How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia

by Shannon Young

  And then it happens. Our placement. Our child. And all the years of waiting, wanting, trying vanish in an instant. I wouldn’t take back any of it, not at all.

  Home Study

  We go back to visit the orphanage. Yuto cautiously approaches us in the lobby, hiding behind the giant stuffed panda, then runs away. His caretaker, Kirita-san, a kind young woman who’s been carrying Yuto on her back since he was a baby, tells us that he’s doing great. He’s so happy, she assures us. Shogo nods optimistically. We decide that we’re going to go to the orphanage every day for the next few months, even if just for half an hour, until he comes home with us forever.

  We make a breakthrough when we ask if we can bring our dog, Aska. If Yuto’s going to be our child, we reason, then he has to meet the other member of the family too. "She’s our daughter,” I say to the staff, risking ridicule. But to our surprise, the orphanage agrees to let us bring her.

  The following day, we load Aska in the car and drive to the orphanage. We park and take her to the back alley that runs beside the orphanage grounds by the playground. The children line up at the fence to reach their hands through to pet her. When we get closer, some stay back, some run away. Those who stay at the fence make a neat line. Yuto stays at the fence. He has no fear. Aska goes down the line, sniffing their shoes. She stops at Yuto. She’s been smelling his scent on us for weeks. She knows who he is. Her tail starts to wag. She makes a smile that frightens some of the children, seems strange and menacing. But Yuto smiles back. His face lights up in a way I’ve never seen it do before. He loves her! He sticks his fingers through the fence. She licks them. He tries to pet her through the fence.

  We ask the orphanage staff if we can take Yuto on a walk with Aska on the street, away from the orphanage.

  Not yet.

  We put her back in the car while we go inside to visit with him.

  He shares a room with three other kids, two girls and one boy. The other kids jump on us and cling to us when we come in the room. We play with blocks, puzzles, toy food, and Legos.

  Of the hundred kids in the orphanage, only one is available for adoption—Yuto. The rest remain in limbo, without parents but legally unable to be placed with families who will care for them. It’s a tragic situation with so many people waiting to adopt, and so many kids just sitting in foster homes and orphanages because the government holds out hope that their blood relatives will claim them. Most don’t. The kids grow up in the foster system, many never meeting their birth parents or having the experience of family or home.

  It’s heartbreaking. I want to adopt them all.

  Flying Bird

  The next time we visit the orphanage, Yuto asks where our dog is: "Where’s wan-wan?”

  "Her name is Aska,” we say. "It means Flying Bird.”

  He laughs. "I want to see her.”

  "We’ll bring her next time,” I say.

  The anticipation is good. He climbs on my lap, lets me read him a picture book. Then he plays ball with Shogo, dancing and happy. He goes to the window and holds the windowsill, dropping back to the floor in a backbend. He’s a yogi!

  "Has he always done that?” I ask.

  "Always,” they say.

  From then on, we bring Aska every visit. Each time, Yuto warms up to us a little bit more. Finally, we can take him out of the orphanage for a walk. Since it’s our first time to take him off the orphanage grounds, we’ve been asked not to bring Aska. He’s disappointed, but we take him to a nearby park which has a duck pond. He loves throwing bread into the pond. There’s also a Baskin-Robbins nearby. We discover his two great loves in the same hour—animals and ice cream.

  On the street, he talks to everyone. Construction workers, old ladies, teenagers. It turns out that he’s not shy at all. Slowly but surely, my heart begins to wrap itself around this little boy.

  Oyatsu

  Weeks go by, and we’re all getting more comfortable with each other. One day, we’re taken into a special room to feed him oyatsu, a snack. It’s really to see if he’ll eat without his familiar caretakers like Kirita-san around.

  The first time, he doesn’t touch his food. Maybe he feels too much pressure with all eyes on him. For all I know, he’s been through this before. How much does he remember? I can tell he’s a very smart boy, and observes everything intently.

  We don’t force it.

