by Karoline Kan
Uncle Lishui and Aunt Zhirong were furious, but not shocked. It had become less rare to see accidental pregnancies before marriage. It would be better, though, if Chunting and Ling did marry, even if the pregnancy meant our family was now at a disadvantage in the bargaining.
When Ling’s family found out, they sent the matchmaker back to Uncle Lishui.
The woman gave a quick but obvious glance at Chunting’s belly. Chunting, who was sitting at the window, pretended she didn’t notice. I sat next to her and listened to every word in the negotiation. In this same room, Chunting and I had talked so much of our rosy dreams, of being an actress, a singer, a professional woman who wore silk scarves around her neck to the office. We had dreamed about our future husbands: They would be tall, handsome gentlemen with warm smiles that we’d fall in love with. In our dream weddings, there wasn’t a matchmaker in sight. This was all I could think about.
I saw Chunting’s dream broken right in front of me. What would happen to me? We had grown up together, watched the same TV shows, had the same hairstyles, and shared the same friends; this could easily happen to me too. Laolao once had a fortune-teller predict my future. I forgot most of what he said, but remembered one thing: She sets her ambition higher than the moon. Was it a compliment or an omen? Chunting and I had started at the same point. How would I fare by comparison?
“Let’s talk about caili.” Uncle Lishui finally hit on the main issue of the evening’s bargaining. Caili, the bride price, was the main measure of a man’s financial power and sincerity. “You know caili is a tradition. If we don’t accept, it doesn’t look good on either side, does it?”
“Aiyaya, of course Ling will give you caili, and I have told his parents that you are not the type who would ask for a lot of money. Caili can be tens of thousands of yuan or millions. I’m sure Chunting won’t be happy in a marriage if her parents-in-law had to borrow so much for her caili, would she?”
In ancient times, the bridegroom’s family gave the bride’s family caili and a letter confirming the engagement, which worked as a contract and a proclamation of the woman’s worth. The more money and gifts the woman received, the more her future husband and parents-in-law respected her—in theory. Paying money and gifts was also regarded as a way to thank the woman’s parents for raising her well. If the woman quit the marriage, her family had to return the caili; if the man quit, he wouldn’t get a penny back.
Mao’s revolution introduced women to the workplace and reformed marriage law to ensure that women and men enjoyed equal status for the first time in Chinese history—at least on paper. The caili system was criticized by Mao as a form of gender discrimination. But caili never ended, especially in the countryside. An interesting phenomenon was that the poorer a region was, and the fewer the available women were, the higher the bar the local people set for caili. Although the government issued an administrative paper to curb caili from increasing, in reality it was a supply-and-demand dynamic.
When Chunting’s marriage was being negotiated, an average caili was at least 70,000 yuan. In addition, the groom’s family had to provide a house or apartment for the newlyweds. The price of housing started to soar in the early 2000s. A simple furnished two-bedroom apartment in Lutai was at least 500,000 yuan, equivalent to $78,000.
Families with daughters believed caili was one of the “now or never” chances of financial support. Women seldom complained about the system. People still believed that the more a man invested, the more stable the marriage would be. Not many families could afford a second marriage.
I informed my parents that I wouldn’t ask for any caili when I got married, because I found it insulting. We were no longer living in the Qing dynasty, when a woman couldn’t support herself and her family by her own means—unless she was an empress, of course. And why should a man pay a woman to marry him? To me, caili made women look weak.
But, clearly, with her pregnancy, Chunting lost in the bargain no matter how hard the families tried to pretend it would be a typical negotiation. Ling’s family offered a relatively meager 50,000 yuan, which Uncle Lishui accepted.
