Good Chinese Wife

by Susan Blumberg-Kason

  “What do you want to order?” he snapped.

  “I’m not hungry.” I looked down in disgrace. He can’t force me to eat, I thought, as my shame turned to anger and then to defiance.

  “Xiaojiě.” He addressed the waitress in the stern and demeaning tone he had started using with me back in Shanghai that morning. “One plate of ku guā, one bowl of rice, and a pot of wūlóng tea.”

  I usually devoured bitter melon—a crunchy, cucumberlike vegetable sautéed with black bean sauce—but this time I looked away in disinterest when the waitress set the plate of ku guā on our table.

  “Chī,” Cai ordered. Eat. He took quick slurps of tea, staring at his empty plate. I was brought up not to waste food, so I forced down a few pieces of the ku guā and a mouthful of rice. Cai stared off to the side and looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but at this restaurant. After a few bites, I had completely lost my appetite. Without speaking, I rested my chopsticks on the table.

  “Why aren’t you eating?” he snarled.

  “I’m not hungry.” I could barely hear myself.

  Cai threw some bills on the table with a huff and stood up. We left the restaurant in silence.

  • • •

  At dinner that evening, we ate with Cai’s PhD adviser, Dr. Tsang, and Cai’s college professors from Wuhan: older gentlemen by the names of Shi, Xiang, and Wu. In their company, Cai had turned back into his old cordial self. Again, I thought that perhaps Cai was nervous about meeting up with his old professors. I could understand how he might feel pressure to show them that his research was sound and feasible. As I dug into a platter of Chinese broccoli at the temple’s restaurant, I figured there must be some explanation for Cai’s earlier outburst.

  A boisterous Xiang turned to me, called out my Chinese name—Su Shan—and raised his glass. With his bushy eyebrows and permanent smile, he seemed the most outgoing of the Wuhan professors.

  “No, thanks,” I said in Mandarin. “I’m not a big drinker.”

  “Come on,” he roared jovially. “All Americans love beer. This is China’s best beer, from Qing Dao. Have a glass with me.”

  “Really, I don’t want to. Thank you anyway.” I smiled and continued to pick around the pork that highlighted most of the dishes.

  Xiang raised his glass to toast me a few more times that evening, but I politely refused to drink with him. Thinking back to my eating differences with Mama, I feared that if I gave in to Professor Xiang once, I’d be setting a precedent and would be expected to drink beer at every meal. And if later I wanted to stop drinking, it would be more difficult than if I’d just refused up front.

  I also worried about the fact that I still hadn’t bought a dress for the large wedding banquet Mama and Baba were planning for us at the end of the month. Although considered thin in the United States, I was larger than most Chinese women and knew it would be difficult to find a dress that fit. I couldn’t afford to gain extra weight.

  Xiang drank his beer and returned to his conversations with Cai and the other professors. He appeared to harbor no bad feelings. After the final course of sliced oranges, he turned to Cai and me. “Míngtiān jiàn.” See you tomorrow.

  Back in our room, Cai’s scowl was gone and he didn’t avoid eye contact. We probably just needed more time alone, I reasoned. Staying with his family for six weeks didn’t afford much personal space. If other couples were presented with the same scenario, I was sure it would strain their relationships, too. Now we had some coveted time to ourselves. Envisioning a quiet evening watching television snuggled next to Cai, I reclined on one of the two twin beds and waited for him to do the same. But he remained standing, his hands hidden in his pockets.

  “Don’t wait up for me.” He spoke matter-of-factly. “I’m going to my professors’ room now.”

  He was leaving me alone in the room? Had I missed something back in the restaurant? I could have sworn that Xiang had wished us both a good night. Dr. Tsang had booked a room at a Hong Kong–run hotel on the outskirts of town, but the Wuhan professors were staying on the floor above us in the same guesthouse.

  “Wait a second,” I said as Cai grabbed the room key. “Why are you going there? And why alone?”

  “Just to play cards and do chatting,” Cai said in English. “They’ll only be wearing their underwear. If you come with me, tāmen bù haoyìsi.” They’ll be embarrassed.

