Among the traffic congestion and crowds of students, pajama-clad grannies, and tough teenage boys with blond-tipped hair, Cai and I slowly inched our way from the Jordan train station south toward the hotel. I felt graceful and special holding Cai’s hand. We had not spent much time in this area together, although it was one of my favorite spots in Hong Kong. When we reached a nondescript mid-rise building with a Wellcome supermarket in the basement, Cai turned to me. “I forgot something. Let’s stop in here for a minute.”
I followed him down the steep cement stairs. What could he have forgotten? We had planned on bringing nothing but his wallet and my purse. I figured the hotel could lend us a couple of disposable toothbrushes and a small tube of toothpaste. Neither of us drank or smoked, so it couldn’t be cigarettes or champagne that he sought. We came to the produce aisle, followed by the Chinese dry foods section. Cai and I walked single file past shriveled mushrooms, cracked scallops, and stinky abalone.
He led me through the beverage aisle where we glimpsed cans of soda, plus Chinese jelly concoctions, Vitasoy, and drink boxes of chrysanthemum tea and lemon tea. I remembered the thrill of trying these new beverages for the first time when I arrived in Hong Kong as an exchange student. It took a while to get used to the new tastes and textures of these drinks, but now I preferred them to American soda.
I thought that if the person I was back then—a girl excited by the change a different type of soda brought into her life—could only see me now, she would be amazed by the remarkable things that had occurred in my life: graduate school, marriage to the man of my dreams, and in a few minutes a luxurious honeymoon, thanks to the generosity of my parents in Chicago.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“It’s around here,” he answered vaguely. His drooping shoulders revealed frustration.
In the toiletries section, Cai carefully eyed the items, row by row, column by column, as if scanning a newspaper. “I don’t know where it is,” he mumbled.
“Where what is?”
Again, no answer. I was confused as to why he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted and started to feel a bit impatient but kept my mouth shut. We reached the end of the toiletries and entered cleaners and paper products. Cai headed toward the checkout lines, but then stopped before a small display of batteries, film, and condoms. Reaching for a black-and-silver box of Trojans, Cai grinned like a mischievous teenager.
“I forgot to bring these.”
I almost had to laugh. So that’s what he needed. He must have been embarrassed to say so. But it was also odd. Cai never mentioned condoms two months earlier when we were visiting at his parents’ apartment—the first and only time we’d had sex. Now that we were married, it seemed strange that Cai suddenly cared about birth control. But I didn’t argue; I assumed we were going to wait at least another year until we graduated before starting a family.
Continuing down Nathan Road, we reached the grand Mira Hotel, which almost took up a full city block across the street from the northern entrance of Kowloon Park. In the hotel, the marble floors and murky crystal chandeliers revealed a lobby from its 1960s heyday. Registration was easy, and the front desk staff congratulated us on our marriage. Because mainland couples were required to present a marriage certificate to stay in the same room, Cai opened our pink envelope to show our certificate, but the man at the front desk said there was no need. The hotel only required a passport or Hong Kong identification card, which all residents needed to carry.
Minutes later in our room, Cai inspected the bathroom, as I opened the blinds to peer down on the frenetic road below. Double-decker buses competed with taxis and luxury cars on Nathan Road. As dusk swept over Kowloon, the colorful neon street signs lit up the scene below. Staying in the Tsim Sha Tsui district was an exciting change from the stillness I was accustomed to in the New Territories.
“It’s very nice,” he called.
Removing my black jacket, I lounged in an oversized chair, a luxury for someone used to living in a dorm. I felt grateful that my parents had insisted we take this one-night honeymoon—extravagant for poor grad students—and that they wanted to pay for it. When Cai came out of the bathroom, he held up the box of condoms.
“We should try these now.”
I smiled.
• • •
After a late dinner at a Shanghai restaurant around the corner—the green-and-white-checked tablecloths contrasting to the opulence of the Mira—I couldn’t wait to get back to our hotel room. Since we brought no change of clothes, I crawled under the fluffy bedding in just my underwear. Cai entered the bathroom to take a shower but soon returned fully dressed, holding a plush white hand towel.
“Susan, is this okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“Àizībìng.”
“AIDS?”
He nodded. “Do you think this towel is clean?”
“Of course. You think you can get AIDS from a towel?”
“Foreigners have AIDS, and they stay at this hotel.”
What? How could Cai, who was studying for a PhD (albeit not in a scientific field), believe that AIDS could be contracted from a hotel towel and that AIDS cases originated from foreigners? What about me, his foreign wife? He had never inquired about my sexual history or if I’d ever contracted a sexually transmitted disease. And I’d never asked about his history because I feared he would change his mind about me if I told him about the two flings I’d had just before we’d met.
“You can’t get AIDS from a towel. Or by drinking from the same glass as someone who has AIDS.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Scientists have proved it.” I tried to remain patient, careful not to sound haughty. There were bound to be times when I would be the one who didn’t comprehend something about foreign cultures. “It’s okay to use the towel.”
He looked somewhat convinced, flipping the towel over his shoulder. “I’m going to shower now.” Ten minutes later, when he came out of the bathroom stripped down to his underwear, he joined me in bed and reached for the television remote.
