The Dragon Emperor’s Treasure (Short Story)
October 2008 - January 2009Due to economic turmoil, a Taiwanese American businessman returns to his homeland with his wife and son in order to convince his estranged father to convert their farmland into a rubber plantation.
First few pages:
The bamboo patches and rice paddies bleached into wheat fields as our train passed across Chiayi County. Much had changed over the past twenty years since I'd been here, in Taiwan. My hometown was becoming more like Hong Kong; downtown Chiayi was now studded with signs and billboards, advertising Panasonic, Versace and such. But we were not going to those urban places—no, we were heading to my father's village, miles away from shopping malls.
Our train ran parallel to cornfields and some adobe houses. Tractors and trucks crept along the paths and sprinklers showered the crops. I took a bite from a sugar-glazed donut we had bought earlier. My six-year-old son, sitting across from me, ate his strawberry-filled one as he stared out the window.
"Isn't Taiwan lovely, Tristan?" Alice wiped his mouth with a napkin.
"Where are the cows?" He wiggled in his leather seat. He was wearing his Mickey Mouse cap we had bought from Hong Kong Disneyland two days ago. Alice tried to settle him down.
I sipped my hot coffee while reading the Wall Street Journal. There's nothing better than the odor of print and that exquisite aroma of Robusta beans. The paper said that the economy's recession was getting worse, and so I was a little worried for my tire company back in San Jose. Our previous suppliers had closed down, so my business needed less expensive raw materials than the current inflated rates. If only I could have my own rubber plantation, I could pay my loans on time. If only I could convince my stubborn old man to let me manage his farm.
Our train entered a dark tunnel. Tristan laughed and mimicked the noise of ghosts.
"Behave," Alice told him. After the boy sat still, she gave his head a pat.
When the train exited the tunnel, the view turned green with hills, paddies and gorges. Our destination grew closer.
***
The farm village seemed as if it had been preserved in a museum. Patches of lettuce, pea tip, cassava, celery and radish lined my father's fields as they stretched around the hillsides, coloring the place with various shades of green. The air was thick with the smell of natural fertilizer. Upon my foot's trudge, the soil felt soft—as it had been during my teenage years when delivering a basket full of sweet potatoes and then slipping on after-rain sludge. I put on my sunglasses and moved onto the rocky trail leading to the large, brown farmhouse at the base of the valley. In the village were the rice paddies and huts. Sweaty peasant men and women wearing straw hats were bending down and soaking their feet in muddy water, collecting grain: a toilsome work under the unmitigated heat of the noonday sun. Other villagers carried large baskets of crops. These provincials ought to use machinery these days.Tristan pinched my gray suit. "Where are the horsies and piggies, Dad?"
