by Gish Jen
LAN / Of course, that kind of fruit was completely flavorless. If you picked up a peach, you noticed immediately that it had no smell.
WENDY / She says she’s from this place called Suzhou, but that she lives in Shandong Province, in a town near this city called Jinan, where I guess she got stuck because her great-aunt was from there or something.
LIZZY / For a long time she worked in a shoe factory. Like she used to have to sew the tops of the shoes onto the bottoms. Top to bottom, top to bottom. These were the ugliest shoes you ever saw, she said, just the sort of shoe you got when the state did the design. That’s what she thought, and sure enough one day the world agreed.
LAN / Then came the market economy and the factory got closed. Our whole production unit got put out of work. But we did all receive free shoes, three pairs each. You see? I showed them mine. Of course they were not as comfortable as the cloth shoes my great-aunt used to make. She made them with liners you could change if they got wet.
WENDY / We thought she should wear those cloth shoes, why doesn’t she wear them? But she says no, they’re not appropriate. Too old-fashioned, she says.
Anyway, the factory closed.
LIZZY / After that she became a migrant worker with a job in this factory and that. For a while, she was the hostess of a karaoke bar in the city, which I thought sounded like fun. But Lan said it most definitely was not.
LAN / It was no different than hanging around Friendship Stores, which lots of women did. There was no shame in it. What else were we going to do? We were huang fei de yi dai—the wasted generation—our lives wrecked by the Cultural Revolution. Once the state factories closed, we couldn’t even get jobs as waitresses or saleswomen. Too old. For that sort of work it was better to be right out of high school.
WENDY / We show Lanlan all the Chinese food our grocery store carries, and she is surprised how much there is. Bean curd, and bean sprouts, and ginger, and all kinds of noodles, and Chinese cabbage, and Chinese mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts, and hoisin sauce, and soy sauce, and sesame oil. You can even get frozen dumplings, and frozen wonton, and frozen shao mai. There’s sushi too we tell her, but she says she doesn’t eat Japanese food, she’s just not used to it.
LAN / In China, we have frozen dumplings too.
WENDY / Lanlan is proud that her family comes from this Suzhou, which is near Shanghai and has all these beautiful gardens. Her family once owned one of those gardens, she says, and she’s proud of that, in fact that’s why she was named Lan, which means orchid. Because her family had a greenhouse in their garden and grew all kinds of orchids in it. Which were very delicate and refined, she said, there was nothing common about them, they were not like the fruit in the grocery store. She inspects the mounds of fruit and asks if the supermarket is fuller during the harvest season.
— Now is the harvest season, she points out, as if she is teaching us something.
But of course we know that because of harvest festivals, pretty much our whole lives Mom’s dragged us to press apples and watch sheep shearing, once she made us go in the pouring rain.
— No, we tell her. The grocery store is like that even in the winter.
— In the winter too! she says.
LIZZY / It’s like she’s surprised but embarrassed that she’s surprised.
LAN / I did not go to university, but I was not ignorant.
WENDY / It’s hard to explain how we always thought growing up in the countryside was great because of Mom, if we could we’d all go back to the farm. Lanlan doesn’t think the countryside is so great. Of course it has some good points, she says, blue sky and clean air and no pollution. Also the government has less to say, she says. But there’s no work, and isn’t that a problem?
She looks at the fruit as if it could eat her, or make her sick. It’s like if the food doesn’t, the air around it will. She thinks you have to wear a sweater in the grocery store or else you will catch cold, also you have to be careful about catching cold through your feet. She believes in socks in general, but especially in the grocery store, and even for us, which is why Lizzy and I wear socks now, to make her feel better. And how powerful the cash registers, says Lanlan. Wow. She watches the scanner, how it sends out that little red line and beep! Her new big word is ‘automatic,’ which she pronounces ‘awma-ic.’
— America should not be call ‘America,’ she says. It should be call ‘Awma-ica.’
— Land of the free, and home of the beep! laughs Lizzy.
LIZZY / Lanlan discovered coupons, which she thought in the beginning meant you could buy something there wasn’t enough of. Like cooking oil, she said, or sugar. How could there not be enough sugar? we asked, but she just said it was hard to explain. Like these coupons were hard for us to explain to her. She said she was sure there were coupons in China, in the big cities they had everything, but was it really free money? I told her it was all just a way for corporate America to get you to buy more of their brand, and Lanlan nodded and said she knew about American corporations.
LAN / We heard about it on TV. How American companies wanted to control the whole world. How they sold everyone American things on purpose. It was actually a kind of weapon.
WENDY / Still she goes looking for the coupons that come with the newspaper. She clips coupons for stuff she thinks we need, plus stuff she needs herself. Hand lotion, toothpaste. Her clippings are like beautiful, she never just tears stuff out. Mom gives her money for these things on top of money for books and stuff because she says she knows she would want to pick her personal products herself, if she were Lan. And Lanlan does pick, even though she says she does not need to pick everything like an American. Like she buys a kind of toothpaste that comes out of a pump instead of a tube. She is excited about the bonus toothbrush. Land of the free!
