I couldn’t believe what I saw as the word fire rolled off my tongue—our property was on fire. Like in a disaster movie, our roof was in flames. The smoke was coming out of the back building where the two homeless men once lived.
Bruno ran out of his unit in his pajamas. Helen waved her arms and was shouting after her husband. I heard the sound of the fire truck coming from a distance. It can’t be our property! I yelled at Qigu. We just bought it and without any insurance!
Qigu and I rechecked the house number and were shocked to realize that it was indeed ours.
We told the police officers that we were the new owners, and that there had been two homeless men living there without our permission. The police officer said that they had found no individuals in the building. There were no witnesses who could prove who had started the fire.
“What about the shopping carts left in the yard by the homeless men?” I asked.
“Sorry, ma’am, the carts would not be considered valid evidence.” The police officer told us that he regretted that there was nothing he could do to help.
Weeks later, one of the homeless men returned to visit Bruno. He and Bruno drank sitting side by side in the yard. They laughed together and tossed the empty beer cans into the shopping cart. Later, after a fight with her husband, Helen told me that the homeless man had admitted to Bruno that he had been the one who had set the fire.
{ Chapter 20 }
Qigu and I worked on repairing the fire-damaged apartment for the entire year. We slept in the attic. We had no money to buy power tools and we couldn’t afford to hire help. We had to learn to do everything ourselves. To keep our legal status, we continued our schooling. We took independent-study courses to buy time.
Local lumberyards and hardware stores became our real-life classrooms. We learned everything about fixing an old house. We gutted the section of our roof where the fire had burnt through. Taking out walls and clearing the debris was much easier than dragging the eight-by-four, three-quarter-inch-thick sheets of plywood. The irony was that the labor camp in China had prepared me for this. I did the heavy carrying because Qigu hadn’t recovered from the neck injury he’d received in the car accident. The foam neck brace he wore turned gray with dirt.
I was afraid of falling when it came time to place the plywood over the roof frame. I told myself that Qigu couldn’t do it alone. It was a windy day. My knees kept shaking. I could see the narrow alley three stories below. I pictured myself falling and my body hitting the concrete. The roof pitch was steep. Qigu needed me to hold, slide, and push the sheets into place and hammer the nails.
Qigu suggested that I tie a cord around my waist for protection. I did, but the problem was the weight. I didn’t have enough strength to lift the large sheets. We experimented with several ways and failed. Finally, Qigu phoned a school friend who was a carpenter. The friend came to help. With two men working together on the roof, and I as their assistant, we were able to get the roof on before the first snowfall.
By December we finished stripping the burnt interior—the walls, windows, bathrooms, and the kitchen. I wore a mask, a shower cap, and gloves. My clothes were filthy. We joked about our nostrils being black, like two chimneys, even though we wore masks. Qigu’s hair was caked with dust.
One day, something got into my eyes. It hurt like hell and for days my tears wouldn’t stop running. My right eye was bloodred and swollen. Rubbing made it worse. I carried on half blind.
At Chicago’s Maxwell Street flea market, we shopped for secondhand tools. We were able to find a used power saw and an electric drill. Afterward, Qigu and I headed to the lumberyard and loaded our car with building materials. There, at a small stand, we had Polish hot dogs for lunch. Qigu enjoyed grilled onions. He loved to say to the vendor, “Extra onions, please.” We had never tasted anything so delicious.
As I watched Qigu take a big bite of his Polish hot dog, I found myself falling into the joy that spread across his face.
I loved the feeling of us working together as a team. When it came time to tackle the plumbing, we became partners in the delicate work of soldering. As Qigu prepared the inside of the fitting with a round wire brush, I used steel wool to clean the outside of the pipe.
“Be careful with the sharp edges,” Qigu would say.
I waited for Qigu to measure and cut the pipe, then put the fittings together. After Qigu applied flux soldering paste, I would light the propane torch and pass it to him.
Meanwhile I quickly inserted an inch of solder into the joint. Qigu held the tip of the flame against the middle of the fitting. We would wait until the soldering paste began to sizzle.
We watched as the capillary action sucked the liquid solder into the joint. The moment Qigu said, “Now!” I wiped away the excess with a rag.
The moments when Qigu heated up the fittings with the propane torch, when we waited for the solder to sizzle, when the liquid solder sealed the copper joints, I felt my heart was at home.
I adored the way Qigu gazed intently at the flame. I found his concentration attractive and even seductive. Bundled in thick winter coats, we moved like two polar bears in a forest of copper pipes. The room’s frigid air made Qigu’s nose turn red. I remember thinking, I can kiss him just now. He might never be rich, but we would be wealthy in love. I began to see Qigu as my ideal peasant farmer who plowed his land tirelessly, and I wanted to be his wife.
The sixty-five-dollar Chevrolet had been serving us well, although the front and taillights no longer worked. Every time I drove, I had to place flashlights inside the light housings, and every time I returned home I took them out. One day I forgot to turn off the flashlights after parking and the batteries died. I received a ticket from the police. Before saving enough money to pay off the first fine, another ticket arrived. A neighbor reported to the city that we had been filling our trash cans with construction debris. We hadn’t known that this was illegal. I was depressed over the lost money. Qigu tried to cheer me up with the Chinese horseman story—the man’s horse ran off and he was distraught from the loss; but as he was moaning into the wind, the horse returned with a finely made new pack.
