Little Soldiers

by Lenora Chu

  “We do have rules,” I told Ming, suddenly defensive. “But jumping off a chair and crawling under the table isn’t dangerous. I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

  Ming pondered this thought. “You’re letting him explore—that is a luxury,” she said, with a tinge of envy, as she watched Rainey scamper out from under a table, ball in hand. “Foreigners are more free.”

  Meanwhile, Little Hao was building a structure with intense concentration.

  Rainey had spurts of focus, but he rarely sat still and never for fifteen minutes at a time. A child in motion is a whirlwind, moving forward and backward, jerking to satisfy any kind of impulse he might have. It was quite a feat to still all of this activity. How does one cultivate focus in a child so young? I wondered. Is that even a good thing?

  “I am a foreigner but our children are in the same education system,” I told Ming. “Perhaps because we are more free with him, Rainey is having trouble adjusting to school.”

  Ming nodded, as if I’d confirmed some kind of secret suspicion she’d held about me. “What wai ke is he taking?” she asked.

  “Wai ke?” I echoed, almost to myself. Outside classes? Already? I looked at our sons—hers sitting and stacking, and mine sprinting circles around the dining-room table. Surely she must know what my answer would be.

  “I haven’t thought about it,” I said. “What is Xiao Hao taking?”

  “English, math, and pinyin,” Ming answered. Pinyin is the phonetic representation of Chinese characters. Learn the pinyin for any character, and you’d immediately know how to pronounce it. For example, haizi is the pinyin representation for 孩子, which means “child.” Xuexiao is pinyin for 学校, which means “school.”

  I recalled the time another parent lectured me about extracurriculars. Gregory Yao’s daughter was only five years old, but she was already taking eight classes a week, including math cram classes and the “early MBA,” which trained babies as young as four months in “six core areas,” including leadership and global vision, according to one provider.

  “Why? Why start so early?” I’d asked Yao, who exuded the pressure—as well as the internal conflict—of the modern Chinese parent, in his zip-up nylon jacket and bowed shoulders.

  “The four best elementary schools in Shanghai take one child out of every three or four hundred who apply,” Yao told me. “It’s like a chain effect. You can only get into a good college if you’re a graduate of a good high school, a good middle school, a good primary school, and a good kindergarten,” Yao said, squinting through rimless glasses. “The competition starts early.”

  To me, the parenting conundrum was obvious. College competitiveness is one thing, as a student has had seventeen years to distinguish herself through leadership, activities, and grades. Stacking a very young child up against her peers after only five or six years of existence on earth is quite another.

  How could a child possibly hope to distinguish herself?

  In Yao’s mind, the answer was simple: standing a head above the rest in something, anything. Yao could increase his daughter’s chances of success by shaping her into the best multiplication-table-reciting, calligraphy-drawing, piano-playing student money could possibly buy, all before she could cut up an apple by herself. All told, Yao spent nearly $1,000 a month on eight classes a week—nearly all of his disposable income went toward educating his child. Chinese parents actually spend more on their kindergartners than on their high schoolers—about a third more—to launch their children with the right foot forward.

  I glanced at Yao, whom I’d met while interviewing parents for a magazine story about Shanghai education. He had a habit of pressing together his thumb and forefinger, as if he were trying to gauge how many bills might be in a stack of cash, and just standing near him made me nervous. If my little boy was to stay in the Shanghai system, we would surely find ourselves climbing this ladder system of study-pass-advance, and Rainey’s competitors on the scramble would be children like Yao’s daughter. And these kids were learning math and English outside of school starting at the age of three and younger. In conversation, a parent once mentioned to me that eighteen million babies were born in China every year; her anxiety suggested she imagined that a mound of infants equal to the combined populations of New York City and London would soon rise from their cribs, prepared to compete with her son for school spots and jobs.