  The next time we come and sit down with him to have his snack, he sips his milk. The time after that, he drinks the whole cup. Finally, he drinks the milk and takes a bite of his cream puff, but only eats half of it. He’s starting to trust us. Progress! I never thought I’d be so excited about a half-eaten cream puff. Kirita-san says he loves them. Now I know why he’s so chubby.

  The next visit, he eats the entire pastry. Even though I’m not thrilled about him eating a cream puff, this is very good news. It means we’ll be able to bring him to our house for a day visit, and that means he’s one step closer to coming home.

  Day Visit

  I spend the week cleaning the house from top to bottom as if preparing for a visit from a head of state. But when the day comes to bring him home for a few hours, my happiness is dampened when I notice scratches on his face and bite marks on his arms.

  "Did he scratch himself?” I ask.

  "We don’t know,” the orphanage staff says.

  I have a theory—one of the girls in his room has been acting out. "Why does he have visitors—a mommy and daddy—and I don’t?” she asked me one day. My heart aches for her.

  "Are you sure she’s not available for adoption?” I ask. The staff shake their heads. I’m making it harder by asking, I know.

  The staff prepare a day pack for him in case he won’t eat at our house. Towels, a change of clothes, a rice ball, and a Thermos. We take him in our car. He’s never ridden in a car before, and he’s excited and scared. On the way to our house, he notices everything, calls out the names of what he sees: birds, flowers, construction cranes, trucks, buses, cars, airplanes, helicopters, ambulances.

  After having lived mainly within the walls of an orphange for the first two years of his life, the outside world is a symphony of sounds and sights and smells. Everything is new, scary, and exciting.

  Everything is possible.

  Home Visit

  On March 25th, finally, we can bring Yuto home for an overnight visit.

  He sleeps in the same bed with me, tossing and turning. Of course, he would be scared. There are so many new sights, sounds, smells, and in my case, even a new language. And though Hiroo is an orphanage, it’s still his home. It’s familiar and comforting. It’s all he’s ever known.

  Aska sleeps at his feet.

  Finally, he closes his eyes.

  Listening to them breathing softly together, I bask in the joy of the moment, but I don’t want to get my hopes up too high yet. Anything can happen.

  So we take each day as it comes. We read to him, play with him. He eats Shogo’s soba, slurping it happily. He asks for seconds. He’s a big eater. That’s a good sign, too.

  He celebrates his second birthday at the orphanage, dressed in a suit and tie. He blows candles out on a cake. We clap and sing.

  Is it ever going to be time to bring him home forever?

  Home

  On April 19th, weeks after Yuto’s second birthday, we get the green light to bring him home forever—or at least for six months before the court renders its final judgment and he’s legally our child.

  We bring Ai-Ai, a stuffed monkey, to comfort him in the car. First, we bring it into the orphanage, and he takes it and hugs it, holding it tightly in his arms. Kirita-san, the woman who’s been taking care of him since he was brought there two days after being born, cries inconsolably. She is happy, she says, waving her hand in front of her face, but I can feel how hard it is for her. I don’t know this then, but Yuto is the first child she has ever taken care of at the orphanage, and she’s raised him as her own. She gives us a
huge bag filled with toys, clothes, books, all lovingly bought and wrapped. I am sure this is totally against orphanage regulations, but no one stops her from giving it and we graciously accept.

  She sees us all the way out the door, bowing as we leave.

  Yuto tries to leave Ai-Ai behind in the foyer, placing him next to the giant panda. We have to convince him that he can keep it: he’s never had a single thing of his own and doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

  As we pull away from the orphanage, Kirita-san is still bowing and waving until we are no longer in sight.

  Mama Papa Yuto Aska

  Though we’re in Japan, I offer a Jewish blessing for bringing home a child. I light a candle at the Japanese altar of Shogo’s ancestors and say the blessing when we bring Yuto and his bag of gifts home:

  May our home always be a mikdash ma’at, a small sanctuary filled with your presence.

  May we reach out to each other in love.

  May our hearts be turned to one another

  May we create bonds of trust and care

  that will keep us close as we grow together as a family.

  Bless us, Source of Life, all of us together with the Light of Your presence.

