Throwaway Daughter Page 9

  “Guess how old I am,” she asked shortly after we settled into the two large armchairs.

  “Um, I don’t know. It’s hard to say. It’s sort of dark in here. Thirty?”

  She laughed. “Be serious.”

  “Thirty-five?”

  Song was barely five feet tall, with a slight build. Her straight black hair was cut short at her earlobes. Behind her square-framed glasses her face was unwrinkled. But Frank had told me they had been classmates at university, so I knew she must be older.

  “Forty-five!” she crowed. “I’m old enough to be your mother, although my own daughter is only fifteen. How old is your mother? Is she a blonde?”

  “She’d kill me if I told her age. She’s older than you. She used to be blond, like my sister Megan, and both have blue eyes. But Mom’s hair is salt-and-pepper now, more salt.”

  “Salt-and-pepper! What a vivid description. In China we have only three hair colours—black, grey, and white. Very boring.”

  “I guess that’s what’s in store for me,” I said.

  “But you have choices. I heard that in your country people dye their hair any colour they want. Even orange or green. And in a movie I saw that you identify one another by hair and eye colour. It’s so strange.”

  We chatted for a while about clothing, make-up, and other stuff that Song was interested in. She wanted to know if it was true that all Western women were overweight.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “But you’re Chinese!”

  I laughed. I knew we’d get along fine.

  I said goodbye to Song before she got into her taxi, and watched the tail lights move out of sight, then walked back up the steps to the hotel. At the top, I turned towards the din of traffic and human voices at the Shanghai train station, with its bright red neon tower. The wide space before the front doors was packed with people, standing, sitting, laid out on thin rush mats—thousands of people in the middle of the night, caught between home and somewhere else.

  I would have slept the whole day through if Ms. Song hadn’t knocked on my door. My watch said five past five in the afternoon, and I thought instantly about the argument I’d had with my parents, telling them I was too young to suffer from jet lag. I pulled on my clothes, ran a comb through my hair, and let Song in. She drew open the curtains to reveal a hazy sky.

  “I’ve come to take you sight-seeing!”

  Though still half-asleep, I did some mental calculations. Song had been up half the night taking care of me and then had put in a full day’s work. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Ms. Song,” I said.

  “Call me Julia. I may not be able to visit you tomorrow or the next day. I have a crazy schedule at the office.”

  “Julia?” I hesitated.

  “I’ve been called Julia for two years now. At work. Choosing an English name is part of the package. I used to teach English at a textile college in the suburbs. After eighteen years, I quit. I’d finally had enough, the unfair treatment from my colleagues and leaders at the college. Now I work for Eastern Wing Airlines, a Hong Kong company with a busy branch here. I’m a ticket agent.”

  “You quit college teaching to be a ticket agent?” I said tactlessly. Song’s openness was infectious.

  “Believe it or not, I make more money now than I used to, with a bonus at the end of the year if the boss is happy with the profits. That never happened at the college. I got this job because I could read and speak English. If I didn’t have English, the boss would have tossed my application out the window without blinking an eye.”

  Remembering my manners, I set about making two cups of tea.

  “In today’s market,” Song said, “women my age, anyone over forty, are unemployable. Those who work in state-owned factories are forced to retire, to make room for younger ones who need jobs. But of course the new policy doesn’t apply to men.”

  “I wish my mother were here to hear this,” I put in. “In Canada a company with this kind of policy would be in deep trouble for sex discrimination. And age discrimination.”

  “Ha! Go tell that to my turkey-neck boss. He is over seventy but he demands that all the women he hires be twenty-five or less, with fair skin and fine features.”

  “You mean a pretty face is what they want.”

  “Yes. I feel lucky, compared to most women my age.”

  I still wasn’t clear why selling airline tickets was better than teaching at a university. “So what’s this about getting the cold treatment you mentioned earlier?” I asked.

  “It’s a bit complicated,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “Your family friend, Frank, and I are what we call WPS—Worker-Peasant-Soldier university graduates. We went to university during the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976. Workers, peasants, and soldiers then were considered the most politically pure people in the country, while intellectuals, businesspeople, and so on were persecuted. During those years, entrance exams were abolished because they were condemned as favourable only to the non-working classes. People like me and Frank, who didn’t complete high school because we were forced to work in factories or on farms, could apply for university with no exam, as long as our political record was clean.

  “We were the last wave of WPS students before Deng Xiao-ping brought entrance exams back. So our time at university, particularly in our last year, was not happy, because all the students who came in after us criticized and mocked us. We were not ‘real academics.’ The WPS label followed us after we graduated and were assigned to jobs. Like the ‘children of concubines,’ we were discriminated against all through our careers.”

  “Interesting expression,” I said, “the children of concubines.”

  “Yes. It’s from the old pre-liberation days, when the emperors and high officials were entitled to have one wife but as many concubines as they pleased. The children of their wives were much higher in status than the kids the concubines produced. Anyhow, no matter what I did in my new teaching job, I couldn’t wipe out the past. I took extra courses on weekends and in the evenings. I postponed marriage and starting a family. My daughter was born when I was thirty. Still, nothing satisfied my boss or the university administration, and I got no respect from my co-workers or students. I was given all the worst classes and the junior students. No promotion, no research assignments. I wasn’t ashamed of being WPS and I made that clear, which didn’t help me. So finally, I left. And as you know, Frank went abroad. But enough lecturing! I sound like a teacher again.”

