Bend, Not Break

by Ping Fu

  One steamy summer day while I was outside caring for my chickens, Lemon approached the nest in a hesitant way, clucking and scratching her feet, and then finally entered. She sat quietly on the hay for half an hour, maybe longer, with eyes closed. Suddenly, Lemon stood up with her feet wide apart, tail raised, rear feathers upright—and a moist egg popped out. She inspected the egg with her beak and then rushed out of the nest clucking loudly. Moments later, she appeared to have forgotten about it entirely. I gathered the egg, still warm with a trace of blood on the shell, and squealed with delight. From that day onward, Lemon produced an egg a day, rarely missing one. Each time, I rewarded her with a mealworm.

  For our New Year’s Eve feast that year, Nanjing Mother asked me to make chicken soup.

  “I can’t make chicken soup. We don’t have a hen,” I argued.

  “What about Lemon?” she asked.

  “Lemon is not for soup; she is my pet,” I said. “Besides, she lays an egg every day, which we always eat.” I considered telling Nanjing Mother about Uncle W’s Soup of Chicken Soup, concocted of nothing more than wild greens and MSG, but then thought better of it. I knew his dish would not be fine enough for my mother’s special guests.

  “I’ll get more chicks for you next year. Lemon is for dinner,” Nanjing Mother said in a voice that left no room for an argument.

  Guests started to arrive in the early afternoon, as it was customary at the Chinese New Year for people to socialize for hours before dinner was served. Nanjing Mother brought them into our tightly packed dorm room. We had pushed our mattress against the wall in order to accommodate an additional table and several chairs that we had borrowed from our neighbors. Hong had decorated with her bright cloths. I counted five coworkers from my mother’s factory, plus the three of us. One chicken could make enough soup to feed us all. I wanted Nanjing Mother to help me with the meal preparations, but she seemed busy entertaining her guests. I had to save face for her and make her life easier. I had no choice but to kill Lemon myself.

  When I walked outside to Lemon’s nest, she ran up to me eagerly, anticipating a mealworm treat. I picked her up, burrowed my face in her soft down, and gave her a kiss. She made delightful chirping sounds.

  “Lemon, please forgive me,” I whispered as I carried her across the yard to a rope, which I used to tie her legs together. This made Lemon cluck and flap her wings frantically, her eyes filled with terror. When I put my face close to hers in an attempt to calm her, she pulled her head back away from me. I felt worse than a Red Guard betraying her own family; I was a murderer, a monster.

  My hands shook but I would not cry. It was New Year’s Eve. I would not embarrass my mother or myself. My heart grew heavy and solid, as though it were filled with lead. I bent Lemon’s neck backward toward her body, then used a pair of scissors to cut her throat.

  I had no appetite that evening, in spite of the guests’ profuse compliments for my cooking. I winced whenever they told me how delicious the chicken soup was. Nanjing Mother’s coworkers praised her as well, saying that she was lucky to have a daughter like me, so capable already at such a young age. Mother beamed. I had never seen her gaze upon me with such pride. But later that night, I had a nightmare. Lemon came back to take her revenge, pecking out my eyes.

  —

  I never forgave Nanjing Mother for making me kill my pet chicken, but I did gain a fresh perspective on our relationship. I should not expect to receive affection from her; it was simply not in her nature or life experience to offer me a hug or say, “I love you.” But I could earn her respect for my accomplishments. If I excelled in my work assignments, study sessions, and the household management, she would offer me generous praise.

  Looking back, I am certain that my birth mother did the best she could. Unlike Shanghai Mama, Nanjing Mother’s intellectual nature had always made her more practical and efficient, rather than warm and nurturing. Even her reaction to the moldy rice was, in all likelihood, her way of showing love, an expression of her frustration at not having been able to prevent the trauma that Hong and I had suffered at the hands of the Red Guard. During those early years of the Cultural Revolution, she, too, had endured brutal living conditions and psychological abuse due to Mao’s purging of intellectuals. I learned later that she had always had a reputation for a bad temper.

