Dolly: Chapter 1 When you see the Buddha

In the middle of Chinatown 

On a back alley street

Where once the buildings were condemned.

A gentrified hipster's paradise

Some historic buildings still stood

Small Structures way back when.  

The sign said Sisters

of the Mary Knoll

These cubbies belonged to the Diocese.

Outreach outposts to 
Chinatown's youth

Next to brick and cobblestone streets. 


One of these holes
 belonged to Dolly
A 5'6'' old white lady.

She spoke a lot of Canto
Though most not understood
Cause she focused on it sounding nicely.

Her Common law man

by the name of Cheung Po
had died quite some time ago. 

He had had a gambling house
Where he would take his young son
To show him the money luck flow. 

Her son grew up 
and moved on and out
And even Dolly died

But somehow resurrected
A Saint to be protected
The church gave her the house with pride.  


Now her family had gone on to other things 
and Dolly lived at home on Tyler, 

Near the statue of Confucius. 
To her son she tried to prove this
But he chose to respectfully deny. 


She had managed to acquire
 the little house for a dollar 
through some strange slight of hand.

 She knew nothing about it.
Just saw how her son pouted
But continued on nonetheless. 

 It had all been done quite behind her back and for the face of her husband and all that as well as for the years of service to the Community and various organizations in Chinatown both legal and otherwise. The condition was that she could never sell the house (which couldn't be sold on its own but would definitely go for over a million, and although many a Church had been converted into condos, these particular holes in the walls had been declared historical sites, and so the Godzilla of development wasn't going to smash these particular holes in the alley. Though the surrounding apartments were all rented out to students, young professionals, and hipsters, very few of whom were Chinese. 

And outsider might assume Veronica was one of these very gentrifiers. But then she was just a little old lady. 

Veronica, though living in Chinatown, had spent a few years in Japan. And although a lot of older mainlanders disliked Japanese culture, Veronica enjoyed its simplicity. When she had first met her late husband (again whom she had not actually married and whom we will refer to as Bo Jai from now on) they had conversed in Japanese. Bo Jai had also been a world traveler and had also spent some time in Japan. Somehow by the time Veronica had returned to the United States, Cape Cod Massachusetts to be exact, and was working as a hostess/receptionist at the Dragon Inn Chinese restaurant, Bo Jai's Japanese, was still better than his English. It may have been because he had learned Japanese when he was young, whereas he had tried to learn English at an older age and it was more difficult to stick. Well that's what someone would guess anyway. The truth was another matter. 

The point of it all is that Veronica's little apartment had little to no furniture and was covered in tatami mats. In other words it looked like a Japanese tea house in terms of the floor. It had various Chinese brush paintings hanging on the wall, many of which had been painted by Veronica herself, but some were from friends, from her grandchildren, and other neighborhood kids. 

In this way the ambiance was a little more chaotic than a Japanese tea house and in fact there was even some paintings by children (and adults, who would write poems that Veronica couldn't read directly on the wall when drunk) than a Japanese tea house. 

In the back, Dolly had a little Japanese Rock garden where she also grew mint and other herbs. She took care of a neighborhood cat that also frequented and was fed by other households. And she often hosted people in her little home. Although she had tried many arts and religions in her youth, in her old age, especially after a bout with Cancer, she developed a simplified version of various things that she could practice in her little hole in the alley as well as with friends at parks etc.

She trained regularly with a Tibetan Gurka and sometimes with her Chinese Style butcher knife, quite close to the body, so as to avoid marking up the walls. A neighborhood child had taught her some of the sword, which was apparently designed for light stepping small children in the dark... but that is another story which we may come into later on. 

Watching her diet, and exercising often, Veronica had become a very fit if stockyish woman, where she had been rather heavy set or at least struggled with her weight for most of her life. She lost so much weight that her son had not even recognized her and to some degree did not fully believe she was his mother as he had seen her die of cancer with his own eyes and could not understand how it came to be that she had seemingly risen from the dead... though legally that was recognized to be the case.

--

Veronica liked to sit outside of her Mary Knoll house door some time and smoke her medical marijuana. She had smoked often in her travels but said that mostly it made her feel tired. When she had had cancer, and yes when she had died of Cancer she had taken up the herb again and recently it was legal and having DIED she actually was qualified for free medical Marijuana until..... well until she died again. 

But still she enjoyed growing her own and mixing in sage and lemon balm and other herbs. She borrowed books from the library and went to various meetings and really she had quite a few young friends who thought she was quite cool because of this. They enjoyed her company much more than her son's in any case. 

