Meet Me in Venice

by Suzanne Ma

  On the plane she tried to imagine her mother, Ah Ma, in a new country. She remembered Ah Ma as a gentle and demure woman who preferred to stay at home, shuffling around the house in her pajamas. She remembered Ah Ma scrubbing the kitchen tiles and Ah Ma curled up under a blanket watching television. What did Ah Ma look like now that she had been living among strangers for so many years? When they finally stepped off the plane and into the airport, Pei tried not to stare at foreigners, who had light-colored hair, pale eyes, and big noses. The men had shiny hair they slicked back with gel. They wore pointy leather shoes and Pei liked the smell of their cologne. Some women painted their lips a bright rouge. Pei admired their skinny legs and round breasts. Others had complexions that were as dark as chocolate. A few women wrapped their heads in colorful scarves; some covered their faces entirely with a dark veil. Pei had never seen anyone like that before. At home, such characters would have attracted a curious mob—and that was when there was just one or two of them. Never in her life had she seen so many strange-looking foreigners all in one place. She noted the time: 8:15 a.m. In China, it was already 2:15 p.m. Although she came from a country that spanned five different geographic time zones, she never thought about time differences. China has maintained just one standard time since 1949: Beijing Time. The sight of so many lao wai and the six-hour time difference was enough to convince Pei she had indeed stepped onto unknown shores.

  Suitcases of all shapes and sizes streamed past as the family waited for their bags. Pei wondered what was taking so long. All three suitcases were overweight and had been stuffed to the seams like a dumpling during the Chinese New Year. But the ticket agent at the Wenzhou airport let them through without any penalty. Perhaps their bags had burst open while being transported and Italy’s customs officials were rifling through their belongings. Would they find the dried river shrimps and yangmei bayberries she had so carefully packed away? “We’re going to be fined,” Pei told her brother. “I just know it.” A loud thump interrupted her frets. The bags, still bulging but unopened, had finally arrived. The family gathered their things and set off one by one into the arrivals hall. They had prepared a little test for Ah Ma.

  Fen’s eyes darted from one dark head to another until they landed on a familiar, pudgy face. “I’m here!” she called to Shen, frantically waving her arm.

  “Laopo!” My wife! His voice rang out loudly. That was her cue. Pei ventured out, pulling her luggage along with her. Blood rushed to her cheeks as soon as she saw her father standing next to a woman who looked even smaller and paler than she remembered.

  “Ah Bai!” Fen waved, using her daughter’s nickname in dialect.

  “Ah Ma,” Pei said softly, no louder than a whisper. At last, Mao made his entrance. He was fifteen years old, skinner and taller than Pei, with thick, messy hair and glasses. Mao strolled forward confidently, but his mother’s eyes passed over him as she continued to scan the crowd. It wasn’t until he waved that Fen peered into the face of the lanky teenager and saw the son she once knew. “Ah Mai,” she said warmly. “If you didn’t wave, I wouldn’t have known it was you.” The two children stared at their mother, who looked like a smaller version of her former self. She had been on her own for too long, Pei thought. They stood in the arrivals hall, a little bewildered.

  “Laopo, xin ku la,” Shen said, his hand resting on her back. My wife, life has been tough on you. Though Fen’s heart fluttered inside her chest, she was now paralyzed with emotion. The children did not stand as close to their mother as they should have, and they did not embrace. It wasn’t the Chinese way. Instead Fen asked what many Chinese ask their loved ones whenever they meet: “Ni men chi le ma?” Have you eaten yet?

  I had expected to see tall skyscrapers, but here there are none. People live in homes that are two stories tall.

  Fen’s uncle, the one who had introduced her to the mushroom farm, waited in a van outside the terminal for them. They piled in and set off on a four-hour drive. Pei could not sit still as she craned her neck looking for skyscrapers. She saw none. Instead, a landscape of medieval castles and crumbling farmhouses stretched out into the distance. The autostrada was similar to the highways in China, except the big green signs had the names of places Pei had never heard of.