  What? He was going to spend a whole week with these professors. Was it really necessary to play cards with them at night? And why would they be in their underwear? The previous evening in Shanghai—the stroll along the Bund and the romantic film at the Cathay cinema—seemed a lifetime ago. But after Cai’s behavior that day, I felt like my hands were tied. I couldn’t bear to set him off again and deal with another episode of him not speaking to me.

  • • •

  When Cai handed me some spending money the next morning and suggested I stay back to explore the city while he and his professors trekked to a Taoist temple thirty minutes away for their fieldwork, I didn’t argue. Although I’d felt abandoned the night before, I suddenly was looking forward to time alone. On my first trip to China, I’d scaled the arched bridges over Suzhou’s fabled canals and roamed beautiful gardens with round Chinese doorways and walls that curved on top like a dragon’s back.

  Now I would set off to wander the city as if I were a local. Perusing the outdoor fruit markets, I selected the choicest peaches for an after-dinner snack and bargained down the price, per the Chinese custom. Without Cai at my side, it felt good to speak Mandarin on my own. When I thought about it, this was the first time I had been alone in China and able to speak Mandarin fluently. In the past, I couldn’t speak it at all or was still in the beginning stages. Back then, conversing in Chinese seemed like a burden. Now it felt liberating.

  In a nearby post office, I proudly handed over my postcards with the scratchy Chinese characters for měiguó or beautiful country, which translated into “United States,” scribbled at the bottom. Stamps and cards in hand, I headed to a high table where I carefully adhered old-fashioned paste—which resembled the rubber cement my father kept on his basement workbench—to the back of the stamps.

  These small tasks brought me great joy, as they allowed me to communicate with the laobiaxìng. Ordinary people. I wished I had enjoyed such opportunities all those weeks back in Hidden River. If only I had had a chance to mix with the town folk on my own, I probably wouldn’t have felt so isolated there.

  At noon, I met up with Cai and his professors at the guesthouse restaurant. Almost as soon as we sat down, Professor Xiang again raised a warm glass of beer and motioned for Professor Wu to pour me one.

  “Bùyào, xièxiè.” I don’t want any, thank you. I truly liked Xiang and didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but would he ever get the picture?

  “Come on,” he said heartily in Mandarin. “Just one drink. When I studied in Moscow many years ago, I always drank vodka with my Russian friends. Now it’s time to drink beer with my new American friend.”

  “No, really, I just want tea. I’m sorry.” I smiled bashfully and blew on my scalding green tea. Cai didn’t drink alcohol and never received criticism from his friends and colleagues over it, but Xiang seemed persistent. Although I managed to end another meal without taking a drink, it felt like a hard-won battle.

  While the professors enjoyed wujiào—their afternoon nap—Cai took me to the silk museum gift shop to look for a qípáo, a Chinese formfitting dress with a high mandarin collar. I had told Cai that I wanted to wear one to our banquet, which was now just weeks away. On my first trip to China, I never once saw a woman in a qípáo. Over the last couple of years, I’d noticed that restaurant hostesses in southern China wore them. But it still wasn’t common for brides to don this sensual dress that first turned heads in the 1930s.

  Without much time to spare before Cai’s afternoon meeting at the temple, we rus
hed through the store to a small rack with silk qípáo, and spotted the sole red one. Red was the traditional color for brides in China before 1949. In recent years, fashionable brides had begun wearing poufy pink or white Western wedding dresses. With three-quarter-length sleeves and a hem that fell halfway down my calves, the red qípáo was embroidered with yellow and white peonies down the front. The tag read size medium, so I held it up to my shoulders and waist, shrugging as if to ask Cai what he thought.

  “It looks perfect,” he said.

  Outside the museum with our purchase in hand, Cai and I squeezed into the narrow seat of a pedicab. The driver pedaled through the bustling main streets in the direction of the guesthouse. We passed vendors squatting along the curbs, selling fresh bananas and melons, candied apples, and skewers of meatballs from makeshift carts. I didn’t know when I would get another chance to speak with Cai alone, so I decided to talk to him about Xiang in the privacy of the pedicab.

