The Tale of Joe Hua by Homer Pheeder From "Tales From the Front" In Seattle, in what passes for Chinatown, although not as splendored, nor as populous as similar ethnic areas in other cities, it is still well...Chinatown. Late one night last week in searching for a decent meal, I stumbled across a small restaurant manned only by a father and two sons, a place that I have summarily nominated for a position high up in the roster of "Tales from the Streets". The formica counters had seen far too many customers to be homespun,the fluorescent lighting too hesitant and flickering to perform their tasks well yet there was an air to the place that I liked. A young man greeted me cordially, as I entered. "Good evening, sir. Would you like some coffee or tea?" I paused, noticing that he spoke without a trace of an accent, yet as I entered, had heard him speaking in Mandarin to someone else in the kitchen. "Yes, Green tea, and a menu, please." He deftly poured a pot of tea, proffering it with one of those delicate rice cups favored in oriental restaurants, and circumspectly left me with a menu, returning back to from whence he had come. Were I one were to judge a restaurant's culinary expertise by its menu's diversity, I thought, this would be a dining experience indeed. Every imaginable oriental dish was represented that I had ever seen, and a few of which I knew very little. Furthermore, the menu, unlike the plastic laminated menus one comes to expect in nearly any restaurant, was obviously done, at some point in its history, on a personal computer using some high- quality graphics and fonts. When the waiter returned, and after I had chosen my meal, I asked him about the source of the menu, adding, "I spend a great deal of my time working on PC's. This is definately some quality artwork." "I did the artwork and lettering for my father on my PC at home. I am glad you enjoy the menu. It was my first attempt at desktop publishing since college." Over the excellent tea, I sought unsuccessfully to engage the young man in further conversation, but each time, much to my chagrin, someone would call out in Mandarin, from within the depths of the kitchen and he would patiently excuse himself, to go to the kitchen, often returning with one or another dish of food for the table next to me. Throughout the the meal, the restaurant was silent and I was left to my own devices, save for the whirring of the overhead fans juxtaposed against the tinny sound of recorded Mandarin music that echoed from a speaker somewhere over my head. Finally, after I had finished my meal, asking for more of the excellent tea, I screwed up my courage to ask the young man how he came to know about personal computers. He brushed a long flock of black hair out of his eyes, and as he wiped an otherwise spotless counter next to where I sat, he said, "I graduated from college with a degree in fine arts in California two years ago. I learned to use a PC there." I sipped my tea a moment, letting his statement hang between us, unnoticed, and then, hoping that I was injecting a proper amount of respect into my voice, I asked, "What are you doing with your art degree now, I mean other than working here?" "This is where I work all the time. My mother passed away two years ago and my father could not run the restaurant alone. It is a tradition in China that when a member of your family dies, a son must help with the work." "I wish Americans had such respect for their elders," I said softly. In America, your culture is only 500 years old. In China our culture is over 5000 years old. This is an old custom." "Who besides you and your father work here? Do you have any sisters or brothers to help with the work?" "No sisters. My younger brother cooks during the daytime, and there is a Chinese girl my father hired to wait on the customers at lunch. That is all. You must excuse me now. I must go back and help my father clean up, as we close in ten minutes." After paying my bill, I left a substantial tip, although perhaps out of guilt at the unhampered lifestyle I lead, and circumspectly let myself out the front door, pausing only to admire the picture of a very beautiful Asian woman that sat in a lovely picture frame in a cubbyhole behind the front counter. I wasn't ten feet away from the door when, looking back in the spacious front window, I saw the young artist cleaning the counter where I had just sat, removing all traces of my existence in their shop, as if I never had been. As I sat across the street, waiting for the truck to warm up, I saw an older man entered from the kitchen with a cup of tea, a cigarette drooping listlessly from the corner of his mouth. He sat down at the end of the counter nearest the front door. Gazing around the room, the older man arose from his seat to come over and gently tend the roses that sat in a vase, by the door. One by one, he briefly touched each one, and with a final caress, slowly turned off the flashing red neon sign in the window. Picking up the picture from behind the counter, and clasping it closely to his chest, he turned off the interior lights and disappeared from view. The next day, out of instinct, I patiently followed the indelible trail of facts the young man had given me to work with, hoping to learn more. In the archives of the Seattle Times I discovered that the beautiful face in the picture had been Joe Hua's wife, until she died in a particularly ugly car wreck two years ago. She was a musician, honored with a first seat in the Seattle symphony. I also learned of her son's budding and illustrious career who had won several major awards as an artist and photographer of world-class talent, in San Francisco. And I learned of life and how light flows by, in the rain, for the love Joe Hua once had reserved, unabashedly, for the beautiful and talented woman in the picture, was now expended in a restaurant on a dismal corner in Seattle; just as the love of art and form that had once impelled his son to newfound heights was now surrendered, unquestioned, in the love and honor of his father.