Wish You Happy Forever (15 page)

September 13, 2001

Dear Chengdu and Chongqing volunteers,

This is simply the worst of times. In the last couple of days we've heard from a couple of you expressing concern and anxiety over the idea of traveling away from home and to the other side of the world next month. This is completely understandable, and is certainly compounded by the prospect of either bringing or leaving behind your family. If you know that this is not the right time for you to make this trip and wish to withdraw, please know that you are not alone.

Before we make a final determination, though, as to what should be the next step for Half the Sky, we would like to hear from the rest of you. Ours is a charitable mission and needn't operate on a stringent timeline. It is very possible that the wisest thing for us to do would be to postpone these builds until the world situation stabilizes. . . .

Big mistake. I had written to the volunteers on impulse—not the first time I'd charged ahead before consulting the board.

Maybe I was paranoid, but it seemed to me that there was a growing tension among some on our board. We were all on edge. Everyone was. Except for Dana, none of us had been on a board before and didn't know exactly what boards of directors did. Some just knew they didn't want me blithely making all the decisions. I felt it, but no one said it, and so I just kept doing what I thought was best, as if I were directing a movie. The director calls the shots: that's the only way good movies get made. It didn't occur to me that running Half the Sky might require a different set of skills.

The day after my e-mail, my pal Terri, our volunteer crew leader, sent an e-mail to the group:

Dear Board
,

I have decided I will not be going to Chongqing. I find the timing of this project to be unmanageable and profoundly difficult. I don't feel comfortable trying to make arrangements involving other people's lives in a time that's filled with so much uncertainty.

She then listed all the things that could go wrong. A lot. Two pages worth of things: stranded or detained volunteers, missing luggage, confiscated supplies, separated families in panic, a new attack, a retaliatory attack, airline shutdowns. The volunteers must not be allowed to participate in making decisions, she urged. In fact, she said, the build
must
be postponed and I had absolutely no business consulting with the volunteers directly.

I had rocked what was not a very stable boat. No surprise, most of the volunteers asked to postpone the trip, and so we did. But the unease among our founding families would never go away; Half the Sky was entering nonprofit adolescence.

THE FOLLOWING SPRING
, we made good on our promise to “develop the west.” None of the board members joined us.

We began in Chongqing, China's largest city. Before it became the poster child for China's western development campaign, old Chongqing, with its winding lanes and steep, staircased hills reminded me of San Francisco. At the confluence of three rivers, the city was always enveloped in mist. It felt like the foggy hills of my childhood.

Staircase shopping was tricky, though—no bicycles, no pedicabs, no trucks or taxis—and, on every Half the Sky build, serious shopping must be done. Naturally, the citizens of Chongqing had solved the problem decades before we got there.
Bongbong
s, men bearing stubby wooden poles, trailed behind us as we shopped. Our purchases—paint cans, rocking chairs, rugs, art supplies, whatever—were tied to the ends of the poles and easily hoisted onto strong shoulders. When we ran out of shoulders, more
bongbong
s magically appeared. By the time we arrived at a street wide and flat enough to accommodate three or four taxis, we had a dozen heavily laden but laughing
bongbong
s in our wake. They thought we were hilarious.

One day, after shopping, our car crept through traffic, leading a parade of supply-laden taxis.

“Why do you think there are so many women outside that little red temple, ZZ?”

“Must be because today is International Women's Day. Good day for women of China. Most work only half day or even have the whole day to enjoy outings and shopping.”

She quizzed the taxi driver.

“Ah yes, see,” she said. “That is the Guanyin Temple. Guanyin is Goddess of Compassion. Taoists, Buddhists, even Christians—all Chinese love her.”

“Can we have a look?” I asked.

“Yes, sure we can.”

We hopped out of the cab and ZZ instructed the whole fleet to pull over.