  REGGIO EMILIA

  PARMA

  MODENA

  BOLOGNA

  They headed east out of Milan and toward Emilia-Romagna, a province blessed with a charming countryside, historic architecture, and unparalleled cuisine. The area owes its beginning to the Romans who built a road in 187 BCE bisecting the flat, foggy region. Along Via Emilia are historic towns featuring restored medieval and Renaissance palazzi. Bologna, the cultural and intellectual center famed for its arcaded sidewalks and grandiose medieval towers, is in the middle of everything. Parma and Modena lie to the west; the Adriatic Sea, with its resort towns, beaches, and bars, to the east. Italians rarely agree about anything but most will concede the best food in the country can be found in Emilia-Romagna—also known as Italy’s culinary heartland and sometimes referred to as Italy’s “stomach.” This is the birthplace of tortellini, fettuccini, ravioli, and lasagna. Prosciutto crudo, a rosy ham sliced razor thin, is cured in Parma. Reggio Emilia is where you find Parmesan cheese. For centuries, balsamic vinegar has been made in the ancient city of Modena. The signature dish in Bologna is tagliatelle al ragu, ribbons of egg noodle topped with a rich, meaty sauce. And who could forget the region’s famous sandwich, the piadina—a pita-thin bread filled with prosciutto and mortadella, put under a grill, and served hot with cheese oozing at its sides. Pei’s stomach growled, but not because she knew anything of the region’s legendary cuisine. In China, it was already 5 p.m.—time for dinner. As they neared the coast, the car turned off the autostrada and Pei saw olive groves and vineyards planted in neat rows on the sloping contours of the earth. Green leaves flapped in the wind and clusters of full-bodied grapes hung down like pearls. They drove inland along a road that traced the tops of those gentle slopes, passing a number of industrial-looking buildings at the bottom of a valley. “That’s the mushroom farm,” Fen pointed. Again, the sight of villas and farmhouses surprised Pei. She wondered where the canals and gondolas were and how far the water city was. The car headed uphill past a few homes, each with a well-kept yard and tidy rows of vines and olive trees, before turning up onto a gravel driveway and rolling to a stop in front of an old two-story house with peeling yellow paint and a crumbling terra-cotta roof. It was 12:40 p.m., 6:40 p.m. China time.

  “We’re here,” Fen announced.

  Both Pei and her brother responded at the same time: “Where?”

  “Home.”

  “This is our house?” Pei asked, peering at the cracks in the concrete walls.

  “Can we live in this house?” her brother said, eyeing a rusty tractor that sat in an overgrown yard surrounded by coils of corroded barbed wire.

  “Just come in and you’ll see.”

  I struggled with jet lag. In broad daylight I was yawning repeatedly and I could think of nothing but sleep. Indeed, I looked at the clock it was already past 11 p.m. in China. But here, it was the middle of the afternoon and the fierce sun shone down on me as if to remind me that this was reality.

  They climbed out of the car and stretched their legs. They had been traveling for nearly twenty-four hours. Large green jugs, the kind that looked like they were used to store wine, lay scattered about near the gravel driveway. Weeds sprouted from the interlocking brick path that brought them to the front of the house where a couple of fig trees stood next to a muddy field. The house was in utter disrepair. Long cracks stretched across the facade and chunks of yellow had fallen off the walls, exposing grey concrete underneath. A single front door opened up into a dusty room with an old fireplace and a sagging floor. A staircase brought them upstairs where they found three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a dining room, all connected by a long, narrow hallway. Re
nt was nearly $700 a month and was paid to the old woman, a friend of the mushroom farm owners, who lived across the street in a pristine three-story home tucked behind a wrought-iron gate. There were at least two cars parked on their paved driveway at all times and perched on the cantaloupe rooftop was a satellite dish. Pei and her family didn’t own a television. They bought secondhand bicycles so they could get around a little easier.

  “You each get your own bedrooms,” Fen said excitedly. Pei entered the kitchen and saw an old cast-iron, wood-burning stove in one corner—a relic left behind by the landlord. Then she saw that her mother had purchased new appliances for the kitchen: a refrigerator, microwave, and a stove. On the table were dishes her mother had prepared earlier that morning. Chinese stir-fries, boiled dumplings, fruit, and even a bottle of champagne. Pei’s father popped open the cork.

