by Fan Wu
“Who says feng shui is nonsense?” Julia disputes. “Americans also ask about feng shui when buying a house.”
“Don’t be silly. You know they don’t believe it. It’s all because of the Chinese—those Americans are afraid that Chinese won’t buy their houses when they want to sell them.” Yaya snorts. “Everyone knows that Chinese like to bid on houses, especially Taiwanese and Hongkongese who have a lot of cash.”
“When you were buying your house, didn’t you tell me that you didn’t want a house at the end of a T intersection? Admit it! Feng shui is an old art, a science. It’s about health and energy. Mingyi and Mary, isn’t that true?” Julia says, looking for support.
“I’m not a judge, okay? I don’t want to get between you two. You never agree on anything,” Mary declares and walks over to the stove, turns off the heat. “Hey, gals, the dumplings are ready!”
Mingyi helps Mary take out the steamer. “Wow, that looks good!,” she says. “I’m starving. Yaya and Julia, just forget about feng shui. Let’s eat!”
Julia’s cell phone rings. She talks briefly, speaking English. After she is done, she says, “It’s George. He said he’s going to have dinner with some classmates. Last night he went to San Francisco to see a movie with a friend. Boys his age see parents as enemies and only want to avoid them. He can’t drive yet. Just wait until he has a car. I probably won’t see him for days. Sophie is just as much of a worry. Her class learned about sexuality last week, and the teacher demonstrated how to use a condom. Part of the homework for her father and me was to explain about sex. Well, you know, what can people from our generation say about sex? The day Wang Wei and I got married, both of us were still virgins. He knew no more than I did about what to do in bed. Wang Wei asked me to do the teaching. He said he did it with George, and now it was my turn with Sophie. So I had to do it. I stammered into an introduction, but you know what Sophie did? She patted my shoulder with sympathy, handed me a glass of water, and said, ‘Mom, don’t panic. I know all that stuff already. It’s no big deal.’ I’m not kidding, I almost wanted to cry. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought them up in the U.S.”
“Hallelujah, welcome to America!” Yaya exclaims and applauds.
“You think China is any better?” Mary asks as she adds soy sauce and vinegar to her friends’ dipping plates. “Nowadays, kids in big cities there know quite a bit too. One of my college friends told me the other day that she had found a bag of cocaine in her sixteen-year-old son’s schoolbag.”
“Julia, why do you worry so much?” Yaya says through a mouthful of food. “When your kids were small, you barely had time to sleep. Now that they’re older, you should just relax and enjoy yourself.”
“I wish. I’m not as modern as you. You don’t even want to have children!” Julia says. “Apart from the kids, there are millions of other things to worry about at home. Let me tell you about the fight I just had with Wang Wei. He said I had sent too much money to my family in China, a few hundred here, a few thousand there. He said it was unfair because he sent far less to his parents. I said that his parents work for the government in Shanghai, while my parents are retired primary-school teachers. He’s the only child in his family, yet I’m the oldest with three brothers and sisters, two of them without jobs. If I didn’t send money home, what would they eat and wear? He said, ‘Doesn’t the government subsidize them?’ I said, ‘Look at you! Didn’t you come from China? You know those subsidies are barely enough to buy a jin of lean meat.’ Wang Wei is so calculating, a typical Shanghainese. You’d think he’d be more generous since he has a Ph.D. and works for a big company like HP. Quite the opposite. Whenever he has time, he’ll make this or that chart to calculate the value of his investments. If I want to buy something, even just a piece of clothing, I have to get his permission or he’ll be grumpy. Have you ever seen a man like him? Maybe I should divorce him.”
It’s not the first time that Julia has complained about her husband. Knowing that she and Wang Wei actually get along well despite their disagreements over domestic matters, Mary and Mingyi only smile, offering no comment.
