by You Jin
It all started in 1983. In an attempt to stop overpopulation, the government initiated the “Stop at Two” policy, implementing a series of measures that made it very costly for a couple who chose to have a third child. Some of these measures included depriving the mother of maternity leave and making it difficult to register the child for school, when she or he reached that age.
I was teaching and writing at the time, keeping myself busy day and night. Being an obedient citizen, I was content to have just two children. At the same time, I had always loved girls and felt that I was missing something if I went through life without a daughter. So, I decided I would have a third child. In 1984, the family planning slogan remained at the stage of: “One kid is good, two is perfect”. Having a third meant accepting some penalties, including the fact that I was not given any maternity leave. Instead, I applied for two months of no-pay leave which, when added to the monthanda-half holiday at the end of the year, gave me three and a half months total.
Friends who knew what I was thinking teased me, “But what if you have another boy?”
I answered casually, “Then I’ll try again.”
Of course, this was just a joke. But while I enjoyed the joke, I definitely did not imagine that, after having a third child, there was no way I could have a fourth. For many years, I intentionally buried this dark period completely. If I do think of it, it makes me break out in a sweat. Were it not necessary to record it here as I try to write an accurate account of the events of my life, I would not ever mention it at all.
In 1983, during the long holidays at the end of the year, James and I planned an exciting trip to South America, visiting Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru on a seven-week free-and-easy tour. Our trip would include a journey deep into the Amazon Rainforest to stay with the indigenous people there, to explore a different way of life on earth.
Concerned about us, many well-intentioned friends and relatives chided: “The Amazon Jungle? Are you crazy? Why would you want to go there? Don’t you know there are still cannibals there?”
Of course I knew, but is any place in this world completely safe?
These friends continued to ask, “Who will look after the kids while the two of you are off travelling for seven weeks?”
That was easy—my mother-in-law. Her generosity toward us is something I know I can never repay. She was the one who made it possible for me to realise my dream of seeing the world, allowing us to travel three or four times a year while the children stayed with her in Ipoh. At the time, it was a difficult eight-hour train journey from Singapore to Ipoh, but my clever mother-in-law always prepared wonderful snacks for the journey, making it a pleasant adventure my kids looked forward to.
She would arrive the day before we were due to leave for holiday, then slave in the kitchen for hours cooking the children’s favourite foods. Then she would pack up the braised chicken with chestnuts, grilled pork ribs, fried lamb, prawn fried rice, and other delicious food into separate plastic containers.
My mother-in-law told me that the children’s eyes were glued to those containers almost as soon as they got on the train. When the lids of the containers were taken off, the wonderful aroma filled the whole compartment as the kids dug heartily into the food, attracting the attention of all the other passengers on the train. As they curiously asked where they had bought the food, the children would answer with pride, “We bought it from Poh Poh’s kitchen.”
My generous mother-in-law always shared food with those around her. This scrumptious food became a goodwill ambassador, a tool for befriending fellow passengers, adding to the fun of their train journey.
The bungalow in Ipoh had a huge plot of land attached to it, and there were many fruit trees growing in the front and back. As soon as the children arrived, they turned into wild little monkeys, enjoying their garden paradise, climbing trees, chasing each other around, digging in the sand, playing soccer, and doing whatever they felt like doing from sunup to sundown.
Because of this, we each looked forward to our own programmes during the school holidays. James and I would enjoy an extended holiday, and the children would enjoy their own adventures at the old family home. My mother-in-law also looked forward to the school holidays, since it meant she could spend time with her beloved grandchildren.
So, during the year-end holidays of 1983, as we had planned, my mother-in-law took six-year-old Fung Yee and one-year-old Fung Teck back to Ipoh, while James and I flew to South America.
To me, every journey was a learning opportunity. The time we spent in the Amazon Rainforest was the first time I had experienced this sort of life. We stayed in a small grass hut beside the Amazon River, without running water or electricity. We had gone back to an absolutely pre-industrial way of life, without any demands. In the daytime, our indigenous guide Quillis-Sacha carried a rifle and a machete and took us deep into the untouched parts of the jungle.
The world outside had undergone great changes, but the way of life of the indigenous peoples was shockingly strange. They relied completely on foraging, fishing and hunting to feed themselves. Their marriage customs were centred around one man keeping multiple wives. The wives had no concept of birth control, and kids were born one after another. Things had gone on like this for centuries, and would continue in the same way for centuries more. Education was a word completely unknown to them.
Later in life, I travelled to many other places and saw indigenous groups in many parts of the world. I have discovered that they all face the same challenge: they are offered little to no education, so it is very difficult for them to change the quality of their lives.
Hassan, an indigenous Berber man in Morocco, put it very well, saying, “The Berber people use traditional methods of making bread. It is quite simple. After preparing the dough, they bake it carelessly, and so the bread they make is rock-hard and cracked. Of course, it is edible, but if you choose better grain, pay attention to the proportion of yeast and flour, and have some expertise in minding the fire, you can really make soft, golden, bread. Most Berber people continue making and eating this rough, hard bread simply because they have never had the opportunity to experience the wonder of any other kind.”