A period of rain was forecast just after the lumberyard truck dropped off a huge stack of eight-by-four drywall sheets in front of our yard. For three days, Qigu and I carried the drywall to the second floor. We were exhausted and frustrated by our ineffectiveness. My spine, injured at the labor camp, began to hurt. Qigu had to endure the pain from his injured neck. By the end of the day we could barely move. Yet we could not afford to quit because heavy rain was on its way.
We were so thankful when two strangers, two white men, passed by and offered to help. For a total of ninety dollars they promised to carry the rest of the drywall up the stairs. To show our gratitude, we offered each man a twenty-dollar tip as they finished. The next morning we were shocked to discover that our basement window had been broken into, and that all of our equipment was gone.
The exterior siding would have to be put up in the middle of winter. The snow on the ground was three feet deep. I could hear Christmas music from the neighbors’ house. As Qigu and I began the job, we each were on an aluminum ladder. The wind was strong. Because the space between the buildings was extremely narrow, the ladders leaned against the wall at almost 90 degrees. As Qigu and I carried the lengths of siding between us up the wall, my ladder kept sliding to the side. Qigu and I had to adjust our positions, like acrobatic actors, in order to keep the balance.
I clenched my teeth as I held on. Qigu had me hold the board as he hammered the nails on his side, and then I would hammer the nails on my side. We worked without stopping. As the evening deepened, the wind grew stronger. It was difficult for me to remove a two-and-a-half-inch nail from my pocket, hold it between my lips, and climb up while juggling to stabilize the ladder. Once I secured my position, I pressed the board with one hand while reaching behind to grab my hammer.
I could feel the ladder under me begin to slide. It went fast. Before I co
uld make a sound, the ladder fell, taking me with it. It was like a slow-motion film. I was falling from three stories while trying to let go of the board for fear that it would pull Qigu down with me.
I hit the ground. Fortunately, the three-foot-high snow cushioned my fall. For a moment I couldn’t move.
“Are you okay?” I heard Qigu’s cry. “Anchee, answer me! Please, are you alive?”
I knew I was not dead, because I could still hear the neighbors’ Christmas music, yet I was unable to speak. Qigu came down from his ladder and held me in his arms.
Strangely, I felt happy.
“How dare you smile!” Qigu yelled in Chinese. His facial expression twisted. “You scared the shit out of me!”
I returned to China to visit my family in the summer of 1989. Students had already begun to gather in Tiananmen Square by the thousands. They were calling for democracy and there was electricity in the air. I met with a former middle schoolmate, who was now one of the student leaders. He tried to convince me to join his organized hunger strike in Beijing. Sitting across from him, I found myself thinking that he had always been an opportunist. I was offended by his cunning. His interest in seeking international media attention at any cost repelled me.
“Democracy has a price!” he kept saying to me. “To wake up the masses, there must be bloodshed. We’ll not back down until we get what we want.”
What he wanted was power. I knew that with certainty because he had once been the leader of the Red Guards in my middle school. When he talked about blood and death, he did not mean his own.
As history played out, the movement was crushed. There was indeed blood and death. What bothered me the most was not the government firing on its own people, but the student leaders who fled to the West on preissued American and European visas: the fact that they left their fellow students to the slaughter.
My mother saw me but didn’t believe what her eyes told her. She had been leaning on the same window frame for years dreaming of my homecoming. I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Mama!”
Frozen in disbelief, my mother failed to respond. Another figure appeared behind her. It was my father. The old man lit up and waved. I heard him shout to my mother, “You are not dreaming! Anchee is here!” Instantly my mother dropped out of sight. She had collapsed to the floor in happiness.
It was not easy to explain to my parents the reason I had returned to China. After failing at every job application I’d tried in America, I realized that the only way I’d ever find a job was to create one myself.
I had been watching the popular American TV series Dynasty when an idea came to me. If I could create a TV series featuring Chinese students’ lives in America, I knew it would have an audience in China. I could write the stories and convince my friend Joan Chen to play the lead. Maybe I could find an American company interested in advertising in China to sponsor the show. I could contact one of my former film bosses in China to coproduce the stories and have the shows broadcast in China—this way, I’d create a job for myself.
I met a young black man at the school named Eric, who worked for a small Chicago film production company. Eric liked my idea so much that he arranged a meeting for me with his boss to pitch the idea.
Mr. R, the head of the production company, was excited about my idea. He told me that a notable corporation was one of his clients. He said that he would present the idea of sponsorship to them while I worked up a detailed proposal describing the show. Several meetings later, the corporation sent its representative, Miss K, to meet with me. I suggested that Mr. R and Miss K come to China with me to investigate the possibility, and they were thrilled.
I contacted Mr. Chong, whom I had once worked for. He was now the boss of the Beijing Film Corporation. I arranged multiple phone meetings between Mr. Chong, Eric, Mr. R, and Miss K. I translated what Mr. Chong said. “China would love to earn US dollars by supplying equipment and labor.” Miss K wanted to know that China would air the show. “Mr. Chong doesn’t think it will be a problem as long as the show is not anti–Communist Party.”
