Severance

by Ling Ma

  Approaching the end of the driveway, I reached a dirt road with a row of dusty storefronts, some closed with a rolling garage door. The difference between the hotel and its immediate surroundings was acute. At one of the storefronts, an old Chinese man in a wife-beater and plastic sandals sat on a plastic crate, in front of a dusty display of candies. He glared at me and spoke something. His Chinese, either a local dialect or heavily accented Mandarin, was impossible to understand.

  I said hello in Mandarin, meekly.

  But now he was standing up, speaking angrily. Though I couldn’t understand what he was saying, it was clear he didn’t think I should be sticking around.

  I turned back.

  *

  In the morning, another white van pulled up outside the Grand Shenzhen Moon Palace Hotel. Blythe and I waited in the lobby, where she debriefed me on what we were doing. The printer was called Phoenix Sun and Moon Ltd. They were one of Spectra’s biggest suppliers, the one we threw many of our largest Bible jobs. She would troubleshoot a cover situation for the Journey Bible, a portable-sized Bible with a printed cover, which was supposed to be made of all-weather, waterproof stock. The stock had trouble absorbing ink; the colors looked too muddy. As an alternative, Phoenix would be running embossing tests. She was there to oversee the tests, and to make a decision on behalf of the client.

  I nodded, trying to keep up.

  So, here’s what’s going to happen when we get there, Blythe said. I’m going to observe the embossing tests, and you’re going to be given a tour of the printer.

  Sounds good, I said. My stomach grumbled. I hadn’t eaten any breakfast. The breakfast buffet offered English breakfast, all beans and warm tomatoes and mushrooms and blood sausage. There had been a congee bar, with additives like duck skin and scallions. It’d all looked too rich for this early in the morning.

  The lobby was scattered with hotel guests, mostly white businessmen. I recognized one of them, with his big build and bald head, from the golf game I’d glimpsed from my room yesterday. It suddenly occurred to me, though it had been obvious all along, that they too were all here on manufacturing-related business: apparel, cell phones and cell phone accessories, sneakers, toilet brushes, and whatever else. They were doing what we were doing.

  A short Chinese man in a polo and aviators walked into the lobby. Blythe stood up, catching his attention.

  Phoenix? he asked in accented English as he came forward. Blythe greeted him with familiarity. He had chauffeured her on previous trips.

  It was another hot and humid day, but with the AC blasting aggressively, it was like the Arctic inside. The driver merged onto an expressway that cut through the city. Rows of factories and apartment buildings, laundry hanging off the clotheslines outside the windows, white undershirts waving in the wind. Palm trees thrashed, their fronds breaking off and hurtling onto the streets. He swerved crazily, thrashing across lanes, doing unpredictable U-turns. Asian pop music played from the radio. When someone cut him off, he didn’t curse or yell, just changed his driving strategy. Blythe seemed unfazed.

  When we arrived at Phoenix Sun and Moon Ltd., a receptionist in teetering club heels escorted us into the receiving room. It was an important-looking room, anchored by a mahogany conference table. Blythe checked her phone. I looked at the walls, lined with plaques, commemorative tokens, and industry awards etched with Chinese characters. It was probably the room where all their American and European clients were received.

  Two middle-aged Chinese men entered. Blythe greeted them familiarly, shook their hands, and introduced me. There was Edgar, VP of customer relations. Despite the weather, he was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, like a London banker. Then there was Balthasar, one of the operations directors of the printer, who was dressed more casually, like the driver, in a polo shirt and slacks.

  Nice to meet you, Edgar said in perfect English. Sit down, sit down.

  The receptionist served us steaming jasmine tea in delicate porcelain teacups.

  As we sipped our tea, Blythe made small talk. She was great at it, friendly but professional. She provided introductory anecdotal details about me that made me seem competent and smart. She asked after each of Edgar’s and Balthasar’s daughters, both of whom were enrolled in a competitive middle school where they only spoke English.

  How is their English? she inquired.