This is an extremely elegant and valuable point, and an excellent educational theory.
Children who are born but not taught are no different from wild grass. Many parents living in big cities in the modern world, however, limit the meaning of education to what happens at school. They leave their children to their own devices, indulge them, allowing them to become monsters, and then hope the school will teach their children to become knowledgeable, well-mannered, obedient citizens. This scenario is like parents using older traditional methods to bake bread, and yet hope the bread produced will become soft and delicious. It is very impractical.
When we were in the Amazon Rainforest and I saw those children running about in unhygienic conditions, I thought, It’s better not to have children than to have them and neglect their education. My reasoning for thinking this way was that, if they were not educated at home or at school, they would eventually become a burden to society.
From Peru, we flew on to Brazil. In the beautiful city of Salvador, something peculiar happened that I will cherish for the rest of my life. The city had been founded by the Portuguese in the 16th century; Bonfim Church was renowned as a place where couples often went to pray for sons and daughters, and their prayers were answered.
On the surface, my husband and I are not religious, but in fact, we both have great respect for all gods. At Bonfim Church, James and I wrote our wishes on a strip of ribbon and tied it on a cross that stood taller than a human. That day, we each wrote exactly the same request: we wanted a daughter.
Not long after our trip, I bore signs of my wish. It was the beginning of a beautiful dream, and a nightmare.
Living Lessons
When I was pregnant the first time, I was a reporter. Even the day before I started my maternity leave, with my huge belly, I went about
conducting interviews. It was unbelievably difficult. Looking back on it now, it is as stark in my mind as a black and white image. If you say I was a leaf at that time, then life was a vast sea, and I had no power to predict when the winds would change direction and raise the great, terrifying waves that would toss me about, so I did not have a real sense of security.
During my second pregnancy, I was engaged in a year of study at NIE, and my house was also a maelstrom of dirty renovation works. Then my delivery date clashed with the final exams, the hard days of carrying my newborn, and feeding him while I studied. After several years, this was still fresh in my mind, as bright as a shooting star in the night sky. Life at this time was like a lake, seemingly calm and peaceful, but hidden underneath was a turbulent undercurrent.
Now, during my third pregnancy, my ship was finally sailing into a peaceful, safe harbour. I was happy in my teaching job and with my writing career; I felt like I had the best of both worlds. My life was like a garden, with sweet floral fragrances all around me.
Teaching at the secondary school, where I had the opportunity to meet many different kinds of parents, I discovered something very interesting. Every student was somehow a reflection of her or his parents. The parents’ training, upbringing, view of life and values were often evident in the child. A large amount of contact with parents made me think deeply about the issue of education at home.
There were several circumstances that I will never forget. One student had the habit of constantly using the vulgar phrase “ta ma de” (literally “his mother’s…”) in Chinese, polluting the excellent learning environment. I corrected him over and over, and he nodded his head and agreed to control himself. But it was not long before he resumed his old habit, and that vulgar phrase would escape from his mouth again. I repeatedly urged him to stop, but he ignored me. Seeing that the soft approach did not work, I then moved to stricter warnings. He earnestly promised to change, but I was infuriated and discouraged to find out that his promise to change was short-lived. The vulgar phrase still followed him like a shadow. I decided I had no choice but to face the battle with his parents and come up with a solution together. His father came at the appointed time, looking ferocious. In front of his son, I laid out the problem. I never imagined that, when I had finished, he would suddenly stand up and viciously slap his son. He said, “Ta ma de, why are you always such a disobedient child? You love to use such filthy language. Ta ma de, do you know any shame?”
“Ta ma de” was flying left and right, followed by a string of vulgarities flowing from the man’s mouth. It was obvious this “ailment” was carried deep in his bones. I had been so naïve to think that we could join forces, to discipline his son. I did not know that he was the fount of vulgar words. His son paled into insignificance by comparison.
Another student, whose eyes were set high on his head, was quite an arrogant fellow. Once he talked back rudely to the teacher, and the school summoned his parents. After three or four calls, one parent finally came to the school for a meeting. As soon as he met us, he showed an unwillingness to cooperate. He brushed off all the questions the discipline master asked. The discipline master got impatient and his tone was not very friendly. The father responded belligerently, slamming both hands on the table as he shouted, “Do you know who I am?”
Before the teacher could respond, he pointed at himself and said, “Why don’t you go and figure out who it is you’re speaking to.”
The discipline master was firm and unyielding, and said calmly, “Of course I know who you are. You are Tuo Sanmi’s father. And because you’re his father, we called you here for this meeting.”
The father exploded. “I’ll tell you! I’m the bodyguard for XXX! XXX, do you understand?”
