by Ann Mah
Wang Wei is handsome, I suppose, with his sharp features and rimless glasses, though I’ve noticed that his thin lips rarely lift into a smile. I try to listen in on his conversation, but all I can hear is the quiet but forceful cadence of his voice as he issues instructions to his colleagues. Their deferential nods indicate their respect (or is it fear?). When Wang Wei stops talking to eat a piece of chicken, I open my mouth to ask him a question. But what? Where are you from? What’s your favorite color? I want to get to know him, but I don’t know how to push past that cold aura of quiet power that makes me shiver.
Next to me, Jeff and his bandmates smoke a steady stream of Marlboro Reds and dissect the show in rapid Chinese. Jeff showed up about an hour after we did, bouncing in with a grin and kissing me on the lips, though I tried to avoid it. I haven’t had the chance to ask him what the hell he was thinking when he introduced me as his girlfriend. But it’s hard to stay angry with him. He keeps turning from his conversation to interpret for me, or scoop morsels of food on my plate. Plus, he looks damn cute in that cutoff T-shirt, which shows off his muscled arms.
I sip from my cup of chrysanthemum tea and try to imagine myself with Jeff as my boyfriend. Dating a Chinese guy would certainly be a first in my relationship history. Hell, I’ve never even had an Asian boyfriend. It’s not something I’m proud of.
“Why don’t you go out with a nice Chinese boy?” my mother would urge, her voice cracking with frustration. “Why?”
Why? There were so many reasons. For one thing, there were only three Asian guys in my high school—we only make up 3.6 percent of the U.S. population, after all—and one of them was gay. Then in college, after Blaine and I broke up, I did have a brief fling with a Korean guy, Rodney Chung. Unlike the sons of my mom’s friends, who were all prelaw/premed, he was majoring in sociology, and planning to work for Teach for America. Unfortunately, he also had a fiancée, which I discovered when she called late one night while we were, er, studying. After college, while working at Belle, I got set up with a couple of bankers, Chinese Americans who’d relocated from the West Coast. Alas, one of them was convinced the Met was a hot stock on the Nasdaq and Tolstoy some sort of Russian media mogul. I’m pretty sure the other one had a gambling addiction—unless you could consider the off-track betting parlor a romantic venue for a first date.
And then there were all those subconscious reasons, the messages I unconsciously absorbed from the media but couldn’t articulate. The Brad Pitts, Matt Damons, and Tom Cruises who strutted across movie screens with their golden skin and hair, high-bridged noses, and wide blue/green/anything but brown eyes. The choppy voiced, slit-eyed caricatures on TV who emasculated Asian men, depicting them as sneaky, or inarticulate, or nerdy, or most of all, undesirable.
But Jeff is different. For the first time, I’ve met a Chinese guy who looks like he could be comfortable on a motorcycle—and not just one that’s attached to a Wii. Maybe he’s never read Shakespeare, but his muscled arms and dimpled smile definitely make up for any missing brain power. Shouldn’t I finally date someone Chinese? After all, I am ethnically Chinese. I’m living in China now. And—not that this is a major concern, but still—my mother would be thrilled. At the thought of Jeff’s boyish smile, my stomach flips. But it changes to an anxious churn when I remember his high-handed behavior at the ball. Why did he have to call me his girlfriend in front of everyone? For a second Charlie’s puzzled, pained face flashes before me, and my stomach twists with a feeling that I can’t identify.
My gaze crosses the round table and rests on Jeff’s band members. There’s the drummer, Li Xing, a round-faced, muscular guy with a shaved head and kind smile. Next to him sits the guitarist/manager, Hu Jia, an arrogant expression resting on his sharp features as he surveys the restaurant’s other tables. And then there are the triplets, as I’ve come to think of them, the backup dancers: three petite Beijing girls, their hair frizzed into identical mullets. They scoop spoonfuls of shaved ice and mango into their pretty mouths and offer squeaky monosyllabic responses to all our questions.