She even had begun to grow a bit of opium (which yes she had also tried in her travels and found it to be not such a big deal as it was made out to be when not processed to just a refined degree) and had begun to mix that in as well. 

She had learned from some of the old Chinese Chess players how to fashion a tobacco bong out of bamboo and an old can. But she had worked at making something more aesthetically pleasing. 

She was blowing smoke, sitting halfway onto her doorstep and the other half still within her threshold, which she was told was Feng Shui, but from which place she could sit and chat with people, but where she could also easily step fully inside and shut the door, perhaps bringing in any neighborhood boy or girl in need of fleeing an overzealous policeman or gang of thugs if necessary, when walking quite deliberately and intently with a strange sort of walking stick was Cheung Sam Fung. Yes... the one and only, said to have created Tai Chi and lived to 300 and all that. As it turns out, he seems to have never died at all, and would pop up here and there all of the world. 

He wasn't dressed in robes and didn't stick out as much as you might think, walking down the streets of Chinatown. He just looked like a healthy old man that probably did Tai Chi or something to stay fit... and that is actually exactly what he was. 

Veronica was sitting there, smoking here mixture of herbs, which could very well be psychoactive. In fact she was in the process of blowing smoke and watching the whisps curl around int to dragons floating about the cosmos in front of her face, when she saw Sam Fung. 

All she saw of course was an older man with a peacoat and a walking stick. It wasn't a normal cane. The height of it was a little lower than shoulder height for teh man, who was tall, especially for Cantonese, at least Veronica's time. Now the people coming over from China all seemed to be over 6 feet for some reason. 

The old man's tall cane had some sort of decoration at the top. Stone. It could very well have been jade, and the stick looked of a solid and expensive dark wood. 

"Jo Sun and Good Morning!" Veronica called to the old man... who she suspected was even older than her though he looked spry. 

"Wah! Jo Sun AND Good Morning, not just Jo Sun, not just Good morning but both," replied Fung.

"Why not?" said Veronica. She hadn't been sure whether he would be more comfortable with English or Chinese.. and wasn't even quite sure why she cared. 

"Let me ask you something Dolly," Said Fung...and his use of Veronica's nickname shocked her until she slowly seemed to recognize, if not the face, at least the presence of the man that stood before her, "Does Joh Sun mean good morning? Actually it just means you got up early. In my experience, just because you get up early, doesn't mean its a good morning... and vice versa."

More and more Dolly, as we will now refer to Veronica, thought that she recognized this man from her travels. In fact it seemed strange but she swore she had seen him in different countries, with different faces and clothing. Whether it was the Sahara, or Khtamandu, or Laos.... She swore she ahd seen him many many times... but had forgotten all about him until just now. 

'Well I suppose I do mean both Jo Sun AND Good Morning then, specifically because the one does not necessarily mean the other, And if you would like to squat here or even come inside, or around back where I have a Zen rock Garden of sorts, we can share in this collection of herbs I am smoking. I will trade you smoke for your story, for I am not mistaken we have crossed paths before. 

With that Dolly blew a particularly lively smoke dragon, or at least she thought so, which seemed to fly all the way down to the corner and circle the Bak Gwa hanging on the Nai Lun Association door and then flying directly to the corner of the skyscraper opposite which the Bak Gwa was protecting the block from... you see in Fung Sui, corners are like soldiers attacking and need to be warded off and all that. Dolly didn't really care muich for Fung Sui, not in the acdemic sense, but she could see it instinctively with her smoke Dragons as she did just now. 

"Wah! Ho Liang Ah!" exclaimed Fung clapping half mockingly, but actually half impressed. " But right now I don't have time to chase the dragon either through artful smoke, or the chemical way. I'm putting together a crew, or rather, there is already a crew and we are missing one person, and I am looking for this person to join now. I'm having a hard time finding the right person though."

While Fung was talking one of Dolly's other friends came ambling along. Julio was his name. He had taught Dolly the Hakka knife fighting techniques. Julio was a chef specializing in Dominican Chinese food and had taught the techniques with the standard Chinese Butcher Knife. Here he came now dressed in all black, as waiters and chefs often did in this age of Fusian Asian food. He looked quite slick, young, and into the night life. 

"When you're in luck.. err..." I don't think I caught your name..I am not sure if I am older or you are Brother... or is it Uncle, or Grandfather, as I do suspect I have seen you before when I was quite young....But in any case, here comes Julio and he may be just the strapping young man for your crew... but he is one of my favorites and a son to me so we will have none of it if you are planning anything illegal."