As the bodyguard for a prominent person in society, he thought he owned the whole world. No wonder his son, who was standing on a little slope, thought he was standing atop the Himalayas!
And there were more—so many more—like the boy who thought he could bully all the children smaller than him with his fists. All the other students were afraid of him, and so did not dare report him. This meant he was virtually outside the law. Once, as he was roughing up yet another student, a teacher happened to catch him in the act, and took him to the discipline master. I was his form teacher, so it fell to me to call his parents. A tall, stout lady came to meet me. When I listed out the undesirable things her son had done, her expression grew as dark as a sunless forest. I was afraid she would use force to curb force, so I quickly said, “Kids this age have a strong ego, so you should not use physical punishment on him. If you do, hatred may sprout.”
The woman opened her mouth, and what she said shocked me. She sneered, “Beat him? What makes you think I would dare beat him? If he doesn’t beat me, I thank god for it!” Saying this, she lifted the edge of her blouse. “Look.”
When I looked, I saw several bruises. Surprised, I asked, “What happened?”
She said, “That’s where he hit me!”
I sucked in my breath, and said, “But surely if he hits you, his father will intervene?”
“He’s so busy with work he can’t cope! How does he have time to intervene?” she answered.
Then I asked, “What does he do?”
She hesitated, then said, “He is a loan shark.”
A child’s negative traits are the fruit produced by bad examples. How can parents not learn a lesson from this?
I observed quietly, and took all the negative examples as instruction, showing me what not to do as a parent.
Travel
I enjoyed my pregnancy in peace, feeling a satisfaction I had not felt before. I cut many photos of baby girls from magazines, filling my room with them. Everywhere I looked there was a picture of a little girl. I wanted a daughter with all my heart, and I fully believed I would have a girl. I only bought girl’s clothes, pouring myself wholeheartedly into waiting for a daughter.
One very odd thing happened during my pregnancy. My appetite became completely opposite of my normal patterns of likes and dislikes. I had previously always hated apples: I remember once when I went into a fruit market, I saw baskets and baskets of apples, and part of the lyrics from a popular folk melody sung in the movie Jiangshan Beauty, suddenly came to my mind, like in a comedy: “When I first saw you, I was disgusted. If I see you again I will be angry.” When I thought of the lines that followed, “If you try to take her away, I will fight you with my life,” I laughed out loud. For my extreme dislike of apples, changing the last two lines to “If you force me to eat apples, I will fight you with my life” would be very apt. If a person could have a karmic relationship with fruit, I was sure I must have offended an apple in my past life.
But there are no absolutes in life, and I now loved all apples: green, red or otherwise, and sour, sweet or somewhere in between. I could not get enough of them. I always had an apple in hand, morning or night, crunching them so loudly that the whole house was filled with the sound. I loved them with a surprising intensity. I had never experienced such an odd thing before, a complete reversal of all my normal patterns. This alone was enough to make many people more experienced in such matters tell me that the sex of this child must surely be different from that of the previous two.
No matter what everyone else thinks or says, I will not try to put a damper on my own appetite. The things I love to eat, I will indulge in. Those that I don’t like, I will not eat, even at gunpoint. During the nine months of my pregnancy, even the smell of apples was enough to get me excited. I never got tired of apples, even though I ate them day and night.
What was really surprising to everyone was that, after the child was born, I loathed apples again. Even today, so many years later, I have not been able to revive that avid love of the fruit I once was so ridiculously in love with. Some people say there is a definite number to the things one can consume in a lifetime. Perhaps, during those nine months, I ate all the apples I could eat in my life.
One other thing that surp
rised me was that, no matter how much I ate, and even though the foetus was growing steadily in my belly, friends told me they could not tell even when I was five or six months pregnant. I felt as light as a feather, full of energy, and beautiful expectations filled my heart. My days were as happy and perfect as a sparkling pearl. But then, only a few months later, I would fall into an extremely dark and painful abyss. It was a thing I had never imagined could happen.
In June, I had a one-month holiday. Before the holiday started, James asked, “Do you want to travel, or stay home and rest?”
Without a second thought, I said, “Of course I want to travel.”
Travel had always been an important part of my life. I liked travel not only for my writing, but because I wanted to see as much of the world as I could in my lifetime. It is funny to say this, but sometimes just hearing a plane fly overhead was enough to make something stir in my heart.
After we had done our research, we decided to fly to South Korea on our way to the US. In this way, we would tour both Korea and America. What we did not consider was that this sort of itinerary was much too tiring for a woman who was six months pregnant; nowadays, I would not even be able to take that flight without a doctor’s note.
We flew on Korean Airlines to Seoul, Japan and Hawai‘i before landing at our first destination in the continental US: San Francisco. It was a 27-hour flight altogether, more than 30 hours including layovers.
Many people find long flights a torture, but I always love them. While aboard, I eat, drink, sleep and read. When I have had enough of those things, I listen to music or watch movies. This sort of leisure, in my busy life where every second counts, is an elusive luxury.