It’s well after 2:00 A.M., but Bellagio remains packed with an energetic crowd, most of whom have spilled over from Babyface, the swish nightclub next door. We’ve eaten savory strips of tofu with fermented black bean, and nuggets of Sichuanese fried chicken hidden in a nest of bright chili peppers. Claire ordered dessert: a towering mound of shaved ice piled high with red beans, green beans, tapioca pearls, sago chunks, canned fruit cocktail, condensed milk, everything, really, as its name zonghe baobing, indicates. It’s cold and sweet, like ice cream with a rubbery chew.
Our waitress approaches our table and sets down one more dish, a chunk of braised meat in a dark sauce.
“Did we order this?” Claire looks confused.
“Wo dianle. Wo yao ni de meimei shi shi.” Wang Wei’s gaze finds mine and I repress a shiver. Something about his thin face intimidates me. Now he’s ordered up a dish, especially for me to try.
“What is it? Shi shenme cai?” I swallow. Claire insists Wang Wei’s English is word perfect, but I haven’t had a chance to find out. So far, he’s insisted on speaking to me only in Chinese, seeming to relish my bad accent and halting replies.
“Kong rou.” He pushes the dish toward me, leans over and scoops a chunk onto my plate, where it glistens slightly, the slivers of meat lost in the stripes of solid fat.
“Uh, xie xie!” I poke at it with my chopsticks. “What’s kong rou?” I make a fruitless attempt to separate the meat from the fat.
“Ni pa fei rou ma? Ni kan! Hao chi!” Wang Wei stabs at the meat and eats a bite, chewing thoughtfully. “You Americans are too afraid of a little fat,” he says. Scorn compels him to finally speak in English.
My cheeks flame as I reluctantly take a bite. The fat squishes in my mouth and I quickly swallow. “Tastes good! Hao chi!” I say politely. “What kind of meat is it? Pork?”
“Gou rou.” Wang Wei’s chilly smile stretches his thin mouth.
I blanch. “Dog?” I push my plate away. “That was dog meat?”
The table erupts in laughter. “Kai wan xiao!” says Wang Wei. “Just kidding! It’s pork.” He wraps an arm around Claire. “I told you she wouldn’t eat it,” he snorts.
Claire shifts uncomfortably and takes a sip of tea. “What did you think of the Taiwanese food, Iz?” she says, clearly trying to change the subject. Her eyes, when they meet mine, are beseeching.
I gaze at my sister, her face aglow in Wang Wei’s presence. This isn’t some casual, expat fling, I realize. Claire is in love. I resist the urge to fling a protective arm around my sister. I can understand why she would be attracted to Wang Wei’s keen good looks, his undeniable intelligence, his high-profile lifestyle. But part of his allure is a carelessness that makes me fear for her. Swallowing my irritation, I take a deep breath and try to inject some warmth into my voice. “It was Taiwanese? It was good—like fancy jiachangcai. I can’t tell how it’s different from regular Chinese food, actually.”
“Why would it be?” Wang Wei says in Chinese, leaning forward and crossing his arms. “Taiwan is a part of China.” His eyes flash.
“Bu shi. Not really.” Chloe pushes her bowl of rice away impatiently. “In Taiwan, we have a democracy. And a free press. You don’t have that on the mainland.”
“Well, according to our government, there’s only one China,” Wang Wei says testily, echoing the official view.
In the months since I moved to Beijing, I’ve become increasingly aware of the tensions between mainland China and the tiny island on its southeastern coast, Taiwan. The two governments have harbored ill will since 1949, when the Kuomintang lost the civil war to the Chinese Communist party and fled to the island, founding the Republic of China. Since then the issue of whether Taiwan represents all of China (as claimed by the Republic of China), or is an inalienable part of the motherland (as claimed by the Communist party) is a topic so pitted with mines, just thinking about it could set off an explosion.
My m
ind drifts to Max Zhang and his bitter Taiwanese childhood, colored by the chaos of political instability and debilitating poverty; about his twin sister, left behind on the mainland in 1949, who was beaten to death in a struggle session during the Cultural Revolution. His feelings about China—whether one China, or more—are more complex than I could ever hope to understand.
“Come on, guys,” Jeff says soothingly. “Let’s not argue about politics. We’re so lucky—China is booming, changing so fast. Yi ri quan qiu. One day is equal to a thousand autumns. Who cares about Taiwan?”