I was not happy with any of it, the caili system or the marriage. Chunting was not a goat, and should not be sold! When we were young, she and I laughed at people who talked about caili. I urged her to think for herself, but I couldn’t give any better suggestions. What did I know about marriage and children? My idealism was founded on nothing; I was only due to start college in August. Chunting didn’t have an escape route. If they refused Ling’s offer, it would mean Chunting would have to get an abortion. If she went this route, she might face the wrath of village gossip; rumors still spread quickly. Chunting’s reputation could very possibly be badly damaged. If that happened, who would propose to her again? And what would her “price” be then?
On her wedding day, Chunting wore a white, Western-style dress instead of a traditional lucky-red dress, and sat beforehand with me in her parents’ room. As we waited for Ling and his family to take her away, I kept my eyes down, on her shoes. As a nod to tradition, and a small concession to the wishes of Ling’s parents, she wore red silk slippers, embroidered with plum branches in bloom and flying magpies to signify happiness.
Chunting touched her belly. She had put on more weight than she had expected to, at only four months pregnant. The dress was a bit tight. I adjusted the fresh red roses in her tied-up hair.
“You look beautiful,” I said.
“This is it.” Chunting gave me a wry smile. “I still can’t believe it. I hope you can visit me a lot.”
By about 10 a.m., Uncle Lishui’s home was packed with people. Two golden characters for double happiness, or xi, printed on bright red paper, were hung by the front gate.
Chunting raised her eyes when the host explained the details of the ceremony: “Your husband will lift you up and take you to the car; you will hand out candy or cigarettes to all his relatives, along with red envelopes to their children, when they bless you…”
I held her hand, just as I had when we were little girls. When the host left, I asked if she still remembered that one afternoon when we were seven and had decided to run away from home after watching the cartoon Haier Brothers, with two little brothers who were always traveling. We had planned to do the same. We’d often walk far along the river—escaping. It felt as if we’d walk for hours, but Uncle Lishui always easily caught up to us and beckoned us to dinner. We had promised each other that one day, when we were grown up, we would go to faraway places, just like the Haier brothers.
“Of course I remember,” said Chunting. “You’re going to accomplish that soon. I’m not. You’ll have to do it for both of us.”
Chunting told me there were so many things she’d never done and probably would never do now, due to her sudden circumstance. Marriage was the best option she had, and she had to face it.
“Are you ready?” I forced a smile on my face. “They will come to take you away from me soon.” I fetched her red velvet purse and helped her do a last check of her things: red envelopes, a small ring box wrapped in glittery red cloth, makeup, a red dress to change into for the toast at lunch, and the marriage certificate with her and Ling’s photos.
Outside, fireworks were set alight, and there was much chatter and laughter. From the window, we watched as a black car pulled up to take her away and into the next chapter of her life.
Chapter Ten
Children of
Tiananmen
Beijing, 2008
It had been the most relaxing summer holiday of my life. Beijing had hosted the Olympic Games, the “most important event in a hundred years,” said the media. For the first time, China topped the gold medals list.
We were becoming obsessed with –ests: China’s plan to build the world’s biggest shopping mall, to have the world’s longest railway, our GDP growth as the world’s fastest, the Great Wall was the world’s largest. We’d had enough humiliation. The Olympics showed that China could do things as well as the West—or
even better. China had become the third country to send humans into space, after Russia and the US, and had started work on building a space station and launching a manned expedition to the moon. China’s economy had been expanding for decades, and would soon overtake Japan to become the world’s second largest. China’s first bullet train was launched, speeding between Beijing and Tianjin in only thirty minutes in a journey that had until then taken two hours. Folks stood in long lines for tickets just to experience a “bullet.” They joked that the trip was so short, you’d waste the ticket if you had to use the bathroom. I left home with a small amount of luggage and an inflated sense of pride.
Before leaving for college, I met Chunting at Uncle Lishui’s home. I didn’t know what I would say. After her marriage, I hadn’t seen much of her that summer. Things had changed quickly. We weren’t the same schoolgirls on similar paths. The fork in our road grew rapidly wider.
