Miss Chopsticks

by Xinran

It was late afternoon when we arrived at the baths. We collected our tokens and towels from reception, and were given various health checks before separating to take a shower. It is important to be clean before entering medicinal pools. But when I got into one of the pale-blue shower cubicles and bolted the door, disaster struck. I turned on the cold tap only to find that the water was scalding hot. Thinking that perhaps the taps had been wrongly labelled, I tried the hot tap, only to find that hot water came out of that one too. I immediately tried to turn off the taps but the threads were so worn that they wouldn’t turn. The shower head was set at such an angle that the water (which was getting hotter and hotter) sprayed in front of the door, making it impossible for me to unlock the cubicle without burning myself further. All I could do was squeeze myself into the corner furthest away from the jet of water, and call for help.

  After a while an attendant heard my cries, but explained, extremely slowly, that she had no way to open the door from the outside. I would have to open it myself. On hearing this, I became frantic.

  ‘If you don’t find a way to get me out of here, I’m going to be seriously injured,’ I said. ‘I can’t keep my body away from the water entirely, and it’s scalding me. Hurry and find someone who can turn it off.’

  ‘Really?’ The voice outside still seemed not to sense the urgency of the situation.

  ‘Listen to me!’ I shouted, ‘If you don’t hurry up and find someone, you’ll be blamed for my injuries!’

  When I think back on it, my voice must have sounded terrifying. I heard the girl running away. While I waited, I tried to keep changing position so that different parts of my body took the pain. I had counted up to two hundred by the time I heard rushing footsteps and shouting:

  ‘Which cubicle? Good heavens, didn’t they seal that one off last night? How come it’s open again? That’s the one that doesn’t work properly! Quickly, go and turn off the hot water! The other customers will just have to be cold for a moment. If there’s trouble, I’ll take responsibility. Now get a move on. Turn off the stopcock!’

  There was another burst of running footsteps, and then the hot water stopped. I opened the door to find three women in uniforms standing open-mouthed outside the cubicle, staring at my bright red body.

  ‘Sorry, we’re sorry,’ they apologised in chorus.

  ‘I’m afraid that, although my brain understands you, my body doesn’t,’ I said resentfully.

  At this, the youngest of the three women stepped forward and began to take charge in a very capable manner. Signalling to her colleagues that they should go and turn the hot water back on, she said that she would look after me. I recognised her voice: she was the one who had promised to take responsibility if any of the other customers complained about the cold water.

  ‘My name’s Mei,’ she said. ‘I’m going to take you to the Skin Treatment Room where they can look at your burns.’ Without giving me a chance to object, she gently placed a big bath towel around my shoulders and led me to a treatment room. The towel was extremely painful wherever it came into contact with my skin, but the doctor in the treatment room promised that the salve he was using would get rid of the redness and pain in half an hour.

  He was right: the pain did begin to ease, especially when Mei gave me a foot massage afterwards. While she was rubbing my feet we talked, and I found out that she too came from Anhui. By the time my husband and I left the Water-Culture Centre late that night, Mei and I had become firm friends. She is the ‘Five’ in this book, and really was her parents’ fifth child.

  Because Mei couldn’t read, we were only able to keep in touch by telephone, which we did for nearly two years. Then, in September 2005, I was told by another employee of the Water-Culture Centre that Mei had been sent on a course of advanced study, and that she did not have her new telephone number.

  I was perplexed. How could a girl who couldn’t read or write be sent on a course of ‘advanced study’? But then I thought again: through sheer hard work, Chinese people have achieved many things that others have thought impossible.

  I wrote this Afterword during a visit to Tasmania, where I was staying in a small wooden hut next to Cradle Mountain. February is the height of summer there, and there were days when the sun was so strong it could burn your skin. On other days, however, there would be snow flying outside my window. In Cradle Mountain, they call it the Sky Mother looking for her children who went out during the summer to play.