Wang Wei shrugs carelessly. “You’re right. As long as I’ve got my iron rice bowl…Prada in the closet, the Benz in the garage, what else really matters?”
Jeff leans back in his chair and smiles. “More importantly, let’s talk about where we’re going next. Babyface?”
Everyone groans. “Only if we can get a VIP table,” says Pearl.
“Yeah,” says Jeff. “Last time we had to sit next to the dance floor and people kept bothering me all night.”
“Oh, you loved it.” Hu Jia throws a crumpled napkin at Jeff. “All those teenage girls asking for your autograph…”
I watch them banter and force a smile to my lips. I’ll go to Babyface and drink Chivas and green tea and feel the loud techno beat vibrate against my sternum. It’s better than sitting at home, contemplating Taiwan, wondering if I’m part of something or tied to nothing at all.
Sichuan
“People from Sichuan, known to the other Chinese as pepper maniacs, like to make a distinction: ‘la’ is the taste that burns, while ‘ma’ numbs.”
—A. ZEE, SWALLOWING CLOUDS: A PLAYFUL JOURNEY THROUGH CHINESE CULTURE, LANGUAGE AND CUISINE
For as long as I can remember, everyone has gathered at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. Easter, Christmas, and Chinese New Year are spent at Aunt Marcie’s (except for one terrible year, when we all went to Las Vegas and Aunt Marcie lost a thousand bucks shooting craps), but on the last Thursday in November, my parents’ ranch-style house drifts with the cozy smell of roasting turkey and crackles with the voices of my mother and her sister. Only three years apart, they are alike in their slight figures, bouffant hairstyles, sharp tongues, and unrestrained curiosity—especially when they’re together. For me, Thanksgiving is traditionally a long weekend filled with food, TV, and difficult conversations.
Take last year. When Aunt Marcie arrived, she made a beeline for me in the kitchen, where I wrestled with a can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce. “Don’t you have a boyfriend yet?” she asked, gazing at me unblinkingly before sighing. “Aiya…I should introduce you to my plastic surgeon. It’s such an easy operation now…not like in my day! Just a quick procedure and you’ll be home in a couple of hours.”
She meant blepharoplasty, of course, the cosmetic surgery that widens the eyes from single-lidded to double. My mother and her sister worshipped the surgeon’s knife, both boasting eyes more marble-shaped than almond. The summer before she started Harvard, even Claire endured the procedure. Only I refused, and my resistance quickly became a bone of contention between me and Aunt Marcie, who could never see me without placing a manicured index finger on my lid and raising the skin, “Just to see what you’d look like, sweetheart.”
It’s not that I was opposed to the surgery, which is common and quick, and done in an outpatient clinic in just a few hours. It was so accepted among Chinese American families that my mom and her sister spoke of it in a normal tone of voice, unlike so many other topics that shouldn’t have been considered shameful but were, like sex, or breast cancer, or being gay. Plenty of Asian women did it—including some whom I admired, like Connie Chung, and some I didn’t, like Tina Chang. I just couldn’t imagine having my eyes snipped. I didn’t believe in changing my features so I could assimilate to an American ideal of beauty, and—remarkably, considering how vulnerable I am to other people’s opinions—I thought my eyes looked fine.
Yet the more I refused to consider the surgery, the more frustrated my mom and Aunt Marcie grew, until their suggestions had rocketed from coaxing to coercion. They began to equate my single status with my single eyelids. Aunt Marcie even tried to bribe me into seeing her plastic surgeon by offering to buy me a handbag she knew I coveted—Gucci with bamboo handles—if I would just agree to a consultation.
“It will make you more confident,” she urged. “I know you want to look pretty. Just meet with him. Please.”
It pained me to turn her down, knowing I’d never be able to purchase the handbag myself (and it’s so beautiful, not to mention iconic), but I summoned up some hidden strength and said no. Aunt Marcie didn’t talk to me for month.
After the Gucci purse incident, Julia suggested that I sit down with my mother and Aunt Marcie and tell them that under no circumstances would I ever consider eye surgery, and could they please stop asking me, because their insistence was damaging our relationship. “Just be calm and firm,” she said.