Inside the lovely old sanctuary, it was dark and crowded with women—worshippers and the nuns who ran the place. We bought joss sticks from a nun stationed near the door. Her shaved head and faded red robes blended into the ancient walls. Everything about her was serene. Only the little rubber-banded stack of bills she carried brought her into this century. She was about my age. We might have been born at the very same instant.
There are a million different ways to live a life,
I thought. Look at us now—standing here together as if it were always our destiny.

A couple of young shop girls, arm in arm, nudged me aside to pay for their incense.

“Why do they come here on this special day?” I asked. “What do they pray to Guanyin for?”

“They say she hears the cries of the world. She takes care of poor and suffering. Maybe there is sickness in the family. Maybe someone in trouble. Guanyin is there for the ones who are forgotten. Usually most pray for her to bring them sons.”

I watched the women, young and old, solemn in their prayers, and wondered which ones were praying for sons and grandsons. Which ones, because of government policy or sheer poverty, might give up their daughters if Guanyin failed to hear their prayers?

After a while, I lit my incense in the fire and, following ZZ's lead, bowed to the giant golden Guanyin. Then I knelt on threadbare silk cushions to pray.

I asked Guanyin to please remember the little girls. Please watch over them too.

“And, if you can, will you keep an eye on Half the Sky as well? Just in case we need some extra help?”

A COUPLE OF
days later, ZZ and I were on a four-hour (or so we had been told) bus trip from Chongqing to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan—trying to manage two concurrent builds without our crew leader. Training would start at Chengdu in the morning. Six hours had already elapsed. It was close to midnight. No Chengdu in sight. ZZ chattered to Old Yang on the phone and slapped my leg happily.

“Good news! Guangdong now welcomes Half the Sky programs! We can choose the sites! Old Yang says he just needs to reconfirm with Mrs. Wu. I am sure this is because President Red Sun Liu's boss, the former vice minister, said such nice things to you at dinner the other night in Beijing! What's that, Old Yang?” ZZ shouted into the phone. “Speak up!”

I could hear Old Yang straining to be heard over the bus noise. Poor fellow was even more impossible to understand on the telephone.

“It should be no problem . . . mmmrfughm . . .”

“Old Yang says please tell what cities you will choose. It seems to be with the support of the former vice minister, everything is moving faster than in the past!”

“Who's Mrs. Wu again? What's the name of the person in Guangdong Province who didn't want us to open programs in Shenzhen?” I asked warily.

“Mrs. Wu is the division chief of Civil Affairs Bureau in Guangdong Province who traveled with us last year when we sing songs together,” ZZ said.

“Oh,
Jane
?—the one who knows all the verses of ‘I Am a Little Member of the Commune'? That's wonderful! Please tell Old Yang thank you for the great news and for his hard work,” I said. “We can choose the cities just as soon as we're absolutely sure we have permission to set up our programs in Guangdong from Mrs. Wu and her boss and Foreign Affairs and everybody else.

“And this is just for you, ZZ—if this is true, it's fantastic news. I think we should try for the fall. There are two families who say they'll support programs in Guangdong. They want to help only the place where their daughters are from. I want to talk to them, but I'm afraid to if permission might be withdrawn again—if this is another Shenzhen. Old Yang needs to confirm it's a definite yes.”

“Understand,” ZZ said.

ZZ shouted into the phone and Old Yang mumbled back for another half hour or so. Still no city lights ahead. I began to wonder if we were on the wrong road. Finally, ZZ hung up and yelled at the bus driver a bit. Then she just stared at the gloom.

“Well?” I said.

“Driver says less than one hour to Chengdu. Maybe.”

“What did Old Yang say?”

“Yang asked again what your plan of Lanzhou. He hope Lanzhou is included in Half the Sky program in some way. I am sure Miao likes that too. Lanzhou is her hometown,” ZZ said.

“Lanzhou? But isn't Lanzhou in Gansu Province? Not Guangdong?”

“Sure it is. We went there!”

“The desert place in the northwest, right? Sort of ugly?”

“Not ugly to Miao,” said ZZ.

“But I thought we were talking about Guangdong. Where Maya is from.”