  My own father had clear expectations for my time: During high school, I was programmed as tightly as a cable box with a thousand channels: Advanced Placement classes, Academic Decathlon, SAT summer prep, Sunday Chinese school, and a few other parent-prescribed activities I’ve blocked from memory (I’m pretty sure they involved a No. 2 pencil). There was more: Grades should be perfect, dating ignored until college, and dance class and sports strictly elective. In my last few years at home, my father and I fought viciously over the right to direct my future. Was my life his to dictate or mine to own? Ours was a classic story of Chinese expectations meets American culture and a strong-willed personality. Yet, my father chalked up a win for his side the day I got into Stanford University.

  As a parent, I like to think I harbor my father’s high expectations, only with a silky-soft grip and a dose of empathy. I wanted Rainey to express himself, explore hobbies, and forge his own path in a way I never did as a child. In other words, I have plans for my little boy, but I wasn’t yet ready to tiger-parent a toddler. Rainey most certainly wasn’t studying pinyin like Ming’s son or taking Genius classes like Yao’s daughter. Rob and I had registered Rainey in a weekly soccer league, but other than that, he loafed around on weekends.

  Ming clearly thought this was dangerous, and she felt compelled to explain the risk of inaction.

  “It is good for kids to be free now, but in China, eventually all students must walk a very narrow road.”

  * * *

  This kind of anxiety spared few parents in China, regardless of geography or class, and expectations for a child’s behavior were correspondingly strict. I remember this lesson from my early interviews for an ayi—a nanny to watch Rainey while I worked. Pronounced “ah-yee,” the word literally translates as auntie. In our home ayi would come to mean housekeeper, cook, babysitter, tutor, and friend.

  During my first month in Shanghai, I’d called on an agent who had given herself the English name Carol. In a city of twenty-six million people, I’d need a middleman. Carol told me she had a database of men and women, categorized by height, weight, hometown, skills, experience, and salary requirements.

  “My ayis can shop for groceries, make dinner, clean your house, and watch your child,” she said. For the equivalent of four US dollars an hour and a few meals?

  “I think that will be fine,” I told Carol.

  Most ayis are one of hundreds of millions of Chinese men and women who filter into big cities from the countryside, drawn by salaries double and triple what they could make back home. Nearly always the decision to chu qu—go out for work—is fueled by the need to support a child’s living expenses and schooling back home. (Countless individual decisions, big and small, are made in the name of education.) China’s rural-to-urban migration is the largest mass movement of humans the world has ever seen—about 350 million over the past few decades—and I’d be helping to power the pilgrimage by creating a job opening in my Shanghai home.

  “My ayis are shou jiao hen gan jing,” Carol continued, which literally translates as “hands, feet, very clean.” To have unclean hands and feet is to be a petty thief.

  “Give my ayis five hundred yuan to buy groceries for your house, and she’ll buy five hundred yuan’s worth,” Carol promised me. “She won’t spend four hundred and fifty yuan and put the change in her pocket. Where are you from?”

  “America—I’m American.”

  “American!” she exclaimed. “American families are good to work for! Ayis like to work for American families. And Canadian. And British.”

  “Why do ayis like to work for Americans?” I asked.


  Carol ignored me. “Ayis don’t like Germans. Germans refuse to negotiate on salary. Ayis don’t like to work for Spanish, either. Spanish are messy. Unrestrained. Always late. Singaporeans have one washing machine per family member—too many machines for ayis to manage.” I chuckled. I often saw Chinese generalizing about a people or culture they’d experienced only in passing.

  “Hong Kong families don’t like ayis to sit on their couch,” Carol continued. “French are arrogant, plus they like their ayis young and pretty—most ayis don’t qualify. Indians are vegetarian, so ayis who work for Indian families are always hungry.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Starving. Ayis will call me and say there’s nothing to eat but one tomato, a carrot, one potato. And some curry paste,” Carol said. I suppose in a country so carnivorous that fifty-four million tons of pork are consumed every year, a meat-free workplace is a downer.

  I repeated my question. “Why do ayis like to work for Americans?”

  “Because an American will give Ayi medicine if she’s sick. She won’t send Ayi shopping in the rain. She’ll invite Ayi to eat at the dinner table with the family, instead of in the kitchen. She follows Ayi around to ask, ‘Are you happy, are you happy?’” Clearly, in Carol’s eyes, the American mother was a neurotic boss concerned about human rights and labor conditions.