A trip to China to meet with Mr. Chong in person was scheduled. The day before our departure, Eric came to me looking devastated.
“They canceled my ticket. They said there was no need for me to go. I’ve been double-crossed. I need your help.”
This was the first time I witnessed betrayal in an American setting. I went to Mr. R and told him that I would not have met him if it hadn’t been for Eric’s introduction. “I will not lead you to China if Eric is not on board. There will be no meeting with Mr. Chong, either.”
Mr. R had no choice but to let Eric join the trip to China.
To welcome the American guests, Mr. Chong threw a lavish banquet. Like a local king, he ushered our party through a tour of his property. Beijing Film Corporation was larger than Hollywood’s Universal Studios, although bare land was all he had. I didn’t know what to say when Mr. Chong asked me how big Mr. R’s film company was. It would be like comparing a horse to a mosquito. I only said that the US film companies operated differently. The success of a film didn’t depend on the size of its production office.
I believed that it was a waste of money when Mr. R and Miss K insisted on signing a contract with Mr. Chong through an American law office based in Beijing. I advised that American law wouldn’t bind the Chinese government—it was part of the risk of doing business in China.
Refusing to listen to me, Mr. R paid a foolish amount to the law office, and then he was happy, and felt secure about the deal.
A month after we returned to the US, Mr. Chong was removed from his position by the Central Communist Party because he had sided with the students at Tiananmen Square. Mr. Chong had personally ordered a documentary crew to film the event when the tanks rolled in. Mr. Chong might have been a historical hero if he hadn’t miscalculated.
The last thing Mr. Chong did was to tell me that the contract was still valid. He asked me to tell Mr. R and Miss K to wire the first production funds promised in the contract. With this, Mr. Chong shot himself in the foot. I smelled his rotten character. He knew he wouldn’t be able to guarantee the production or the broadcast, yet he still wanted the American dollars. He didn’t care what might happen to the American investors or me.
I was not as foolish as Mr. Chong thought I was. I told Mr. R and Miss K that the deal was off due to China’s political situation and Mr. Chong’s downfall. By then, they had already been informed. The image of a Chinese man standing in front of a line of military tanks was on TV all over the world.
“But we have the contract with Mr. Chong,” Mr. R argued. “It was notarized by our law office in Beijing!”
A couple years later I cowrote a new twenty-five-episode TV series for China based on the same idea. This time I was betrayed by my own people. I looked for partners to coproduce my show because I was tied up in writing a book and completing the scripts of the twenty-five episodes. Two former students from China, Mr. S and Mr. Z, approached me. They had been running a small Chinese-language television station in Chicago. They begged for a chance to work with me. I was impressed by their enthusiasm. I convinced Joan Chen to lend her name to the project and I composed a letter introducing Mr. S and Mr. Z to the Minister of China’s Cultural and Art Bureau. When Joan Chen asked if I trusted these young men, I gave a positive answer.
It never occurred to me that I would be double-crossed the same way Eric was. The moment China’s Central Television Corporation picked up the show and became its solo sponsor, which guaranteed over a billion viewers, I found myself excluded from the project. My partners, the two students whom I named executive producers, had “fired” me.
Most of the creative members of the crew went with the money, understandably, except my loyal friend Joan Chen. She did exactly what I had done for Eric—she stood up for me and withdrew her name from the show. She witnessed how I was stabbed in the back and lost her faith in the project. She no longer felt safe working with them. “They were your friends
,” she said to me.
{ Chapter 21 }
Not a day passed that I didn’t think about my younger sister’s tear-washed face, my mother pretending that she hadn’t witnessed our fight, and my father pleading, “Anchee, it is my wish that you go back to America. You might be poor there, but you will be safe. America will have no Cultural Revolution. You’ll never worry about waking up one morning to find yourself denounced.”
I couldn’t make my father understand that without a green card there would be no safety in America. The door kept shutting in my face in terms of jobs, even with my master’s degree. I began to see that some Chinese students who couldn’t get jobs chose to pursue Ph.D. degrees. Why not try the same route? My master’s degree might fool people into believing I was qualified. I submitted my application to the University of Chicago in Chinese history and women’s studies.
Qigu said, “It’s crazy to focus your entire life on securing your immigration status. Your life is passing you by. You’re robbing yourself of all that is wonderful—sunshine, spring, flowers, and birds. You forget the real reason we exist on this planet.” Once again he listed examples of people who were green card holders, American citizens who lived unfulfilled and miserable lives.
“If you continue to slave yourself, what is the purpose of coming to America?” Qigu continued. “It’s a downward spiral, a black hole. It will not end even after you achieve citizenship. Such discontent is like greed. You will want to upgrade your house to match your new status. Then you’ll realize that you must drive an equally fancy car. You will then need to update your wardrobe in order to match your car; along the way your hair, accessories, shoes, socks, and skin color will come up for review. Finally, you’ll convince yourself that your partner is a mismatch …”