  I can see now how I played a part in our lack of mother-daughter bonding as well. By the time Nanjing Mother returned, I was a teenager who had spent the past five years living completely without adult supervision. I had my own ideas of how to take care of myself. Adolescence, rebellion, and independence did not add up to make me the most loving daughter.

  Ironically, I realize now that I had the best of both worlds with my two mothers. Shanghai Mama’s unconditional adoration and tender nurturing from when I was a baby until I was eight years old gave me a foundation of love, compassion, and appreciation for beauty that helped me to survive the harsh years of the Cultural Revolution. But if she had raised me until I was an adult, I don’t think I would have been as strong or capable as I am today. Nanjing Mother’s more analytical, rational way of thinking and her tough, unemotional style pushed me to accomplish more. She also afforded me tremendous independence and encouragement, which led me to gain self-confidence and develop new skills.

  Mao’s favorite philosopher was Friedrich Hegel, who maintained that life manifests itself in a set of contradictions: spiritual soul versus rational mind, matter versus the void, and so on. This duality ultimately must be integrated, without eliminating either pole or reducing one to the other. Later in life, I would study both art and science, embrace both a Chinese and an American identity, and develop as both a mother and an entrepreneur. Had I not grown up under the influence of two such different women, it may have proven far more difficult to reconcile these dichotomies in my own life and evolve a unified sense of self.

  —

  Precisely one year after his first visit, and six months after my mother’s return to live with us, Uncle W reappeared at the door to Room 202. With him he brought three American novels, which he said he had selected just for me: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Scarlet Letter, and The Old Man and the Sea. I was ecstatic to have fresh reading material. I had devoured Gone with the Wind so many times by then that I could recite long passages of it from memory. I didn’t sleep and polished off all three new books in a matter of days, discussing the themes with Uncle W as I read. I identified with the slaves in the first book, the shamed woman in the second, and the lonely old man in the third.

  Uncle W had brought a sleeping bag with him. At night, he camped out in the hallway next to our cooking stove. Nanjing Mother called him “the gypsy.” She didn’t mind that Uncle W had brought me these forbidden books. She was well educated and had read them herself as a young woman when they had been permissible in China. In fact, Nanjing Mother encouraged my friendship with Uncle W. She felt that I would benefit from the education he was giving me beyond studying Mao’s writings. However, she did not approve when, after reading The Scarlet Letter, I yanked the red star off my moss green military cap and replaced it with a red A that I had fashioned from a piece of Hong’s cloth.

  “Why would you want to declare such shame?” Mother asked, grabbing the cap from my head and ripping the red A off the front. She knew that the letter stood for sexual promiscuity in the novel, but I doubted that was why she was so horrified by my behavior. In all likelihood, she was more concerned about the punishment I would receive for tampering with the Communist red star. Nanjing Mother had never asked and I never did tell her about the rape, though I suspect at some point she guessed what had really happened. I took comfort in not having to face the issue with her head-on. In China, people do not talk about rape because it brings shame to the family and no one wants to marry a woman who is openly known not to be a virgin.

  “You might have been killed for this!” Nanjing Mother yelled after me as I stormed out
of the room without arguing about the scarlet letter. I had to admit that my mother was right to save me from certain punishment. But it had felt good to act out. The way I saw it, people already called me “broken shoe.” Wearing the red A on my cap would have helped me reclaim my identity in a subtle, secretive way, proving that I could be proud of myself in spite of the brutal events in my past.

  —

  Every year after that until I was eighteen, Uncle W came to visit me with books in hand. I looked forward to his appearances with the eagerness that American children display for the arrival of Santa Claus. He brought me Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, The Sun Also Rises, and other great works of Western literature. These forbidden books became my oasis. Reading them transported me to a different world, allowing me to escape from the smelly hallways of the NUAA dorm and the noisy monotony of the factory floor.