  The Green Villa restaurant was on Nanjing Road, which must be the most crowded street in the world. Most of the tables were occupied. We were shown upstairs to a table by the window. I sat down, grateful for the air conditioning, and Song began to chat with the waiter. He went away and returned to hand me a menu in English.

  I put it aside. “I don’t need this, but thanks anyway,” I said.

  “I know you don’t need it,” Song replied, “but it will help me. I don’t have enough English to describe the fancy food and cooking here. I’m hoping you’ll explain a few things to me.”

  Next to us a party was in progress, with six adults and a boy of about five or six. The obnoxious little creep was anywhere but in his chair. He spent his time crawling among the other tables and roaming around the dining room, annoying other diners, all the while chased by a young woman with a bowl of rice in one hand and a spoon in the other, trying to feed the brat as he scooted from place to place.

  I thought about my dad and his motto: if a kid doesn’t eat, he isn’t hungry. I had often argued with him about that, wanting to play and eat at the same time, or eat in front of the TV. Dad would have ended this little troublemaker’s travels fast. I told Song that the kid reminded me of the spoiled boy-king in the movie The Last Emperor.

  “Yes, boys like him are called little emperors nowadays,” she answered in English. “Look at him, doted on by everyone. I bet his poor mother hasn’t had a bite yet, but the ruler of the family must not be disciplined! All
because he’s the only child—and a boy.”

  “And the girls are empresses?”

  “Oh, no. I’m afraid China still has feudal attitudes about this matter, especially in the countryside, where boys are preferred. Surprised?”

  “Well …”

  “Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that all girl children are mistreated or undervalued. Look, I have a daughter and I wouldn’t trade her for a dozen sons. Nor would my husband.”

  “But don’t more than eighty percent of Chinese live in the country? What’s the problem there that they’re still so behind the times? They’re educated, right? They have radios, and TV?”

  “I’m sorry I upset you, Grace,” Song said quietly.

  “No, no, it wasn’t you,” I said. “I was thinking out loud.”

  At that moment the little boy scooted under our table for the third time. I had to force myself not to boot him in his fat little ass.

  I spent the next morning killing time by exploring the Bund and waterfront area. It wasn’t very interesting. On the way back to the hotel I walked through a shopping district on Nanjing Road. Almost all the store windows were jammed with high-fashion, logo-covered clothing, cosmetics and perfume, or high-tech computer and entertainment equipment. A giant picture of the latest Western supermodel, with long blond hair and a body as thin as a coat hanger, advertised Rolex watches across the road from a fast-food stall where workers in faded denim pants and threadbare T-shirts lined up to buy fried bread. So much for the socialist workers’ paradise.

  My room was cool. I kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed and fell asleep instantly. I awoke to a knocking on the door. Song was standing there with a young girl.

  “Say hello, Ah-yi,” Song told the girl, who mumbled something. Ah-yi—Auntie—was a term of respect. “Speak louder, she can’t hear you. This is my daughter, Xing-xing. She has never been inside a fancy hotel like this. I hope you don’t mind that I brought her.”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “Come on in.”

  I made tea for Song and myself and offered a cola to Xing-xing. Like her mother, Xing-xing had almond-shaped eyes, which gave her a fragile appearance. She would have been prettier without the blue eyeshadow, vivid red lipstick, and a thick layer of blush on her cheeks. Her long black hair was piled on her head and decorated with a red ribbon that contrasted with her tight green T-shirt. She was wearing a denim miniskirt and fishnet stockings. She looked like a wannabe hooker in a second-rate movie.

  “Tell Ah-yi what you want to be when you grow up,” Song said to Xing-xing after we had sat down.

  “You tell her, Mama.”

  Song turned pink, and I smothered a laugh.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, you useless girl. Look at Ah-yi. She is a Chinese like you, only four years older, yet she speaks English, French, and Chinese. She is going to university to get a good education. She’ll have a wonderful job and make a lot of money. Don’t you want the same things? Speak up!” Song demanded when her daughter said nothing.

  “Why do you want Xing-xing to be like me?” I asked in English. “You hardly know me. And who told you I am rich? I’m just an ordinary person, Julia.”

  “But you have a wonderful life in Canada,” she replied in Mandarin. “Don’t be so modest. Most Chinese girls would die to have what you have.”

  To change the subject, I suggested we go to the hotel restaurant for dinner. Song happily agreed. When the three of us had sat down at a table in the busy dining room and ordered our food, Xing-xing began to play with the glass lazy susan in the centre of the table. Song talked to me in English.

  “I want to ask if you can help Xing-xing to go to a Canadian university when the time comes.”

  “Um, well, I could try,” I said lamely. “Are you planning to move to Canada?”

  Song laughed. “Oh, no. That would be impossible. But I will send Xing-xing abroad if I can.”

  “But she’d be away for a year at a time. Wouldn’t you and your husband miss her?”

