Good Chinese Wife Read online

  All I could think about was spending the rest of my life with Cai—and that he wanted to share his with me. I didn’t dwell on the fact that I didn’t really want to live in China. Even after I had a moment to gather my thoughts, I still couldn’t speak up. What if he took back his proposal if I didn’t accept his terms? That seemed more unbearable than giving up a life in Hong Kong or America. So I blurted out, “Oh, that’s fine! I could live in China, too.”

  Cai bent in closer, peering at me with his gentle eyes. “So would you like to start dating?”

  I can’t believe this is happening. I was psyched! “Yes, of course,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and collected.

  He fidgeted as he looked away from me. “Can I kiss you?”

  “Yes.” I spoke quietly, yet with newfound self-assurance. When he stood up, I followed his lead, holding on to the desk to steady myself.

  Cai drew me to him with his cellist fingers and strong arms. After a drawn-out kiss, he held my hands in his, gazing into my eyes. “Do you have any bad habits?” he asked in the same way someone would whisper sweet nothings into a lover’s ear.

  I thought it an odd question to ask but felt grateful for his openness. Maybe I’d been wrong to feel so reserved in those first couple months. “Well, I don’t like conflict. Sometimes I bottle my emotions inside so I don’t have to argue.”

  He kissed the back of my hands one at a time. “You should always tell me how you feel: what bothers you, what you don’t like, what scares you. Remember, I’ve been married. Communication is vital for a happy relationship.”

  I gently squeezed Cai’s fingers, which still held mine. “What about you? Do you have any bad habits?” I couldn’t imagine any. He listens, he understands, he cares.

  Cai held my hands still. “Sometimes I get angry and don’t like to talk. Don’t worry when that happens. I just need time to resolve things myself.”

  I couldn’t picture him getting upset and clamming up. I’d seen him with his classmates that night we met and at the two dances. He was outgoing and upbeat in these social settings, and gentle with me. I looked down at our intertwined hands and felt my cheeks flush. This was all moving so quickly for me. And it seemed so impulsive. Yet I worried I would lose him if I turned him down.

  “When were you thinking about getting married?” I asked.

  “After we graduate? In a year and a half? Is that okay with you?”

  “Yes, of course. It’ll be like a graduation party and wedding all rolled into one.”

  Cai smiled and looked into my eyes. “Can you do me a favor? The other mainland students will be very jealous if they know we’re engaged. Just until the end of the summer, can you please not tell anyone on campus? In the fall it will be fine to talk openly about it.”

  “Do you really think the mainland students even care?”

  “Remember how they talked about us before we were even dating? They’ll go crazy if they know we’re already engaged. They’ll probably say I’m marrying you to get an American passport—”

  “But you’re the only one who wants to return to China. They want to go to the U.S.” How dare these students label him an opportunist like that? They didn’t know him like I did, and I wasn’t about to feed their gossip. In truth, I felt a little excited about keeping this secret, just as I had after Cai told me about his former marriage to Wei Ling and his fragile relationship with Ting-Ting.

  Cai then asked me why I loved him. It was difficult for me to express complex terms in Mandarin, but I tried my best to say that he was kind, funny, intelligent, and easy to talk to. As he left my room that evening, he kissed me again and whispered, “I love you,” before opening the door and returning to his room four floors below.

  Chapter 7

  Chinese New Year in Hidden River

  Chinese New Year came two months after Cai proposed. The longest and most important holiday in China, the New Year was a time for people to return to their families no matter where they lived in China. It was also the busiest travel season in Hong Kong, as people either went north to visit their ancestral homes or left the area for the beaches of Thailand, the Philippines, or Malaysia.

  As February approached, Cai thought it best to tell his family about me in person—and alone. I was anxious to meet them but trusted Cai’s judgment. There would be plenty of chances for me to be introduced, perhaps as early as that summer when he would return to China to conduct his dissertation fieldwork.