  I was old enough to have begun noticing incongruities between Mao’s teachings and the reality of the society in which I lived. It was obvious to me that our Communist system was no utopia. I longed for a proper education, with the opportunity to study a variety of subjects and not just Mao’s teachings. I saw how some people did not share their resources equally, in accordance with Communist ideals, but rather hoarded what little they had for themselves. Many Communist leaders had servants and drivers. People would bribe them with fresh fruits and the choicest cuts of meat to get better jobs or favorable notes in their personal files. At my factory job, I heard that a woman was sexually abused by her boss and then shamed for the resulting pregnancy, while her boss suffered no punishment. I began to doubt whether it was really “better to grow Communist weeds than eat Capitalist rice,” as Mao had famously said.

  I couldn’t write to Uncle W about my thoughts on such matters, as we still had to assume that the authorities were randomly checking our letters. Instead, I looked forward to discussing them with him during his annual visits. On long ambles around Nanjing, we would delve into every topic imaginable. We would lose track of time and distance as our thoughts drifted with the clouds.

  “I am not mad,” Uncle W told me once, though I later learned that he had been tortured to the point where many people thought he was. “This country is mad.” On and on he went, about the restrictions placed on our freedom as individual thinkers, the lack of choice in where we lived, what we did, or who we were supposed to be.

  I found myself responding viscerally to Uncle W’s words. Long ago, Shanghai Papa had told me that people could take away your wealth and health, but your mind—the way you think—would always be yours. No one could take that away from you. I always had remembered his advice and guided my mind carefully to maintain autonomous thinking, in spite of being surrounded on all sides by Communist propaganda. Now, it seemed, I had an ally.

  After 1972, when I was fourteen, Mao’s iron-fisted grip on China loosened; he was getting older and his health was deteriorating. Following several months of “Ping-Pong diplomacy,” President Nixon came to visit that year and in time reestablished normal relations between the two countries. Political pressure against black elements lessened. Reading Western novels was no longer a crime deemed worthy of severe punishment. For a short period when Deng Xiaoping was brought into power, our study sessions began to include some classes that were not purely based on Mao’s ideologies. I was ecstatic to be given old poems from the Tang and Song dynasties to memorize rather than Mao’s Little Red Book.

  Nevertheless, my frustration with the political system and my living conditions continued to grow. No matter how hard I worked to clear my name, I always would be held accountable for the multiple generations of black blood in my family. I never would be permitted to join the Communist Youth League of China or, after age twenty-five, the Communist Party. I would not be able to get a decent job, pursue my interests, or influence our society. In Uncle W’s Western books, people could choose what to do for a living and succeed through a combination of effort, intelligence, and luck. Everyone had an equal right to study the subjects that most interested them, work at jobs that paid well, and love the people they desired.

  “Why can’t we say what we really think in China?” I asked Uncle W on one of our walks. “People who live in other countries can say whatever they want! Here, our true opinions stay hidden beneath the surface. I can only say things that won’t get me in trouble or recite what we learn in study sessions, even if it’s not what I believe. We can’t even talk about our real feelings, and no one talks about love. Isn’t love a natural human emotion? Do people in China fall in love before they get married?”

  Uncle W sighed. “These are good questions.” He paused. Looking back, I’m not sure whether he believed what he said next or whether he was just worried about filling my young mind with dangerous ideas. “Ping-Ping, you should follow Mao’s teachings, knowing that some Communist concepts are good. Eventually, you may choose either to reject or accept the existing system. What matters most is that you can think independently.” I took comfort in his wise words, which reminded me of Shanghai Papa’s so many years before.

  THE RELUCTANT ENTREPRENEUR: 1993–1996

  REVISITING MY CHILDHOOD memories led me to recall just how confused I had been about Communist Chinese society and my place in it as a teenager. My recent visit had further shaken my identity. When I settled back into life in Illinois and my job at NCSA a few weeks later, I found that something had changed inside me. I no longer questioned whether I was Chinese or American. I was an American, an immigrant just like everyone else. My life here was an embodiment of the American dream. I felt lucky and at peace. As for my life in China, I resolved, once again, not to think about it anymore or talk about it to anyone. Looking back now, I can see this was healing and healthy for me in some ways. It allowed me to forget old wounds and open my heart to fully embrace the woman I had become.