  On the last night I spent in Tasmania, I was taken with a group of other people to see a colony of Little Penguins. It was a rainy, windy night and we walked through the dark down to the sea, chatting to each other in our excitement. When we got there, our guide told us to be quiet. ‘Please don’t use flashlights, and be careful where you put your feet. You are now in the penguins’ territory.’ As he spoke, he switched on a special torch, designed to give off a gentle light. Its beam revealed a huge crowd of tiny penguins standing right in front of us – not black and white, like the ones I had learned about in school, but dark-blue and white. The largest was barely twenty centimetres high, and they were all waving their tiny, soft wings, and calling out to each other as they searched for their mates. My companions and I were awed by the peaceful harmony in which these little creatures lived. Involuntarily I greeted them in Chinese. Who knows – I might have been the first person ever to speak Chinese to them. The guide asked us three questions: ‘Why are the penguins waddling so awkwardly? Why do they make so light of having to spend five or six hours climbing from the sea to the top of the ridge? And why are they making so much noise?

  A long silence followed. We could hear nothing but the ocean and the penguins ‘discussing’ our ignorance.

  Since no one in the group knew the answers to the questions, our guide provided them. As I listened to him, surrounded by the roar of the ocean and the cries of the penguins, my heart wept.

  ‘Firstly, penguins can’t bend their legs. Think how difficult it would be to climb a mountain with no knees! What would take us ten minutes to climb, takes them hours, with many rest-stops. Why do they do it every day? Because their mates and babies are at the top of the ridge, and they must bring them food. And finally, the noise … The ocean is the place that gives them life and keeps enemies at bay; on dry land they and their offspring are far more exposed to predators. So when love drives them to climb the ridge for their family, they are worried, confused and lonely. They need the calls of their own kind to comfort them …’

  The guide’s words seem a fitting footnote to the story of Three, Five and Six, and all the peasant women who come to work in China’s cities, or labour in the fields from dawn to dusk. They do not have the advantages we were born with – the knees that allow us to walk freely through our lives and our choices. Many of them have never been cuddled by their parents, never touched a book, never had warm clothes, never eaten their fill. But in conditions that we would consider ‘impossible’, they fight for their self-respect, their aspirations, their loves.

  Just as I was humbled by the sight of the little Tasmanian penguins who had struggled up the ridge, I am full of admiration for the chopstick girls who, with their energy, give us so much.

  Thank you.

  Maps

  Editor’s Note: A List of Chinese Festivals

  There are many different festivals celebrated in the cities and villages of China, and the way in which they are marked varies from region to region. It is impossible to list them all, but here are the some of the most important ones:

  Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year (last day of 12th lunar month and the first 5–15 days of 1st lunar month): This is the most important festival in the Chinese year. First preparation is made for New Year. Houses are cleaned, the family banquet is prepared and people paste pictures of the ‘door gods’ onto their front doors to protect the family. Relatives visit each other and there are fireworks.

  Lantern Festival (15th day of 1st lunar month): Celebrated with the lighting of lanterns and lion
dances.

  Tomb Sweeping Day, also known as the Festival of Pure Brightness (12th day of 3rd lunar month): A day for honouring one’s ancestors by cleaning their tomb and burning ceremonial paper money. Families go on outings.

  Dragon Boat Festival (5th day of 5th lunar month): This festival commemorates the death of the great Chinese poet Qu Yuan, who committed suicide by drowning. Dragon boat races are held. People also eat Zong Zi, glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves. It is also a time when people protect themselves against illness. It is thought that this period of the year is when the Five Poisonous Creatures (snakes, scorpions, spiders, lizards, toads) awake from hibernation and cause harm, particularly to small children. Parents protect their children by giving them special clothes to wear decorated with pictures of the Five Poisonous Creatures.

  The Night of Sevens, also known as Magpie Festival (7th day of 7th lunar month): A day which celebrates lovers, this festival marks the night when the goddess Zhi Nü was allowed to meet the mortal cowherd Niu Lang with whom she had fallen in love. On the seventh night of the seventh moon, magpies would form a bridge for the two lovers to meet. The two lovers became stars (Vega and Altair), divided by the Milky Way.