  “I wish Professor Xiang wouldn’t pressure me to drink beer all the time. He keeps asking and it makes me uncomfortable.”

  Peering over Cai’s shoulder as we rode by colorful stands of red apples and green pears stacked into neat layers, I waited for him to offer to speak to Xiang. But when I looked back at him, I trembled. His eyes had turned fiery.

  “These are my old professors, Susan,” Cai snapped. “You have to respect them, and respect me. Who cares if you drink one glass of beer? It won’t kill you.” I noticed he failed to mention how he brushed people away when they offered him alcohol, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Silent, I felt a cold shiver despite the oppressive July heat.

  “I know what it’s like to have problems in a marriage,” he continued in English so the pedicab driver wouldn’t understand. “You must be very careful. If you’re not, big trouble can happen to the family. I know.”

  Feeling even more alone than I had on the train to Suzhou, I finally understood his message: if I didn’t comply with his wishes, we were headed toward divorce. And if he divorced me, what would I tell my parents and my friends? It never crossed my mind to threaten Cai with divorce if he didn’t start treating me better. But even if I’d been stronger, I wouldn’t have given up after just three months of marriage. Surely everyone needed time to get used to living with another person.

  As the driver pedaled toward the guesthouse, I thought back to the Chinese University of Hong Kong and how other mainland students there often spoke of the drastic changes taking place in China. They all lamented how it wasn’t the same country of their childhoods in the 1960s and 1970s. Cai just needed time to acclimate, I told myself. I would make a bigger effort to understand his culture and his background. With careful choreography, I would also try to dance my way around future eruptions.

  To take my mind off these troubles, I started counting down the days until my family flew into Shanghai to be there for our wedding banquet. My parents, Uncle Jeff, and brother Jonathan could get time off from work for the ceremony or the banquet, but not both, so when Cai and his parents stressed the importance of the banquet, my family chose to come for that.

  That evening when Cai announced he was going up to his professors’ room to chat and play cards again, the burn from the pedicab lecture still hurt. I told myself that Cai had few chances to see his Wuhan professors, so this was just a temporary diversion in our married life. I never felt needy in Hong Kong, where I kept myself busy with friends and classes. But this wasn’t the case in China, where I felt lonely and isolated.

  So to while away those evenings in the dingy guesthouse room, I found refuge in a soap opera called Russian Girls in Harbin. The noticeably foreign women on the TV show lived in northern China and encountered cultural differences every day—at work, with friends, and in love. I fancied myself one of them, learning the complexities of Chinese culture by trial and error. Clinging once again to images of our happier days in Hong Kong, I vowed not to let cultural differences taint our marriage.

  When a girl leaves her father’s house,

  Her husband thereafter

  Is her nearest relative.

  —Ban Zhao

  Instruction for Chinese Women and Girls

  Chapter 13

  A Chinese Wedding Banquet

  A couple weeks after our trip to Suzhou, I squeezed into my red silk qípáo. Standing in the bedroom Cai and I shared at his parents’ home in Hidden River, I slowly zipped the dress above the high slit on my left side, careful not to burst a seam. I could have used the next size up, but this one would have to do. Cai opened the door, ducking under the fake flowers hanging from the top of the door frame. He looked impeccable, sporting the same gray business pants, white button-down shirt, and herringbone jacket he wore to our Hong Kong ceremony, only now it was accentuated with a synthetic red poppy pinned to his lapel.

  Cai picked up my hands and held them in his. “I’m so glad both our parents support our marriage. As long as we have love, our lives will be very happy.” When I told my parents about my engagement, they gave me their unconditional support, explaining that their own marriage had been met with resistance from my mom’s family. My dad was too Jewish for my mom’s Reform family. He was also too old, a widower, and a single father. My parents didn’t want me to experience the same opposition. Mama and Baba, on the other hand, not only backed our engagement, but they had encouraged us to marry as soon as possible.

