Jade of the Orient
Jade of the Orient is the Chinese restaurant on Mall Road in Derry, Maine, where Mike Hanlon arranged the reunion lunch for the surviving members of the Losers' Club on May 30, 1985. It serves as the neutral ground where the six adults—Bill Denbrough, Beverly Rogan, Ben Hanscom, Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, and Mike Hanlon—first gather after twenty-seven years, share their stories, and vote to return to the Barrens to confront It again. The meal is marked by a grotesque supernatural incident when the fortune cookies produce blood, a human eyeball, teeth, and a mutant cricket, confirming that It is aware of their return and actively opposing them.
Setting and Atmosphere
Jade of the Orient is located on Mall Road, which was once Pasture Road, where the Kitchener Ironworks had stood before the Derry Mall was built. Mike chose the restaurant because it was new and felt like "neutral ground" to him, a place untainted by the childhood horrors that saturated the rest of Derry. The restaurant is described as a large plastic pagoda, and its interior features a dim corridor leading from the lobby past the main dining room to private rooms. The hostess, Rose, is a smiling Oriental woman in a delicate pink kimono upon which a dragon is embroidered, her dark hair held with ivory combs. She greets Mike by name and leads the party to their reserved room, noting that they are "well met in friendship." The private room is furnished with a long table, and the atmosphere is initially one of cautious reunion, with the six old friends ordering drinks and beginning to talk.
The Reunion Lunch
The lunch itself is a lavish affair, with the group ordering pu-pu platters, spareribs, moo goo gai pan, chicken wings, egg rolls, water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, and strips of beef threaded onto wooden skewers. Richie Tozier makes a childish but amusing business of broiling a little bit of everything over the flaming pot in the center of the platter, including half an egg roll and a few red kidney beans. The meal is punctuated by laughter and the easy falling-back into old roles, with Richie performing his Voices and the others responding with the familiar "Beep-beep, Richie." Rose herself brings the dessert—a great mound of baked Alaska which she ignites at the head of the table. Richie remarks that it may be the best meal he has ever eaten, and Rose replies demurely, "But of course." When Richie asks if he gets his wish by blowing out the flame, Rose says, "At Jade of the Orient, all wishes are granted, sir." Richie's smile falters as he responds, "I applaud the sentiment, but you know, I really doubt the veracity."
The Fortune Cookie Incident
The meal's conclusion is shattered by a supernatural attack. Mike passes a bowl of fortune cookies around the table. Each of the six takes one, but no one simply bites into his or her cookie; they all break them open with a sense of foreboding. Beverly's cookie spurts blood across her hand and onto the white napery. Eddie's cookie produces a huge, mutated cricket with an ugly yellow-brown carapace and obsidian eyes. Richie's cookie contains a human eyeball staring with glazed intensity. Ben's cookie holds two teeth with clotted blood on their roots. Bill's cookie begins to pulse and swell, and a great grayish-black fly slowly births itself from the collapsing remains. The fly is the size of a baby sparrow. Bill later explains that the fly came from his mind because he had been planning a novel called "Roadbugs" about bugs, and that the Langlahan story "The Fly" had woven itself into his thinking. Beverly's blood came from her memory of the blood from the bathroom drain when she was eleven. Eddie's cricket came from a nightmare he had about his bed being full of crickets. The hostess, Rose, returns to check on them but sees nothing unusual, just as Beverly's parents had never seen the blood that came out of the drain. Bill covers the fly with his napkin, and the group quickly pays the check and leaves, shaken but resolute.
Narrative Significance
Jade of the Orient serves as the crucial transitional space between the Losers' separate adult lives and their unified purpose. It is the place where the vote to stay and fight is taken, with each member raising a hand in turn, and where the final pieces of memory begin to click into place. The restaurant's status as "neutral ground" is immediately violated by the fortune cookie attack, demonstrating that no place in Derry is safe from It's influence. The incident also reveals that It is aware of their return and is actively trying to intimidate them, using their own fears and memories against them. The restaurant's name, "Jade of the Orient," and its Orientalist decor—the hostess in a kimono, the pagoda architecture—stand in stark contrast to the raw, American horror that erupts within it, underscoring the novel's theme of the mundane world being invaded by the supernatural. The restaurant itself is later destroyed in the storm that devastates Derry on May 31, 1985, when the Derry Mall, where it was located, is leveled by a series of explosions.
