The Opposite of Fate (17 page)

“I guess this is a Western version of Oriental food,” Robert says to Ma.

She peers at her meal. “This Chinese idea of American food,”
she corrects him. “This what I ate in China long time ago when we go to restaurant eat foreign dinner.”

After recalling this, Ma decides to forgo her meal. She tells me in English that she is going to offer it to the man three seats away. I am about to stop her—explaining that no one would want to eat her leftovers—but it is too late. The man three seats away has happily accepted her offering. And now they are chatting animatedly in Chinese.

O
ur family in Shanghai apparently did not get our letter, the one explaining that we would be arriving at eight p.m. It is now eight-thirty Shanghai time, and they are lunging forward, two or three at once, hugging us, calling my mother “Ma” and “Grandma,” and me “Auntie” and “Baby Sister.” Hongchong, my brother-in-law, explains that they have been waiting at the airport since four in the afternoon, all seven of them: he and my sister, my nephew and his wife, my niece and her husband and their son.

“What a tragedy,” I say in my fractured Mandarin. “You must have been anxious to pieces, waiting, wondering where we were.”

“Oyo!” squeals my sister Yuhang. “Look at her, she speaks Chinese. Last time you were deaf and mute. Now you can speak!”

“Only a little,” I say. Three years ago, I could manage to say “How are you?” Today I can talk about tragedies.

“Only a little?” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Hey!” she calls to the others. “Look how smart my little sister is. Now she can speak Chinese.”

She hooks one arm in mine, the other in Ma’s. We start to walk out of the airport. My twenty-five-year-old nephew, Xiao-dong, reaches for Ma’s luggage. My mother immediately shouts back at him, “Be careful, be careful! Don’t grab so fast.” Xiao-dong leaps back and blinks.

“Last time, we lost a radio,” Ma says. She is referring to our trip three years ago, when a Walkman disappeared somewhere between San Francisco check-in and Shanghai customs. Five minutes on Shanghai soil and Ma is already in her element. She is speaking rapid Shanghainese, dispensing advice and approval to her Chinese and American daughters, her son-in-law and grandchildren. She is queen for the week, the one everybody has to obey, no talking back.

We pile our six bulging suitcases into a van, a
membao che,
or “bread truck,” called so for its loaflike shape. Ten of us jam in, plus the driver, a young man who waves to us and is introduced as Xiao-dong’s friend. The van is courtesy of someone’s work unit—it’s not clear whose. The windows are down, and as we take off, our nostrils are blasted by something that resembles the ripe stench of a pig farm on top of a toxic waste dump. As the van careens onto the road leading into Shanghai, I see that Robert finally believes some of what I have described as typical China: freestyle driving. He clutches the back of the seat ahead, alternately grinning and gritting his teeth as the van narrowly avoids a disastrous collision with a bicyclist, then a man pushing a cart, then three girls walking, then a huge truck barreling down on us in our lane. I am an optimist. If we crash, I may not have to finish the novel I’m working on.

We drive past high-rise office buildings sprouting up from farm fields of yesteryear, then come upon a residential
neighborhood. Along the darkened roads we see that this part of Shanghai is still a hub of activity at nine p.m. Bicyclists flow by, their bells chiming.

“What’s that? A store?” I ask Xiao-dong, pointing to an outdoor stall lit by a bare bulb.

“Hah?” He cups his hand to his ear.

“What is that?” I say, and point again. We have been writing back and forth in English, discussing his desire to immigrate to Canada, where my brother, John, lives.

Over the past year, Xiao-dong’s written English, while still shaky, has improved. So has his understanding of life in a Western country—I hope. In an early letter, he had asked me to deposit $15,000 in a bank under his name and to pay for the foreign tuition at a $30,000-a-year university. He figured he could pay me back within the year, working part-time while he attended classes. I wrote back outlining a condensed course on Western economics: how much one could expect to earn with a part-time, minimum-wage salary, how much one had to set aside for taxes, medical insurance, bus fare, English classes at the YMCA, a new mattress, a new pair of Levi’s, as well as contributions to rent, gas and electricity, food, and so on. I explained that I would pay for these expenses while he and his wife lived with my brother and sister-in-law in Calgary. But after the first year, he would be on his own.