  I think the prayer must be working. At home, Yuto is so polite. He helps me with the dishes. He carries my bags. He follows me into the bathroom. He asks before he does anything. Is it okay? Ii desu ka? Can I eat? Can I get up from the table? Ii desu ka? Can I pet the dog? Ii desu ka? I know this asking for permission will soon be a thing of the past, and I savor it. It’s clear he’s on his best behavior. His desire to please us is so beautiful it breaks my heart. He hardly has to try.

  He’s no longer chubby, and somehow, he’s incredibly handsome. Is this the same child we saw at the orphange months before?

  At night in bed, after I read him a bedtime story and before he drifts off to sleep, he says "Mama, Papa, Aska, Yuto” over and over, as a question, as if wrapping his head around this new unit, branding them into his heart.

  "Mama, Papa, Aska, Yuto?” he asks.

  "Hai,” I reply, over and over until he falls asleep.

  It’s our mantra.

  We are a family. We will stay together.

  Mama, Papa, Aska, Yuto.

  I say Yuto’s blessing in my mind, repeating our names, stitching them together in my heart.

  We are here for each other.

  Forever.

  Excerpted from a memoir-in-progress entitled Here Comes the Sun: A Memoir of Adoption, Yoga, and the Samurai Spirit.

  Leza Lowitz is a writer and yoga teacher in Tokyo. Her debut young adult novel, Jet Black and the Ninja Wind (Tuttle, 2013), received the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Young Adult category. Portions of her memoir in progress have appeared in the New York Times online, The Huffington Post, Shambhala Sun, Best Buddhist Writing 2011, and Yoga Journal. Lowitz’s Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By, was a #1 Amazon bestseller. www.lezalowitz.com

  CHINESE STONEWALLS

  By Ember Swift

  Guo Jian and I had climbed the eastern gate of the walled city of Dali, located in southern China’s Yunnan province. We looked out on the traditional rooflines of the city in the foreground, a shimmering mountain in the background. Behind us lay a wide-open lake. The remaining traditional architecture in China always takes my breath away, as if I’ve been whisked back a few centuries in the span of a single moment. But, on that day, the breathlessness was also related to nerves.

  We sat down on the west-facing outer ledge to watch the setting sun, its warmth a contrast to the chilly early December we had left behind in Beijing. Golden light glinted off of tiled rooftops with their eaves intricately carved with dragons and spirit gods. My eyes traced several roof corners, finding centuries-old figures illuminated by the sunset, one after another, all frozen in upturned poses of strength. It was as though they were there to reinforce my resolve. My heart started beating much too fast for such a peaceful moment. I closed my eyes. This was long overdue.

  With the sun on our faces and my heart in my throat, I choked out these words in a raspy Mandarin whisper: "Nĭ zhīdÀo wŏ yībÀn gēn nǚrén zÀi yīqĭ ma?” (You know that I am usually only with women, right?)

  We’d taken a spontaneous trip south. It was our last few days together before I had to return to Canada, where my life was established—a life that didn’t include Guo Jian. In the past few weeks, our relationship had progressed to that mountain of bliss only two people falling in love can scale. We were high from it, buzzing. We walked the streets of Dali as though levitating on love. The more intense our feelings grew, the more I had stalled.

  Until that moment, I had never really come out to him. I could blame it on my limited Chinese, but that’s just denial. I was afraid. How could I be in love with someone whose views on homosexuality I had not yet even heard? What if he was a homophobe? What if the feeling of floating on perfection was, in fact, hiding a deep, dark prejudice? Was I about to descend into a specifically Chinese version of homophobia? I gulped after I said the words. I could see only orange spots on the inside of my eyelids. I held my breath and bit down on my lower lip.

  At that time, I had spent five months in total in China—three months on my first trip, two on my second. Now that I live in Beijing, it’s hard to believe that I was ever temporary here. Back then, though, China was a mystery whose pages I was thumbing through eagerly, impatiently. I wanted so much to fit in—to convince China to accept me; I wanted to understand this world. My sexual identity seemed the only thing at odds with this place. Everything else had a resonance that made me lose my balance, like a bell clanging in my spirit. I was "China-charmed.”

