Good Chinese Wife Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Susan Blumberg-Kason

  Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Black Kat Design

  Cover image © Maria Dorner/PlainPicture-Rauschen

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  This book is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of experiences over a period of years. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been re-created.

  Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: A Chance Meeting in Hong Kong

  Chapter 2: An Introduction to Chinese Culture

  Chapter 3: Entering a Chinese Fairy Tale

  Chapter 4: Learning the Chinese Rules of Dating

  Chapter 5: Sharing Secrets

  Chapter 6: “China Is My Home”

  Chapter 7: Chinese New Year in Hidden River

  Chapter 8: A Hong Kong Wedding

  Chapter 9: Honeymoon in Hong Kong

  Chapter 10: Summer Vacation in Hidden River

  Chapter 11: Sojourn in Shanghai

  Chapter 12: The Train to Suzhou

  Chapter 13: A Chinese Wedding Banquet

  Chapter 14: Visit from “Japanese Father”

  Chapter 15: Women Are Dirty

  Chapter 16: The Foreign Stepmother

  Chapter 17: America, My Exotic Home

  Chapter 18: Another Chinese New Year in Hidden River

  Chapter 19: The Mysterious Yoshimoto

  Chapter 20: At Home in Hong Kong

  Chapter 21: Red Alert!

  Chapter 22: A Chinese Conception

  Chapter 23: Spring in San Francisco

  Chapter 24: A Surprise Guest

  Chapter 25: A Good Chinese Wife

  Chapter 26: The Ex-Wife

  Chapter 27: Quiet in Kowloon

  Chapter 28: Settling into San Francisco

  Chapter 29: At Home in America

  Chapter 30: The New Arrival

  Chapter 31: The Neighbors

  Chapter 32: Trying Traditions

  Chapter 33: A Parental Invasion

  Chapter 34: Battling the Tiger Mother

  Chapter 35: A Letter from Yoshimoto

  Chapter 36: “Why Do You Need Mother’s Day?”

  Chapter 37: Peace at Last

  Chapter 38: To Day Care or Not to Day Care?

  Chapter 39: Indian Summer

  Chapter 40: The Plan

  Chapter 41: A Storm Is Brewing

  Chapter 42: A “Casual” Visit to China

  Chapter 43: Now or Never

  Chapter 44: Planning to Leave

  Chapter 45: The Morning of Departure

  Chapter 46: Delayed in San Francisco

  Chapter 47: Sweet Home Chicago

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For my family: Tom, Jake, Rachel, and Martin

  Author’s Note

  I have changed the names of most people in this book to protect their identities. For the sake of storytelling, I have consolidated a couple of secondary characters and have changed the location of one small scene from Chicago to San Francisco. To keep with the flavor of the story, I have included some Chinese dialogue, most of which uses the pinyin system of romanization that’s been prevalent in mainland China since the 1950s. I’ve also used a little Cantonese romanization and the local Hubei province dialect from my former in-laws’ hometown. As I’ve briefly mentioned in the book, Chinese family names appear first, so Cai Jun’s family name is Cai (pronounced Tsai) and his given name is Jun. Thus, his father’s and sisters’ names also begin with the family name of Cai. Women in China do not change their names when they marry, but it’s quite common for non-Chinese women to take their Chinese husbands’ names.

  Prologue

  “Now tell me something,” Cai said, holding my hands in his. “What about me do you love?”

  “Everything.” I could feel my cheeks burning red.

  “What’s everything? I want to know.” He rubbed the tips of his long fingers over my nails.

  “You’re kind, intelligent, funny, modest…and a good communicator,” I mumbled, utterly enthralled by him.

  He nodded with satisfaction. “Do you want to know why I love you?”

  “Yes!” Being a painfully shy Midwestern wallflower, I had never dated anyone for more than three weeks. At times it had seemed unlikely that I would ever have a long-term relationship, let alone marry. I had no idea why an attractive scholar like Cai would be interested in me, but I was thrilled that he was. I felt like a schoolkid waiting for a good report card, but instead of earning grades for classes, I was about to receive them for my personality, for my very being.

  “Modern Chinese women are harsh, emotional, and selfish. You’re not like them, and you’re not like typically loud American women. You remind me of traditional women in China’s countryside—kind, warm, and soft.”

  Just before this, I had been tutoring Cai in English to prepare for a presentation at the university in Hong Kong, which we both attended. Because our engagement happened so quickly, I didn’t question why he thought I wasn’t a typical American. Or why he deemed loud and emotional Chinese women so unbecoming. I was thrilled that he viewed me as a traditional Chinese woman. I saw it as the utmost compliment.

  When walking, look straight, turn not your head;

  Talking, restrain your voice within your teeth;

  When pleased, laugh not aloud;

  If angry, still make no noise.