“Hmm,” he murmured, as he found pay-per-view. “I’ve never seen this before.”
“What’s that?”
“Number three movies.” Cai switched to speaking in English for the first time all day. In Hong Kong, movies were rated one, two, or three. One was similar to G- and PG-rated movies in the United States, two was PG-13 and mild R-rated movies, and three was soft porn. I’d never seen porn, but if it was really Cai’s first time to view it, I thought it best to go along with it rather than be a nag. Perhaps all men jumped at the opportunity to watch porn. I didn’t know because I’d never shared a hotel room with one until now.
Still, I wondered, did he have to watch it on our honeymoon? It was our first time sleeping in the same bed together, because we both had roommates, and also probably our last for the next two months, when we would leave Hong Kong to spend the summer in China for Cai’s dissertation research and our wedding banquet. But what choice did I have? I could either prohibit him from watching it and risk starting an argument on our honeymoon, or I could go to sleep and leave him to the porn.
After a long day, I could feel my eyes closing. So I shifted my head on the fluffy pillow in preparation for a night in a bed substantially larger and more comfortable than the camp-cot-esque one in my dorm room.
He clicked on Pay and said gently, “You go to sleep.” A nude Japanese couple in a simple room got down to business without so much as a prelude.
My thoughts immediately went to my parents. When I thanked them for the honeymoon, there was no way I could tell them about this. I would have to lie—to pretend I had a once-in-a-lifetime evening of bliss off campus—because the truth was too embarrassing to admit to anyone: Cai was more interested in watching porn than being with me. At least that’s what I thought as I fell asleep to the woman’s monotonous whimp
ers, while Cai’s eyes remained glued to the television.
Father and mother-in-law
Are your husband’s family.
When you arrive at their threshold
You become a new woman;
Reverence and serve them
As your own parents.
—Ban Zhao
Instruction for Chinese Women and Girls
Chapter 10
Summer Vacation in Hidden River
We wasted no time departing Hong Kong at the end of our semester. After completing the first year of my master’s program in political science, I was free until fall and planned to enjoy my first summer of being married by catching up on pleasure reading while Cai conducted his dissertation research. Our luggage, including one suitcase and a carry-on each, allowed me to bring along six paperbacks, mostly classics bought cheaply at the university bookstore.
Since China was Cai’s territory, I was happy to leave our summer planning to him. And as we discussed the cities we would visit, Cai grew especially animated when he spoke about all the places we would go, including some cities I had visited before. Although I would miss Hong Kong, I looked forward to traveling with Cai for three months and seeing these places from a new perspective.
Our first stop—for six weeks—was to visit Mama and Baba in Hidden River. Their dānwèi, or work unit, was like a campus unto itself: clusters of living quarters, classrooms, and administrative offices spread out over an area that included a park for tai chi and a rundown playground. Though private housing was becoming popular in the larger coastal and southern cities, most people in China’s interior still lived, worked, and studied within the confines of a dānwèi.
Summers in Hidden River were scorchers, often reaching above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Mama and Baba’s apartment had ceiling fans in each room, but only one air conditioner. In preparation for our trip that summer, they had bought it for the room where Cai and I would sleep.
Apart from that quick, weeklong meeting during Chinese New Year months earlier, I was still getting to know my in-laws when we arrived that June. At our first dinner in Hidden River that summer, we sat around a wooden card table in the small dining area between the kitchen and living room. I looked forward to Mama’s home cooking. The food in China was more rustic than what I ate in Hong Kong, but over the years, I’d grown to enjoy simple Chinese fare.
In the hot dining room, Baba reached over to spoon a ladle full of rice into everyone’s dish. Cai served me some green beans and a piece of black chicken, a delicacy. It looked fresh and delicious. Mama followed his lead by plucking a golden-brown rice cake, dripping in pork grease, with her wooden chopsticks. That was something I would pass on, I thought.
In college, especially during my junior year in Hong Kong, I had started to feel sickened by the smell and taste of pork. Some form of pork, including lard, always seemed to make an appearance in many types of Chinese food: bread, pies, vegetables, meat dishes. Although my parents both came from Jewish families, we often ate pork when I was growing up. In Asia, I quickly grew to understand the reasoning behind the Jewish custom of refraining from pork and started to abide by that practice. I also tried to stay away from fried foods, which often inflicted mayhem on my intestines.
When Mama lowered the rice cake toward my bowl, I put my hand up as if to stop traffic. “Bùyào.” I don’t want it.
Mama’s face rotated quickly toward Cai. Her compact face made me think of a crabapple doll I owned as a child. “Mo shi?” In her Hidden River dialect, she asked what was going on.
“Tā bù chī yóu zháde.” He calmly told her that I didn’t eat fried food.
“She ate lots of it over the Chinese New Year. Does she not like my cooking anymore?”
“Of course she loves your cooking. It’s just that she normally doesn’t eat fried food—or pork. Last time she ate it because she wasn’t part of the family and didn’t want to be rude. Don’t worry so much.” Cai returned to the chicken foot in his rice bowl.