“Individual freedom comes with a lot of responsibility,” I wrote. “If your sister wants to immigrate later on, you will be responsible for bringing her over. We will talk about this when I come see you in China.” And now I am in China.

“Is it a store?” I point again.

“Ssss-tore, ssss-tore,” he says, searching for the meaning of this word. And then his face brightens with recognition. “Ah! Store!” He giggles. His wife, Jiming, looks and giggles too. It is the first time I’ve seen her smile. She is perhaps twenty-two, very pretty, and she has not yet said one word to me.

“
Ge-ti hu,
” he says softly. “We say
ge-ti hu,
no store. Small things, yes, can buy.”

“Like a local shop?” I ask. “A neighborhood store?”

“Hah?” he says, cupping his ear again.

“What can you buy there?” I almost shout, as if he truly were hard of hearing.

He shrugs. “Auntie,” he says carefully. “You don’t go there.”

“Why?”

“Auntie,” he repeats. “You don’t go there.” Jiming giggles again. I understand nothing: not the English, not the meaning of the giggles, not the reason I shouldn’t go there.

We pass trucks and buses with no headlights on.

“Why don’t they turn on their lights?” I ask my mother. She asks Yuhang the same question.

“To save electricity,” my sister answers, as though she believes this is a reasonable thing to do. I wonder whether our bus is saving electricity as well.

“What do you think?” I ask Robert. “Is this the China you expected?”

“Great,” he says, his wide eyes still fixed on the road. “Just great.”

And now we arrive in an area where, we are informed, model workers’ apartments are located. Or is it the workers’ model apartments? Dubious translations notwithstanding, this is where
we find large housing complexes built by the
danwei,
or work units, supplied for a small monthly fee, probably the equivalent of a few dollars. The complexes are located on the outskirts of Shanghai in what used to be the old Chinese district.

I watch the street scene. Gone are the rabbit warrens of one-story tile-roofed constructions on twisty lanes, although we can see the remnants of some, piles of tumbled-down brick that have become roofless playhouses for children. In place of the old, modern concrete apartment buildings have sprung up. Those that are a few years old are five stories tall and have colorful laundry strewn over every balcony. The newest apartment buildings resemble luxury high-rises, with round turrets on top, similar to the rotating bars of some hotels. We are told the turrets do not actually rotate. God only knows why the architects thought this was an interesting feature to copy. We pass the skeletal beginnings of other buildings.

Our driver turns into the narrow opening in an iron fence, continuing onto what seems to be a sidewalk, until we arrive in front of one of hundreds of buildings painted a fading green.

The ten of us clamber up a dark flight of stairs littered with bicycles. And then Yuhang and Hongchong announce that we have arrived. They push a buzzer with great ceremony, and this emits a squawk that resembles the reaction of a baby being doused in cold water.
Wanh!

Two locks click back, the door opens, the iron grate swings out, and we press forward into a fluorescent-lit apartment. Ahmei, Auntie Elsie’s servant from the old days, greets us, asking about plane delays, checking for exhaustion, directing where luggage should go. From now on, Robert and I observe, it’s all Chinese or nothing. A wave of hands leads us into a sitting
room. It contains a stiff-backed sofa with scratchy industrial-strength fabric, a matching armchair, four stools, a Formica table, a small green refrigerator, a telephone, and a television covered with a protective cloth.

I am led to a stool next to the table. A tumbler of tea is pressed into my hand. Excited voices buzz in my ear and I can’t understand a word. I nod and smile frequently. This is what it will be like when I grow senile.

“What do I call her?” I ask my mother, gesturing to the servant. I am not old enough to call the servant by her given name.

“Call her Aiyi,” my mother says. “Call her Auntie to show respect.”

“Thank you, Aiyi,” I say in Mandarin, holding up my tea. She laughs and shouts back a long string of Shanghainese.

Yuhang sweeps her arm out, inviting us to consider our living quarters. “What do you think? Comfortable enough?” Xiao-dong watches my face. It seems he is conscious of how his American auntie is reacting to her new surroundings.

My mother and I look around the room once again, smile and nod. “Very good,” my mother says. “Clean.” And I know she means it. I can tell she’s relieved.

“More comfortable than staying at my house,” agrees Yuhang. “Here you can be together. You have hot water. Of course, every day I will come and keep you company.”