“Aha, speaking of divorce. A friend of mine just divorced her husband,” Yaya says. “She’s from Guangdong, and her husband is British. That guy didn’t eat chicken with bones and skin, and used many measuring cups when he was cooking. He ate slowly, chewed his food without the slightest sound, and moved his knife and fork like they were trained soldiers. He wouldn’t even use chopsticks! You’d think he was a robot if you saw him eating. When he got home, the first thing he did was listen to Mozart. My friend was very different. She loved Cantonese-style chicken—with bones, blood, skin, and all that. She loved chicken feet, porridge, preserved eggs, and beef-tendon soup noodles. It’s hard not to slurp when eating porridge and soup noodles. Don’t you agree? She also liked to invite friends over for potlucks instead of listening to Mozart. They were together for a few years but just couldn’t continue the marriage. The guy even got depressed and had to see a psychiatrist.”
“Westerners love to see psychiatrists,” Julia remarks. “In China, who does that? So many people here are treated for depression. If I told my mother I was depressed, she’d surely say, ‘Drink some ginseng soup and go to bed early and you’ll be okay.’”
“Ha-ha, my mother would say the same thing.” Mary laughs. “Isn’t it a bit like the Jewish cure for everything? Chicken soup, right?”
“Mary, what’s the secret of your marriage? Bob is never angry or gloomy. Whatever you say, he listens. And you never quarrel,” Yaya says.
“Well, English is his first language, but it’s my second. I guess you can only quarrel in your mother tongue. If he speaks slang or idioms, I just don’t understand him. To me, speaking English is like taking a bath with my clothes on. It’s always awkward. I also don’t know how to swear or curse in English. If I translated Chinese cursing into English literally, it simply wouldn’t work. If I said, ‘You’re the son of a turtle!’ he’d think I was wishing he would live as long as a turtle; if I said, ‘I’ll give you some color to see!’ he’d ask, ‘Which color?’”
All her friends burst out laughing: they know those Chinese curses.
“That’s so true!” Julia says. “When Wang Wei and I get into an argument, sometimes he speaks Shanghainese, of which I don’t understand a word. So in the end I can do nothing but laugh. Then we reconcile.”
Yaya has just returned from visiting her husband in China. “You know what I bought in China this time?” she asks, mysteriously.
“Another qipao or some other Chinese dresses? Or more knockoff Louis Vuittons or Gucci?” Julia mocks her. “You have enough of those to start a department store.”
“Helloooo, I haven’t bought any knockoffs since I began going to church. Mary can be my witness.” Yaya pauses, moving her eyes from friend to friend. “I don’t think you can guess. I should just tell you. I bought my great-great-grandfather’s snuff bottle! Don’t ask me how much I spent on it. If I told you, you’d think I’d lost my mind. Here is how it happened. Daming was busy and didn’t have time to hang out with me, so I wandered around by myself. One day, I went to Pan Jia Yuan antiques market. I spotted this snuff bottle in a store and knew instantly that I had seen it somewhere before. A few hours later I finally remembered that my grandfather once showed me a picture of it. He said his grandfather had given it to him before he died, but during World War Two a Japanese soldier took it from his house. He also told me that my great-great-grandfather had carved his nickname on the bottom of the bottle. I walked back to the store and asked the owner to show it to me. Indeed, my great-great-grandfather’s nickname, Little Monkey, was on the bottom of the bottle! Too bad that my grandfather has passed away. Just imagine how surprised and happy he would have been to see it again! Now I’ve got an idea. I’m going to do some treasure hunting to find the antiques that the Red Guards took from my parents during the Cultural Revolution. I have some of their pictures.”
“You’re dreaming. Where c
an you find them? They were either destroyed after being confiscated or now belong to some ex-Red Guards,” Mary says.
“I bet some of them will show up in an antiques market somewhere, just like this snuff bottle,” Yaya says.
“Yaya, why not spend the energy thinking about what you are going to do with Daming? How long do you want to be separated like this?” Mingyi says.
“I don’t want to live in Beijing. It’s too crowded. Too much pollution as well. Also, I like my job here,” Yaya says.
“Aren’t you afraid that he might run away with another woman?” Mary teases her.
