Finding Home

Chapter Eighteen: Xi'an, China

The flight to Xi’an was eight hours and I gladly used it to sleep for the first time in two days. I had packed mostly western style clothing but I had brought along a few kimono and upon my mother’s request I had worn a hikifurisode on the flight to Xi’an to meet the Hai Family in. She had tried to make me wear a traditional hairstyle as well but I had wiggled my way out of it. We flew first class, which was something I had not done since I was a child. When I had traveled to other oriental countries with my parents where the company had expanded to and once to America we had always been in first class but now the company had two planes so there was no longer a need for such a thing. I liked to ride economy when I traveled alone however.

I dreamed the same hallucination I had had on the beach over and over again on the flight to Xi’an, but I could never see Itsuki’s face nor did he ever reach me. Nor did I reach him when I tried. I was glad to finally wake from the looping nightmare when we landed in XIY and were met by several of the compounds house servants. A butler, a chauffeur, and a few male servants all which wore traditional Chinese clothing and spoke such formal Mandarin that I felt like I was in a classroom learning Mandarin for the first time. The butler and the other servants carried our luggage to another car while were lead to an expensive black car by the chauffer. The car looked to me like that standard car for all rich people with the expensive looking leather interior.

After a drive through the city, we exited the south gate of the 12 meter wall that surrounded the ancient yet now modern city. The drive from the wall to the compound was probably only 20 to 30 minutes it was short yet long but I enjoyed every second of the ride to the complex from the airport. The compound was located a few miles from the city in a somewhat rural area and with there being no sight of the city I felt as if I had gone back in time to ancient China as I exited the car that was now parked inside the large ornate wall of the complex. The complex was much, much larger than any of the Hotaru compounds, and I doubt putting all of the compounds we had in Japan together would add up to the size of the castle like compound.

The cars were unloaded and Zheng Li grabbed my hand and pulled me away as soon as I stood on the stone of the drive. It left me no time to gawk at the compound, “Where are we going?” I asked him in Mandarin as he pulled me along.

“I must introduce you to the ancestors first” he told me as he pulled me along through several buildings before coming to a garden which he lead me up a small hill to a large building, the ancestral hall. I was lead into the building and did as Zheng Li did greeting the ancestral tablets and praying. We soon left the hall and walked down the stairs back toward the large building that stood at the front of the complex.

After walking up several staircases we came to an office, an old Chinese man sat behind the large desk. He had dark skin and he was so wrinkled that he reminded me of a shar pei puppy though he definitely was not as cute as a puppy. He looked as if he had worked out the fields every day of his life, though I knew he had never seen a day of such hard work, the Hai Family had never in the history of China been poor. I bowed to the ancient man as we stopped in the center of the room, assuming he was either my employer or another important family member I would be working with while I was in China.

“Did you take her to meet the ancestors?” he asked Zheng Li in Pinghua assuming I did not know any other dialects besides Cantonese and Mandarin.

       “Yes, Father, I remember tradition though I have been in Japan for several years now” he told the man bowing to him.

The man looked me over nodding in approval, a smile on his face, “From what I see and hear she would make a good bride, I am willing to overlook that she is Japanese, Zheng Li” he told Zheng Li.