For me, anything would have been fine, as long as it was not a hotel. But this apartment exceeds my expectations. It is very clean. In fact, it is almost antiseptic, the fluorescent lighting casting a blue tinge on everything, including our faces. Robert looks slightly ill, although it may be the jet lag.

Auntie Elsie, Ma’s old schoolmate who now lives in
Vancouver, bought this place for her mother, who has since died. Now Elsie comes only once or twice a year. Aiyi, who has been the family servant for the past thirty years, lives here full-time as caretaker, subsisting on a salary of sixty yuan a month, about ten U.S. dollars.

The apartment is really two combined apartments, the dividing wall removed. It has a grand total of four and a half rooms, and a hallway, where we have piled our luggage.

To the left of the hallway is a kitchen, a space about six feet by nine, with built-in counters and cabinets, a sink with an overhead water heater that must be lit manually, and a propane-fueled two-burner portable cooktop. By Chinese standards, we are told, this is luxury.

Next to the kitchen is a bathroom, another luxury, because it is not shared with other apartments and it is equipped with hot water. The tub can easily fit one person if that person scrunches up with knees against chest. And the hot water must be heated ahead of time, with the overhead device in the kitchen. A tiny sink and a miniature version of a pull-chain toilet complete the amenities.

Off the hallway is a bedroom, big enough for only a small cot and a tea table. Aiyi will sleep there during our visit. Next to that—the supreme luxury—another bathroom, this one without benefit of hot water. The sight of the yellowed tub brings Ma to wonder aloud why no one teaches Chinese people to build better bathrooms. She points to the cracking tile. “Why so ugly?” Yuhang smiles and throws me a knowing expression that means, “Here we go again.”

Robert’s room is a living room turned into sleeping quarters.
His bed is a convertible sofa. He has a yellow-tiled balcony facing the wide street. Gray pants and white shirts are suspended from long bamboo poles that overhang the street. The laundry flaps in the wind like proletarian banners. At one end of Robert’s room is a long built-in hutch, and on top of that is a picture of Auntie Elsie’s mother, a dour, sparrowlike woman of some ninety-odd years when she died, and odd she was. My mother has already told me that the fierce old lady was an expert at playing one daughter off the other. She coddled Auntie Elsie, her favorite, and despised the other daughter for reasons unclear. Aiyi says she cared for the woman until she died, and she died in this very room, lying in the very bed that is now Robert’s.

“Perfect,” Robert says, making an A-okay sign. He seems relieved to have his own room, privacy, time away from nosy Chinese women.

The room Ma and I will share is Auntie Elsie’s. It has a double bed with neatly folded quilts at the footboard. Aiyi tells us that Elsie paid extra money for the parquet floors, the built-in dresser and armoire, and the beige paint job.

We return to the sitting room. Aiyi has cooked us wonton. They are made with a vegetable that has no American name. I am told that it is wild clover, although maybe it is not actually wild, maybe it is not really clover. Whatever it is, the taste is pungent, with a lingering aroma that reminds me of garlic chives.

Aiyi is happy to see that Robert, the
nangko-ning,
or foreigner, is bent over his bowl of wontons, eating heartily. Ma remarks in English, “Yuhang happy, eating lots. She knows how to enjoy life.” She tells Yuhang in Shanghainese that she has
gained too much weight. Yuhang smiles and pats her cheeks. Then Ma tells me in English that Yuhang’s face looks like a square, like her father’s. She does not like to see reminders of her first husband in her daughter’s face. Poor Yuhang. To me, she has a kind and generous face, guileless.

“Lose weight,” she commands Yuhang.

Yuhang smiles, happy to be criticized like a child.

“How old are you now?” Ma asks.

Yuhang answers that she is fifty-three.

“Lose weight,” Ma says. “Don’t eat too much cholesterol.” This last word is said in English. Yuhang nods without questioning what “cholesterol” means.

“Lose weight,” I tell Robert.

“Chill out,” he says.

Aiyi brings in another fresh-cooked batch of her wonderful wontons. Yuhang tells me that she and Aiyi will cook for us every day.

“Do you think you could stand to eat Chinese food morning, noon, and night?” I ask Robert. He nods. He looks like he’s in Chinese heaven.

And now Ma is translating the Shanghainese conversation for Robert and me. The apartment, she explains, is a model building. It was built by the government as an example of high-standard living. We turn around and admire the room, nodding with much appreciation.