  I gazed into Cai’s beaming eyes, thankful for our families’ support and for his love. I knew I’d remember this day for the rest of my life. After all, how many of my classmates back in Evanston could say they got married in central China? This was a day I’d reminisce about with my children and grandchildren, recalling the stifling heat, the lone red dress in Suzhou that was destined to be mine, and the lavish wedding banquet. Jittery about being the center of attention and eager at the same time, I felt proud to appear in front of all these people with Cai at my side.

  Cai guided me down the crumbly stairs of his parents’ apartment; I took short strides so to not tear the dress. We ambled across the dānwèi’s gravel road to one of four waiting vehicles, all decked out with large red velvet bows above the front bumpers, as clusters of spectators looked on. Compared to our quick civil ceremony in Hong Kong, banquets clearly were a big deal in China. My family would be waiting for us at the restaurant, along with two hundred of Mama and Baba’s family and friends. I didn’t care that I didn’t know most of them. It was my day, one that I couldn’t have scripted even six months ago.

  I followed Cai into a white Volkswagen Santana, his parents got into a Jeep, and his siblings and their families went in two vans. A fifth car had already left to pick up my family at their hotel. Children of Communist Party members could only include a few cars in their wedding processions, but since I was a foreigner, those rules didn’t apply. We rode down to the front gate of the dānwèi grounds, along patches of a weed-infested courtyard, and turned onto a dusty, unpaved road leading to a five-street intersection.

  Continuing at a funereal pace through the downtown area, we reached the Hidden River Hotel restaurant. When Cai stepped out of the car, he held out his hand to take mine. His brother-in-law Lin took a last drag from his cigarette and touched its tip against the wick of a two-foot-long strand of firecrackers numbering in the hundreds. He repositioned the cigarette in his mouth and stood back while Cai led me up the stairs, escaping the deafening explosions of the firecrackers. The smell of sulfur tickled my nose as we entered the musty building.

  We strode into the cigarette-smoke-filled restaurant, twenty tables filled with family, friends, and Baba’s Communist Party comrades. Party members’ children weren’t allowed more than ten tables at their wedding banquets, but again, the rule could be bent for a foreigner. I examined the spacious room and recognized a few of the people staring back at me. On each place setting sat a pack of Red Pagoda Hill cigarettes, the party favor.

  Dre
ssed in shorts and T-shirts, my parents, uncle, and brother blended in with the two hundred other guests. When my mom had emailed me back in Hong Kong to ask about the wedding’s dress code, Cai stressed that it would be casual. Now I could see that for myself. Many men had donned wifebeater shirts and tattered dress pants belted above their waists. The older women wore housecoats and the younger ones polyester sundresses, some so sheer I could see through to their underwear.

  Cai and I shared a table with his sisters and their families. My family followed a Cai family friend—one of the few in their dānwèi who could speak English—to an adjacent table. At first I could feel a cool, comfortable breeze from the air-conditioning unit mounted on an adjacent wall. But soon the body heat of two hundred people overpowered the cool air.

  Waiters swarmed the tables with the opening dish. We started with a plate of sliced pig ears. I sipped my pink plastic cup of warm orange soda and waited for the next dish. Cai and his family didn’t drink, so I was thankful for the plethora of orange soda bottles. Soon the waiters brought out platter after platter, including a whole steamed fish, sautéed eel, fatty pork braised with pickled greens, chicken soup, blackened chicken stew, Chinese water spinach, and steamed rice bringing up the rear. While this amount of food was standard for Hong Kong banquets, I had never seen so many dishes served at one time in China. Before I could serve more than two of these into my bowl, Cai took my elbow and nodded toward my cup. “It’s time to hējiu, to drink toasts.” He grabbed his cup.

  We first reached Mama and Baba’s table. Surrounded by their closest dānwèi friends, Cai’s parents gleamed. Lifting our cups toward theirs, we toasted them and thanked them for all they’d given us. We then raised our cups above their friends at the table. When we moved over to where my family was seated, I noticed special dishes of dumplings shaped like birds, flowers, and baskets, some filled with savory minced beef or pork and others with sweet lotus or red bean paste. My parents, Uncle Jeff, and my brother Jonathan stood up to toast us.