  Ai-yah. Only so-so. But they should learn English from you! Edgar joked. My English is … how do Americans say, rusty.

  We laughed politely. Blythe smiled. Your English is excellent. They should learn English from you, she complimented Edgar, reestablishing the equilibrium.

  The small talk gradually led to business. Edgar told us about the company’s year, which had exceeded expectations. For the upcoming year, they were planning to expand their facilities by twenty percent, focusing specifically on making stationery and gift sets that required manual assembly.

  We expect to be fully operational with gifts and stationery very soon, Edgar said.

  The market has shifted, Blythe agreed. Whenever I walk into chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble, the gifts and stationery section grows bigger and bigger; all these journals, board games, crafts kits. It makes you wonder if anyone reads anymore.

  Nowadays, anyone can download a book on their e-reader, Edgar said.

  Bibles are good business. They are always in good style. Balthasar spoke less fluently than Edgar, his words stiff and heavily accented.

  We finished our tea. For the first time, Edgar addressed me. Balthasar will give you a tour of the factory now, he announced.

  Balthasar stood up and smiled obligingly. I followed him. We walked through the lobby and into the printing facility. The place was enormous, housed in a multilevel brick-walled building with large windows. The equipment was impressive but confusing: a tangled abstraction of levers and pulleys and buttons. The printing facility was hot and humid, loud with the whirring and grinding of machinery. Workers in blue jumpsuits and earplugs looked up curiously from their work.

  Balthasar explained that in addition to offset printers and sheet-fed printers, Phoenix owned seven web presses, which were typically used to print newspapers and magazines.

  And, of course, your precious Bibles, he added, the snideness of his tone barely perceptible, but the subtext of which could only mean: We manufacture the emblematic text to propagate your country’s Christian Euro-American ideologies, and for this, for this important task, you and your clients negotiate aggressively over pennies per unit cost, demand that we deliver early with every printing, and undercut the value of our labor year after year.

  Balthasar smiled. Pointing to a web press, a giant roll of paper furiously spinning onto other cylinders, he explained the mechanics of how it worked, the revolutions it spun per second. I tried to write everything down. He explained that only certain printers in China were granted a license to print Bibles, and even then there were rules.

  What are the rules? I asked.

  If there are—how you say—reference maps in the back of the Bible, Tibet and China must be printed in the same color. Otherwise the officials won’t allow the Bibles to ship. Taiwan too. Hong Kong. They must all be printed in the same colors as China. You know, we are all one, he said, letting slip an ironic grin.

  So it seems like Chinese authorities aren’t as sensitive to religious content as they are to political content?

  Balthasar smiled enigmatically.

  We walked onward. He showed me the dark, humidity-controlled room where children’s board books were kept after they were bound, so that the glue dried without warping the board pages. He opened the door and switched on the lights to reveal row after row of illustrated board books on wooden pallets.

  Oh, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I said, locating one stack of board books.

  Yes, very popular, he affirmed. We do so many reprints. As we turned to leave, he asked: Why is it so popular in America?

  I shrugged. I guess it teaches children counting skil
ls. They practice counting all the apples that the caterpillar eats.

  The worm is very greedy, Balthasar said darkly. He eats all the food and doesn’t share. What lesson does that teach children? To eat with no—he paused, searching for the word—no conscience?

  American kids are very fat, I joked, though I knew that was not what he really meant.

  Yes, he agreed, dropping the topic. He switched off the lights in the humidity-controlled room and closed the door.

  What I knew about overseas labor came from a college Economics class. First, the U.S. manufacturing jobs went to Mexico, to the maquiladoras that staffed laborers willing to work for cheaper rates than Americans. Duty-free, tariff-free. This was the 1980s and 1990s. Later, a portion of those jobs went to suppliers in China, which offered cheaper labor rates, even cheap enough to offset the shipping costs that coincided with a rise in oil prices. And after this, in another few years, the jobs will go elsewhere, to India or some other country willing to offer even cheaper rates, to produce iPods, Happy Meal toys, skateboards, American flags, sneakers, air conditioners. The American businessmen will come to visit these countries and tour their factories, inspect their manufacturing processes, sample their cuisines, while staying at their nicest hotels built to cater to them.

