How Sweet the Bitter Soup

by Lori Qian

  “Yeah, this isn’t usual at all. This is definitely not the norm in America. Maybe it’s just that it’s this small town. Maybe it’s the seasonal ’Christmas spirit,’ but whatever it is, this is so cool!”

  We hugged, sat by the cozy fireplace and enjoyed our cookies. Best Christmas season ever.

  chapter 43

  Tt was almost Spring Festival again, and William and I had been going back and forth for the past few months, trying to decide if we should immigrate to America or stay in China for another year. On paper, it made more sense to stay so that we could save money and be better prepared when we did move to the States. In my heart, though, I wanted to go. I was ready for us to think about a new chapter and was anxious for William to experience America—particularly for him to attend university there.

  He had that goal too, but wanted to be absolutely ready. One thing he had learned when we’d gone home for Christmas was that America is a wonderful place . . . as long as you have money. Without money, he’d said, it seemed the life there is miserable. True enough.

  We had a long way to go before our savings would be where we wanted them to be, and my student loan debt was still high. No question it made sense to stay, but based on our feelings, we decided to apply for immigration anyway. There was something about getting to America—an unspoken urgency we both felt that we couldn’t deny.

  After all, we had made it through tough times before, and it would be okay to live the “poor college student” life for a while. It was all about the process, after all, and learning as we went. Plus, we weren’t completely unprepared. We made a plan for how much we could save in China before leaving the following fall. We began getting our paperwork together and studying the process of immigration. We made lists of all the documents we needed to get and devised a plan for how to get them. Clearly, our trip to Huang Mei for Spring Festival would have to involve working on this.

  I was already having horrible déjà vu from the year before, remembering how we’d traipsed through the countryside trying to get the first stamp, the second stamp, the third stamp, all the right forms, and all the right signatures. I was not ready to return to that nightmare—so I simply told myself this time wouldn’t be so bad.

  The main thing we needed to get was William’s birth certificate. From a Western perspective, this sounds perfectly natural. Everyone has a birth certificate, right?

  Well, no. What if the person is born at home? Before giving birth to William, Xu Shui Xian was outside at the pond doing her wash. When she felt the labor pains she came inside and, with the help of two older ladies, delivered her son. No paperwork was filed. This was the countryside. This was middle China. Beyond that, this was 1976, the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. Even if it had been normal to file paperwork after a birth, during this time, people would not have done it anyway. William had been born under these circumstances and therefore had no birth certificate.

  Generally speaking, the birth certificate is not as significant in China as it in the States. The more major document is the registration card we had obtained from the record keeper’s attic the year before. With that card, William was able to obtain a Chinese passport. So he had these documents proving his iden-tity—but he didn’t have an actual birth certificate.

  Of course, I called the consulate and visited them multiple times to try to explain to them how difficult it would be to get a birth certificate that did not exist. I figured, naively, that they would appreciate our honesty (as it would have been easy enough to obtain a fake birth certificate) and say that the birth certificate was not really necessary. However, they didn’t. I remember calling a US government official from the countryside and telling him that I would never be able to get the certificate. He told me to get what I could, turn it in with our immigration application, and then we’d go from there.

  I felt optimistic at this. This sounded reasonable. We would get what we could and that, combined with William’s other documents, should be enough to prove that he was who he said he was.

  So with that, we set off for Huang Mei once again. This time, however, we flew there. The first time William had flown was the previous May, when we were in a hurry to get back to Guangzhou and see a doctor. He marveled at the convenience and speed of it, and it was a thrill for me to watch him stare out the window as we took off. It had never occurred to him to fly. After all, he could tolerate almost anything, and taking the train did not bother him one bit. No, he was doing this for me. To him, it was a waste of money, but he knew how much I hated the train at Spring Festival.

  As we boarded the plane and found our seats, I thought back to the previous year. Was it already a year ago that I had first gone to Huang Mei? Things were so different then. Our relationship was so new. Everything was unknown. It’s more comfortable now, I thought, as I grabbed William’s hand and squeezed it.

  He looked up from his magazine and leaned his head back on the seat, not taking his eyes off me. Then he took both my hands in his and said, “Can you believe this is already our second Spring Festival in Huang Mei?”

  “I know.” I nodded, smiling. “I was just thinking about that. A lot has happened this year.”

  “Time passes so quickly.” He glanced out the window.

  “Are you excited about going home this time?” I asked.

  “Well. . . .” He paused for a moment, as if thinking about how to form his ideas. “It’s wonderful to go home, but then again I’m not looking forward to the problems there. They have such a hard life and every time we go home, I realize it more and more. And there’s really nothing we can do to help them.”

  It was true. Over the past year, knowing how much his family struggled, we had sent money periodically, but it was never enough, and it almost seemed to cause more contention within the family. At the same time, though, it was hard to do nothing when they had so little and we, comparatively, had so much.

