by Eddie Huang
“Evan, what happened to Hakka Homes?”
“This is Hakka Homes.”
“This is Tower A of the Super 8.”
“You’ll see.”
Evan already had my keys, so we bypassed the lobby full of chain smokers and sleeping desk jockeys. It was a common scene in China: the business siesta. No matter where we went, the airport, the hotel, restaurants, people were always sleeping on the job. Morning, afternoon, or late at night, people slept on the spot. Some sitting, head back, mouth wide open, cigarette hangin’, others with their hands on the desk, the creative ones creating cots out of cardboard boxes full of quart containers in the prep areas of restaurants. I started taking photos for a coffee table book: Crouching Tiger, Sleeping Chinaman.
As I walked through the lobby, I peeped a sign against the wall advertising rooms by the hour. The elevator door opened and the floor was carpeted with sex-worker trading cards and another barker was standing in the corner of the elevator waiting for Johns. Your mans had carpenter shants on and was hotboxing the elevator with Honghe cigarettes, screaming through a gap grill*8 about his heauxs.
“Da gu! Da gu! Lai ba!”
“My g, are we really staying at a Times Square by-the-hour hooker hotel?”
“Yup. We’re here.”
We walked into a hallway lined with doors, each one fronted by a plastic takeout bag filled with garbage and chopsticks sticking out.
“They pick up garbage every morning if you leave it outside your door.”
“There are other people staying here overnight?”
“Yeah, tons of white dudes come in and out for the hookers, but some locals stay here ’cause they work in the area and they’re new to town, so they rent from Hakka Homes.”
“So what the fuck is Hakka Homes? This is a Super 8!”
“Hakka Heather owns Hakka Homes. She has a deal where she pays Super 8, then ‘culturally engineers’ the rooms, redecorates them, and rents them to people by the month for more money.”
“We’re staying at a Chinese hooker Ace Hotel.”
“Exactly.”
I walked through the hallway and saw a sliding glass door to the balcony with wet laundry hanging. Fifty feet to the right, I reached my room.
I dropped my bags and walked around the room. I was pretty impressed by Hakka Heather’s cultural engineering. I was sick of overly curated N.Y., and this badly appropriated motel room was just right. It didn’t overtake the culture of by-the-hour hotels and hawker stalls downstairs but lived alongside it wide-eyed and aware of what lay above and below, accepting and confident in its habitat and in its aspirations. Hakka Homes was the rose that grew from a hooker hotel, the answer to the gentrification riddle.
There was a faux Philippe Starck table for two elevated on a stucco platform, which was a little much, but everything else made sense. There was a window overlooking the hood for when you wanted to gaze out at the scooters and hawkers. Refrigerator with freezer, just big enough for dolo living and parties of five. A railroad layout from front door to kitchen to alternate patio door, leading to washing machine and lines for drying clothes. The living room to the left of the railroad structure had cold tile floors that were the perfect complement to the Chengdu blacktop we’d walk every day. I could already imagine my stank-ass feet in Dri Fit socks screamin’ for that cold-ass tile on the regular, but the couch had to go. It had been through wars, lumped up, guts falling out, cake-batter-lookin’ like Seaman’s Furniture. I thought about throwing Saran Wrap on the couch but left it alone.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Doraemon soap dispenser in the bathroom that reminded me of my mom. She loved cartoons. As a kid, I’d be embarrassed that all our household artifacts doubled as animated characters. Soap dispensers, cups, pens, chopsticks, and Kleenex holders in the crib were all green frogs and pink pigs. One of her favorite photos of me was a 1984 joint where I was hanging with a baker’s dozen of stuffed animals, hugging Snoopy, lounging on a big red lobster. It was a strange comfort to stand there, a grown-ass man in a Chengdu hooker hotel, half a world away from home, staring at a Doraemon soap dispenser next to a green bottle of Chinese Pert Plus.
—
I pulled myself out of the moment as Evan and I settled into the room. Something was hanging in the air between us. Evan could tell.
“So what do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“We need to get on the same page.”