  When Cai left to study in Hong Kong, it probably occurred to his parents that he could meet and marry a Hong Kong Chinese woman. That was their idea of a foreigner. People in Hubei province didn’t speak Cantonese, and in most cases, people in Hong Kong wouldn’t understand the local dialects in Hubei. Hong Kong used traditional Chinese characters, along with some characters unique to Cantonese and some English letters, while people in China read and wrote simplified characters that had been introduced in the 1950s to increase literacy after Mao came into power.

  And the food in the two regions wasn’t the same: Cantonese food didn’t use chili peppers, but people in Hubei, just south of fiery Hunan province, were not afraid of spicy foods. Also, women in China didn’t change their names after they married, but Hong Kong women did.

  Although these differences might seem insignificant to the outsider, they were great enough to cause a cultural divide between many mainland students in Hong Kong and their local classmates. For students like me, who had studied Mandarin in our home countries, it was often easier to fit in with the Mandarin-speaking mainland students than with the local Cantonese students. Thus it was more common for mainland students to date foreigners who knew Mandarin than local Hong Kong Chinese who preferred to speak Cantonese.

  But to Cai’s parents, I would probably seem like an alien. Upon hearing my nationality, would they think I was a loose American who disregarded the traditional family unit? Would they worry that I would take Cai away from them, whisking him to the United States and changing him into an American? These questions raced through my mind when Cai suggested he return to Hidden River alone this time. I imagined his parents would need some time to digest this news.

  A couple of days after Cai left for Hidden River, I returned home one evening from the New Year’s market at Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island. Row after row of vendors selling pussy willow branches, kumquat trees, and plum blossom branches lined the spacious park along the harbor. I had met my roommates from my exchange year for dinner and a stroll through the festive market.

  In the spirit of the New Year, I purchased a small kumquat tree, the tiny orange fruits bobbing on their lush, green-leaved branches as I lugged it home on the train and halfway up the mountain to my dorm room. Just as I set the tree on my desk, the phone buzzer blasted in my room. I had a phone call.

  Picking up my key, I headed for the hall phone around the corner. I was surprised to hear Cai’s voice on the other end. He sounded out of breath. Had his family threatened to disown him if he married me?

  “I’m calling from the post office and there is a long line, so I can’t talk long. I just wanted to tell you that I love you. And that my family is anxious to meet you. I’ve told them all about you.”

  “Really? Did you tell them we’re engaged?”

  Cai still sounded rushed, yet elated. “Yes. They want you to come visit—as soon as possible.”

  “You mean now? During this break?” They couldn’t possibly expect me to buy a plane ticket at the last minute during the busiest travel season of the year. Maybe he meant for spring break.

  “Yes, yes! They know everything and want to meet you now. They are so happy for me, for us. When can you fly to Wuhan? I’ll meet you at the airport. Please come as soon as you can.”

  One moment I was returning from a fair with a kumquat tree, and the next I was expected to fly to Wuhan as soon as possible. I had thought that my biggest decision for
the rest of the evening would involve whether I would read before bed. Now I had to think about all I’d have to prepare if I were to suddenly leave Hong Kong for a week.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to meet Cai’s family, but flying up to Wuhan had never crossed my mind. In Hong Kong we only had a three-day vacation, but in China people took off two weeks. My classes would start up in two days and I’d have to miss a week if I suddenly left for Hidden River. And when a billion people travel throughout China during the Lunar New Year, tickets don’t exactly come easily. “I’m not sure I can find a flight now.”

  “Please look,” he said gently. “They really want to meet you. There must be some flights still available to Wuhan.”

  I paused, knowing deep down that I’d do whatever it took to get myself to Wuhan. What was one week of classes compared to meeting Cai’s family, my future in-laws? “I’ll call my travel agent first thing tomorrow morning. After I find out what’s available, I’ll phone you at your parents’ place.”

  “Thank you. Call me as soon as you buy your ticket.”