  Once we got to Huang Mei, we set about getting statements. We wanted a statement from William’s mom and dad, and from the two ladies who had witnessed the birth. Well, the old ladies had since died, so we settled for just his parents. His poor mother didn’t quite know what we were up to. After all, it was Spring Festival and everyone else was relaxing, visiting relatives, and eating while William and I were constantly on our mobile phones, trying to get a hold of the consulate or William’s classmates, who were helping us gather other documents. We were always taking notes and speaking in English and asking his mom what must have seemed to her crazy questions.

  “Now, Mama,” I said in my best Chinese, “when Minga”— that’s what they called William in the local dialect—”was born, how much did he weigh?” I was trying to gather all the information that would normally be on a birth certificate. My idea was that we could get a blank birth certificate and fill it out, not claiming that it was filled out in 1976 but simply presenting it as an official document that had all the necessary information about his birth. We would get it and his mother’s statement notarized, and hopefully that would be adequate proof.

  When I asked Mama this question in all seriousness, pencil and paper in hand, ready to write her response, she laughed out loud and, holding her hands about a foot apart, palms facing in, said, “About this much.”

  I was not amused.

  Well, actually, I was kind of amused. But my entire body was aching from stress. My head hurt so bad that I could not see straight. We desperately wanted this information, but I could see this from her point of view. Her son was now twenty-six years old; why was I asking how much he’d weighed as a baby?

  William tried to explain that this was what the American government wanted to know so that he could get his visa. “Why do they need to know such a crazy thing?” Mama asked again and again. “So many crazy questions!”

  This was after I’d also asked how long William had been at birth and at what time of the day he’d been born. She was right, though. This was crazy. I mean, did they really need this information? Why did every
process we went through seem to be so incredibly difficult? When would we ever be able to come to Huang Mei and just rest and enjoy the family without being on some desperate paperwork mission?

  There was one moment that stood out as quality family time. In retrospect, there were many, but the biggest was visiting William’s grandmother—an experience I won’t soon forget. I’d had a special connection with her from the beginning. She was this combination of humility and elegance that is so unusual in any situation, let alone the countryside of China. When I talked with her about her life, I learned just how many difficulties she’d endured. She had faced war and poverty and everything in between yet she still carried herself like a lady and always greeted me with a warm smile and extended hand holding. I just loved her.

  During this fourth visit to Huang Mei, though, we saw Grandma in a different light. She had fallen and broken her leg and was confined to her bed. It was difficult to see her like that, unable to move and with very little hope in her eyes. The doctors hadn’t put a cast on the leg or given her any medication. Rather, they’d instructed her to stay in bed for about two months, telling her the leg would heal itself. When we saw her, she had been in bed for about a month.

  I wanted to badly to do something for her. I wished we could rent a helicopter and take her to the best hospital in Guangzhou and get real help for her. I wished we could make her feel better—but I knew that we couldn’t. Knowing that she’d been lying in that same position for all that time made me cringe. I knew how her body must ache, and suddenly it occurred to me that maybe she’d like a massage.

  I was holding her hand and I just began to rub her hands and arms a bit, seeing how she’d respond. It made her relax. I moved up to her shoulders a bit and was careful to make sure I wasn’t hurting her. Finally, I asked William to ask her if I could rub her back and her other leg a little. She really liked the idea. So, while all the relatives were in the other room, we gently rolled her just a bit so that I could get to her back. Even moving her that little bit, lifting her back a couple of inches and propping her up with pillows, brought her relief. I began to massage her back and she literally moaned with happiness. Those poor muscles. William found some hand cream and we used that to add some moisture to her skin. When the aunts came in, at first I think they thought we were crazy, but when Grandma told them how wonderful she felt they just smiled at me and gave approving nods.

  We moved her as much as we could without interfering with the broken leg. I tried to imagine where I would be hurting if I had been lying on that hard bed for a month and decided that she must hurt everywhere. So I did what I could, and I think it really helped both of us: she got a little relief for those aching muscles and joints, and I had found a way to show my love for this dear woman.

  It made us sad to leave that day, but having made that connection with her made it less painful. I thought about Grandma a lot over the next few months and was amazed that when we visited seven months later she was her old self again, walking around with the sparkle back in her eyes.

  The day before we left for Wuhan to try to get everything notarized, William and his mom sat at the kitchen table practicing her name. I was so humbled by this; I could hardly believe what I was watching. Most of us sign our names or write something every day of our lives, but William’s mother had never even had the chance to learn how to write her own name. What reason did she have to do so? Her life was not one of signatures and forms. Her life was one of cooking, cleaning, and hard work that did not involve literacy. As she sat there trying to copy what William had written out for her, I suddenly didn’t like myself very much.

