The Street of Precious Pearls

THE key to new treasure is often found in places unexpectedly near. It was midforenoon of a day in early spring. I approached the stuffy cubby hole, in which my private teacher waited, with lagging steps, struggling with the temptation to be finished with school for the day. On Hatamen Street a fortune teller squatted, reading fates with his magic paraphernalia; outside of Chen Men an old man in a lantern had promised to teach me to paint on parchment; there was a temple bazaar on at Lung Fa Fsu—a dozen different allurements called. Reluctantly I tapped upon the door several minutes late.

A woman older than my former teacher bade me enter. It is the custom in the school where I study Mandarin, or official Chinese, to change instructors often lest one copy too accurately mannerisms in intonation. Perhaps had it not been spring, or had I not been late we would have conned over lessons for weeks and gone no deeper behind the veil of passive expression on either face, each of us busy with her own thoughts while we droned over Chinese proverbs. As it was I had seen the official looking document laid upon the table and the light in Chia Kuei Ping’s eyes that told better than words the story of a long hoped for dream suddenly come true. Perhaps she felt the need in mine. I count it among the most precious treasures of my life that she did not pass me by with only a drilling on Chinese proverbs.

Proverbs are good, but she gave me much more. The document she translated was the appointment of her son to go to study railway transportation for three years in America, England and the continent of Europe. While she talked, I who could understand only a few of her words, caught something of what that meant to her and to her people. Through her eyes I saw burdens lifted from the necks of millions of overladen men and women who with their bodies now make the largest part of the transportation service of her country. She was not blinded to the long years before her son’s dream of an interlacing series of freight trains should take their place; but her dream had been fulfilled in his opportunity.

The days that followed were filled with deep joy for me. In the atmosphere of her own home Kuei Ping let me know her daughter and her four grandchildren. Nestled at the foot of the western hills, where seventeen generations of her mother’s family have dwelt, she let me sit at her feet and listen to life as it was lived about her. She did not still my eager questions, but she shared with me what she had learned from fifty-five years of life, teaching as simply and as eagerly as she taught the pupils of her own school.

Ancient trees mark cool spots of deep green on the bare cathedral-like glory of western hills that overlook her village. They shelter the ancient temples in which her forefathers and her neighbors have worshipped for many generations. Some are falling into decay, but all have been built with infinite care by the hand of man. In the quiet of early morning I have listened with Chia Kuei Ping to the chant of services in the Llama temple, to make which men carried pure white marble all the way from India that they might have a fitting dwelling place for their gods. I have walked with her beneath the peaceful shade of wide-spreading trees that stretch their branches over the roof of a temple where men and women seek through worship of Buddha to bring blessedness to themselves and their families. She has led me beneath the counting board whose legend reads “As you live so shall the evils be marked against you,” through the noisy mart of a Taoist temple where seekers after truth please their gods by avoiding evil.

The mountains overlook, and the temples surround, her little school and church, the former but a part of her ancient family dwelling, the latter new like her religion. The trees that surround it are but slender saplings, little more than sprouting roots. The simple structure of the building has no architectural beauty to compare with the ancient temples on the hillside. I wonder just a little at her daring to place it there. Then from within her dwelling comes the sound of childish voices singing—the children who are being taught what she has learned of life while she goes just a little ahead, listening with the eager heart of youth for the voice of the Father who gave his Son that those who seek might learn of Him. Her school is filled to overflowing with the youth of her village.

Parents, too long bound by old tradition to learn to walk in new ways, covet for their children the luminous light that shines in the eyes of Chia Kuei Ping.