Revisiting Memories are not Signs of Living the Past but are the Embrace of the Future

It doesn’t matter how long I have to wait. I know no other place like here. In the midst of capital’s touristy area, this place is a well-hidden gem somewhere in one of Sanlitun’s small alleys, guided with no lights along the sidewalk, setting side by side to local fruit stands and a small animal hospital. I could even stop and play with the little Labs if I had to wait for my table.

“I already booked a room. My name is Mulan Hua.”

The hurricane wind was still hurling outside. My taxi passed the alleyway so that I had to walk myself through the summer rain for a few minutes to get to the restaurant. My hair was soaking wet, coldness rasped into my skin as the rain immersed through my satin dress thoroughly.

He was already waiting inside. No better than myself, the rain got us all. My eyes widened as the waitress guided us to our own Washitsu- Japanese-styled room, through the festive of the night. Somewhere along the way, every step was bringing me closer to the thought of how this place has always been the same.

How do you recall a memory? Well I couldn’t precisely recall. Like a strike of lightning, I said to myself; Holden Caulfield. Holden f*****g Caulfield. His words, they were echoing one by one in my head. Perhaps in a voice of someone I’d never seen, but he seemed so close that moment, he was there. Still killing time in the museum, and the restaurant with me.

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you." - Catcher in the Rye

A one-second bitterness entered myself as I stepped in the same Washitsu I had not entered for so long. Holden was right. The best thing, though, in the room was that everything always stayed right where it was. The shoji doors were still the ones of that sliding akari-style. The tatami floor, was raw sienna in colour, arranged in two lines in accordance with edoma - the Tokyo floor setting. The fermented-rice smell of warm sake was strong, delicately mixed with the bamboo scent from the curtain that divided us and the Japanese chatters next door. The staff greeted “irasshaimashe” to us, and the Okara- fried soy-pulp, was the first thing that was served on the table from all the things I ordered. They even tasted the same like last summer, the last time I entered this room. 

Nobody was different. The only thing that was different was me. This time I was not dressed in a white chiffon dress. This time I impolitely soaked the tatami flooring and sat in the opposite side of the room. This time I entered the room with a different he. Nor did we shout “Itadakimasu” before supper or sneak passionate kisses under the dim lantern lights as the waitress shut the shoji door firmly behind us.

I smiled. Telling to myself that this would be one of those night I put myself into records to. The next time enter this Washitsu" and I’m sure I will again, maybe next week, or five months or maybe ten years from now " I’ll be able to look back and find out where I exactly was in my life. Maybe with the same he, or different, maybe with a group of medium-level friends or even alone, or with a kid or two. I recently gave up trying to win back a heart I had lost all the way back last summer before I entered this Washitsu. I made peace with the past, no longer holding grudge as memoirs frequently revisited in every little object or site mattered. Through the night, I knew I had lost the battle but I surely had won the war.

We finished the delightful dinner and biked back to his new home. He rented a courtyard house of a local. The landlord was a Chinese couple who lived there for more than forty years until finally decided to rent it out, which I eventually  ound to be a quirky thing to do by a local- trusting and letting go of your long-time possession to a foreigner, a Laowai- literally, an outsider. The house was located in the middle of one of the Capital’s old hutongs-Mongolian alleys in ancient China's time- As I walked in, I, for once was revisited again by memories of the past. The scent of old Teak Hardwood furniture all over the room, the bright red "Happiness" couplets written in Chinese characters on the white wall; they brought me back to the time when I was three or four, I couldn’t recall. 

It was late December- My sister's birthday. That late afternoon the sun was setting. I couldn't careless as I heard my grandmother was shouting, calling me for dinner. It had been a tradition of our family to have a dinner in Gram's place whenever someone has a birthday. That time I was jealous of all the attention my sister received. I could only giggle to myself, standing alone on a small, wet teak hardwood bridge in between a small pond, picking up wild Dandelions, too busy blowing them into the water full of Gosanke Carp fish in her backyard, trying to feed them. Their red and white heads swirling around vividly beneath the clear water like a Yin-Yang symbol, trying to catch the seeds. Who cared about dinner, we were never hungry when we were little, were we.

As I sat there I realised I was sitting in between forty years of other people's memories, but paradoxically was revisited by some fragments of my own. We had some merlot and listened to some rainy tunes as we sat closer to each other. I thought to myself; this room never changed, the only thing that was different was the ones who walked in it.

As we were falling asleep, he whispered to my ears,

“You are special one.”

“… and so is everyone."