“I have everything planned. I’m going to get the equipment with Hakka Heather tomorrow. I spoke to her, and she wants to show you options for kitchens, and she is ready for you to cook Friday.”
“Yo, that’s all good, but I got an email from Dad.”
“Yeah, I know.”
A month before we came to China, I had sent my dad an email criticizing Evan. For some nonsensical reason, my dad forwarded Evan my email, thinking it’d motivate him or get a conversation started, but it was a miscalculation. The only thing holding Evan and me together was this idea our mother planted in us that family was always enough. If we broke up, it wasn’t just the end of our business relationship, but in a lot of ways the end of an ideal. We’d still be brothers, we’d still see each other, but our belief that family always stuck together would die. My parents spoke with Evan; Emery, our other brother, spoke with Evan; everyone felt like it was time for him to leave Baohaus. Except Mom.
My mom had a dream. Ever since she had the three of us, she imagined us working together in the family business. That’s how she came up. Whether it was the family mantou, textile, or furniture business, they did it together. The philosophy wasn’t unique to my mom’s family or Chinese people, but was the universal code of immigrants in general. All you have is family. Does being family automatically make you compatible? No. It never did.
The partnership between Evan and me was doomed practically from the beginning, but this ideal of family kept us together for four years. Like alcoholics stumbling through the day on whiskey and trail mix, we were assed out. We had squeezed the family for everything it had, but my mom couldn’t let it go because her family had failed, too. She was trying to fix something that broke a long time ago. She saw the mistakes her own family made that shattered their business, and she left Maryland for Orlando when things fell apart. But she studied her family’s mistakes, trained us to work together, taught us everything she could in the hopes that we could do it right. That one day her family would stick together.
My pops was ready to let it go. He was the one we called to put Humpty and Dumpty back together every time we broke apart. He ran a restaurant. He knew what the two of us were responsible for, and he knew where the fracture was.
By now I was thirty-one. I wasn’t just one of the kids anymore, I had to be a mentor to Baohaus staff. Some of these kids had teen pregnancy scares, others left home, a few dropped out of school, and we had a few guys miss shifts because they got locked up on the weekend. I knew this was normal because I grew up around it. These are the things you sign up for working in a restaurant, but I wanted more for myself, the kids, and of course, Evan.
There was always a division between the college kids working at Baohaus and the career line/prep cooks. You love the college kids because they sell the product well, have email, and they fill out the paperwork. Their phones don’t get turned off, their baby mamas don’t come to the shop, and their cousins don’t try to rob you, but they never last more than a couple semesters, they have wandering eyes, and a lot of times they’ll sell your ideas and processes to their next employer. They’re carpetbaggers.
On the other side, we had my people from Lefrak City: Rah and Big Chris. They were content with their jobs and genuinely wanted to be friends. There was never any angling to move up or break out. They’d been with us more than three years and even after we let Big Chris go for being late, he kept coming to hang at the shop on the weekends because we were family. We burned Ls and listened to the new Wayne album, never letting business get in the way of what we were. Eventually, Big Chris
came back, and he’s there today. I actually tell Rah and Big Chris all the time that they gotta take on more responsibility, try to become managers, want more for themselves, but they don’t take me seriously. All you need is one person to believe in you, but sometimes it’s just too late.
I realized I was in a unique position as a veteran with feet on both sides of the track. I remember being a knucklehead doing ecstasy when I worked at Boston Market and putting my hands in the sweet potato casserole. I was that dude. But I also went to college, went to law school, and built the spaceship. I had a responsibility to these kids, especially Evan.
That was my son. I really felt that way. We lived together and paid our bills together. I woke him up on days he slept in, I had him send me daily recaps of his day, I checked his work, I was way up the motherfucker’s ass, and for good reason he got sick of it. But it was all I knew. My father hit Emery and me harder than he ever hit Evan and we were different for it. My personality was a product of an adversarial relationship with my pops—and as in our adversarial judicial system, my truths were many times forged in physical, mental, and social abuse. I learned to take it, I learned to hate it, and I learned to fight back.