She gives the toothbrush to Lizzy, who loves it.
Lanlan is amazed by how much people throw out, like how many napkins they use in restaurants, and how they take ketchup packets they don’t even use, but this is what’s amazing to us, that Lizzy takes the toothbrush and smiles like she never had a toothbrush before, or like she’s been dying her whole entire life for a blue one. When Lanlan walks with me or Lizzy she links her arm in ours. And Lizzy likes that too, no one can believe it.
How new everything is, says Lanlan, and no dust. She’s amazed at how clean her shoes stay on account of everything being paved or grass, there’s like no bare dirt anywhere. And is it true there’s no dust even in the spring? Even in the spring, we say.
— But what about pollen, she says.
She says she heard that on TV, on an English conversation program, how there is a big problem with pollen, you have to wash your hair every day to get it out. Only in some places, we say, like down South, up here we have some pollen but not that much. And no garbage almost anywhere, she says, and where do people spit? We tell her nobody spits, and she’s amazed. Wow. And how quiet it is! So peaceful and nice, she says, except for the goat.
LAN / I was surprised there were no slums, like I saw on TV and in the movies. I asked the children where the slums were. But they said there were no slums near where they lived, only far away, in the city. I told them how in China we heard a lot about the slums, and they were surprised. The slums and the violence, I told them. But they said there was no violence in their town. They said people got shot, but only in the news. In their town, no one got shot.
WENDY / She’s amazed that instead of slums there are churches all over the place, I guess you don’t realize from the movies how many of them there are. Do we go to church, she wants to know, and is amazed when we say we don’t even though our mom does sometimes, because that’s what we decided and our parents didn’t make us. Like they said it was our choice.
LAN / How could the parents let the child choose something so important? I could not understand it. Didn’t American parents care enough to control their children?
WENDY / — Not all parents do that, says Lizzy. Just some do. We’re
lucky.
Lanlan gets quiet like for a sec.
— People can do whatever they want, nobody has anything to say, she says. Wow.
— Freedom, we say. America is about freedom.
— Freedom, she says, wow.
But then she says she thinks too much freedom is no good either, and that individualism is terrible, she hopes we don’t believe too much in individualism. I tell her I’m not sure what individualism even is, and she’s glad.
She is surprised how there are no Thermoses, instead lots of computers. Four just in our house! That’s because Dad’s in high tech, we say, and Mom has a home machine hooked up to work too, and we have some extra machines left over from whatever. It’s not typical.
— Wow, says Lanlan anyway.
We start to explain about the Internet, but it turns out she knows what that is already.
— In China, she begins.
And Lizzy says: — In China, big city have everything these days.
Then we all laugh. And how everyone crosses the street in the crosswalk downtown—Lanlan thinks that’s amazing, that people don’t just walk all over. Though how fast people walk here! Everyone in a hurry all the time.
LAN / Chinese people were much more relaxed. Everything was so easy in America, so convenient. And yet people were tense.
WENDY / And the bicyclists all wear helmets, and how many cars people had!
— In China, many people have car now, she says.
But still she is amazed that some families have two or three, and that even some kids have cars. And will Lizzy really be learning to drive soon? She is surprised that people drive one-handed, some of them, and talk on their cell phones at the same time, she thinks everyone in America talks and talks, especially the children are so curious. In China, kids do not ask why why why, she says. Then make everyone listen to them, as if they have something to say.
— At school, people say American children are very easy, she says. People say you ask them one question they will talk, talk, talk. You ask them three questions they will love you.
— Like you ask us questions! I say.
She smiles her funny smile.
LAN / At school, people say that when you talk to American children you have to ask, You want this one or that one? The blue one or the red one? Then they will be happy. If you simply say Here is red one, I know you like red, the children will not be happy. They don’t want you to know what they like, they want to choose for themselves.
WENDY / — That’s kind of true, says Lizzy. Like I wanted to have blond hair, I didn’t want my hair to be plain black until I died. Do you know what I mean?
Lanlan nods, but then she says: — Black hair very nice, nothing the matter with black hair. That is your natural hair.
She says she hopes we will not grow up one hundred percent American. First the children talk about themselves all day, she says, and then they think about themselves all day. All day long they think, What is my favorite this? What is my favorite that?
LAN / Chinese people say Americans don’t care about other people, they only care about themselves. Americans do not take care of even their own mothers and fathers. When their parents get old, Americans just put them in a nursing home. Their parents die by themselves. Chinese people say Americans have no feelings.
WENDY / She says that in America, if you borrow money from somebody and have some trouble, people expect you to pay it back no matter what.
— Of course, these days, even in China, some people are like that, she says. Especially those people born in Cultural Revolution. But they are not real Chinese.
When her grandfather died, she says, he had a whole trunk full of IOUs from people he knew would pay him if they could, except that they couldn’t, and it just went to show what a big heart he had, that he did not ask them. On his deathbed he just said that he wanted all the papers burned.
— That is how real Chinese think, she says.
— Wow, we say.