  I hated that William and I were making her do this— reminding her of something she couldn’t do and sending the message that this was an important thing. In doing so, we were discounting all the important things she had done every day throughout her whole life. The way to help her son now was to be able to write her name, something she was trying so hard to do. I watched William’s face as he helped her and I knew that he felt it too. We must really want to go to America to put her through this, to put the whole family through all our craziness, every time we come home, I thought. At that moment I really wondered if it was all worth it, this idea of going to America. But then I thought, Of course it is, and William has every right as my husband to go. If we gave up now, all that we had gone through would be for nothing and William would never have a chance to study in America or simply live in the place where his wife was from.

  My mind flashed forward to when we had children. If William didn’t have permission to go to the States, would we keep the kids from doing so too?

  No, all this work was worth it. He had every right to go. I just hated, absolutely hated, that it was so difficult for us. My anger was now directed more at the consulate for having such a stupid requirement. I mean, had they any idea what we were going through here? Why on earth couldn’t they accept the registration card or the passport? Why did we have to go back twenty-six years, trying to reconstruct a piece of paper that didn’t exist?

  Still, we wouldn’t give up. After going through all this, especially after watching Mama working so diligently to sign her name, there was nothing we’d let stop us from getting William his immigrant visa.

  We got everything notarized in Wuhan—all the documents, all the statements. Now, there was nothing to do except pray that it was enough. If it wasn’t, we really had no idea what we would do.

  When we got back to Guangzhou, we went to the consulate and turned everything in to INS. They told us that within a month we would hear from them, and either the application would be approved and passed on to the next step, the immigrant visa unit, or they would let us know what else they needed.

  With that, we went home. When we walked in the door, the phone rang. It was our friend Stuart, calling to ask us if we’d heard of this terrible disease that was killing people all over the city.

  chapter 44

  At first we didn’t know what the disease was; we just kept getting phone calls asking us if we had heard the latest on the numbers of people affected. It was some type of pneumonia, we knew, but much more serious than the usual kind, since people were dying all over Guangzhou. The media was not openly reporting anything at this time, so all the reports of this came from word of mouth.

  Some older ladies in the neighborhood advised me to go out and buy vinegar. They said I should boil it in the house and it would kill germs. People advised one another to stay in their homes and away from other people. We were all so frightened of this disease—the disease we later learned was called SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).

  SARS changed people’s lives. For the next four months, nothing could be taken for granted. Schools were closed; everyone wore masks; people were afraid to get near each other. The price of vinegar quadrupled and for a while even rice was hard to get. People were panicked, and scared to death that their loved ones would catch this horrible disease for which there was no cure. We knew the symptoms included fever, cough, and diarrhea, so any sign of these symptoms sent a chill though people’s bones.

  If this had happened six months earlier, when William still had a fever every day, I would have been even more panicked because in those days, the side effects of his medications were similar to the classic SARS symptoms. Thankfully, now he was almost finished with his TB treatment and was no longer experiencing those side effects.

  Finally, the media began to report on the epidemic. Every night, William and I watched to see what the numbers were: how many new cases had been reported and how many deaths had occurred. Of course we knew that the real numbers were much higher, as obviously the government was trying to send the message that things were under control, but even the numbers they reported were astounding. All we could do was to wash our hands frequently, eat well, sleep well, and pray. We tried different vitamins and herbal remedies meant to strengthen the immune system, but beyond that, there was nothing we could do. Everyone felt helpless during those days. It
was so scary to have no medicine for this disease and to know that it was just out there, everywhere, anywhere.

  During this time in our lives, we did not take a single moment for granted. We watched the news and saw these tragic stories of victims of SARS. Young people, old people—it didn’t seem to discriminate. Each week we just prayed that this disease would go away and stop hurting people all over China and in other parts of the world.

  By this time it was all over and was getting worse in Beijing than it had been in Guangzhou. We heard reports of cases in Canada, Taiwan, and other parts of the world. People began to leave China, only to be quarantined when they got home. The thought crossed our minds to leave, but in fact even if we’d wanted to, William had no visa and we couldn’t. We really didn’t want to leave, though, and just kept hoping things would get better. We also worried about the effect this would have on our immigration application. What if China became blacklisted?

  What if they decided that since SARS had originated there, no more immigrants from China would be allowed to come to the US? All sorts of thoughts went through our minds. It was a terrible time.

  Amidst this SARS scare, William began a new job. This was yet another answer to prayer, another major step for him and toward a brighter future for us. He became the CEO assistant to Brady, a church member who had just moved to China from Utah. His company manufactured computer cables, and he happened to need an assistant around the same time William was looking for a new job. Things just fell into place and in February, William began this new position.

  At first, he wasn’t sure what his role would be, but as time passed he learned a great deal about management and working with different groups of people. The experience proved invaluable.

  Throughout the SARS ordeal, we were still dealing with INS and trying to get William’s visa. We received word from them that the documents we had provided were not sufficient to prove William’s birth. I felt like screaming, “He’s standing right in front of you! Is that not proof enough? He’s got a passport and his registration card. What more do you want?”