Julio perked up as he waved hello, "What's this? Auntie are you getting me into trouble with strangers? Who are you and why are you bothering our Auntie. Everyone on this street knows her you know." 

"I'm recruiting someone for a journey and an adventure." Fung repeated. 

"Haha... don't look at me. I want to stay home and eat! or watch Netflix and chill, whether its by myself or with a liang loi form around here, easy to find now in Chinatown. Those white girls come in looking for handsome chefs like me, believe it or not. I have all the adventures I could want right down the block on Kneeland, and even that is too much for me sometimes, but at least afterward I can walk home or bring it home with me."

"Well, As it so happens," Continued Fung, "I WASN'T actually looking at you, but at Veronica here, or Dolly, as she was called as a young girl."

Julio raised and eyebrow and gave Dolly a look to see if everything was ok. Dolly nodded and waved him on, letting him off the hook from possibly needing to intervene on her behalf, physically or otherwise. Julio looked a Fung up and down, saw that perhaps there was more to him than met the eye but decided he was probably ok. He waved a nonchalant salute as he stepped off down toward Chinatown proper calling, "Jao le!"

Dolly started to smile and nod smile and nod, which universally among women can mean that the conversation is totally over. 

"It's funny what a smile and a nod can mean isn't it?" Started Fung again, after some time of just standing there in silence which almost startled Dolly as she had almost forgotten he was there, not feeling particularly threatened by him. "I mean, smiling and nodding and then calling Jo Sun, that could be a greeting. But Smiling and nodding and calling Jo Sun, can me..."

"Jo Sun!" Smiled Dolly

"Which means..." Fung said

"....off!" Dolly said quietly with a smile that was all feeling. Which means Fung laughed. This of course broke the ice again a little. 

"What did you say your name was again?" Dolly asked. 

"Jerng Sam Fung."

"That's spelled C H E U N G isn't it?"

"Or Z H A N G nowadays in China, " Fung continued. 

"Hmmmm..... I'm going to smile and nod to that one." Dolly said... smiling and nodding, "But where have we met before, and do you always use the same name? Or more to the point.... is it time?

"Time for what?" Fung asked, "Time for your journey."

"Into the next world." Dolly said calmly as she was feeling quite high.

"Well first of all, I believe you have taken that journey and come back again once, which is why you seem to recognize me. Otherwise I would be able to make your memory of me completely fade. Instead you have a shadow of lost recognition."

"So...."

"A different journey. One in this world." Fung said. 

-

-Dolly was getting tired and bored at this point and started to pack away her things. 
"Well, I went on many an adventure on my youth, and it is true that I seem to know you, but honestly I'm tired now and I'm going to go lie down. I'm old. I'm so old that as you have said I died and came back, and even if you have done that, as I remember you being old when i was young, well... good for you. But I'm tried now... and I'm lying down."

Dolly went to do just that staring up at the ceiling. The moment she lay down, she wasn't tired. It was often like that. And now she was annoyed that she couldn't just pass out and push the memory of Ah Fung out of her head. Not that he was particularly unpleasant. But its just that she kept thinking of the other times she had seen him....or thought she saw him. She was bothered by it. She could call her son and talk about it, but the truth was, maybe her son felt the same way about her as she felt about this Ah Fung. You see her son had watched her die, and he did not fully accept that she was his mother, nor did he fully deny it.  

Dolly wondered if she had been rude. Maybe she should have asked him to go to dim sum tomorrow. But to ask a thing like that in Chinese culture meant that she would have to pay, and why the hell should she do that? It seemed to be more that this guy wanted something from her than the other way around. But maybe his sudden presence meant something. It was this destiny and fate idea that bothered her and made her want to lie down and figure it all out later.

Fung, standing outside, with basically the door slammed (albeit gently) in his face did two strange things. First he took a small water brush from his pocket. It was the Japanese plastic type that artists would fill with water and then dip into ink. But Fung had his brush filled directly with ink. The ink was not black either but red... and it wasn't normal ink. It was a mixture of Cinnabar, which is actually solidified Mercury. He painted a hardly recognizable symbol of a crane on the top right corner of Dolly's front door. Not the Chinese word for crane, a squiggle with wings that could have been a child's drawing. He also pulled out his phone entered the location on his Fung Sui Monsters app as a place where you could pick up a monkey thief. FSM was like Pokemon Go. Less popular... but only because it was an underground app of sorts, in that it wasn't common knowledge. But enough people played it that it was not an exclusive app per se. 