Lanlan is amazed that people in America drive and eat at the same time, eating in cars makes her shake her head. So dangerous, she says, really it should be illegal the way it is in China. Plus she thinks it must be bad for people’s digestion, digestion being another thing she talks about a lot, besides catching cold. What is good for the stomach, what is bad for the stomach, what has heat, what is cool. She likes teaching us stuff, and Lizzy can tell you a lot of it already—that garlic and bananas have heat, and that pears are cooling, also lotus root. Forget that she barely knows what a lotus root is, even, Lizzy’s like Elaine at school, she just says stuff if she feels like it. Lanlan thinks eating and driving must be bad for the stomach. She says she doesn’t know how Americans can eat without stopping to eat, although obviously they do because look how many fat people there are! Many more than in the movies. She says she heard that once Chinese people come to America, they get fat too. Of course there are fat people in China now, more and more of them because of McDonald’s, but still not as many as here, she cannot believe how people eat. How huge the sandwiches are, so big people can barely get their mouths open wide enough. And the drinks—so big people need two hands to lift them.
She does not want to eat at all, looking at them, she does not want to become fat like an American. Also the smell of people here makes her want to throw up. How people smell! That’s one thing you don’t realize from the movies.
LAN / Chinese people do not smell.
WENDY / She wants to know if people will smell less in the winter when they are wearing sweaters. She is surprised how hairy some of the people are too, she knew that from the movies, but still didn’t realize how hairy, even some of the women, she says, and there are men who look one hundred percent like monkey.
LAN / Even their backs are covered with hair.
WENDY / And the way they sit, she says. The women not even covered with clothes some of them, and big as mountains and all over their chairs. She’s surprised American chairs are not bigger. And she stares at the black people with that hair braided all different ways, or else loose like a big ball of seaweed, she wants to know if it has any use, like if they can cut it off and sell it for something. Scrub brushes maybe, or pillow stuffing. She’s amazed at how different people look from each other, she knew it from the movies but still she’s shocked by that, and by how complete strangers say hello on the street, even if they never saw you before. She says the first time that happened she ran away.
LAN / Sometimes I saw men let women walk in front of them. Even open doors for them, as if they were important! Just like in the movies. I was amazed to see that.
And nobody ate the squirrels, even in the countryside, that’s what the girls said. There was so much food. People let whole trees full of fruit just fall to the ground.
LIZZY / It all made her want to throw up, which I understood. Because to be honest it all made me want to throw up too, sometimes.
WENDY / She can be warm and bright, full of funny songs and funny voices, but she can sink away like the sun, and come back as the moon. She is suddenly here and suddenly there, she knows lots of games. Sometimes we don’t know what room she is even in. A lot of the time she is on the floor or on a stool, she likes stools. She does not need a chair to sit up straight, she sits up straight on a stool, in fact she doesn’t even need a stool. She sits up straight even when she’s squatting, and can squat a lot better than Lizzy. She rests her elbows on her knees like they are the most convenient thing, and she squats in this very light way, with her feet together, so that she looks like that kind of rice bowl that has a little built-in pedestal. Or like she could balance something on top of her head, and could stand up without knocking it over. She says she is comfortable anywhere. Americans need padding, she says, and we can see she is proud she does not. She likes to say what she does not need.
— I do not need more clothes, she says.
— I do not need more food.
— I do not need more room.
She says she can chi ku—
eat bitter—and that makes her different than an American, she is just glad she is not staying here.
LAN / Why was I brought here? Because Carnegie’s mother wanted me to come, they said. But I wondered, what was the real reason? What did they want from me?
WENDY / She says she is not like young people in China these days either, all they know is how to wanr—fool around. And how to hui jin ru tu—spend money like dirt.
— What is eat bitter? we say.
But when we say that, she looks at her feet.
— I see you are one hundred percent American, she says.
LAN / What real Chinese would ever ask that question?
WENDY / She says eat bitter is bad in one way but not so bad in another way. She says if you can eat bitter it will make you strong.
LAN / Chinese people have a saying. Chi de ku zhong ku, fang wei ren shang ren—Eat the bitterest of the bitter, rise above other men. My father said that all the time.
WENDY / She says Americans are rich but soft.
— You know why Chinese people survive such long time? she says. Because we are not soft.
She says: — Chinese people today, especially in the coastal area, like to have comfortable life. But real Chinese people think live easy life is like drink poison.
LAN / My father, being a scholar, used to quote Mencius on this subject. Anxiety and distress lead to life, he used to say. Ease and comfort end in death.
Of course, these are things Americans will never understand.
WENDY / When she says these things it doesn’t really matter if you nod or not. Either way she looks at you then looks out the window like Lizzy, sometimes I wonder how old you have to be to look out the window like that. Her face is like the moon, there is nothing in it, she is done talking. When I look out the window I don’t see anything there, I don’t see what they see, and Lanlan looks at her feet too, that’s another thing. How old do you have to be to do that? Lanlan looks at her feet to see how the veins are popping out even through her stockings, she says she didn’t used to be able to see her veins at all. But luckily nobody knows except her. Even if they are in slippers and no one can see them, she says she always knows, and when she says that I can almost see them. I can almost see how she presses her toes together like she does with her fingers, her fingers keep to themselves.