by Karoline Kan
But pregnancy was only the beginning of her troubles: How could she hide her growing stomach? How long could she keep her job? How would she consult a doctor if something happened to her? Where would she give birth? No hospital would accept her without a birth permit. And when the baby was born, where could she get enough yuan to pay the fine? These questions haunted her day and night.
She went to her mother for advice.
Her parents’ village, Caiyuan, had a longer history than my dad’s. The school where Mom worked had been a temple. It was destroyed in 1966 by Red Guards—a student organization during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976)—who were encouraged by Chairman Mao to eliminate all remnants of the old China: “Old thoughts, old culture, old customs, and old habits,” they pledged to remove.
Mom sat by the window in her childhood home, listening to her mother. “You never know what the government’s policy will be tomorrow,” said my grandmother Guiqin, “but if you have a second baby, the child will be there always. I say, have another. A boy would be good; a girl would be better. A daughter is her mother’s closest companion.”
When my mother told me about Guiqin’s undying support to have me, I was both surprised and not. These were the willful women of my family. The women I come from. These women have pushed me to move forward and be unafraid and confident about my decisions, as they had to be in order for me to exist. They were born in a more difficult time than I was. Society, the government, and their families paid no heed to these women’s ambitions and desires, but they fought against the merciless odds to make something out of very little.
Mom—afraid she would never be able to teach again—was not sure this was a notion my grandmother could relate to. Grandma Guiqin had no education, and had never worked outside the family home. She also never had the government stopping her from having the children she wanted. But Mom found relief in her mother’s kind words. Though she wanted more for me, her daughter, than what my grandmother expected of her—she wanted me to be more than just her caretaker.
The June breeze sent Mom’s thoughts blowing through the small window, into the waterlilies in the river running alongside their home. She remembered her childhood, when she would race in the wind with her brothers in the yard. She had always cherished the happiness of growing up with siblings and wanted Yunxiang to have such memories too.
“For women, family is more important than anything,” my grandmother added, pulling Mom back from her thoughts. Mom nodded; there was no point in arguing with a woman born in 1924. Grandma Guiqin, pale and physically fragile, had married into my grandfather’s village at the age of fifteen, and had never traveled farther than eight miles from her front door. “Try to hide the stomach for a few more months,” Grandma advised as she pulled a blanket over herself. Even in June she couldn’t bear the most gentle chill. “When it’s big enough, who would kill a baby about to be born?” She grabbed Mom’s hands and gently caressed them. “The older I grow, the more confused I get about life. Too many people ignore the law of the lǎotiānyé, the Heavenly Lord, and do bad things so proudly.”
Mom nodded again.
“You know”—Grandma perked up—“Xiangju’s husband works in the government. Why don’t you ask her for help?”
Xiangju was Mom’s best friend since childhood, and had always been a lucky girl. Her father, a teacher, was one of the few men who had appointed his daughter instead of his son to “inherit” his job. She had also married a local government worker.
There were many differences between my mom and Xiangju, but for reasons nobody understood, they were best friends. Xiangju was tough in nature—straightforward and competitive. Mom had thought of asking her for help but was too proud, in part because Xiangju hadn’t forgiven her for marrying my father.
“What’s so good about him, Shumin? He’s a farmer,” scolded Xiangju once in a fight. “He’s nothing!”
No, Xiangju would be the last person she’d ask for help.
* * *
The first few months, Mom hid the pregnancy well. And in the cool autumn months, a long, loose coat always helped. On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, she stood facing the moon, put her palms together in devotion, and begged the goddess of the moon to bless her. Her belly remained small in the first few months, so she was hopeful. “Grow slower, baby,” she whispered to me.
The first crisis came when Sister Lin showed up one day to tell her that there was a new physical check required of married women. This really worried Mom; a little coat trick wouldn’t do now. Even the blurriest photo would reveal the baby in her womb. “So sorry, Sister Lin,” she said. “I have to teach, you know. It’s so close to the final exams and I really can’t leave the students. I’ll go to the hospital myself when the semester’s over.”
Sister Lin didn’t insist: Other villagers had told her Shumin was the last one she needed to worry about. “She’s so eager to have a teaching job,” they gossiped. “Of course she wouldn’t have a second child.”
Mom pushed back the checkup several times until even Sister Lin forgot about it.
She felt lucky. Her sister worked in a factory and told her that female workers had to report their period each month to show they were not pregnant.
Mom was one of only three teachers at her school, and though they didn’t notice her belly in the first few months, by the winter her secret could no longer be contained—not from her colleagues or her in-laws.
She and Dad told their family about her pregnancy over dinner. “Shumin is pregnant,” my dad said to his father.
Wengui pushed aside his bowl and sat silent. When the old man did that, nobody else at the table dared even move their chopsticks. It was the longest few minutes ever. Mom sneaked a glance at my dad, whose head was down in anticipation of his father’s wrath.
Finally, Wengui said softly, “How are you going to deal with it? We don’t have any money.”
Then he picked up his chopsticks and began eating again, and everyone at the table followed. For the rest of the dinner, the only sound was chopsticks hitting rice bowls.
