by Lenora Chu
My connection to China came by birthright. I am a direct descendant of the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty, but Mao Zedong’s armies cared little about dynastic heritage when they came marching through China in the 1940s. During this time, my mother’s and father’s families fled China and near-certain persecution, seeking safety and a stability the country couldn’t provide. “It was hard,” was the only phrase my maternal grandmother would ever utter about her travails, with the emotional reserve characteristic of many Chinese. For decades after that, the routes back into China were shuttered, and no one saw extended family for years.
The uncles, aunts, and cousins who stayed behind in China braved war and Mao’s devastating campaigns, including the 1960s-era Cultural Revolution, and only began to prosper as China opened up over the past few decades. As China rose, so did they: Some became prominent executives and politicians. Most notably, my granduncle Zhu Rongji developed Shanghai as mayor during the 1990s and ultimately became one of the most acclaimed premiers of modern China.
Across the Pacific Ocean, my mother and father had emigrated as youngsters to America, where collecting advanced degrees must have been a dating ritual: They met in Michigan, earned Ivy League PhDs together, got married, and settled down in the suburbs of Houston. There, they would raise me and my baby sister almost with a sense of urgency—it was an anxiety born from knowing prosperity in a faraway land, only to be forced out with nothing but their lives, their education, and a few bars of carefully smuggled gold.
My family line started anew in America. I wish I could say that childhood was fun, that my parents tackled their new lives with the adventurer’s sense of spirit. Instead, I grew up under the invisible hand of ancestral expectation, which clutched my shoulder with the intensity of a vise grip. Certainly, I never knew war or revolution, and I attended American public schools—which in Texas revolved around the rituals of football and cheerleading—but I came home to my parents’ authoritarian Chinese ways.
My mother and father wielded their authority without mercy, plotting mine and my sister’s paths to test perfection and advanced degrees. Unlike for Rob’s, church and sports weren’t a compass for my family; we worshipped at the altar of education, and if I’d tried to apply to the US Peace Corps, I’m sure my father would have asked why I’d choose to live in a developing country when my predecessors sought to escape their borders. (“Why go somewhere where you can’t drink the tap water?”)
Rob and I met in New York City in our late twenties, as graduate students in journalism. By then, we’d traveled six continents between us, hopscotching between jobs and backpack trips around the world, and the wanderlust continued after we got married. We shared five homes in as many years. Rob pursued public radio journalism while I became a newspaper reporter and later a writer.
Moving to China proved a homecoming for each of us in a different way. Rob’s time in the Peace Corps in China had inspired his decision to become a journalist. My ancestry in China meant I had the frame of reference of a descendant who’d left for an extended expedition and journeyed home for a visit. Rob and I both had just enough of that change-seeking enzyme in our blood to pack up a baby boy and relocate to a foreign country.
This spirit of adventure and adaptability would prove helpful as we grew into our roles as parents, and it would become critical as we learned what was expected of us—not only from Chinese teachers but from society—as parents of a child in China.
* * *
Soon enough, at Rainey’s school, I was getting signals that a child’s education should be a full-time job for at least one parent. Three months into the school year, I met a Beijing woman who’d abruptly left her job selling equipment during China’s economic boom. Brokering industrial machines had made her wealthy, but the job kept her trapped in meetings at unpredictable hours.
“One day, I had to choose between a meeting with my big boss and an activity with my daughter at school,” she told me. “They were scheduled at exactly the same time.”
In the kerfuffle, she somehow missed both appointments.
“The school proved less forgiving than work. So I quit my job,” she said.
Soong Qing Ling liked this kind of parent. “We don’t pick children—we pick parents,” Principal Zhang had told a packed auditorium of bobbing, black-haired heads during school orientation. “Yesterday, I met a parent who purchased two flutes. One flute for herself, so she could practice alongside her child. I like that kind of parent.”
Principal Zhang also liked parents who read and respond. There’s a lot of back-and-forth in a Chinese education: notices, memos, text messages, emails, letters, and permission slips. A series of bulletin boards hung outside Rainey’s classroom, and they courted a daily gaggle of parents and grandparents who crowded around, two and three bodies deep. I came to call these five-foot-square monstrosities “Big Board.” Its mainstays were the week’s schedule, alongside the lunch menu and a scattering of student artwork, say, two dozen peacock drawings, with each tail feather parsed out at exactly the same angle. It was Big Board’s directives I began to struggle with, those memos that disseminated all kinds of tasks for parent and child: work to complete at home, books to read, tasks to perform on behalf of administrators. When missives to parents weren’t posted, they were sent home with children in a three-ring binder, into which teachers slotted articles and notices. There was also a classroom blog.
Most bothersome of all was the WeChat parent group, which kept me tethered to my phone at all hours of the day and night. WeChat is an instant messaging platform more popular than email as a means of communication in China. Through this mobile app, the teachers could communicate to us their every command. Their instructions were fast and frequent:
This week we’re starting the “I Love My Family” theme. We’ll start by painting pictures of the mother. Mothers, please bring a photo of yourself to school. Please reply in the affirmative.