  “Of course we would. But it’s a sacrifice we would gladly make for Xing-xing’s future. You’ll understand when you become a mother yourself.”

  “Speaking of school,” I said, “the residence at Huang-pu College opens tomorrow.”

  “Yes, a pity you must move from this nice hotel,” Song said.

  The Huang-pu Business College was in the old French section of Shanghai, on a wide street lined with plane trees and free of the constant snarl of traffic that seemed to clog most of the city. The school was housed in an old mansion with a large courtyard and a new wing added to the back—the dorms, I learned soon after my arrival.

  Classes were held in the original mansion, in grand rooms with hardwood floors, high ceilings, and large windows looking out over the courtyard. There were two dozen of us in the summer institute, people about my age from Canada, the United States and Europe. I was not used to the teaching style. Where Frank had an iron rule that, when he and I were together, not one word of English was to be spoken, our Chinese teacher lectured, giving us no chance to talk to her in Mandarin. That was for the language lab, she told us on the first day. Her job was to teach us grammar.

  Besides the lab and lectures each day, we had calligraphy lessons that were more like an art class, taught by a skinny old guy named Lao Qin who stood over us chattering away and pointing out faults in our brush strokes. But it was the only class I enjoyed—not just because he favoured me, being the only “overseas Chinese” in the class, but because I liked the feel of the brush in my hand and the way the jet-black ink flowed from the brush onto the newspaper we used for practice.

  At night, most of the other students went out drinking at the disco bars. I went with them once. The bars were incredibly hot, pounding with tenth-rate rock music, and every once in a while they’d fire up the karaoke machine. There were hookers there, and drugs. So much for Mom’s notion that China was free of vice. We got back to the school at three in the morning, wasted and red-eyed. Once was enough for me.

  In the middle of the third week, Dad called. He told me that Megan had come down with a bad case of appendicitis and had had an operation. “Don’t worry,” he said to calm me, “it was a simple procedure and she sailed through it. She’s home now, doing fine and grumping at everybody. But she won’t be able to join your tour group.”

  The longer I was in China, the more I felt my birth parents pulling me towards them, as if a big question was closer to an answer if only I’d take a few more steps. I wasn’t far away. But I was afraid of what I might find out. By the last week of classes I still hadn’t made up my mind. Then one morning I stood at the sink and looked at the face in the mirror, the black hair, the dark skin, the large eyes that were not reflected in my sister or my parents. I decided what I wanted to do.

  I passed all my courses and so did everybody else. At the little graduation tea party out on the lawn under the plane trees, everyone was abuzz about the five-city tour—Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Wuxi, which were not too far from Shanghai, then Beijing and Xi’an.

  I told the director of the summer institute that I’d be visiting relatives instead of taking the tour. “No refund,” was his answer.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I’ve got other plans.”

  After the party, I went to my dorm and called Song to say goodbye and to tell her I was going to Yangzhou. She insisted on getting my train ticket for me.

  “There is no train to Yangzhou,” she said. “You have to take a train to Zhenjiang and then catch a bus. It’s very difficult for you to get a train ticket, but for me it’s as easy as cutting a piece of bean curd. My work unit and the train station are co-ordinated units, as we call it. We do favours for one another all the time. What do you say in English? We back-scratch each other.”

  I laughed. “Something like that. Okay, I’ll go ahead and book a hotel room in Yangzhou.”

  “There’s no need to book ahead,” Song said, “so save yourself the cost of a long-distance call. Look, this is Sha
nghai, and your hotel wasn’t full when you arrived, so Yangzhou will have lots of empty rooms. If you call ahead for a reservation, you will be charged full price. But if you just walk into the hotel in Yangzhou and ask if there’s a room, you can get a bargain. I wish you would stay in Shanghai a few days longer,” she went on. “My husband and I would like you to visit our home.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” I said. “But I have a tight schedule. My visa is only good for two more weeks and I don’t know what kind of problems or delays I might run into.”

  “Then wait for my call tomorrow morning. I’ll have your ticket, possibly see you off at the station.”

  By the time I boarded the train for Zhenjiang and took a window seat in the air-conditioned car, my mood was lighter and I felt kind of proud of myself. I had accomplished a lot in the past two days.

  The high point in my morning had been my visit to the ticket office in the train station. Carrying my backpack and clutching my suitcase, I had felt like royalty as I walked past the long queues—or rather crowds—gathered in an unruly bunch in front of the ticket windows, greeted by hostile stares and grumbling. I had stepped into a room where I presented my confirmation number, provided by Song, paid for my ticket, and left. The whole procedure took less than fifteen minutes. The man behind the wicket even apologized to me because there were no first-class tickets left.

  Hours later, the train made its slow progress out of Shanghai station. Only at that moment did I feel that my journey was finally under way.

  As the train arrived at Zhenjiang station, I got my first glimpse of Frank’s hometown. It seemed to be a city of chimneys, all pumping clouds of black smoke into the hot, sticky air. The walls of the buildings were the colour of ashes. Not much concern for greenhouse emissions here, I thought as I got down from the train amid the clanging of the bell and the rumble of the bustling crowd.