  “It’s a special occasion,” he said. “We must drink!” No one in the family liked champagne very much, but they all took obligatory sips, the golden bubbles rising to the tops of their glasses in a dizzying froth. Pei turned to look at her mother. It was true she looked a lot older than she remembered, but there was something else about her. She exuded a quiet sense of competence. “Ah Ma has taken on so much responsibility,” Pei thought. “She’s the one taking care of our family. All of us, even Ah Ba, depend on her now.” Months later, Pei would come to understand that it would be up to her to take care of the family, too. That night, Pei pulled the creaky shutters down over her bedroom window. Her mother said burglars often targeted Chinese residences. “They know the Chinese keep a lot of cash at home,” she told Pei. “Make sure you close all the windows and shutters every night and before you leave the house.” It was already 2 a.m. in China and Pei had no way of contacting Li Jie. She wondered if he had stayed up, waiting for her call.

  So, there are also flies, mosquitoes, and ants outside of China, too. I wonder what would happen if the small insects in Italy encountered the insects in China. Would they say “hello” to each other in Italian? I would hope so! Maybe I think too much . . .

  Pei got a better look at her surroundings over the next few days. Their old house was perched at the top of a hill overlooking a valley. On a clear day, you could see the Adriatic—a blue-grey mass pooling just above the horizon—in the distance. Recreational cyclists zipped past the house in their sleek helmets and colorful spandex, riding hills that dipped and swelled like waves in a sea. Their house might have been old and crumbling, but the rest of the street was lined with pristine, gated villas that overlooked private vineyards and olive groves. Birds sang loudly in the trees. And every house on the street had at least a few pet dogs. No matter their size, these dogs dutifully guarded the gates of each home, barking ferociously at anyone who walked past. Pei was careful not to get too close, especially after one man made a point to yank his dog in the opposite direction the minute she neared. Though her Italian wasn’t very good at the time, she could still make out a few key words: Cinesi. Mangiano. Cani. Chinese. Eat. Dogs. “Obviously this man wasn’t speaking to his dog,” Pei said angrily. “Those words were meant to hurt me.” For centuries, people around the world have been eating dog meat. Ancient Romans feasted on their canines, butcher shops in France and Belgium sold dog meat during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and dog meat was also consumed in Germany and the Netherlands, though usually only in times of war and famine. Today, the tradition of curing dog meat into jerky and sausages continues in Switzerland. In China, people have been eating what’s often called xiang rou or “fragrant meat” since at least 500 BCE. In some Eastern cultures, dog meat is believed to have medicinal properties like generating heat and promoting warmth in the body. Pei admitted she had eaten dog meat before in China. “It was delicious,” she told me rather sheepishly. “But I would never admit that to an Italian.”

  Italy is no place for an introvert. For many, striking up a conversation isn’t merely a matter of being polite. Conversation is far too important to be cut short. But if you don’t speak the language, conversing can be rather awkward and difficult. In the mornings, as powdery sunlight sifted in through the shutters, Pei often awoke to a strange gurgling sound coming from a workshop next to their home. The space belonged to the landlord, and some of the neighborhood men would gather there to make red wine or to tinker with machinery. “Make sure you always say ‘hello’ to the foreigners,” Fen told her children. “Otherwise, Italians will think you are rude. They say buongiorno to you; you say buongiorno back. It’s that simple.” Pei had already learned this phrase when she was still in China, but her phrasebook used Chinese characters to sound out Italian words. Buongiorno came out sounding like puo-en-ju-er-nuo and grazie sounded like ge-la-zie. It was not a fashionable or exotic accent and Pei felt her words were coming out rough and ugly to Italian ears. There was one thing she could say with confidence: ciao. She used ciao every day to say hello and good-bye. She said ciao to her neighbors in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night.

  She spent the next month at home, exploring the hilly neighborhood on her secondhand bike. “Having no car in Italy is like having no feet,” Fen said. “So you must learn to ride.” Pei never needed a bicycle in Qingtian. How ironic, she thought, that a Chinese girl would be forced to learn how to ride a bike in Italy. In the mornings, when her mother went off to work, Pei cruised alongside her father, Shen, who had taken up running in an effort to lose some weight. She gripped the handlebars until her hands turned pink, teetering to the left and to the right. Going downhill terrified her and she fell repeatedly, scraping her elbows and knees on the pavement. In the afternoons, Shen worked in the muddy field next to their house. He tilled the soil with a shovel and spade, got down on his hands and knees, and buried the seeds below a layer of fertilizer. Everyone else in the neighborhood planted flowers and tended to olive groves and grapevines. In a few months, bamboo shoots, balls of lettuce, and blades of bok choy would sprout from Shen’s muddy garden.