  The next morning I found a one-way ticket to Wuhan that cost as much as a round-trip ticket from New York to Paris. My savings from my research and teaching assistant salary just covered the airfare. I would see Cai and meet his parents the following day. In the meantime, I left a message with the department secretary to inform my professors I’d miss a week of classes. Most of the professors in my department came from Taiwan and, like Janice’s parents, were weary of mainland Chinese. So I was grateful I didn’t have to tell them in person about my trip and the reasons for it. I knew that some of my professors would not just worry that I had become involved with a mainland student, but that I would marry him.

  • • •

  Several hours later, I stepped out of the Wuhan military airport into a sea of men and women with black hair who wore either dark winter jackets or long, military-green wool coats. The temperature outside hovered just above freezing. Red Chinese character banners draped over the surrounding buildings provided the only color in a monochromatic landscape. Like the other Chinese cities I had visited, Wuhan appeared dilapidated, blanketed by a gray haze.

  Cai emerged at the back of the crowd, running toward me. When he reached the front, he embraced me tightly, lifting me off the frozen ground. All around, people stared at us while Cai took my suitcase. With his other hand, Cai held on to mine, leading me away from the masses to a gravel parking lot. He stopped when we reached a black Volkswagen Santana sedan. Two young men leaned against it, smoking cigarettes. The shorter one resembled a Chinese James Dean, with narrow eyes and a cigarette hanging almost limply from the side of his mouth. The taller one was Cai’s height and held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, like a pencil. Both either sported slight body waves or were growing out old perms.

  Cai introduced them as his brothers-in-law, Zhao Yun and Lin Haitao, who had driven with him on the two-hour journey from Hidden River. Something about this scene reminded me of the night I met Cai with his two mainland classmates, Luo Minghui and Yang Xiaoxun. Just like then, Cai’s companions seemed at home in China while Cai looked out of place, as if he belonged in a more cosmopolitan setting.

  “Ni hao, ni hao,” I said, greeting the men who would soon become my relatives. They nodded as Cai held open the back passenger door for me. An amulet bearing a young, rosy-cheeked Mao Zedong hung from the rearview mirror, protecting the car from calamity. Zhao, the Chinese James Dean, had borrowed the Santana from his dānwèi, or work unit. Back then, few people in China owned cars (and today, cars are still somewhat of a luxury in parts of rural China).

  The road to Hidden River loomed flat, monotonous, and uncluttered. The empty, rural highway contrasted sharply with Wuhan’s cramped city streets, with its masses of bicycles and pedestrians. Besides a few huge trucks, ours was the only vehicle on the highway in either direction. Cai and I sat in the backseat, his arm around my shoulders. With his other hand he pointed out a sputtering tractor and a flock of chickens so scrawny that they appeared not to have eaten since before the Great Leap Forward. Compared to the Hong Kong countryside, the road to Wuhan seemed like a blast back to the 1950s.

  We reached Hidden River two hours later, thick clusters of bicycles and pedestrians surrounding us like long-lost relatives. I felt my pulse rush as Cai rubbed my shoulder. The Santana crept through the city of one million people, which looked like a small town with its low buildings, street markets, and wide dusty roads. At his parents’ dānwèi on the other side of town, Zhao drove under a crumbling, arched gateway. I noticed a few rows of one-story, dilapidated redbrick buildings, as flat and grimy as old condemned motels in America. A handful of adults sat around a card table in front of one door, playing mah-jongg and sipping murky tea from old jars, while a band of children ran in and out of an open doorway.

  I almost choked when Cai said his parents had lived in one of those apartments less than two years ago. I couldn’t picture myself spending a week in one of the run-down brick shanties, but I would have felt worse for Cai’s parents if they still lived that way.

  Zhao parked the car in a gravel lot next to a building that looked deserted. Once outside, Cai took my hand while he hauled my suitcase on his other side. As we kicked up clouds of dust with each stride, I felt nervous and excited to meet my future in-laws. Zhao and Lin followed us. Still holding on to my hand, which wasn’t a common practice in China then unless it was between friends of the same sex, Cai nodded toward a drab, cement six-story walk-up that looked to be at least forty years old. “My parents live there.”