On the other hand, Evan was happy. Part of me was relieved that Evan had a chance to see life through clear eyes, but I worried, too. My father was the thug motivation for Emery and me; Evan had to be his own.
“I’m just tired, Evan. I’m really tired.”
“I’m tired, too. Dad and Emery both think that we’re a bad fit, but Mom is right. We made it this far, we’re successful, and we gotta stick together.”
Against all logic, I agreed for the simple reason that it sounded good. Leaving home, breaking up, giving up on family, those things sound fucking terrible. I wanted to believe in family; I wanted to believe in love; I wanted to believe in us.
“I agree.”
“All right, well, you sleep in. The jet lag is gonna kill you. I’ll get up early and meet Hakka Heather for equipment.”
“Word. Peace, Ev.”
“Later, Ed.”
That’s how we always left it. A quote for the gods, a pound good night, and a pipe dream that sleep would give us a clean slate the next day.
The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.
Thus it has ever been.*9
* * *
*1 In the twelve months I knew Dena, I tried shit I’d never done before, like surfing, visiting Scranton, giving white people a chance, and not watching the Knicks. I watched fewer Knicks games than I ever had in my life, but then got sucked in again when it looked like Melo was going to carry us past the Pacers or like Chris Copeland was going to be the second coming of Sam Perkins or like Raymond Felton was actually a decent human being. None of these things were true. Raymond Felton is actually a terrible human being, Chris Copeland is a bum, and Melo carried us about as far as I got surfing.
*2 Starang.
*3 Mouth breather.
*4 People allege that Delonte West slept with LeBron’s mom, but in fact HE DID NOT. Poor Delonte, please bring him back to the NBA.
*5 Fermented mare’s milk is known to flush the system, but it was not known to me at the time. I drove from the desert, boarded my flight to Ulan Bator, and upon arrival my water broke. I ran around the airport like a goat with its head cut off, looking for anything to take a shit in. Luckily, I found a men’s bathroom. Unluckily, this bathroom was in the Ulan Bator airport, had no doors on any stalls, nor did it have toilet paper or toilet seats for human sitting. Every seat had Jackson Pollocks on it, so I had to pop a squat over the toilet, made a mudslide, then wiped my ass with my socks. Luckily…there was soap.
*6 cdc.gov/std/hpv/stdfact-hpv.htm.
*7 Ferris Bueller, what’s really good?
*8 Son had no bottom teeth.
*9 Romance of the Three Kingdoms…the book, not the PlayStation game.
Hakka Heather
I decided to tell Evan my plan to propose.
“Ev. I need to tell you something.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s important. Sit down.”
“Bruh, why so emotional?”
“This is a big deal, man. Extreme life moment.”
“Oh. How extreme?”
“Pretty extreme. Defcon One extreme.”
“What, are you proposing to Dena?”
I was pissed. How did this fool know?
“WHAT’D YOU SAY?”
“I said, ‘ARE YOU PROPOSING TO DENA?’ ”
“How did you know that?”
“It’s so obvious, man. You love that girl.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not like crazy in love with her!” I said defensively.
“Uh, genius face, you’re proposing to her, how are you not crazy in love with her?”
“Who said I was proposing?”
“OK, so you’re not proposing. What am I sitting down for that’s extreme Defcon One?”
“Fine, I’m proposing. You’re supposed to be surprised, fool!”
“Dude, I live with you. I work with you. I see everything. When you walk sideways and pull the front of your pants, it means you didn’t wipe well enough because your dumb ass wipes standing up. Nothing is a surprise anymore.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t hate me, you just mad that I know everything. Especially the fact that you’re an idiot that wipes standing up.”
“All right. Well, don’t tell Mom. I gotta call her.”
“That’s gonna be fun.”
I got nervous.
“Why? What do you think she’s going to say?”
“It’s Mom. You never know what she’s going to say, but it’s probably going to be crazy, and she probably wants us all to be single forever even though she tells us to find smart women from wealthy families who are obedient to have children with, she really just wants us to have kids with them and take their money but never actually be happy with anyone but her.”