“We grew up as neighbors, and I know him inside and out. Even if a girl talked to him, he wouldn’t know how to answer.”
“People change, don’t they?” Julia says. “If you want to do business in China, you have to invite your clients for dinner. After dinner, you go to a nightclub or a karaoke place. There are so many pretty young girls there. What’s the saying you told me last week? ‘Men turn bad when they have money, and women can’t have money unless they turn bad.’ Honestly, I don’t even let Wang Wei go to China alone. Girls are no longer innocent, as we used to be.” She frowns. “I watched a Chinese talk show the other day and the subject was ‘Should extramarital affairs be condemned?’ What kind of discussion is that? Isn’t the answer obvious?”
“I trust Daming. And if something bad ever happens to me, God will take care of me, right?” Yaya points her right forefinger upward. “When I was in China, a friend of mine said that what is important in a relationship is not staying together forever but momentary possession. I know God wouldn’t approve, but I kinda like the idea. Isn’t it a little boring to look at the same face every day, every year, every decade? If there’s no more love between a couple, they’d better get divorced rather than maintain the marriage. Christians divorce too. Reading the Bible, praying, and listening to sermons don’t always help. Lucky us, we’re not in China, or we’d have to ask permission from our work units to get a divorce. I read somewhere that two thirds of marriages in China are ‘dead.’ Scary, isn’t it? I think all of them should just get divorced. Julia, forget your worries. If Wang Wei left you, you’d be a free woman and could look for your new love. At least you could fantasize about a handsome single man without feeling guilty. God doesn’t like divorce, but the Bible doesn’t say it’s a sin to fantasize about someone if you’re not in a marriage. Andy Lau? Hmm, maybe not. I want to save him for myself in case I become single again. How about George Clooney?”
Julia takes away Yaya’s plate, where there are still a few dumplings, and hides it behind her. “No more food for you. You’re getting drunk from eating dumplings. You’d better pray hard tonight or God won’t forgive you for what you’ve said.”
Mingyi slaps the back of Yaya’s head playfully. “Don’t talk trash! Are you trying to destroy others’ marriages?”
“I’m just kidding, okay?” Yaya laughs heartily.
“It looks like Daming should be worrying about you.” Mary says, affecting seriousness. “Before he left, he asked me to keep an eye on you. Well, maybe I should call him and ask him to fly back to the U.S. tomorrow.”
As soon as her friends leave, Mary goes to the master bedroom and lies on the bed, thinking about Yaya’s comment that she and Bob never fight. It’s not true, though she didn’t want to admit that to her friends. Unlike Yaya and Julia, she rarely speaks about her family troubles, or complains about Bob, even to close friends, even to Mingyi. There’s no perfect couple, no perfect family in the world, that’s her belief, and you just have to work out the problems. Perfection belongs to God, not to human beings. Still, it bothers her to think that she and Bob had a fight the night before, or an argument to make it sound better. It was innocent enough to begin with, but then it took a wrong turn.
Bob had returned home at eleven. He said that the company had ordered sushi for everyone who had to stay late. Mary took his laptop bag and helped him slip off his jacket, something she always did when he got home.
“When will this project end?” she asked, hanging the jacket in the hallway closet.
“Who knows? Our founder has been sleeping in his office for weeks. Shirat is still at work, and it looks like he’ll have to spend the night in the office again. I don’t think he has the energy to drive two hours to get home at this hour.” Shirat, Bob’s manager, lived in Sacramento.
“Doesn’t he have three small children? Even if his wife doesn’t work, it must be hard for her to take care of them by herself.”
“He doesn’t have a choice. He’s waiting for a green card, and if he loses his job he might have to move back to India. Also, he’s been counting on the IPO to make him rich, so he can buy a house closer to work.”