  I was a part of this.

  The workers looked up at me with benign expressions as we walked past. My first impulse was to smile, but it seemed condescending. I didn’t know them. I didn’t know what their jobs were or what their lives were like. I was just passing through. I was just doing my job.

  As we walked on, I could see other buildings out of the big-paned windows. There were several nearby buildings that looked like apartment complexes, with air conditioners sticking out of the windows, leaking rust stains, and nightgowns hanging out from clotheslines. I walked closer to the windows. Despite the loudness of the factory, I could hear strains of Chinese pop music and Peking opera, something that my grandmother used to play. The music was coming from the buildings.

  What are those? I asked, pointing.

  Balthasar followed my gaze. That is where the workers live, he said. Except when they return to their hometowns for Chinese New Year. The printer shuts down for two weeks. Big holiday. He looked at me carefully, as if seeing me for the first time. Do you celebrate Chinese New Year?

  I’ll eat a moon cake, I said, purposely evasive. Does that count?

  He smiled the same enigmatic smile. Ah, moon cake.

  We walked through other rooms. There were areas devoted to bookbinding. He showed me the machines that folded together the page signatures, machines that stitched together page signatures, the machines that glued the book blocks. They were all operated by workers in jumpsuits, who wore earplugs and safety goggles. The air was thick with paper dust.

  Can you speak Chinese? Balthasar asked.

  Yes, I can speak Mandarin, I replied stiffly, sticking to English. I had been six when I left China, and my Mandarin vocabulary was regressive, simplistic. I used idioms that only small children would use; my language was frozen in time. I could carry on a casual conversation for ten minutes. Any longer, and I was like a shallow-water dog paddler flailing in deeper ocean waters. It had worsened every year. I had only spoken Mandarin to communicate with my parents, and was out of practice.

  I added: But it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken Mandarin and I’m a bit rusty.

  He looked at me, as if trying to decide whether my response truly indicated the limits of my Chinese-speaking abilities or if I was simply conveying modesty, a very Chinese quality.

  Without warning, he switched to Mandarin. He asked if I liked Chinese food.

  I took the bait and responded in Mandarin. Yes, I quite rather like Chinese food, I said, proud to know so many qualifiers, the hallmark of a nuanced conversationalist. I like—here, I racked my brain. I was too embarrassed to say General Tso’s chicken, an American invention. But I didn’t know the names of other dishes, so I named something I never ate at all—Peking duck. I like Peking duck.

  Ah, your Chinese is very good! he delightedly exclaimed. Which was an inverted form of what Chinese immigrants would say to me: Your English is very good!

  He pressed on. Were you born in the United States?

  No, I said. I was born in China but—I scanned my mind for immigrate and came up short—I went to America when I was six.

  Oh, so young! Our exchange now took on an air of familiarity. Balthasar lowered his voice to confiding tones and told me about his daughter, how he was constantly pressing her to learn English. Because it’s good for business, you know? More opportunities.

  Yes, there is a lot of business exchange between China and the U.S. these days, I agreed, hoping that the conversation wouldn’t veer into economics or international relations or globalization, more complicated issues I probably wouldn’t be able to converse in as fluently.

  Do you speak Mandarin at home with your parents? Balthasar asked.

  Yes, I speak Mandarin with my parents, I answered, thankful that the language does not require tenses distinguishing past, present, and future.

  What do your parents do?

  My mother doesn’t work. She stays at home.

  And your father?

  My father is a … doctor, I said, because I didn’t know the words for housing loans risk analyst. Then I added, unnecessarily, The brain.

  Ah, a brain surgeon, he said, then hesitated. Or do you mean psychiatrist?