  “If I have an American family who needs an ayi,” Carol said, “I’ll walk into my dormitory and every ayi will raise her hand. ‘I’ll go, I’ll go!’”

  Carol said she would head over in a few hours, and soon enough she appeared on my doorstep with another agent and three smiling ayi candidates. Carol wore a black patent-leather trench coat and shiny black pumps, attire that seemed to advertise: Hire one of my ayis and you’ll have the time to primp like me.

  The Chinese women filed into my dining room, and each settled into a seat around our table. I took a chair. Five pairs of eyes the color of black tea focused on mine.

  “You can start the interviews now,” Carol said. I surveyed the army of strangers seated where I eat breakfast.

  “Now? Here?” I asked.

  “Go ahead. Ask their names and experience,” Carol prodded. I started with the woman on my left.

  Tang Ayi took pride in the fact that she’d worked for only three families in the eight years she’d been in Shanghai—she was loyal—and she was pretty, with a gentle manner about her. She looked over at Rainey, who was busy maneuvering trains about the living room floor, and smiled.

  Wu Ayi was from Anhui province, which bordered Shanghai. She made sure to announce that tap water was not for drinking and that she’d been a chef back in her hometown. I imagined the meals she could make.

  Hu Ayi was forty-four years old from Fujian province, near the ocean. It was said that Fujian had the cleanest air in all of China, but Hu Ayi looked as if she lived in a chimney. She’d likely just stepped off a dusty, multiday journey from the countryside.

  All the women were eager to work. Each explained her experience, but I was confused.

  “Which do you like?” Carol asked, as if we were discussing the purchase of a gerbil at a pet store. The ayis sat waiting, both winner and losers sitting together in my home. It occurred to me that the situation perfectly mirrored China’s labor force: Population is large. People are dispensable. One doesn’t suit, a replacement is always at hand. There was never any need to gloss over this fact of life in China, and I felt anxious knowing my choice would ultimately help support a family’s child back home.

  “How do I choose?” I finally asked.

  “I’d invite each ayi to your home for a day,” Carol said. “Watch how they wash the walls. Do they put chemicals in the water, or do they just pass over surfaces with a wet cloth? How do they iron? Do they chop vegetables neatly? And you need to see how they massage the baby.”

  “Massage the baby?”

  “Yes,” Carol said. “The French think this is very important.”

  “Well, if anyone will massage the baby,” I said, “it will be me.”

  Carol nodded. “Why don’t you try each one for a day. Which would you like to start with? Pick one.” With her chin, she traced a circle around the table.

  This was too much. “Could they wait outside?” I asked. Carol shooed the women out the front door and came back to the table, ready to talk business.

  “The first one you could get for two thousand RMB* a month,” she said. That was about $300, which was a nice monthly Chinese salary in the year 2010. “The second you’d have to pay twenty-five hundred, and the third one will want twenty-three hundred. My fee is forty percent of a month’s salary.”

  The next day, Tang Ayi showed up at eight a.m., ready to work. She positioned herself next to Rainey, who was sitting at the dining-room table, spooning oatmeal into his mouth.

  “Hello, little boy,” Tang Ayi said. The little boy did not respond.

  “His name’s Rainey,” I told Tang Ayi.

  “Rainey, what are you eating?” Tang said, staring him down intently. Still, Rainey did not respond, and apparently that was simply too much. Tang would make him acknowledge her, and she abruptly removed the spoon from his hand and tried to force it into his mouth. Rainey clambered down from his chair and ran over to me.

  Tang followed him, spoon outstretched. “Little boy, come eat this porridge now,” she said.

  “You can call him Rainey,” I said as he clung to my arm.

  “Rainey, come over to me,” Tang Ayi said. But Rainey didn’t budge.

  “Bu tinghua,” she said, putting down the spoon. Doesn’t listen. Tinghua was the listen-and-obey command Teacher Chen had issued on Rainey’s first day of school. That day Rainey had failed the tinghua test, and he’d flunked this one, too.