Dolly fell into a deep sleep. It had been the middle of the afternoon , you could say if it were a nap, that she over slept and had forgotten to eat dinner. She woke up at 2 am, her stomach empty which bothered her enough that she couldn't really go back to sleep. But she was still tired and in a haze that she really couldn't get up. There weren't that many places in Chinatown that were still open at 2 am...Chau Chau City had closed its doors long ago, and that was a little rough for an old lady even when it was open. Of course she had food in the fridge or she could make something... but at 2 am? Maybe she should just try and fall back to sleep. 


But then there was knocking at the door. Her door! and whispered shouting in Chinese. The tapping and knocking was not random, but to the beat of the lion dance drumming that you often heard on Chinese New Year and at wedding parties.. as if it be some sort of code meaning.  

She looked through the peep hole and saw the sketchiest group of short Asian males that you could possibly see in Chinatown. They had Tattoos, and unlike say a group of young hoods with tattooed that looked like they were playing dress up, they looked somewhat more aged, jaded, and reserved, like for them banging on an old ladies door at night really wasn't something fun to do at all and they couldn't believe this was what they were doing. 

Dolly opened the door. One or two of the younger one's look shocked. 

"I thought you were dead... hmm...." then turning to the others, "Hurry up and bow you idiots." and then Walking in and offering his hand, "Sing. I know your son...I don't know why he doesn't believe its you, it's obvious who else could it be. We brought some take out. Not the crappy kind, the good stuff.." then again to the others in whispered anger, "Hurry up and take off your shoes, set up the dinner and get things ready for uhhh... How should we call you? See Tai? How about that! Haha."

Sing laughed to himself and organised what appeared to be a banquet. The lights were turned on and despite efforts to keep quiet, the men... and actually Dolly noticed a couple of women, were really quite loud.  

Dolly suddenly felt young again. "Should I put on tea?" She asked these virtual strangers, "What is the correct thing to do? That food smells really good!, is there rice?"

Sing walked in as if he owned the place saying, "Don't worry about it Grandma, we'll take care of everything you just sit down and relax. Hey! set up a seat at the head of the table for our leader here!" 

The take out containers were arranged and opened on the table. Fau Yuk, Salted fish rice, Bean curd fu yu string beans and beef, Curry chicken...these dishes were not all from the same restaurant but from several, and the containers, Dolly noticed, were not made of styrofoam, but of Bamboo. There were dim sum containers too which was strange because it was the middle of the night. There was bowls of wonton noodles, Roast duck, Char siu, Baos... how could they have gotten all of this at 2 am? 

Dolly saw Scallops and oysters and.... "What are these?" she asked, 

"Bao Yu. Try it!" Sing said. 

Dolly dug in but soon found she was full. 

There were soups that weren't just the cheap kind but the medicinal herbal kind. 

Cell phone texts kept alerting Sing and various other members of the group of new people at the door, whom they let in as if it were their own house. But given the quality of the food brought, Dolly didn't complain. 

Why were they eating like this? Was it a holiday?

Dolly looked at Sing who gave here a knowing nod. "Eat up" he called, "Might be the last time we eat like this. 

After the food was finished stacks of boxes decorated with beautiful women, either the four ancient beauties or sillohettes of Chang' E against the moon suddenly appeared, 

"Oh I love Moon cakes!" Dolly cried. 

One of the crew, who was one of the few women in the group called out, "Don't eat the packaged ones. We can save those for later," And Pearl, that was her name handed a fresh mooncake with lotus seed paste to Dolly. Dolly had always been partial to Moon Cakes but usually they only sold the red and black bean paste Mooncakes in Boston's Chinatown.  

After the meeting sort of started spontaneously, people went around and introduced themselves

Sing of course
K lun, Hong Mao, Lac, Wu Ah, Tiger, Ping, Macao Ming, not to be confused with Tall legs Ming, Sake Su, and Ghost Eye Lucy. Sake Su and Ghost Eye Lucy were women. They looked like the type of women, in body and form and hairstyle that Dolly had always aspired to look like. And then finally, Fung arrived. 

At some point they started playing music from the phone.

Ghost Eye Lucy said, "I created this new beat you wanna hear it?"

She played it and it sounded like a sample of Fui Sik Dik Gwai Ji with a stronger beat which she rapped over. When the melody kicked in everyone started screaming

Dap jik Fui sik dik gwai ji!
Juen si sum yeen dik Sui Ying!

Ngau yi bui serng  yat sang fu gwun
How fu yi hei hui...
nei ngan lui gerk ji jap juen lui...


Je go sai gai yi but ji but gwok 
Dik Hung Hui....
But serng nei meen hui...


Dolly passed out at some point. It was the most comfortable sleep she had slept in a long time.