“Of course, we are,” ZZ said.

“Right. I'm confused.”

Sometimes even though we were speaking the same language it was as if we weren't.

“Don't worry.” ZZ shrugged. “It's not your fault; you're just ‘the other kind.'”

“You've said that before.”

“
Mei wenti,
” ZZ said. “No problem.”

I slumped deeper in my bus seat and pouted for a bit. Just for a bit, though. She had a point.

When I arrived home from that whirlwind tour of trouble spots, Anya, who had just turned three and was starting to like me a little, said, “Mom, you Chinese.”

“You mean Mommy was in China.” She'd been hearing English for only eight months now.

“No, Mom. You Chinese. I mean, Mommy Chinese,” she insisted.

I knew better than to pick a fight with my most avid critic.

“Okay,” I said.

But her pronouncement got me thinking. In four years we'd accomplished a lot, but it seemed I understood less about China now than I did back in 1998 when I devoted all those days to research. I was learning to love the country and adore the people and even decipher them a little, but I was in no way assimilating. Even though I liked to think there was no role too challenging for the actor in me to inhabit, in some elusive way it seemed that the more time I spent in China, the less “Chinese” I became.

Anya was wrong for once. I am
the other kind
. This may be for the best. The Chinese seemed to let foreigners get away with more.

Chengdu, Sichuan

The interminable bus ride finally came to an end. At 2:00
A.M.

Somehow, we managed to drag ourselves to Half the Sky's training at the orphanage first thing in the morning.

Wen's happy and productive Reggio-inspired preschools had already become legend; her exuberant training style was a must-see for anyone who happened to be on the orphanage campus while she was at work. She soon had a devoted band of young teachers who would follow her anywhere.

Meanwhile, Janice Cotton, the early childhood specialist from Alabama (also mom to a Chinese daughter) whom I'd met online, had taken my infant nurture idea and shaped it into a beautifully teachable program that spoke to women of even the humblest backgrounds. The locals we hired were, in the early days, mostly semiliterate factory workers, laid off from state-owned companies that had recently shut down. Janice had an intuitive connection with these undervalued women, who were just thrilled by the idea that someone would actually pay them to cuddle babies.

After the trainings, and after they'd been at their new jobs for a few months, the nannies often told us that they had been given another gift, one they hadn't understood before: purpose. Their babies needed them. The women began knitting sweaters for their little charges during their free time. They came in on Sundays just to make sure everything was okay. With such loving attention, the babies blossomed. They bonded with the nannies who loved them so. And then the thriving, happy babies were adopted. Soon we had to add another unit to our training: one on saying goodbye to the ones you love. That part still isn't easy. I don't know how they do it. The best nannies, the ones who manage to open their hearts again and again, only to have them broken—they suffer (and perhaps benefit) the most.

“Babies cannot take care of themselves,” Janice told her new trainees. “They need you to care for them—not just in a physical way, but in an emotional way. Babies in institutions don't have parents to give them love. The babies in this orphanage are totally dependent on you nannies and
ayi
s to take care of them when they are hurt, to love them when they are lonely, and to challenge them to take risks and to learn new things. This is what we call ‘responsive care.'

“We talk a lot about responsive care and how important it is to a baby's development. Babies who have responsive care grow up to be happy and able children and adults. Research studies show that babies who have
not
experienced responsive care often have difficulty in many different areas of development when they are older. The purpose of Half the Sky is to make sure that the babies in this institution have the responsive care that they need to grow up to be happy and healthy. Your job is very important. The kinds of care that you provide to babies here will have lifelong effects for them when they grow to be children and later adults.”

Then Janice went on to demonstrate responsive care by inviting Dr. Huang, her training partner and interpreter, to dance. As music filled the training room and they waltzed around, Janice called out, “See how I'm letting Dr. Huang lead? I'm giving him responsive care. But see how he pays attention to me too? If I want to twirl, he is ready to help. Responsive care is a dance.”