More and more foreigners at Mary’s company were H1B visa holders applying for a green card through their employer, so she understood Shirat’s situation. If these people lost their jobs, they would lose their visas as well and would have to leave the United States. To secure a visa, they were willing to work long hours or accept lower-than-market salaries. Recently, at her church, Mary had met a Taiwanese girl who worked for a Korean company in Santa Clara. The company had sponsored her H1B but paid her only thirty thousand dollars a year, one half to one third of what they would have to pay an American or someone with a green card who could leave for another job at any time, despite the fact that she had a master’s degree in computer science and worked more than twelve hours a day.
Bob walked into their bedroom and lay down on the bed, stretching his arms and legs comfortably. She followed and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Teacher Chang, I’m exhausted. It looks like we have to cancel our Chinese class today,” he said, smiling. On Monday, Mary had started to teach him some Mandarin every evening, in preparation for her mother’s arrival. “Fire drills,” Bob had called their classes.
“Oh, we can skip it.”
“Even if I studied hard, you know, I would never be able to understand you and your friends’ high-speed chatter in Mandarin. It’s as incomprehensible as ducks quacking or birds chirping.” Bob mimicked their talk, making a fast nonsense sound.
Mary laughed. His sense of humor, that was what she had always liked about Bob. When they were dating and even in the first few years of their marriage, he had often made her laugh by telling her jokes and teasing her.
“So, the project is going well?” Mary said, guessing the reason for Bob’s good mood. He’d been stressed the whole week.
“Today, yes. We made good progress. Tomorrow, a big question mark. That’s what it’s like working at a start-up.”
“Why not quit and join a more established company?” she suggested. “So you don’t have to work so much.”
“I wish I could, but what about all the stock they’ve promised? And the economy is slowing down; many companies are actually laying off people. It isn’t that easy to switch jobs. Not like before.”
“You haven’t been to church for a while. Why not go this Sunday? You might feel less stressed afterward.” Bob’s church, an English-speaking one, unlike Mary’s, where the pastor gave sermons mainly in Mandarin, was in Palo Alto.
“I don’t have time.”
How could lack of time be the real reason? Mary questioned silently. Born of devout Christian parents, Bob had been baptized young and was very active in church affairs at Berkeley and at Santa Clara University. It was after he started his job at the communications networking company that he’d begun to go to church less. She had imagined many reasons for his alienation from religion, including his disgust and bafflement by the recent news of a priest reportedly raping an altar boy in Waltham, Massachusetts. But Bob had denied all her speculations and wouldn’t discuss the matter further.
“But it’s important to go to church,” she finally managed to say.
Bob was silent, then he asked, “What do you go there for?”
She was taken aback by the question. “Of course, for spiritual enlightenment, so we
can connect with God and with people.”
“Not out of habit and for comfort?”
She hesitated. “That too.”
“Or because it makes us look like good people?”
Another pause. “No.”
“Or out of the fear of going to hell when death comes?”
This time, she didn’t answer.
There was a disturbing lull. Then Bob said, “I need some time to think about it.”
She leaned back against the headboard, her heart sinking: so it was true, Bob was turning away from God. In her heart, she felt that she should try harder to find out why he had stopped going to church. It had been a while since she’d inquired. It was too bad that they went to separate churches; though she had been to his church a few times, she had little idea what it was like. On the other hand, she could see where his question came from; she’d had it herself. Sometimes, as soon as she walked out of church, she felt that her life resumed being as ordinary as always. There was a disconnect between her daily life and her church life. However, despite this, it was comforting to know that God was watching over her and taking care of her, and to know that she had a chance to be saved and go to paradise after she died.
Should she keep pressing Bob? she wondered. Obviously, there was something he was hiding from her. But no, it was unlike her to be pushy. Maybe she should just put the matter behind her, assume that as soon as his workload lessened, he would start to go to church again. Also, she didn’t want to trouble herself with the issue right now: she had a busy day herself. She wished she could speak Chinese to Bob; it was such an effort to speak English when she was tired. She is careful with her English at work, trying to make it as good as possible, so her professionalism wouldn’t be jeopardized by embarrassing grammatical errors in her speech, but at home, she doesn’t have to try so hard. If she is in good spirits, she speaks just fine; if not, such as now, her English fails her and she lapses into Chinese English.