She settled down in her husband’s village and decided to rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. I was excited about the baby but nervous for her. I still didn’t think she had made the right decision, and it almost killed me to look at her in this new life. Her eyes were droopy, and she couldn’t fake enthusiasm in seeing me either. We just sat down next to each other, hand in hand. I wanted to tell her how excited I was about going to Beijing, about seeing the national flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square like we had always planned, about spending the weekends at art exhibitions and meeting new friends from all over the country, or from all over the world. All my hard work for the gaokao had paid off. It was the bridge I was crossing to my future, and I wanted so badly to talk to Chunting about all the possibilities, but I couldn’t. It would hurt her feelings. She was staying behind, with no clear plan beyond being a wife and mother.
Her head hung low as we sat together in her old room and she rubbed her stomach. I tried to cheer her up by telling her how happy she would be the next time I saw her, in six months when the baby was born.
“Will you still miss me after you have your fancy new friends?” she asked, forcing a small smile.
I felt a throb of pain in my throat, but put on a big smile. “Of course,” I said, “I’ll talk to you on the phone almost every day.”
* * *
Since my parents knew nothing about Beijing or college life, Yunxiang offered to help me settle in. The next morning, we caught the 7 a.m. bus. My eyes were wide open, taking in every inch of the drive, while most other passengers napped.
As we left Lutai, I saw homes and shops turn into fields. Farmers dotted across the yellow paddy fields, their green and red headscarves bright in the early morning sun. We passed the field where Grandfather Wengui used to work. I remembered him resting on the ridge, smoking tobacco. We passed Caiyuan, and I remembered Laolao peeling the green beans on her kang. The bus also passed Chaoyang Village, where I was born. I recognized a few men I knew sitting at the village entrance. They had aged and seemed smaller, frailer, while I was taller and felt as if I could fly to the sky.
After an hour or so, the scenery was no longer familiar. There were woods, rivers, vineyards, and flocks of sheep in villages that seemed strange to me, reminding me of the feeling I had on my first trip to Beijing ten years earlier, when we visited Uncle Siyong. The clean, wide avenues, under the shade of paulownia trees, and the blue-and-white trolleys had fascinated me. The ticket sellers would pop their heads out the window and shout “Attention!” when the trolleys made a turn. There was so much more happening than in the familiar quietude of my village. I took a photo in front of the vast Tiananmen Square, Mao Zedong’s portrait prominently displayed on the wall of the gate tower behind me.
After the photo, we saw a woman wearing an armband with a badge that read “Beijing Civilization Observer” stop a man who had just spit on the ground and fine him twenty yuan on the spot. He was shocked, and so were we. Spitting would never have been punished in our small town.
To my grandparents’ generation, Beijing was a sacred city, former home to our past emperors and royal families. According to the old people, Beijing had the best feng shui, the best geomancy. Yuhuangdadi, or emperor of the heavens, had blessed the city. Beijing had not experienced any serious floods, no earthquakes or any natural disasters. Beijing was a holy city where all the important people lived: the Chinese Communist Party’s top leaders, the army generals, and our greatest artists, scientists, engineers, and intellectuals—and their offspring.
Everyone in Caiyuan could point in Beijing’s direction, but few had the chance to go there.
With the strict hukou system, before the 1980s, only when you had a reason approved by the government were you allowed to ride on the slow, green train to the capital. Laoye said that as a young farmer, no matter how tired he became, when he heard the radio announcers say in their polished Mandarin, “It’s seven o’clock, Beijing time,” he would feel a sense of hope; there would always be the dream of living in Beijing one day. When Uncle Siyong was transferred to his military unit in Beijing, Laolao knelt down in front of the ancestors’ shrine and kowtowed to thank them for their blessing.
When my parents were young, all paintings and pictures decorating their walls were of the great capital city: children holding flowers and dancing in Tiananmen Square, pigeons flying over the blue sky at the Great Wall, and families rowing boats in Beihai Park. Beijing had the best of everything.