Keeping up with daily instructions like this were part of the job. Sometimes, the teachers’ directives were bewildering: “Bring plastic fish to school”; or troubling: “Health check is tomorrow, so tell your child he must endure the finger prick without fear”; or antithetical to my belief about the strength of the human body: “Today the weather is cold so children cannot play outdoor sports.”
Other times, teachers deployed parents as free labor: “Tear out all your children’s worksheets and affix them to the corresponding lesson page.” That day, Rainey marched home seven workbooks, and we set up a mini-factory on our dining-room table, tearing worksheets, reshuffling papers, and stapling for hours.
“Shouldn’t this be the school’s responsibility? Or a teacher’s aide?” Rob asked, picking up a stapler. I shook my head.
Parents are full partners in a Chinese education, and pity the mother who overlooked a message and failed to bring plastic fish to school.
As the weeks passed, the barrage of daily WeChat messages continued, and my anxiety levels continued to creep up. A parent’s reply to a teacher’s WeChat message was expected to be immediate, if not instantaneous, and keeping up with this daily flow of information was part of my job. Before long, I realized what troubled me most: the other Chinese parents. It all began to feel like a race, as if we were playing endless rounds of musical chairs, and the last parent to respond would have her supports immediately kicked out from underneath her. A teacher would message:
Do any parents own “tortoise and hare” clothing for a role-playing exercise?
Within seconds, a cacophony of mostly mothers would chime in, and my phone buzzed as each message arrived:
Yes! I do! Teacher, you work so hard!
I have tortoise and hare clothing!
I will go shopping immediately! Teacher, you are too amazing!
I received the message! We will do as you say!
One overachieving parent wrote that she had not only tortoise and hare clothing but also “frogs, goldfish, and tadpole clothing!” Others immediately l
aunched a search for animal costumes (or at least, they announced their diligence on WeChat).
I didn’t see the point of the role-play exercise, nor did I care to dress my three-year-old son in reptilian clothing. But I wanted to keep my chair on this particular day, so I broadcast my own enthusiasm:
Teacher, will do right away!
The teachers’ own messages came at all hours, even late at night and on weekends, and on some days I counted north of three hundred messages buzzing around the group.
Most Chinese families had an easier time keeping up than I did: It was simple mathematics. China’s planned-birth policy of the last few decades—the “one-child policy,” colloquially—meant that many of Rainey’s classmates have no siblings. These children have one mother, one father, and four grandparents to share parenting duties—that’s six adults per child. Living arrangements reflect this top-heavy arrangement in major Chinese cities, and it’s not uncommon to see three generations under one roof: kid plus parents, with a side of grandparent or two.
Sometimes this arrangement backfires, cultivating a child so spoiled that pop culture deems them “little emperors.” Other times, lots of helping hands transfers a crushing pressure of expectation onto the student at the bottom of this pyramid. I often think of the Chinese proverb bu kan zhong fu, conjuring up a donkey or workhorse, piled high and weighed down with goods, that can “no longer carry the burden.”
On the positive side, a six-to-one adult-to-child ratio means that Chinese urban children generally have more warm bodies around to share the duties of education. My granduncle Kuangguo, a talkative man with a commanding poise honed from decades of sitting at the heads of banquet tables, takes to grandparenting like a blood sport.
“My most important work is only beginning,” he told me, now that he has a grandchild to dote over. Uncle Kuangguo carts stacks of cash for extracurricular activities, lords over homework, arranges gifts for teachers, and attends field trips. His granddaughter actually relocates to his apartment during the school week—she has her own bed there—with the Monday-to-Friday migration made easier by the fact she has only to get in the elevator and press a button. The girl’s father, my second cousin, bought an apartment in the same building as Kuangguo just for this purpose.
By contrast, Rainey has only two reliable adults in his life, Rob and me. Rainey’s grandparents were an ocean away, so we couldn’t tap extended family to crowd-source child care, and I strained under the weight of keeping up with directives written in my second language. I was finding fulfilling work as a writer, and later as a television correspondent, and I wasn’t about to abandon that to appease Teacher Chen.
I thought I’d mastered the balancing act as well as the guilt, until Grandparents’ Day came around to prove me wrong. Nothing flaunted the delicate balancing act of our short-staffed household like this particular holiday.
“It’s a virtue of our Chinese nation to respect the old people. Our grandparents have paid so much love that we should do what we can as they grow old,” a teacher’s note told us one day. The note instructed us to send one grandparent to school that Thursday to mark a celebration of “filial obedience.”
This would be a problem.
“Rainey’s grandparents live in the United States,” I told Teacher Chen at pickup.
“Well, then Rainey can’t participate,” Chen replied. “Keep him home from school.”
“Buhaoyisi—my apologies—I’m sure Rainey would like to participate,” I said.
“Then you come with him,” Chen said, briskly.
“I work, and I’ll be unable to get time off that day,” I said.
“Then—keep him home from school.”
So, that’s how I found myself begging off work for a day to impersonate my own son’s grandmother. I walked into Small Class No. 4’s classroom two minutes late to find a couple dozen grandparents seated in tiny chairs, singing a song from 1952 about labor.