  Pei wrote in her diary and recorded new Italian words every day. She noticed the locals liked to speak with their hands. There was the waggy finger-pointing pose. The shrugging of shoulders with the palms facing upward toward the sky. Some Italians connected index fingers to thumbs and shouted, “Perfetto!” And if someone was angry, he slid his hands under his chin as if to say, “I don’t care.” The family purchased SIM cards that allowed for cheap long-distance calls to China. In the early mornings, Shen called home and shouted greetings into his phone to ensure his family and friends could hear him all the way from Italy. If you stood outside his bedroom window, even before the orange sun had spilled out over the horizon, you could hear him holler at the top of his lungs: “Have you eaten yet??!”

  The family preferred to cook at home, but getting to the grocery store was not easy. It was a thirty-minute bike ride to the nearest supermarket, and to get there, you had to travel down what Pei considered a death-defying hill. Getting home was no easy task either. Pei couldn’t decide which was more onerous—speeding down that hill or having to push a heavily loaded bicycle back home. The more groceries they bought, the more difficult it was for them to transport those items home. Things like bottled water and toilet paper were large and cumbersome and could only be purchased if they managed to hitch a ride to the store with one of Fen’s colleagues. That’s when the family bought in bulk. They stacked half a dozen cases of bottled water and toilet paper rolls in one corner of the dining room—enough to last them several months. The supermarket was one of the largest Pei had ever seen, but there was very little she had an appetite for. They called Emilia-Romagna Italy’s “stomach,” but when it came to eating, Pei came to say one phrase over and over again: Wo chi bu lai, which roughly translates to “I can’t stomach it.” She said it when she tasted salami for the first time. The chewy texture made her feel as if she were eating raw meat. “Wo chi bu lai,” she said. When her mother made spaghetti bolognese at home, Pei said it tasted different from the noodles at Lalacomt
e Beef and Coffee. She pushed her plate away and said: Wo chi bu lai. She was told eating salads were good for her (it would help her lose weight!), but all she wanted to do was stir-fry that crisp lettuce in some oil and garlic. “Eating something raw just seems wrong,” Pei said. “I don’t think I can stomach this, either.” The family agreed Italy was indeed a fine country: the air was clean, the sky was always blue, and the people were well-mannered. The only problem was the food. “There just isn’t a lot of good food around here,” Mao often said gloomily. “There is nothing to eat.” In September, they celebrated Pei’s seventeenth birthday. Shen cooked all of his daughter’s favorite dishes, and Fen invited another Chinese family to share in the meal. Ying Ying, a skinny girl with long hair and droopy eyes who was just a few years younger than Pei, lived at the bottom of the hill. Both her parents worked on the mushroom farm with Fen. The two families packed into the tiny kitchen for dinner, smacking their lips, clinking glasses of wine, and digging their chopsticks into the hearty dishes laid out before them. But Pei and Ying Ying did not exchange one word until Fen said: “Why aren’t you two talking to each other?” Pei and Ying Ying turned to look at each other for the first time and broke into giggles. For the rest of the night, the girls could not stop chit-chatting and eventually broke away from the family, Pei spilling all her secrets to Ying Ying. She talked about Li Jie and about life in China. Ying Ying listened enthusiastically to her stories. That night, Pei declared Ying Ying her best friend in Italy.

  It was soon after her birthday dinner when Pei learned her mother had found her a job. A friend had recently purchased a bar near Venice and agreed to take Pei in. She would live and work with this woman and her family and she would learn how to mix drinks, how to brew the perfect cappuccino, and most importantly, how to socialize with Italians. Every Chinese migrant seemed to be investing in a bar. It was a good idea for Pei to learn as much as she could about it. This friend, whom Pei called Ayi, promised to enroll her in a local school where she could take part-time Italian lessons and work part-time at the bar. It sounded like a good arrangement.