“Damn. You really do know everything. This whole time I thought you were the dumb one.”
“Whatever, asshole, my genius constantly goes unnoticed in this family.”
I bugged out. I’d been dreading the call because deep down I knew Moms didn’t approve of Dena—maybe because she wasn’t Taiwanese-Chinese, but primarily because she thought Dena didn’t know what she was doing with her life. Dena didn’t deny it, and I didn’t make a big deal about it. What actual authority did I have to speak on the matter when I was selling weed in a park three years ago? But I knew that wasn’t the most promising line of reasoning with my mother.
No, today would not be the day. Mom would have to wait.
Instead Evan and I met Hakka Heather, the owner of Hakka Homes.
Our rally point was downstairs from the Super 8 in front of the store Ha Face. If you forced me to describe it, I’d have to say it was cute. It was fucking cute! What do you want me to say? There were cute women running the store swaddled in versatile fabrics, waving and throwing FOB fingers at everyone who walked by. Their entire collection made no sense, and I loved it. There were elaborate thirty-dollar dresses straight out of a British tea ceremony, others from a rave, and some that were probably intended for the next heaux trading card photo shoot. I couldn’t see myself in their psychedelic rompers, but I thought that if I did wear rompers, this is the vision of twenty-one I’d want to be forever. There was so much range and randomness. If there was a proverbial “box” of conventional thinking, they put their kitty kat heels in it and beat it like a Xerox machine from Office Space.
Hakka Heather arrived and from one look it was clear she didn’t shop at Ha Face. Her brand was her ethnicity: Hakka. Hakka or “guest” people are an ethnic minority that some historians consider to be the “O.C.”—Original Chinese—but that’s not definitive. Hakka speak Hokkien, make good fish balls, get athlete’s foot, and remind me of the Native Tongues posse if the Jungle Brothers had been born in the Chinese Central
Plains. They have a different culture than the dominant Han population. You go to a mountain, Hakka people serve their food wearing traditional garments, braid your hair, sell tchotchkes, and act like mystical Chinese unicorn people with healing powers. They send upwardly mobile Han Chinese tourist families home with the idea that they’ve reconnected with real China.
Chinese conspiracy theorists and romantics alike consider the Hakka some kind of Chinese Illuminati because leaders and revolutionaries like Sun Yat-sen, Deng Xiaoping, and Lee Teng-hui all had Hakka blood in the veins. Are they the Chinese Masons? Are they the “Chinese Jews,” as many people refer to them? Nobody knows for sure where Hakka people come from, why they emigrated to southern China, or what the exact racial distinctions between Hakka and Han Chinese are, but both sides want you to know that somewhere, someway, somehow these very important distinctions exist.
The handling of Hakka identity in China constantly reminds me that whiteness is everywhere. Something oppressive rises to the top in every country and inevitably declares itself the cream. You may call it aioli and he may call it Kewpie, but rest assured there are white people everywhere, and they gonna want mayonnaise on their wedding shrimp.*1
Hakka Heather’s entire business was based on attracting the gaze of mayonnaise eaters worldwide. This is an excerpt from her website boasting “Hakka Lineage”:
On Chengdu’s East Side reside a community of Hakka people whose ancestral lineage precedes the Ming and Qing dynasties—over 500 years ago. This enclave descends from generations more recently from Guangdong Province.
It goes on for another two paragraphs documenting the “rich spirit of unity and strong endeavors” inherent in Hakka culture. The website also made it clear who Hakka Homes was for:
Hakka Homes provides housing for all sorts of travelers and visitors that find themselves in Chengdu. Whether you’re from Poland or Peru, a student or an employee of a multi-national, we have rooms that are comfortable and affordable.
It reminded me of Popeye’s “Annie, the Chicken Queen,” or Ken Jeong in The Hangover—perpetuating the fantastical mysticism of their respective races for the enchantment of weary international travelers. But I had to give it to her: the highlighting of Polish-Peruvian students or employees of multinationals was some pretty specific and intriguing writing. If Hakka Homes didn’t work out, Hakka Heather clearly had a future as a copywriter.