  “How old is this building?”

  “A year and a half. Just like new.”

  How was this building, in its Stalinist drabness, less than two years old? Even the run-down buildings in Hong Kong, like Janice’s in Kowloon, didn’t look this old—and hers really was decades old.

  As we walked around to the back of the building, Cai looked up and sang, “Mama, Baba!” A plump woman leaned out of an open window, her permed hair dyed as black as night. Cai’s mother screeched, “Yan-er!” Like many Chinese men, Cai went by his last name. But his parents still called him by his childhood nickname, Yan, the Chinese word for the swallow bird.

  Their three-bedroom apartment was no larger than nine hundred square feet, gigantic by Hong Kong standards. I noticed Cai’s parents and his three younger sisters still wore their winter coats, and I could see their breath as they spoke. The apartment’s mint green and white two-toned paint job reminded me of a hospital. The brown vinyl sofa in the living room offset the naked walls. The smell of coal, cooking oil, and strong, musty cigarette smoke brought me back to a week in Nanjing several years back when I visited the tour guide from my high school trip to China. Cai’s parents greeted me by smiling and nodding. They didn’t shake hands, kiss, or hug. The sisters talked among themselves and didn’t engage me in conversation. But Cai’s father spoke to me.

  “Àiwūjíwū,” Cai’s dad said while Cai and I stood holding hands in front of the wooden beads and red silk flowers that hung from the top of the door frame of the middle bedroom. After Cai’s dad recited this proverb, he covered his mouth with one hand to hide his teeth.

  “That’s a traditional Chinese saying,” Cai interpreted. “It means, ‘Love my house, love the crow on it.’”

  As the pungent, metallic smell of chicken blood wafted in from the kitchen, where Cai’s mother had returned to chop away at a fresh carcass, I pondered the meaning of this proverb while not breathing through my nose. From Cai’s translation, I interpreted it to mean that as long as you have love, you can withstand anything. I took comfort in this idiom; it showed that nothing mattered but the love of Cai and his family, even if it meant living in China and frequently visiting my in-laws in Hidden River, out in the middle of nowhere.

  • • •

  The toughest adjustment that week in Hidden River wasn’t trying to convince
Cai’s family to like me, or getting used to the modest living conditions. It didn’t concern the food or the people who stared at me as I strolled down the middle of the main street with Cai and his family. It was the damp, unrelenting cold. We never took our winter coats off inside until it was time for bed. And like the Cai family members, I didn’t shower once that week.

  “We only take a bath once a week. It’s too expensive to turn on the hot water,” Cai explained. I didn’t care that I would have to wait until I returned to Hong Kong before taking my next shower or taming my tangled hair. I would rather stay warm and covered than unpeel my many layers and expose myself to the freezing temperatures. My saving grace that week was the electric blanket Cai’s mother had placed on my bed. Thank goodness it wasn’t too expensive to use those. Cai and his parents warmed up at night with electric blankets, too.

  But I couldn’t avoid cold water all together. When I washed my hands, the icy water sent waves of shock through my system. After a winter of rinsing with frigid water, Cai’s family sported chapped purple splotches on their knuckles. To keep my hands warm, I fell back on a trick I’d learned in Nanjing—wrapping my hands around a mug of hot tea—even if I wasn’t thirsty. It was my only contact with heat during the day.

  The only other way to stay warm when I wasn’t tucked under the comfy electric blanket was to eat. I devoured everything Cai’s parents cooked—gooey fried bread dripping with pork grease; cooked greens swimming in liquefied fat from huge slabs of pork back; and plates of red and white glistening pork sausage. Normally I wouldn’t have eaten any dishes with pork, but I was fine with bending a rule to keep from feeling hopeless against the cold. I also wanted Cai’s parents to think I could adapt to Chinese culture, including a central component of that—eating Chinese food.

  After our first dinner together, Cai’s father asked, “Do you know the term yuánfèn?” I nodded. It means fate, something’s that meant to be.