At this point, Mom had to follow her mother’s advice. When she knew Xiangju would be visiting my grandmother, Mom made sure to be waiting at the house. She had no choice but to throw aside her pride and ask for help.
When Xiangju arrived, she entered carrying a basket of apples and bananas. She had newly permed hair, which made her look more elegant, Mom told her. Xiangju smiled and sat down. She picked up a handful of bananas. “This is what my husband brought home from town last week. We don’t see it much in the village—southern fruits are not worth the money. They rot so fast.”
She handed a banana each to Mom and Grandma Guiqin before she noticed Mom’s bulging belly.
“Shumin? Are you pregnant again?”
“Yes,” Mom confessed and proceeded to tell Xiangju about her situation. To her great relief, her friend was willing to help.
“I understand. My husband has been in charge of the birth-planning work since last autumn,” she admitted. “I’m not very proud of what he’s doing. But what can he do? Every village must control the numbers. They have to keep it under a certain number each year. If there’s one more illegal baby born, the official’s salary will be decreased.” She took a deep breath. “What a goddamned job he has!”
They sat in silence for a while until suddenly Xiangju got up and quickly walked to the door and closed it, so the neighbors, who lived in the same yard, would not hear. She then sat close to Mom and whispered, “I have an idea. I’ll let you know when the birth-control team is coming to inspect your village. I’ll tell my husband that you haven’t recovered from high blood pressure since you gave birth to Yunxiang, and that you can’t bear the harassment right now. Trust me, nobody in the government wants to see an illegal baby, but nobody wants to see a dead woman either.”
* * *
That chilly November in northern China, when the trees shed their leaves, people climbed on ladders to pick orange persimm
ons hanging ripe in their front yards. They bought and harvested cabbage, which they piled high into backyard storage and covered with hay, to prepare for the long winter.
The sky was so gray it seemed the first snow was already on its way. Mom had cleaned out her desk and announced that she wouldn’t be returning. She no longer felt safe at the school; being in the same place all the time would only make it easier for the government to notice her and take her away for an abortion.
“I’m not sure if you’ll want to return after the second one is born, but you can always come back,” said the headmistress, Lao Li. She sipped tea from a white-enameled cup. “The children will miss you.”
Mom held back her tears and said goodbye. She had never betrayed the government or the people around her so severely. For a moment, she strongly doubted the decision she had made, but then walked out of the school gate to sit on the back seat of Baba’s bicycle for the ride home.
As my mother sat behind my dad, her heart pounded when she thought of the incident at home the previous weekend. As promised, Xiangju had informed her in advance of the birth-control team’s visit to Chaoyang. Baba was not home. Mom decided to hide in the field and Yunxiang insisted on being with her.
The abandoned corn straw was high enough to hide her, and she held Yunxiang close, gently whispering to him, “Don’t make a noise if you want to stay with Mommy. We have to hide from those people.”
He understood, and squatted to hide his little body as well. He looked up at her and asked, “We are protecting little brother?”
She nodded, though they didn’t know if the child in her belly would be a boy or a girl. She dared not visit a hospital. She’d had a dream that week in which a colorful snake was dancing in front of her, and the snake wore a flowered crown on its head. It was the year of the snake in the Chinese zodiac, and she believed the flowered crown indicated that she would give birth to a girl.
When she and Yunxiang came back, Baba had returned from work, brick dust thickly layered on his quilted cotton jacket.
“Father and Mother told the inspectors you were helping your sick aunt in another village,” he said, “but I think they’ll come again. Soon.”
They ate dinner that night again in silence.
“I’ve heard that once you reach the eighth month, they won’t do anything,” Baba said, trying to console her quietly that night in bed. “Let’s just make it through one more month.”
* * *
In March 1989, I was born at home. It was midnight. Baba rode his bike to the neighboring village to knock on a local midwife’s door for help. The midwife had been put on notice, so she was well prepared. When they arrived, everybody was waiting in our kitchen, which doubled as the living room. The midwife asked Nainai, Baba’s mom, to help her, and told Wengui and Baba to wait outside. She said the birthing blood would bring bad luck to the men. Yunxiang was so excited he couldn’t sleep. He walked here and there, and asked Grandpa and Dad again and again when he would meet his little brother. At 3:15 a.m., a loud crying sound came from the bedroom. Nainai came out with sweat on her forehead. “It’s a girl,” she cried. Mom told me later that she felt a wave of relief once she saw me. I had arrived, so they could no longer kill me. It would be a long road ahead, but she was happy that I had survived. My maternal grandfather, Laoye, named me Chaoqun, which means “to stand out from the crowd.” It was a good name—for survival and difference would be the running themes in my life. Later, as a writer, I would adopt the pseudonym Karoline.
Not long after, my parents were ordered to pay the fine of 6,000 yuan for having me, which would ensure that I received a hukou—the ID that would enable me to enroll in school, marry, and receive healthcare. In 1989, the average annual income for people in Chinese cities was only a bit more than 1,000 yuan, the equivalent to $157, and in rural areas even less. So the fine equaled several years of my parents’ and grandparents’ incomes.