  —Ban Zhao, the first known female Chinese historian (45–116 AD)

  Instruction for Chinese Women and Girls

  Chapter 1

  A Chance Meeting in Hong Kong

  The Chinese University of Hong Kong sits atop a mountain, north of Hong Kong Island and twenty minutes south of the mainland China border. When I arrived on campus in 1990 for a college exchange year, I had imagined Hong Kong would be a city of skyscrapers and neon. But the only lights around the campus came from the occasional barge or leisure boat in otherwise quiet Tolo Harbour. On the weekends, the campus was almost deserted. Local students returned home to their families, and the few overseas students studying abroad left for the bustling expat areas of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

  Upon my return for graduate school years later, new residential skyscrapers had popped up across the harbor. The campus was beginning to look like what I’d first imagined. But the most significant change on campus was that the mainland Chinese po
pulation had blossomed from a handful of people to about two hundred graduate students. I was fascinated by these newcomers and their alluringly mysterious culture, so utterly different from my own.

  On one of those still-quiet Saturday nights, a month after I started graduate school, I locked myself out of my dorm room. I was on my way to call a friend, using the hall phone around the corner, and as soon as I closed my door, I knew I had left my key on my desk. My roommate, Na Wei, hailed from Harbin in northeast China, but she slept in her boyfriend’s single room most nights and only returned to our room during the day when she needed a change of clothes or a short nap. So no luck there.

  Then it hit me. The guard downstairs kept spare keys. I could borrow one from him.

  My stomach fell when the elevator opened on the ground floor. The lobby was empty. I inched over to the guard’s desk to read a tattered white sign perched upon it. Although I couldn’t speak the local Cantonese dialect, I had studied Mandarin, the official language in mainland China. With five years of Mandarin behind me, I could almost make out the meaning of the Chinese characters on the sign: if, need, something, and return. But one character came up as a blank. If you need something, I will return blank.

  If only I could read the one character describing when the guard would return. I usually got around Hong Kong without having to resort to my little, red Chinese-English dictionary. Now, the one time I needed it, it was locked away in my room, not far from my coveted key.

  I decided to take a seat on a vinyl bench near the front door in case someone came by who could translate that mysterious character. Worst case, I would have to stay up all night until the daytime guard arrived.

  And that would indeed be the worst case for me. Other than on long international flights, I had never pulled an all-nighter. I was the type of college student who worked ahead to avoid cramming all night before exams or writing a paper the night before its deadline. Thinking about the daunting prospect of a lobby all-nighter, I looked up, startled, as two men and a woman suddenly entered the building.

  Cai immediately caught my attention. Like a movie star, he stood six feet tall with confident eyes and an infectious smile. His hair was cut in the popular Hong Kong men’s wedge of the early 1990s—longish on top, tapering down to almost a crew cut a few inches above the neck. He carried himself with the self-assurance of someone used to drawing admiring glances. He looked striking in his stylish brown corduroy pants, short-sleeved shirt, and hunting vest, but I couldn’t place his nationality. Based on his more sophisticated appearance, I figured he was from Taiwan, or maybe an overseas Chinese from Japan or another developed country.

  His friends, however, weren’t so hard to identify. The shorter man wore an olive business suit with the white label still stitched to the cuff, and the woman was dressed in a long, striped polyester skirt and a mismatched floral blouse. Definitely mainland Chinese.

  On my first trip to China in 1988 with a group from high school, I had noticed this eclectic fashion trend. Up until the late 1970s, fashion in China consisted of simple “peasant pajamas” or “Mao suits.” In the years after the Chairman’s death, people started to experiment with colors and patterns, including bright stripes and flowers. So this distinct mainlander fashion was easy to recognize in stylish Hong Kong.

  Once Cai’s friends turned toward the elevator, I knew I had to act quickly before he left the lobby and I had to face my all-nighter again. “Excuse me, can you read this sign?” I hurried after Cai, speaking in English. No answer. Oh God, what if he only knows Cantonese? I thought. But I was determined not to sit on that bench all night, so I repeated my question in Mandarin as I felt a pearl of sweat trickle down my neck.

  Cai glanced at the sign and said nonchalantly in Mandarin, “Tā jiù mashàng huílái.” He will be back soon. His Mandarin was clear and articulate, without the slurring of the northern Chinese accents.

  “Oh, thank goodness! I locked myself out and need a key,” I explained to this attractive, well-spoken stranger, stumbling in choppy Mandarin. The relief I felt, knowing that I wouldn’t have to camp out in the dorm lobby all night, seemed insignificant compared with my sudden desire to know everything about him. I needed to find a way to prolong our conversation.

  “Méi wèntí.” Don’t worry. He nodded slightly, as if locking oneself out happened all the time. “Actually, I need to buy a phone card from the guard.” He went to sit on the bench I had just occupied. I couldn’t believe my luck.