“She doesn’t eat pork? Who doesn’t like pork?” Mama spoke to Cai as if I wasn’t in the same room with them, sitting next to her. I stared into my bowl, willing this conversation to end. This wasn’t what I thought would happen when I refused the rice cake.
“Bùyàojin.” Don’t worry, Baba interjected, coming to my rescue. “So she doesn’t like pork. Now let’s eat!”
Mama scrunched her lips together in concentration—as if she were trying to solve a difficult puzzle—and plopped the rice cake into her mouth. When I’d finished eating half a dozen other dishes, my favorites being steamed spinach and sautéed eel, Mama’s eyes bulged as I stood up with Cai to clear the plates.
“Tā bù chīfàn!” She hasn’t finished her rice, Mama shrieked. My rice bowl wasn’t empty.
“Ma, tā chī baole,” Cai said. She’s full. He sounded tired.
I figured it was best to just smile, to say I was stuffed, and then drop it. I wanted to respect Cai’s culture and show his parents that I enjoyed their cooking and appreciated their hospitality, but at the same time, I feared I’d grow resentful if I didn’t start standing up for myself. I knew they were observing everything I did, taking mental notes of my likes and dislikes so they would know what to prepare in the weeks to come.
My parents would have done the same with guests or new family members back in Chicago. But if I didn’t make these preferences known early on, it would be almost impossible to change later when they’d already formed their impressions of me. This wasn’t easy since food is such a central component of Chinese culture, and people are expected try a bite of every dish.
In the living room after dinner, Baba peeled a tart apple with a rusty pocketknife he kept on a bookshelf that also held a small plaster bust of Chairman Mao. As he skinned the apple, the peel materialized in one long ribbon. Holding the apple with his thumb and pinky finger, Baba handed it to me, his eyes almost disappearing into his face as he smiled. His salt-and-pepper buzz cut stood at attention, counterbalancing his gentle demeanor. I bit into the cool apple, grateful for Baba’s acceptance. Besides the tea I had allowed to cool off to room temperature, the apples Baba peeled for me after lunch and dinner provided a reprieve from the heat and stickiness of the day.
At night, once Cai and I retired to our bedroom, I felt some relief from the summer humidity as we switched on the air conditioner. Its gentle breeze cooled the backs of my bare legs while I slept on a bamboo mat, which kept my skin from sticking to the sheets. Like a rough cousin of the tatami, these mats felt smooth to the touch, but at night my hip bones, knees, and ankles collided with the stiff wood as I shifted back and forth from my stomach to my side.
• • •
When Cai first suggested this trip to China, I pictured us venturing out on our own to visit the countryside where he had spent his youth or idling outdoors with his friends, perhaps going to a picnic spot for lunch like I did when I went out with my friends in Hong Kong. Instead, when Cai and I left Mama and Baba’s, we walked from apartment to apartment to visit his friends. The men played cards in these dark, cement-floored homes while I sat by Cai’s side and struggled to follow their quick conversations in the Hidden River dialect.
“Can I try a hand?” I asked Cai late one morning, hungry and hoping we would break to eat soon. I was also growing bored watching the cards fly back and forth from hands to table and back to hands, and thought I would enjoy the days better if I could participate.
“You don’t understand the game and it would only slow us down,” he replied.
Cai was so accommodating in everything else during my stay in Hidden River that I didn’t find his words offensive. If we were in the United States and I was with old friends, I knew I would appreciate some uninterrupted time with them. So I understood where Cai was coming from. I would just have to find something to occupy my thoughts as they chatted and played cards.
Somet
imes during the monotony of those days, I wished I had brought a book to the card-playing sessions. But I also feared running out of reading material. What would I do for the rest of the summer if I had nothing to read? My books became godsends on the days when we didn’t leave Mama and Baba’s.
Most people took a siesta after lunch for a couple of hours. Called wujiào, or noontime nap, it was a common practice across China, and they were a relief during the oppressively hot summer months. Unable to sleep the entire wujiào, I would read while Cai watched television and his parents napped. It was during a quiet afternoon about five weeks into our stay in Hidden River, when Mama and Baba had retired to their room for wujiào, that I finished the last book I’d brought from Hong Kong.
“Cai,” I asked as he channel-surfed the television, “can we go to a bookstore sometime? I don’t have anything to read now.”
“What about all those books you brought?”
“I finished them. Do you know of any stores that sell English books?”
“Nothing in Hidden River or Wuhan.” He squinted his eyes in thought. “There’s a foreign-language bookstore near the Shanghai train station. We can go there before we take the train to Suzhou.”
It would be another week until we’d arrive in Shanghai for a quick layover on our way to Suzhou, where we’d stay for ten days while Cai, his PhD adviser Dr. Tsang, and a trio of professors from the Wuhan Conservatory would help conduct fieldwork for Cai’s dissertation. I could wait another week. In the meantime, I fantasized about entering the foreign language bookstore and finding a sizable English section. I would flip through the brittle pages of seldom-touched books, probably paperback classics like I had bought in Hong Kong. It didn’t matter what I bought—anything in English would do.
Good Chinese Wife Page 7