  Tang Ayi headed to our front door and started putting on her shoes. I followed her to the door, incredulous.

  “Excuse me, you’re leaving?” I asked.

  “I’d heard foreign children bu tinghua.” And with that, she shut the door behind her. Ayis might prefer American employers, but a US passport didn’t trump a disobedient child.

  Wu Ayi came the next day for her trial. She revealed that her husband was a construction worker in another city, and her own wages were designated for tutoring costs for their son.

  All seemed to go well until afternoon nap, when Rainey kept popping up like an overwound jack-in-the-box in his crib, whimpering and crying. Wu strode over to the crib, jerked Rainey off balance so that his body toppled forward, and pushed him into a lying position. “Tinghua! Listen! Lie down! Hold your head still.”

  She held Rainey’s head against the mattress, and I watched in disbelief as his arms began flailing. Within two bounds, I was crib-side.

  “Let him go,” I said, removing Wu’s hand from the back of my son’s head. Rainey lifted his head and continued to cry.

  “He doesn’t listen,” Wu said, glancing up at me. I recognized the reproach in her glance. This was my fault!

  “I don’t think we’re a good match,” I told her, my fist clenching. “I’d like you to leave.”

  By now the word had surely gotten out: Rainey was a terror. I called Carol to let her know I’d lost two prospects, with only Hu Ayi remaining. But Wu and Hu must have been in cahoots, because Carol soon delivered the news: Hu Ayi thought Rainey was “very young and our house was too difficult to clean.” (Never mind that Hu Ayi had shown up at our interview looking as dirty as a chimney.) Our final prospect would pass.

  The subtext was clear, reasons carefully calibrated so I wouldn’t lose face. “You’re a terrible parent. Your child is a nightmare. As much as I need this job to raise my own child, I can’t take care of a foreign kid who doesn’t listen.”

  * * *

  Our foreign kid has two parents who set about tackling their new lives with purpose and a sense of adventure.

  It helped that our marriage was itself forged, in some sense, on an appreciation of differences; one of us was always adj
usting to new circumstances. The first time I flew in to meet Rob’s parents in Minnesota, I stepped off the plane from New York, onto an airport tram, and immediately noted that I was the shortest person there, and the only one with hair darker than white chocolate. I’d spent most of my life in the melting-pot megacities of Houston, San Francisco, and New York City—I’d never before seen so many tall, blond titans gathered in one place.

  See, Rob and I hail from two cultures, as distinct as lutefisk and lychees.

  Rob grew up in a Minnesota town with a single stoplight. His predecessors were Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans who’d settled in the Midwest generations ago, and if you’d lined up all the townspeople on Main Street—and thrown in the apparitions of their ancestors for good measure—the people would still be outnumbered by the frogs and fish in the lake out back. Most everyone was on a first-name basis with the druggist and dentist, and the community’s anchors were sports and church. A neighbor might recall, game by game, the high school hockey prowess of your uncle, and when someone in your family died, people materialized on your doorstep with casseroles. Rob’s parents set curfews and firm rules about school attendance, but otherwise Rob and his brothers spent hours outside playing ball, exploring the woods out front, and swimming or boating the lake behind their house.

  It was an idyllic childhood, but it was also insular, and Rob never looked back once he found the opportunity to leave. During his twenties, he hopscotched from one continent to the next, living in Spain, then Australia, and later China during the 1990s as a Peace Corps volunteer. In fact, Rob was one of the first foreigners to live in the town of Zigong in rural China since Mao Zedong’s takeover of the country in 1949. His second day there, Rob pulled aside the drapes of his ground-floor apartment to find half a dozen Chinese children, hands grasping the bars outside his window, eager for a peek at the American arrival. Rob mirrored their wonder, turning it toward the place that would be home for the next two years. China’s was a rapidly changing society, yet letters still took two months to reach the United States, and email wasn’t yet commonly used to communicate with friends and loved ones. Isolation from the outside world granted Rob the focus and the time to learn Mandarin, devour Chinese history books, and befriend his neighbors.