  Ghost Festival (15th day of 7th lunar month): a day when people burn paper money and making offerings to their dead ancestors so that restless spirits will not trouble the living.

  Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as Moon Festival (15th day of 8th lunar month): Based on the legend of Chang Er, this is a festival where families come together to eat moon cakes.

  Double Ninth Festival (9th day of 9th lunar month): A day for warding off evil, celebrated in many different ways. Traditions include climbing a mountain, drinking chrysanthemum wine and carrying sprays of dogwood.

  Winter Solstice, also known as Mid-Winter Festival (day of winter solstice): A day for worshipping one’s ancestors.

  Laba Festival, also known as Congee Festival (8th day of 12th lunar month): The day Buddha attained enlightenment. People eat Laba congee which is made of mixed grains, meat and fruit.

  Kitchen God Festival (23rd day of 12th lunar month): On this day the Kitchen god returns to heaven to give a report to the Jade Emperor (in Chinese mythology the Jade Emperor is the ruler of heaven) about the family’s activities over the past year. Families therefore spend the day performing acts of appeasement to the Kitchen god so that he will give the Jade Emperor a favourable report.

  Acknowledgements

  My heartfelt thanks to my husband Toby Eady, whose cooking skills and exquisite literary knowledge sustain me; and to my son PanPan for his independence and indomitable hard work. Without all the help these two people have given me, I could not have finished writing this book whilst juggling my frantic activity with the charity the Mothers’ Bridge of Love (MBL), and my talks, interviews and lectures all over the world.

  Thanks to all the volunteers and supporters of MBL: their generosity and encouragement has helped me to understand the self-respect and will to become successful and strong that lie behind the achievements of China’s chopstick girls.

  Thanks to Esther Tyldesley. I feel lucky and honoured to have such a translator. Like me, she is proud of Chinese women, and wishes to help others love and understand them. I would like this book to be a wedding present for her.

  Thanks to my editor Rebecca Carter – whose questions have helped me understand what Westerners do and don’t know about China – and to everybody at Random House who has worked on this book. It is their professional knowledge that has made my stories into the book you are reading now.

  Thanks to all my friends in publishing and the media all over the world. They have helped me to express in thirty different languages all the hopes for China I have described with my Chinese pen.

  Thanks to Tantan’s mother Liu Tong, MBL CEO Wendy Wu and Meiyee Lim, excellent Chinese women who have helped so many chopstick girls.

  Thanks to you, the readers, for reading, and for your love and appreciation of the chopstick girls.

  sharing chineses culture

  helping chinese children

  MBL’s Heart to the World

  Over fifty per cent of Chinese people live in poverty. Millions of Chinese children can only dream of a decent education. These children ask: ‘How can I ever go to school?’

  In 2004, the charity ‘The Mothers’ Bridge of Love’ (MBL) was founded to help disadvantaged Chinese children, and to build a bridge of understanding between the West and China. The seeds of hope planted in 2004 for all those who have suffered and lost, have been watered by the charity’s many volunteers in China, the UK and the twenty-seven other countries involved. They have now developed two buds:Sharing Chinese Culture and Helping Chinese Children. Our great thanks goes to all the volunteers and supporters who have allowed these two buds to reach out of the soil.

  Before you close this book, and as you reflect on the story of Miss Chopsticks, we ask you to take a little time to find out about the activities of MBL.

  If you wish to support MBL charity activities, you can send a cheque to:

  MBL 9 Orme Court

  London W2 4RL UK

  If you would like to make a bank transfer, please send funds to:

  The Mothers’ Bridge of Love (MBL)

  Sort Code: 400607

  Account Number: 11453130

  HSBC Bank Russell Square Branch

  1 Woburn Place, Russell Square

  London WC1H 0LQ

  SWIFT Code: MIDL GB2142E

  If you would like to make an online donation please visit: http://www.justgiving.com/mbl/donate

  For further information please do visit our website: www.motherbridge.org.

  Executive Director: Wendy Wu

  Founder: Xinran

  MBL – The Mothers’ Bridge of Love: Charity Registration

  No. 1105543

  www.vintage-books.co.uk