  I selected the more Chinese-impressive title. A brain surgeon, I said. I understood the terms as he spoke them, but I couldn’t come up with the words on my own.

  He looked at me with what seemed like respect. While I hoped that we would stop conversing in Chinese and switch back to English, I sensed that something important rode on my ability to speak fluently in both languages, I wasn’t sure what. It was important that I gave the appearance of fluency.

  He asked where my family was from, what part of China.

  Fuzhou. That’s where I was born.

  Ah, Fujian province. He nodded knowingly.

  I looked at Balthasar uneasily. There was a hierarchy of provinces, and each province carried a stereotype, like the cultural biases associated with different New York neighborhoods. He was probably unimpressed. My knowledge of Fujian consisted of basic encyclopedic details: it is located directly across the strait from traitorous Taiwan; it has been historically separated from the rest of the mainland by a mountain range. With its seafaring traditions, most of the world’s Chinese immigrants consist of the Fujianese. They go to other countries and have children and claim citizenship, sending money back home to their families to build empty McMansions, occupied by grandparents. Fujianese was outlier Chinese.

  I switched back to English, changed the subject. How did you and Edgar get your names? I asked.

  They are not our real names, he said, following suit in English. They are just our business names, when we work with Western clients.

  How did you pick Balthasar? It’s unusual.

  It’s from Shakespeare. I choose from the best. He laughed. Then he asked, What is your Chinese name?

  I told him.

  Ah, very poetic, he said. It reminds me of the poem by Li Bai. It’s very famous. All the students in China study it.

  I didn’t know it. I couldn’t bear to ask him the name of the poem. I had no idea what my Chinese name meant, or that I was even named after a poem.

  In the packing room, Balthasar showed me a machine that made customized cardboard boxes in which books were packed. He spoke to one of the attending workers, a small, lanky man, in a fast-paced Mandarin I couldn’t catch. The worker punched some measurements into a digital screen. His fingertips were yellow. With both hands, he pulled the lever. A weight descended and then lifted.

  When he pulls the lever, the machine punches through cardboard, Balthasar explained.

  Out came a flattened cardboard, with indents, ready to be folded into a box. Wordlessly, the worker handed
it to Balthasar.

  He has to pull the lever to make one cardboard box? I asked.

  No, no, this machine punches through several cardboard boxes at once. It’s only an example.

  Turning to the man once again, Balthasar issued requests for different-sized boxes.

  The worker, in his late twenties with a goatee, punched in some different measurements and pulled the lever again. Out came a larger stack of cardboard, then a midsized stack. The shipping boxes were the least important part of the book production, I wasn’t sure why we were focusing on this so much. But I was mesmerized anyway. It was such a rote, mechanical movement, the punching in of measurements, the pulling of the lever. Cardboard boxes of different sizes and shapes were produced. He did this same thing over and over again, on a loop, until suddenly, he stopped in midaction and unleashed what sounded like a protest.

  Balthasar responded calmly, something about how part of his job was to demonstrate the machinery for visiting businessmen, but as the irritated worker grew louder and more insistent, the two men engaged in an argument, speaking too quickly for me to get every word. Something I did hear: Balthasar told the worker he was making a fool of himself in front of the foreigner.

  I looked away. On the wall, someone had taped up a titillating photo of a woman, holding an ice cream cone and sucking her finger. It had been ripped from a magazine.

  The photo was of Claire Danes, and it had been ripped from a 1996 issue of Us magazine. I knew it right away, because, as a kid, I had been obsessed with the Baz Luhrmann production of Romeo and Juliet, and had read all the interviews with its stars, collected them in a folder. It was unbelievable to see it here, of all places. The fact of finding a childhood artifact in such a strange place on the other side of the world, years and years later, I couldn’t put this sensation into words.

  Claire Danes! I love Claire Danes, I exclaimed, to no one in particular.

  Balthasar and the worker looked up. They exchanged glances. Something about my behavior, in keeping with a dumb, enthusiastic American, put things into perspective.