“What a tragedy,” I say in my fractured Mandarin. “You must have been anxious to pieces, waiting, wondering where we were.”
“Oyo!” squeals my sister Yuhang. “Look at her, she speaks Chinese. Last time you were deaf and mute. Now you can speak!”
“Only a little,” I say. Three years ago, I could manage to say “How are you?” Today I can talk about tragedies.
“Only a little?” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Hey!” she calls to the others. “Look how smart my little sister is. Now she can speak Chinese.”
She hooks one arm in mine, the other in Ma’s. We start to walk out of the airport. My twenty-five-year-old nephew, Xiao-dong, reaches for Ma’s luggage. My mother immediately shouts back at him, “Be careful, be careful! Don’t grab so fast.” Xiao-dong leaps back and blinks.
“Last time, we lost a radio,” Ma says. She is referring to our trip three years ago, when a Walkman disappeared somewhere between San Francisco check-in and Shanghai customs. Five minutes on Shanghai soil and Ma is already in her element. She is speaking rapid Shanghainese, dispensing advice and approval to her Chinese and American daughters, her son-in-law and grandchildren. She is queen for the week, the one everybody has to obey, no talking back.
We pile our six bulging suitcases into a van, a membao che, or “bread truck,” called so for its loaflike shape. Ten of us jam in, plus the driver, a young man who waves to us and is introduced as Xiao-dong’s friend. The van is courtesy of someone’s work unit—it’s not clear whose. The windows are down, and as we take off, our nostrils are blasted by something that resembles the ripe stench of a pig farm on top of a toxic waste dump. As the van careens onto the road leading into Shanghai, I see that Robert finally believes some of what I have described as typical China: freestyle driving. He clutches the back of the seat ahead, alternately grinning and gritting his teeth as the van narrowly avoids a disastrous collision with a bicyclist, then a man pushing a cart, then three girls walking, then a huge truck barreling down on us in our lane. I am an optimist. If we crash, I may not have to finish the novel I’m working on.
We drive past high-rise office buildings sprouting up from farm fields of yesteryear, then come upon a residential neighborhood. Along the darkened roads we see that this part of Shanghai is still a hub of activity at nine p.m. Bicyclists flow by, their bells chiming.
“What’s that? A store?” I ask Xiao-dong, pointing to an outdoor stall lit by a bare bulb.
“Hah?” He cups his hand to his ear.
“What is that?” I say, and point again. We have been writing back and forth in English, discussing his desire to immigrate to Canada, where my brother, John, lives.
Over the past year, Xiao-dong’s written English, while still shaky, has improved. So has his understanding of life in a Western country—I hope. In an early letter, he had asked me to deposit $15,000 in a bank under his name and to pay for the foreign tuition at a $30,000-a-year university. He figured he could pay me back within the year, working part-time while he attended classes. I wrote back outlining a condensed course on Western economics: how much one could expect to earn with a part-time, minimum-wage salary, how much one had to set aside for taxes, medical insurance, bus fare, English classes at the YMCA, a new mattress, a new pair of Levi’s, as well as contributions to rent, gas and electricity, food, and so on. I explained that I would pay for these expenses while he and his wife lived with my brother and sister-in-law in Calgary. But after the first year, he would be on his own.
“Individual freedom comes with a lot of responsibility,” I wrote. “If your sister wants to immigrate later on, you will be responsible for bringing her over. We will talk about this when I come see you in China.” And now I am in China.
“Is it a store?” I point again.
“Ssss-tore, ssss-tore,” he says, searching for the meaning of this word. And then his face brightens with recognition. “Ah! Store!” He giggles. His wife, Jiming, looks and giggles too. It is the first time I’ve seen her smile. She is perhaps twenty-two, very pretty, and she has not yet said one word to me.
“Ge-ti hu,” he says softly. “We say ge-ti hu, no store. Small things, yes, can buy.”
“Like a local shop?” I ask. “A neighborhood store?”
“Hah?” he says, cupping his ear again.
“What can you buy there?” I almost shout, as if he truly were hard of hearing.
He shrugs. “Auntie,” he says carefully. “You don’t go there.”