When the hukou restrictions loosened in 1980s, everyone could travel freely to Beijing for work if they wanted; however, they were reluctant to go, partly because of the prejudices they suffered for being migrant workers, without a city hukou and no permanent residence, therefore no stable job. But university students were different.
My neighbors and relatives believed it was a real achievement for me to go to Beijing to study. I was proud, too, but wondered where the capital would take me.
At 9:30 a.m., we arrived at the central bus station. The city looked even more like what I had seen on television than it did ten years before: skyscrapers and flashing billboards, heavy traffic, working women in smart suits holding disposable cups of soy milk as they walked to work, traffic policemen pointing cars here and there. The din was so loud it was as if ten video games were on at the same time, with honking car horns, bicycle bells, men in white shirts and black ties chatting loudly into their phones, street artists singing, and the drilling and hammering vibrations of construction. I loved it all, even the noise.
After a short subway ride, Yunxiang and I arrived at Beijing International Studies University, or BISU. Evergreens and pine trees, peonies and roses, were bathed in sunshine. All the buildings were painted either gray or dark orange, which made the small campus look tidy and clean. There was a big library and a new athletic center with an Olympic-size swimming pool.
When we arrived at the dorm, we found a lot of people in my room—mainly the families of my roommates, including Yun. Pretty and energetic, she had just dyed her hair brown and was learning jazz dance. We had been assigned bunks, and hers was below mine. My other roommate, Tian, a small girl with bangs cut to make her look like a traditional Japanese doll, liked Japanese animation and manga. She looked so young, I would have guessed she was no older than fourteen. Qi was the mysterious and elegant one. She didn’t talk much, but smiled a lot. Na was easygoing—and was from Beijing’s suburbs. Mei was a full-figured girl with short hair and thick glasses and tended to wear simple clothes: white or gray T-shirts, sporty trousers and shoes. Not long after we moved in together, I heard Mei was a lesbian and had a girlfriend in the Korean language department.
I asked Yunxiang if we could go for a walk. For some reason, I wasn’t ready to be left alone.
The campus was full of activity. Parents hauled luggage, school coordinators held welcome banners, groups of girls chatted on their way to the shower house, boys ran to the basketball courts. And there were wandering magpies everywhere—I remember feeling as lost as they seemed to be.
Before he left, Yunxiang handed me some c
ash to buy things I needed, like soap and shampoo.
“Listen, Chaoqun, here’s some advice: Don’t fight with girls in your dorm, don’t eat the street food, don’t get back to the dorm late, and call me whenever you need to.”
I felt like he was nervous, which made me more nervous. I could barely focus on what he was saying.
But the moment I watched him walk away, I stood in the dorm lobby, and suddenly felt a huge rush of adrenaline. I made it! I wanted to cheer. Yesss! I had been ready to be a grown-up for too long. The time had finally arrived, and my dream was happening right now, right in front of me. I was standing in my dream. It was my first time living far away from my parents, my first time sharing a room with people I didn’t know at all, and my first time deciding how to spend my money and my time. I was like a newly grown cat, poised, ready to pounce on her prey, though a little uncertain that she had acquired the necessary skills.
* * *
The first two weeks of university life were filled with meetings: with teachers, organized academic departments, and student union leaders; meetings to choose which clubs to join; meetings about how to use the student ID card to get water, take showers, buy food, and use the library; and, most importantly, meetings with our fǔdǎoyuán, my political counselor-adviser, Guan Xin.
A fǔdǎoyuán is appointed to each grade. They help students academically and professionally, organize activities, and monitor the students’ mental health, but their most important duty is to provide political instruction and build unity between students and the party. Guan Xin was only five or six years older than me. He had just finished his master’s program at a university in Northeast China. He wore thick glasses, kept his hair short and neat, and seemed to have an endless supply of checkered shirts. He was plump and walked like a penguin, which took me a while to stop giggling about.