“I can’t understand why you wanted to have a girl,” my grandfather complained to my dad while hitting his pipe against the wall, cleaning out the ash perhaps more fervently than usual. He then stood in the open doorway, frowning and looking out at the paddy fields. The rice would soon be tall enough to thin the sprouts. Unfortunately, with his daughter-in-law tending to her newborn baby, he’d have even fewer hands to help.
“Days will be wasted,” he muttered.
“We’ll manage,” said Baba.
Wengui lit the tobacco leaves in his pipe while looking out over his farm.
But, that spring, five days before my parents were due to pay the fine, he handed Baba a blue handkerchief. In it was 2,000 yuan. His life savings.
Chapter Two
A Daughter’s Promise
I have two birthdays. One is a secret and what I celebrate at home, and the other is written on all my official documents. Like my birth, this, too, was not an accident.
On the penalty notice that Sister Lin left my parents, she had underlined the words Pay within two months. But by the time the deadline arrived, my parents still needed 1,000 yuan in addition to what Wengui had given them and what they had saved. They were worried. The local Birth Control Office threatened that if they didn’t register my birth in time, I would never be registered. And failing to obtain a hukou would condemn me to life as a “black child,” a term used for those whose existence is not recognized by the government. According to the latest national demographic census done in 2010, China had about 13 million “black children” because their parents couldn’t pay the fine. Without a hukou, they are unable to attend school, marry or work legally, or even get on a train.
Every week, the Birth Control Office chased my parents for payment. Sometimes, Sister Lin came; other times, the officials knocked on our door themselves.
“If you delay payment, the government will charge you more,” shouted Sister Lin one day, peering over the fence to our backyard, where my mother was hanging laundry to dry.
Lin had just returned from the county’s All Women Federation meeting, during which the director continued to pressure her to do more to collect the fines. The little tiger lady took her work seriously.
My mother put aside her clothes basket and unbolted the gate. “You can come in, Sister Lin, but the money won’t grow from the dirt, will it? We are trying.”
“Of course, but you have broken the law!” Lin sat on the stool. “The money is not for me! The fine you pay will go straight to the national treasury. Your second child is draining resources from our country, so this is your responsibility.”
Mom doubted this was true. It was no secret that the Birth Control Office was a financially well-off branch of government—in our county, at least. Its officials had the best homes. The villagers believed that local bureaucrats—not national ones—decided the size of the fines for their own personal gain. There was a thick barricade between the lǎobǎixìng, or common citizen, and the government. At that time, there was no voting system in the county that enabled the villagers to choose officials directly. The lǎobǎixìng did not have access to the decision-making process in the citadels of the powerful. Mom knew this, so it made her angry that Sister Lin was suggesting the fee was an even trade.
It wasn’t until June that my parents had gathered enough money…then there was the late fee.
I wasn’t born in a hospital, so there was no documentation showing my exact birthday. How would the officials know if the payment was late? The only official who might know the exact day was Sister Lin. If she agreed to write a letter to the Birth Control Office stating my parents paid the fine on time, they would not come to the village to verify it.
This time Mom went knocking on Lin’s door. She carried a bamboo basket, which contained a chicken my father had just killed, a pack of Zhōngnánhǎi—the most expensive cigarettes she could find—and three bottles of pickled peaches. My parents understood the power and necessity of such bribes. It was regarded as “gift giving,” allowing people to develop relationships and, if needed, speed u
p bureaucratic processes.
My mother smiled as she placed the basket on Sister Lin’s dinner table. “My husband and I wondered if it would be okay if we just say Chaoqun was born in April?”
Sister Lin peeked into the basket and then pushed it back toward my mother. “Aiya, what are you doing?” After a few rounds of pushing the basket back and forth, Lin put it in a closet. Sister Lin loved gifts, but it was an unspoken rule in China, even among close friends and relatives, to not accept gifts eagerly. You wouldn’t want to give the impression that you were greedy. Whether sincere or faking it, a person would act it out, and sometimes acted so well that it looked like a real fight. “This is only my job. I won’t accept the gifts but tomorrow I will go to the county government’s office and tell your situation to my boss. He’s a big smoker. I will try my best.”
Soon enough, my parents received a letter from the Birth Control Office. That same day, Baba bicycled to the police station to register me. When he was handed the hukou notebook, it read “Birthday: April 21, 1989”—over a month later than my real birthday. He felt guilty for a moment but put the hukou notebook in his bag and quickly left the police station. He knew he couldn’t give me a lot, but at least he could give me an identity. For this, he felt proud.
* * *
A few months later, Sister Lin came around again with another announcement from the Birth Control Office. They wanted all women who had two children to do a sterilization operation—tubal ligation. My grandparents, who were of Mao’s era, understood that any government dictates should be perceived as the most “glorious, right, and great decision,” and had learned to accept such demands without question. They ordered Mom to comply, but she was against the idea. Though she didn’t plan to have more children, she couldn’t accept losing one of the most important functions of her body. It was her body after all, and she believed it should be her choice.