“Why?”
“Auntie,” he repeats. “You don’t go there.” Jiming giggles again. I understand nothing: not the English, not the meaning of the giggles, not the reason I shouldn’t go there.
We pass trucks and buses with no headlights on.
“Why don’t they turn on their lights?” I ask my mother. She asks Yuhang the same question.
“To save electricity,” my sister answers, as though she believes this is a reasonable thing to do. I wonder whether our bus is saving electricity as well.
“What do you think?” I ask Robert. “Is this the China you expected?”
“Great,” he says, his wide eyes still fixed on the road. “Just great.”
And now we arrive in an area where, we are informed, model workers’ apartments are located. Or is it the workers’ model apartments? Dubious translations notwithstanding, this is where we find large housing complexes built by the danwei, or work units, supplied for a small monthly fee, probably the equivalent of a few dollars. The complexes are located on the outskirts of Shanghai in what used to be the old Chinese district.
I watch the street scene. Gone are the rabbit warrens of one-story tile-roofed constructions on twisty lanes, although we can see the remnants of some, piles of tumbled-down brick that have become roofless playhouses for children. In place of the old, modern concrete apartment buildings have sprung up. Those that are a few years old are five stories tall and have colorful laundry strewn over every balcony. The newest apartment buildings resemble luxury high-rises, with round turrets on top, similar to the rotating bars of some hotels. We are told the turrets do not actually rotate. God only knows why the architects thought this was an interesting feature to copy. We pass the skeletal beginnings of other buildings.
Our driver turns into the narrow opening in an iron fence, continuing onto what seems to be a sidewalk, until we arrive in front of one of hundreds of buildings painted a fading green.
The ten of us clamber up a dark flight of stairs littered with bicycles. And then Yuhang and Hongchong announce that we have arrived. They push a buzzer with great ceremony, and this emits a squawk that resembles the reaction of a baby being doused in cold water. Wanh!
Two locks click back, the door opens, the iron grate swings out, and we press forward into a fluorescent-lit apartment. Ahmei, Auntie Elsie’s servant from the old days, greets us, asking about plane delays, checking for exhaustion, directing where luggage should go. From now on, Robert and I observe, it’s all Chinese or nothing. A wave of hands leads us into a sitting room. It contains a stiff-backed sofa with scratchy industrial-strength fabric, a matching armchair, four stools, a Formica table, a small green refrigerator, a telephone, and a television covered with a protective cloth.
I am led to a stool next to the table. A tumbler of tea is pressed into my hand. Excited voices buzz in my ear and I can’t understand a word. I nod and smile frequently. This is what it will be like when I grow senile.
“What do I call her?” I ask my mother, gesturing to the servant. I am not old enough to call the servant by her given name.
“Call her Aiyi,” my mother says. “Call her Auntie to show respect.”
“Thank you, Aiyi,” I say in Mandarin, holding up my tea. She laughs and shouts back a long string of Shanghainese.
Yuhang sweeps her arm out, inviting us to consider our living quarters. “What do you think? Comfortable enough?” Xiao-dong watches my face. It seems he is conscious of how his American auntie is reacting to her new surroun
dings.
My mother and I look around the room once again, smile and nod. “Very good,” my mother says. “Clean.” And I know she means it. I can tell she’s relieved.
“More comfortable than staying at my house,” agrees Yuhang. “Here you can be together. You have hot water. Of course, every day I will come and keep you company.”
For me, anything would have been fine, as long as it was not a hotel. But this apartment exceeds my expectations. It is very clean. In fact, it is almost antiseptic, the fluorescent lighting casting a blue tinge on everything, including our faces. Robert looks slightly ill, although it may be the jet lag.
Auntie Elsie, Ma’s old schoolmate who now lives in Vancouver, bought this place for her mother, who has since died. Now Elsie comes only once or twice a year. Aiyi, who has been the family servant for the past thirty years, lives here full-time as caretaker, subsisting on a salary of sixty yuan a month, about ten U.S. dollars.
The apartment is really two combined apartments, the dividing wall removed. It has a grand total of four and a half rooms, and a hallway, where we have piled our luggage.
