The Room on the Lane

I handle the Chinese. You follow the story.

Shi Jianqiao arrived in Tianjin on the third of March, 1935.

She arrived at the central railway station on the morning train from Pukou. She carried a single bag.

Inside the bag were three changes of clothes, two leather notebooks, a small dictionary, a sewing basket, and a Browning model 1900 wrapped in oilcloth in a small wooden box at the bottom.

She did not stay in a hotel.

She rented 这zhè second-floor room above a bean-curd shop on a lane three blocks south of the foreign-concession boundary, two blocks east of the Buddhist Jushilin.

The widow who owned the house asked for the rent in advance, in cash, and did not ask for papers.

这zhè. This. 这zhè second-floor room means this second-floor room. 这zhè is for things close to you.

Shi Jianqiao gave the widow a 名字míngzi that was not the 名字míngzi on her marriage register. The 名字míngzi she gave was Dong Hui, a common surname and a common given 字zì.

Dong Hui from Anhui, recently widowed, in Tianjin for a season of mourning at a Buddhist hall a friend had recommended.

The widow found this credible. The widow had rented the second-floor room to half a dozen women in the same situation since 1932.

The room had one window facing the lane. One bed. One table. One small clothes chest with a wooden box at the back.

Shi Jianqiao unpacked the bag on the first afternoon and put the wooden box at the bottom of the clothes chest, under a winter coat she would not need until November.

She slept in the room that night. She woke at five. She walked through the lanes to the front gate of the TianjinJushilin in time for the six o'clock chanting on her first morning in the city.

The front gate of the Jushilin was a stone arch with a wooden plaque above it that said TianjinJushilin in four black 字zì cut deep into the wood. Beyond the arch was a courtyard with a small pond and two old plum trees.

Beyond the courtyard was the chanting hall itself, a single-story building with a tile roof and a wide threshold and rows of cushions arranged in front of an altar.

She removed her shoes at the threshold. She walked in quietly. A woman registrar at a small desk inside asked for her 名字míngzi, the city she was from, and whether she was a returning member or new.

Shi Jianqiao said she was new. She said the 名字míngzi she had given the widow. She said Anhui.

The woman registrar wrote it in the visitor 书shū and gave her a small wooden number tag and pointed her to the back two rows of cushions, which were reserved for visitors.

Shi Jianqiao took a cushion in the back row.

The chanting began at six. She did not chant on the first morning. She listened. She watched the front of the hall, where the older members and the founding board sat.She located Sun Chuanfang on her seventh look.

He 坐着 in the second row, on a center-left cushion, in a simple gray robe, with his back to her, chanting steadily.

坐着. 坐 plus 着. Same 着 as in 拿着 from earlier. 坐 alone is to sit. 坐着 is sitting in place, held there.

She left the hall at seven thirty with the rest of the visitors. She walked back to the room. She made a small entry in the second 书shū. Sun Chuanfang, present, second row, center-left, gray robe.

On the second morning, she chanted with the rest of them. She did not know the chants well enough to keep up, but she followed the older woman next to her, mouthing the syllables a beat behind.

By the end of the second week, she could keep up.

By the end of the first month, she was a regular.

The board members noticed her in the way a board notices any consistent visitor. Sun Chuanfang, in the second row, did not turn around.

In May she registered as a paying student of the Jushilin的de lay-instruction program. The 老师lǎoshī who led the program was a quiet former magistrate from Shandong, Jin Yunpeng的de朋友péngyou.

老师lǎoshī. Teacher. The 老师lǎoshī who led the program means the teacher who led the program. 老师lǎoshī is a respectful word for any teacher.

The registration gave her access to the daily afternoon study sessions, which were held in a side room of the main hall and were attended by a smaller circle of about forty regular students.

The afternoon sessions were where the older members spoke informally with the new ones.

The afternoon sessions were where Sun Chuanfang的de assistant, a man called Old Fang, sometimes appeared with a tray of tea on behalf of the board.

Shi Jianqiao, attending the afternoon sessions as Dong Hui, was three weeks into the 老师lǎoshī的de program when Old Fang first put a cup of tea down at her cushion.

She thanked him. She drank the tea slowly. She asked him, with what she hoped was the diffident curiosity of a recent widow, whether the founders ever attended the afternoon sessions.

Old Fang said the head, Jin Yunpeng, occasionally. The chairman, the one with the dharma nameZhi Yuan, did not. The chairman was a private man. He kept to the morning chanting and his own afternoon reading.

Shi Jianqiao thanked Old Fang and asked nothing else.

By August, she had been a regular at the TianjinJushilin for five months.By September, she had been seen by Sun Chuanfang once across the chanting hall on a morning when he turned to look at the door for an unrelated reason.

He had seen her, registered her as one of the back-row visitors, and turned back. The look had lasted, by her count, about two seconds.

On the first of October 1935, she made the entry in the second 书shū that mattered.

Sun Chuanfang的de schedule confirmed for the past five months. Six in the morning. Second row. Same cushion. Same exit at seven thirty out the side gate. Walks east along the lane to a tea house for breakfast.

Walks home in the afternoon. He was home by five.

现在xiànzài she had what she needed.

现在xiànzài. Now. 现在xiànzài she had what she needed means now she had what she needed.

What she was going to do with it would take another month to plan and one morning to carry out.

In Episode Fourteen, we walk through the front gate of the TianjinJushilin and look at it the way she looked at it in October.

That is where we start Episode Fourteen.