  Early in December 1993, I gave birth to a precious girl, Xixi. I was expecting her on Christmas Eve, but she came three weeks earlier. The birth was easy. Nurses said that in all their years of midwifing, they had never seen a delivery like mine: I didn’t push my baby out with cries of pain, but with hysterical laughter. We were so in love with her, Herbert and I, that our eyes caressed each other with tenderness we had not found before.

  “Indigo comes from blue, but it is a deeper shade of blue,” I told Xixi in Chinese as she snuggled into my bosom. This is a colloquial expression meaning “Children are a better version of their parents.” I vowed to make Xixi feel loved and cherished, as Shanghai Mama had made me feel. She was the one who had shown me what love was meant to be, something that welled up endlessly from inside. I wrapped my arms around Xixi, trying my best to be soft and strong at the same time.

  “I love you,” I whispered, choking on the words. The last time I had told someone I loved them I was eight years old. I had found it challenging to say those three words ever since. Then little Xixi appeared. She reached inside me and pulled on something: my heartstrings. With one tiny breath, she rescued me.

  —

  Not long after Xixi’s birth, I began to wonder what it would be like to raise a child in America. I also worried, What sort of mother would I be, disconnected as I was from my family and country of birth? Perhaps I had been wrong to dismiss my heritage so abruptly. Wouldn’t Xixi want to connect with her Chinese roots when she got older, as well as her Austrian ones?

  When a temporary position opened up in 1994 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to help them build a “mini-NCSA,” I took it. Herbert came along and was offered a visiting professorship at the same university. Being based in Hong Kong, I reasoned, would give me an opportunity to further explore my Chinese American identity. A British colony for a few years longer, Hong Kong offered a convenient cultural and political distance, while remaining physically close enough to make it easy for me to travel to Mainland China.

  I loved being a working mom. I took Xixi everywhere with me, nursing he
r in my office and carrying her into meetings. The year in Hong Kong was a blessing; I was able to spend much more time with Xixi than I would have otherwise. The close bond we formed then remained strong, even through darker days ahead.

  In Hong Kong, a Chinese publisher asked me to write a book in Chinese about my first ten years in America. I was reluctant, but I wanted to have an opportunity to sharpen and renew my Chinese language skills, which I had neglected while living in America. Ah Cheng, a Chinese writer famous for his book Chess King, was conducting a fiction writing class at HKUST. I enrolled and scribbled down notes in my spare time, breastfeeding Xixi with one arm and writing with the other. By 1994, I had accumulated enough notes to turn in a manuscript, and my first book was published in China.

  I ranted in that book against becoming a businessperson. My Communist education still influenced my thinking back then. I thought of making money as a crime, an exploitation of the laboring class, soulless and completely unappealing. “I will never be an entrepreneur,” I wrote naively, “because businesspeople hate their jobs and love money. I love my job and hate money.”

  —

  Before Herbert and I completed our year at HKUST, Shanghai Papa asked me to travel back to China to meet with him in private. There was heaviness in his voice, and I wondered what he had in mind. I arrived at our old Shanghai home and found Papa quietly staring out his second-story window.

  “Here, this is for you,” he said, his face expressing a mixture of sorrow and pride. He handed me two hand-bound, silk-covered scrapbooks filled with pages of handwritten calligraphy, aged photographs, and yellowed news clippings. “Your grandfather assembled these at his sixtieth birthday and gave them to me before he died.”

  I had seen my grandfather bury some of our family heirlooms under a tree in our garden at the start of the Cultural Revolution. Had he hidden these photographs and documents there as well? How else could they have survived? And why, I wondered, was my Shanghai Papa giving them to me, when I was not his child by birth? He had four sons and one daughter of his own. Did they even know these books existed? I had so many questions, but Papa stopped me from speaking by placing his hand lightly on my leg. All he would say was, “I want you to have them. I know you will treasure them and keep them safe.”