Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
detective said, “in case she doesn’t know. Here’s the address.” He
handed Vera his colleague’s translation of the address.
If a soul can tremble, that was what I was doing. I remembered
that letter. I had read it.
It was from my cousin Yuhang. She was my confidante in child­
hood, the one who told me the family gossip when she and her fam­
ily came to visit us once a year. When the Communists were on the
verge of taking over Shanghai, and our family left, hers stayed. This
was one of her occasional letters, which arrived in a package of gifts
the morning before I died. I was in the display window area, re­
arranging items, when the postman handed it to me. I put it on the
altar table, and time flew by before I remembered it. As the detective
guessed, I was indeed standing on a stool, hanging Christmas lights.
I spotted my cousin’s package, reached down, and slipped out the
letter. It began with the usual chitchat about weather and health.
And then my cousin got to what she called “the interesting news.”
“The other day,” she wrote, “I was at the dirt market to find some
things for my eBay business. You know how the foreigners like to buy
all the old stuff still in worn condition. Sometimes I take the old
junk, roll it in dirt to give it an antique look. Don’t tell anyone!
“You should go to the early-morning market with me the next
time you come to Shanghai. They always have good bargains, many
imperialist things that families hid during the Cultural Revolution. I
saw some mah jong sets with original boxes. Those are especially
popular with foreigners. I also saw a woman who was selling a few
pieces of jewelry. The gems were real, not what you’d expect to find
with a woman that coarse, a downriver person—you know what I’m
saying.
“I asked her, just to be friendly, ‘How is it that you came to have
such fancy things?’ And she boasted back, ‘These belonged to my
family. My father was a really rich man before the change. We had
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