  Without speaking, I joined him, leaving a full arm’s length between us. Although I wanted to sit closer to Cai, I knew from my junior year in Hong Kong and the few times I’d visited mainland China that people in Asia often viewed Western women as loud and loose.

  Up until three weeks earlier, I wouldn’t have allowed the silly stereotype to cause me any worry. But I had jumped into two consecutive flings with men on campus soon after I moved into the dorm. Now seated next to Cai, I felt sensitive and ashamed that I’d allowed myself to become intimate with people I had no intention of dating seriously.

  Doing something like that was so out of character for me. In high school, I didn’t date at all. When I moved to Baltimore to attend Goucher College, a few guys asked me out for first dates, but there were never follow-up phone calls. I wasn’t too bothered because the feeling was mutual. Conversation with them seemed forced, and our common interests were minimal.

  Finally, eighteen months before I returned to Hong Kong for graduate school, I decided I wanted a serious boyfriend. After college, I had found a job in an academic library in Washington, DC. I immediately enrolled in a Mandarin course at the university and became friendly with a Japanese student named Jin. A couple of months into the semester—his last—Jin asked for my number. He wondered if I’d like to join him for dinner one Saturday night during midterms. I wasn’t interested in him romantically but didn’t think any harm would come of it.

  On the evening of our dinner, Jin met me at the library and led me several blocks to his apartment, a low-rise on a side street covered with fallen ginkgo leaves. From afar, the ground appeared to have a light coating of snow. Inside, we spoke about travel, music, and art while he cooked Chinese food and poured me a glass of wine. It was the first time I felt comfortable talking to a man my age. Jin didn’t hug or kiss me that night. When I left his place by cab after dinner, I wished he had.

  With limited dating experience, I didn’t want to tell him that I was starting to have feelings for him for fear of scaring him off. But I had enough chutzpah to phone him most evenings. We would talk for hours about identity, stereotypes, movies, books, travel, and whatever else was on his mind that day. I mainly listened. During those phone conversations, he never mentioned keeping in touch after he left Washington at the end of the semester. So I finally decided to find out what he was feeling.

  Our last Chinese class concluded in mid-December. Jin walked me back to the library, like he did after each class. As we started to cross Massachusetts Avenue, I laced my fingers just above his elbow. Keeping my eyes on the ground in front of us, I could feel his arm tense up. Suddenly he tore away from me and raced across the street. Stunned, I froze in utter shame. Had I completely misjudged Jin?

  This part of DuPont Circle was full of students I knew from the library, so I continued across the street and didn’t dare look around to see who had just witnessed my most humiliating and foolish moment. The walk back to work seemed like miles, although the library was only halfway down the street.

  The following afternoon when Jin arrived at the library and settled into a carrel near the circulation desk, I hid among the reserve shelves. But there was only one exit, so I couldn’t avoid him when my shift finished an hour later. As I made my way to the elevator, Jin followed me in silence. I prayed that other people would leave the library at the same time, but no one else budged. On the ride to the ground floor, he tried to apologize—complete with the cliché, “It’
s not you, it’s me”—and said he would call. Shaking my head, I didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t stop replaying his mad dash across the street.

  I called Jin days later when I did feel like talking. All he said about us was that it would never work out. My shame still raw, I didn’t ask him to elaborate. But I mulled it over. Was I too common for his upper-crust family, or was it because I wasn’t Japanese? Or did he just not like me that way?

  We kept in touch over the phone after he moved, and although the hurt from that December day was still fresh, I hadn’t thought there would be any harm in maintaining a connection to him. But eventually, I realized my self-esteem had suffered so much that I severed ties with him and vowed to never put myself in that position again.

  Ever since my junior year in Hong Kong, I’d been pining to return there, not as a tourist but as an expat. So after the fiasco with Jin, I decided to leave America for Hong Kong, a place I knew and loved. A place where I felt more accepted and comfortable, and where I better understood the customs than I did Jin’s Japanese culture.

  I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but I also needed proof that I was attractive and desirable. So without ever having experienced a rebound relationship, I jumped into consecutive flings with the first two men I met on campus in Hong Kong. Guo was a PhD student from mainland China who stated up front that he wasn’t interested in a relationship, but was rather curious about being with a Western woman.

  I convinced myself that if a man could want that, there was nothing wrong with a woman wanting the same. I had never been intimate with anyone before Guo. Unlike most students in the dorm, he had a single room, so we had more privacy than most. At first Guo was charming and spoke about his work back in China. “I’m a poet, a playwright,” he crooned as I sat in his lap on his solitary desk chair.

  But after our friendship was no longer platonic, I noticed that he bridled the next time I knocked on his door, as if he was impatient for me to leave. I could feel my self-esteem slipping to where it had fallen in Washington, DC. When Guo came to see me the following week, I turned him away, explaining that I needed a committed relationship. Later when we passed each other in the dorm lobby or in the cafeterias, I nodded as I would to any casual acquaintance.