To the left of the hallway is a kitchen, a space about six feet by nine, with built-in counters and cabinets, a sink with an overhead water heater that must be lit manually, and a propane-fueled two-burner portable cooktop. By Chinese standards, we are told, this is luxury.
Next to the kitchen is a bathroom, another luxury, because it is not shared with other apartments and it is equipped with hot water. The tub can easily fit one person if that person scrunches up with knees against chest. And the hot water must be heated ahead of time, with the overhead device in the kitchen. A tiny sink and a miniature version of a pull-chain toilet complete the amenities.
Off the hallway is a bedroom, big enough for only a small cot and a tea table. Aiyi will sleep there during our visit. Next to that—the supreme luxury—another bathroom, this one without benefit of hot water. The sight of the yellowed tub brings Ma to wonder aloud why no one teaches Chinese people to build better bathrooms. She points to the cracking tile. “Why so ugly?” Yuhang smiles and throws me a knowing expression that means, “Here we go again.”
Robert’s room is a living room turned into sleeping quarters. His bed is a convertible sofa. He has a yellow-tiled balcony facing the wide street. Gray pants and white shirts are suspended from long bamboo poles that overhang the street. The laundry flaps in the wind like proletarian banners. At one end of Robert’s room is a long built-in hutch, and on top of that is a picture of Auntie Elsie’s mother, a dour, sparrowlike woman of some ninety-odd years when she died, and odd she was. My mother has already told me that the fierce old lady was an expert at playing one daughter off the other. She coddled Auntie Elsie, her favorite, and despised the other daughter for reasons unclear. Aiyi says she cared for the woman until she died, and she died in this very room, lying in the very bed that is now Robert’s.
“Perfect,” Robert says, making an A-okay sign. He seems relieved to have his own room, privacy, time away from nosy Chinese women.
The room Ma and I will share is Auntie Elsie’s. It has a double bed with neatly folded quilts at the footboard. Aiyi tells us that Elsie paid extra money for the parquet floors, the built-in dresser and armoire, and the beige paint job.
We return to the sitting room. Aiyi has cooked us wonton. They are made with a vegetable that has no American name. I am told that it is wild clover, although maybe it is not actually wild, maybe it is not really clover. Whatever it is, the taste is pungent, with a lingering aroma that reminds me of garlic chives.
Aiyi is happy to see that Robert, the nangko-ning, or foreigner, is bent over his bowl of wontons, eating heartily. Ma remarks in English, “Yuhang happy, eating lots. She knows how to enjoy life.” She tells Yuhang in Shanghainese that she has gained too much weight. Yuhang smiles and pats her cheeks. Then Ma tells me in English that Yuhang’s face looks like a square, like her father’s. She does not like to see reminders of her first husband in her daughter’s face. Poor Yuhang. To me, she has a kind and generous face, guileless.
“Lose weight,” she commands Yuhang.
Yuhang smiles, happy to be criticized like a child.
“How old are you now?” Ma asks.
Yuhang answers that she is fifty-three.
“Lose weight,” Ma says. “Don’t eat too much cholesterol.” This last word is said in English. Yuhang nods without questioning what “cholesterol” means.
“Lose weight,” I tell Robert.
“Chill out,” he says.
Aiyi brings in another fresh-cooked batch of her wonderful wontons. Yuhang tells me that she and Aiyi will cook for us every day.
“Do you think you could stand to eat Chinese food morning, noon, and night?” I ask Robert. He nods. He looks like he’s in Chinese heaven.
And now Ma is translating the Shanghainese conversation for Robert and me. The apartment, she explains, is a model building. It was built by the government as an example of high-standard living. We turn around and admire the room, nodding with much appreciation.
“When was it built?” Robert asks. “In the 1920s or 1930s?” He’s being sincere.
“No!” my mother says. “Brand-new! Yes, can you imagine?” She throws him a secret smile.
Xiao-dong asks me in painful English, “Auntie, soon you will like to see my horse?”
“Horse?” I ask. Have conditions improved so much that my nephew can now afford to play polo in his spare time? I ask him in Mandarin, “You have a horse?” It turns out he meant “house.” He adds the burr of Shanghainese to his English.