Working is the most honorable thing
The sunlight is shining and the rooster is singing . . .
I glanced over at Rainey. He seemed strangely disengaged, and he avoided my eyes.
Flowers wake up and birds are preening . . .
A little magpie sets up house, and a bee gathers honey.
I looked over at Rainey again, but he seemed intent on ignoring me. Was that because his grandmother for the day in fact gave birth to him? I didn’t expect a three-year-old would feel peer pressure, but right then I realized the ways in which Rainey was different from his classmates were sometimes impossible to hide. This was made worse by the Chinese cultural focus on the collective rather than the individual, and I saw that Rainey’s psychology was beginning to shift in that direction. He was embarrassed because he stood out.
The children slapped their knees to “Big Rooster, Big Chicken,” and then another jolly tune built around the Party’s themes of work and labor, and finally Teacher Chen arrived at the point of the holiday: a lesson on filial piety.
“Children!” Teacher Chen exclaimed, clapping twice. “We should tell our grandparents, ‘You work too hard!’ Your grandparents are older, and as a show of respect, let’s massage our elders!”
Massage our elders?
Chairs squeaked as children rose and made beelines for the backs of their respective grandparents. Seated in a miniature chair, I was eye level with Rainey as he approached.
“Hi, Rainey!” I said, smoothing back his hair.
“Tai xinkule—you work too hard!” Teacher Chen commanded. “Say it, children!”
The children chanted. “Tai xinkule—you work too hard!” they chirped, gazing up at their elders. Rainey managed to mumble something in my direction.
“Now massage your elders!” Chen proclaimed.
Rainey stepped around my chair and placed his tiny hands on my back. The other children did the same, and I realized the students had rehearsed this moment in class. Rainey tapped halfheartedly, as lightly as you might touch a wall wet with paint, and finally it was over. Twenty-seven children had massaged the backs of twenty-seven Chinese ancestors, while the twenty-eighth—my little boy—had patted the backside of his American mother.
Later that evening at home, Rainey moaned, “I don’t have grandparents.”
Of course he has grandparents—four of them—but they lived on the other side of the planet. Not one was interested in moving in with us.
As Chinese New Year approached, the most important holiday of the Chinese calendar, I got wind that other parents were planning elaborate gifts. I figured it was time to cultivate a little guanxi, or rapport with Rainey’s teachers. Rainey didn’t have grandparents around to share the duties of his education, but he had one mother very eager to step into the big shoes required of a Chinese parent. Buying gifts was a task I could manage.
I’d found myself at a Coach outlet in Houston during a midyear trip home to see my parents, Rainey in tow. It had been a slow day at the mall, and when the Coach greeter discovered what I was shopping for, she began trailing me with enthusiasm.
“Oh!” she’d said, perking up. “You are shopping for gifts? Gifts for Chinese women?”
“Yes. I need two . . .”
“Yes! For Chinese!” she exclaimed. “The Chinese come here in droves and buy thousands of dollars’ worth of purses. They are very good customers!”
Import taxes make foreign brands double and triple the price inside Chinese borders, so the Chinese consumer with means had begun flying to Europe, the United States, Hong Kong, and Korea to shop. The Houston saleswoman spotted an over-the-shoulder satchel with bright blue Cs on it and tapped the letters with her forefinger. Out tumbled her diagnosis of the buying habits of well-to-do Chinese: “The Chinese like anything with the ‘C’ on it. They love the metal insignias with the Coach wagon and horses on it, because it is the classic logo. They love patent leather and bright shiny plastic colors. They like to have a zipper closure so nothing is open and vulnerable. And they like an over-the-shoulder st
rap,” she concluded, slipping the bag over her shoulder. When she spoke, her words began to come out faster and faster as she fingered the corresponding part of the bag—logo, leather, zipper, strap.
I dropped $500 on handbags, each with the four must-have features, hoping for a little attention for my son. Rainey was confused. During the drive back from the mall, he’d sung out, “Who are those purses for?”
“For your Teachers Chen and Cai.”
Puzzlement crept into Rainey’s voice. “They already have purses,” he said.
“It’s a gift,” I said.
“So, they will each have two purses?”
“Yes,” I answered, focusing intently on the road past the steering wheel. Rainey had already sussed out the absurdity of the situation.
In modern China, gift-giving is an important ritual inside any valued relationship. All types of implications are suggested based on what the gift is, how expensive it is, and the manner in which it is presented, with machinations sometimes bordering on the comical. Most Chinese I know find this ritual exhausting, and the act itself is so complicated that researchers have devoted entire dissertations and studies to teasing out its formalities and insinuations. Chinese culture is hierarchical, and “respectful verbal and nonverbal behaviors” must be nailed when presenting a gift to someone of “high power status,” wrote academic Hairong Feng.
In other words, it was never as simple as handing over a tissue-wrapped box. Teachers Chen and Cai were of “high power status” in our relationship, and my son spent eight hours a day in their care. In academic terms, I needed to show my appreciation for the teachers and also generate a feeling of reciprocity.