I choked on my martini. “Are you kidding?” I gasped, after I’d finished coughing. “They’re Chinese. They don’t talk about their emotions. They repress them and tell you some obscure Chinese story about peacocks and the emperor. And then, months later you realize that was a metaphor and they were actually furious with you.”
And so, I didn’t confront my mother and Aunt Marcie. Instead, I moved to China, where the distance and twelve-hour time difference makes it difficult for them to badger me. I may be a dating disappointment, a single-lidded romantic failure, but at least I’m no longer reminded of my shortcomings every other weekend and national holiday.
And this Thanksgiving I’ll finally be free of Aunt Marcie’s probing fingers. I’ll invite my friends, and we’ll eat at 7:00 P.M. instead of three in the afternoon, the turkey will be stuffed with bread instead of rice, and no one will care if I have a boyfriend.
I’ve ordered the turkey from Jenny Lou’s and already made pie crust and frozen it. Geraldine is bringing green bean casserole, and Ed mentioned something about a pitcher of Bloody Marys. It’s going to be an ideal Thanksgiving, just the way the pilgrims imagined it. Except in China, not America, obviously.
In fact, I’ve been so busy dreaming about pumpkin pie and sweet potatoes that I hardly had time to think about all those pesky doubts crowding the back of my mind. Like the hollow feeling I get when Geraldine teases me about Jeff being my boyfriend, even though he clearly is not. Or the frostily polite tone in Charlie’s voice at the Marine Ball—not to mention his conspicuous silence (I thought I saw him in the lobby the other day, but when I called his name, he didn’t turn around). Or the dead-end path my career seems to be taking, ever since my piece on Max Zhang got censored (I love Beijing NOW, but it can make People look like Pulitzer material).
I know I should have pitched the Max Zhang story to a few American publications. But as the days slipped into weeks, my ambition felt more and more like a fantasy that had drifted too far from reality. So, I was more than a little surprised when Ed brought it up over lunch one day.
“Isabelle.” He raised his voice over the roar that filled our neighborhood noodle joint, shifted his bulk on the tiny chair and clutched at the table, nearly sending a bottle of vinegar into my lap. The waitress set down large, steaming bowls of soupy noodles, and Ed immediately dove in, slurping up a mouthful before turning to me. “Wha da fuck ish goin’ on wi’ dat Mash Ang piece?”
I allowed a spoonful of salty broth to slide down my throat. “Sorry—I didn’t catch that?”
He finished chewing, swallowed, and sighed. “The Max Zhang piece. What’s happening with it? I thought you were going to pitch it.”
“Oh, yeah, well I’m still thinking about where to send it.” I avoided his eyes and tried to pile noodles into my porcelain spoon.
“Why?” He slapped his hand on the table and soup slopped over the edge of our bowls. “What the bloody hell are you waiting for?” He glared at me before twining another bunch of noodles around his chopsticks. Ssslurrp, ssslurrp, sss
lurrp.
“I’m still doing some research on the Internet…trying to figure out the best way to pitch it…”
“The longer you sit on it, the harder it’s going to be to sell.” He reached for his tea and took a long sip. “Look, I’ll give you the names and e-mails of some editors, but only if you promise to pitch it by the end of the week.”
“Really?” I felt my face grow pink. “You’d do that for me?” It was such a kind, generous act…in fact, totally unlike Ed. I crossed my arms and fixed my eyes on him. “Why?” I asked.
“Come on, Iz. Don’t look at me like that.” He shrugged, his eyes wide. “I’m not a monster. I’ve been known to help people.”
“Please, I know you better than that. Now, why?”
He toyed with his noodles and then rested his chopsticks on the edge of his bowl. “Honestly?” He continued in a rush. “Life is pretty good here for us…we eat at all the best restaurants, hang out at the hippest clubs, get pissed at the coolest bars, the magazine keeps us busy, we’re surrounded by beautiful women…” He caught my baleful stare. “Okay, erase the beautiful women part. Anyway, my point is, it’s easy to drift along in an expat haze, not thinking about where your life is going…And before you know it you’re forty-three and the only clips you’ve produced in five years are from Beijing NOW. I don’t want to see that happen to you. You’re too good a journalist.” He offered me a wry smile.