“Correct him,” my mother tells me. “How he can go Canada, speak English like that?”
“Howww-sss,” I say for him.
“Harrwww-sss,” he says back for me.
“Bu-shr har!” my mother says to him. “Don’t say ‘har.’ How. How, how, how—like hau, hau, hau.” Good, good, good.
“How, how, how,” Xiao-dong whispers.
I know my mother is not trying to intimidate Xiao-dong. She is only doing for her grandson what no one did for her: teaching him correct English so that he does not have to suffer the same pain she has had to endure—being misunderstood at banks, mis-diagnosed by doctors, ignored by her teenage children. Poor service, bad treatment, no respect—that’s the penalty for not speaking English well in America.
It is now five a.m. After a half-hour struggle, I have given up. I can no longer sleep. My mother and I lie wrapped in our quilts, encased like two mummies. It is still dark, but I can see my mother’s eyes are open too.
“Already awake?” I ask.
“How can I sleep?” she grumbles.
We are listening to peddlers shouting to one another on the street. Bicyclists ring their bells every few seconds. One would think it was already the middle of a busy market day.
Once we are up, we find Aiyi engaged in an efficient buzz of activity. She has heated water in the kitchen to drain into the bathroom tub. She has filled the thermos with freshly boiled water for our instant coffee. I’ve been told Shanghai has one of the most polluted water systems in the world: hepatitis and industrial toxins right out of the tap.
Aiyi is cleaning out the tub in preparation for our fragile American skins. When it’s my turn to bathe, it takes ten minutes to fill the tub with about an inch of hot water, mixed with a little cold. It does not seem wise to wait another hour for the tub to fill. So I crouch in it, using my washcloth to swipe myself clean.
At six a.m., we are ready to go to the market to shop for our breakfast. Robert has loaded himself down with three cameras draped over his photo jacket. Ma has elected to stay in the apartment, in case Yuhang arrives. She stuffs my hand with a fifty-yuan note, telling me to make sure I pay for the groceries. Aiyi is smiling broadly, waiting for us. She clutches a plastic bag and a food saver. Just as we are about to leave, a small argument in Shanghainese erupts between Aiyi and Ma. Ma is insisting that we pay for everything. Aiyi is assuring her tha
t she will keep track of all expenses and can wait to be reimbursed later. At least that’s what it seems like they’re saying, to judge from the hand gestures, the shoving of money back and forth. These fights are for the sake of politeness.
Outside we find the air is cool but not cold. The sky is bluish-gray, as if the outdoors too were lit by fluorescent bulbs. As soon as we cross the street—which is devoid of cars—we see people streaming by on bicycles and turning around to stare. We are not in a part of town that caters to tourists. It is a sure bet that no Westerners have vacationed in this part of Shanghai before. I tell Aiyi in Mandarin that the weather seems quite nice, not too cold, not too hot, although maybe it looks like rain. Thank God for my colloquial Chinese handbook and its vacuous phrases. Aiyi answers me in rapid Shanghainese. After a few more polite exchanges like this, I turn to Robert. “Aiyi speaks only Shanghainese,” I inform him. “I don’t speak Shanghainese. We’re in trouble.”
But in fact, we are not. Aiyi, like my relatives, is adept at sign language and facial expressions, as well as speech intonations that make crystal-clear what she means to tell us: “This way,” “That way,” and “Sure, it’s okay to stop and take a photo—if it’s quick.”
We cut through a large apartment complex to a growing path of vendors huddled near their vegetables. Robert begins snapping pictures, motioning for permission with his eyebrows. The vendors grin. As we walk along, he continues to attract a crowd, an amiable group of people who seem perfectly at ease posing or simply carrying on with their business.
In the open market square, we stare at the array of vegetables piled high in perfect mounds. I had expected this part of Shanghai to be drab. And in a way it is. The clothing of all but the young children is a monotonous gray or blue, dyed in the same vat. But the drab clothes are the perfect accompaniment to the sharp colors of the morning market. There are clean-white turnips with purple-green tops, chartreuse-green-and-white cabbages, and tin buckets of bloody eels.