  On my first journey to Beijing, the spring of that same year, I had met a lesbian woman whose chosen English name was Rain. She took a fancy to me and, despite the attraction being one-sided, I enjoyed being shown a world of quiet, back-alley bars where other women-who-love-women congregated. One confessional evening, Rain told me that most of her friends were "fake married” to gay men in order to make their families happy.

  "Chinese parents don’t believe gayness even exists,” she said, practically screaming over speakers blaring Ace of Bass’s "I Saw The Sign,” a hit from 1993. "Those who do consider it a disease.” It made my heart ache. She was well over thirty and continued to lie to her family about her life. "It’s the only way,” she said, taking another long gulp of her beer.

  Later in the night, amidst the smoky haze of suspendered tomboys, or "T”s, in crew cuts holding hands with "P” girls in two-inch heels and red lipstick, Rain’s eyes widened like full moons when I told her that gay marriage had been legalized in Canada. I had already attended a few of my friends’ same-sex weddings, I said. Homesickness washed over me as I spoke, coated with a sadness that made me think Rain had chosen her name wisely. How could I feel so connected to this country when my very presence in a women’s bar was considered illicit? What does a queer like me have in common with a reputedly repressed society (at least in "sexual revolution” terms) where gay marriage, for instance, is a long, long march away? Why did I want to be here so much again? I asked myself.

  After that conversation, I made my way back to my dorm room at the university in which I was enrolled as a three-month language student. I slouched in the taxi like a despondent castaway who had mistakenly washed up on eastern shores. Could this all have been a mistake?

  The first time I stepped onto Chinese soil had been just a month earlier, in the spring of 2007. I got off the plane and stood at the baggage carousel, groggy from the flight and dazed to finally be in the country that I had considered my "dream destination” for over a decade. As the luggage began to cascade toward our gang of weary travelers, the identical baggage tags caught my eye. There in big black print were three capital letters: PEK. My heart nearly stopped. I looked around for an explanation, like I might be hallucinating or dreaming while upright, but no one seemed bothered by anything. Was I th
e only one who could see those matching tags?

  Ten years earlier, when I decided to put my dream to go to China aside for a career in music, I had sat in a garage in British Columbia midway through my first national tour with my band. There, perched on an abandoned wheel well and leaning against the bumper of a classic car, I let my guitar echo off the tin roof as I wrote an instrumental song. I had just graduated from university with a degree in East Asian Studies, and this piece was a plaintive yearning for China in musical form—a place whose calling I was choosing to ignore. Little did I know that this song would become a signature song and remain on my band’s set list for over a decade. The song was called "PĒK,” named after the phonetic spelling of three separate words whose combined meanings seemed to embody this calling: peak, peek, and pique.

  I quickly realized that PEK was the airport’s acronym, harkening back to a time when Beijing was called Peking, but at the moment of my arrival, standing at the baggage carousel, those three letters signaled that I had truly found my long-awaited destination. That was the first of the many tolling bells.

  Recovering from my surprise, I had gathered my bags and hauled them into my first of many Beijing taxis, en route to the hotel whose address I gripped tightly in my hand. That’s when the remembering started. The smells, the sounds, the language in my ears and on my lips, and even the stonework of the buildings we passed—it all seemed to vibrate in my bones as familiar. I’ve been here before, I thought. I know this place.

  No, coming to China couldn’t have been a mistake. The signs told me I was meant to be here. In Chinese, they call it yuÁnfÈn (fate).

  The night I met Guo Jian, I was in a music venue in Beijing called Mao Live House, at the tail end of that first trip to China. I couldn’t stop staring at a beautiful, tall, lean Chinese woman on the other side of the lobby dressed in Thai fisherman’s pants and a blue floral jacket. She stood straight-backed with long dreadlocks tied neatly at the nape of her neck. In her profile, I could see high cheekbones and the hint of a dimple. Perfect skin. She was stunning. It wasn’t until she turned and glanced in our direction that I saw his goatee. I almost fell off the bar stool in surprise. I had just spent several minutes lusting after a man, and yet, I couldn’t stop. I had to admit it, he was one of the most beautiful human beings I had ever seen.