… immigrants must cope with the problems of conflict between two cultures, until they reach a spiritual stage where cultural references become meaningless. ~~Deng Ming-Dao

The light came into the house from the west casting a shimmer over the faces of Number 4 and Number 5 sons. I rather liked not seeing their features as I drank tea for the seventh time that day… I withdrew more easily from the pressures of the week in the contrast of light. I imagined drawing this picture… the yellow satiny rays and the shaded, umber faces drinking tea. I liked what I saw… a counterpoint to the long afternoon. I listened silently as dialects of diverse Chinese places intersected and made way for each other… my legs out of sync with the conversation as I crossed and re-crossed them, shifted in my chair as the tiniest mosquitoes I had ever seen deposited anything except malaria, I hoped, into my bare flesh. I was careful to keep a pleasant expression. I longed for the week to be over… but wishing hadn’t make it so.

Someone suggested that I go look at the pond. Number 4 had said, “What is there to look at?” Indeed, there had been nothing at all to look at… a water logged earth seeping into the brand new rich man’s house leaving black mold two feet up the cheap wood paneling. I used the substandard bathroom reluctantly after my field trip to the pond… trailed through a room bereft of anything but mahjong tables and a freezer, black mold even higher up the wall, to get there only to wait in line.

I thought about the tea farm we had just come from during my wait in the cue… the jade tea bushes on rolling hills that had no end as if an unappeased god of eternity had chosen the form of a teacup. I had picked some of the tiny leaves in the scorching heat… watched a man in a wide straw hat as he had picked deftly depositing the leaves in a green canvas bag… a daily, laborious trek through a world of tiny things… insects and tea leaves. We would drink this tea in Number 4’s air conditioned office later… a bitter, murky brew made from steaming well water… my Chinese friends murmuring out of Number 4’s ear shot about not wanting to drink the well water. But, we all drank some anyway… my thoughts returning to the man out in the field… a contemplation of all of my cups of tea I had carelessly drank in my lifetime.

The countryside of China with Chinese friends… they had been muttering all afternoon about not wanting to eat the food… not wanting to be in the sun… not wanting to be bitten by mosquitoes… not wanting to walk in the garden… an afternoon of not wanting. They whispered their comments to each other in muted breaths… behind cupped hands… subtle catches of an eye. Their reactions, a series of wordless volleys, had the feel of the shuttlecock on the exact center of the racket… the return precisely imminent. They looked at me askance as I reveled in being out of doors in the hot sun investigating the garden… the eggplants… rows of “shan you” growing like potatoes… ripe watermelon. Number 4 had picked one in the field, slightly rinsed it in the trickle of water emptying into the blue plastic rain barrel. He had cut it open later with a pig sticker… a resounding crack on the office desk, the sweet, sticky juice exploding onto the cheap wooden surface. One friend said, “You know, Paula, not all of us like this.” I felt chastened for my agreeable garden walk in the hot sun under a blue sky without the use of the ubiquitous Chinese umbrella to maintain whiter shades of skin that I found ridiculous, and more than mildly offensive in the context of my own culture. I had not asked to come here. I had not lingered in the fields because I had known that cultural difference dictated that my friends would worry about things like dark skin and sweat and had run for umbrellas when our short walk in the fields had begun.

How had I come to be traveling with seven Chinese people in two private cars with drivers? I have rarely traveled with more than two of anything and, now, I would be traveling with seven people who would herd me hither and yon, insist upon the solidarity of the group when I would rather wander off… my presence ceremonial like an always smiling Western-style Buddha sitting in the honorable front seat of the car… Chinese disco music and AC blasting. The men traveled in one car… the women in the other. Soon everyone would forget that I was there…the Chinese would whiz by in hours of harping gossip without anyone wanting to include me in anything like a conversation. Speaking Chinese with me, after all, seemed like a conversation with a child… tedious, painful, and, ultimately, boring. I would hear my name bantered about constantly… understand some of the gossip… the outrageous cost of my small traveling bag (it had been cheap)… how Paula would pay “xiaofei” when I got my new apartment, because foreign people always pay tips… how they must manage things for me when I got my new apartment. Otherwise, people would take advantage of my paying “xiaofei” at every opportunity… how Paula should forget her Western ways now that she lives in China. Little of the gossip about me was true and the rest was a colossal exaggeration.

 

I got irritated listening…patience battling with silent fuming over the long travel hours and its assumptions. By the end of the week I had it… no privacy… a mean gaggle of gossiping women with prosaic observations and lack of interest who comported themselves like little girls. They trotted me through endless silk shops exclaiming over the same common patterns in every stall… hours spent in a huge discount department store discussing over and over the kind of Traditional Chinese Medicine gifts to take to Number 4 and 5’s mother. What had happened to the nice, conversational women I had gotten to know? Perhaps it had all been an illusion based on the newness of China. I was sick of the distance and the insistence of the men, as well, who had their way in everything and rarely interacted with us in any kind of meaningful way.

I had no graceful way of removing myself from this trip although I had tried by saying my passport was at the police station for paperwork formalities. Chinese connections assured that it would be firmly placed in my hand so that I could go. I had done a favor and now it would be repaid by this traveling. The friend who owed the favor had a best friend who owned three factories… he would “host” us with his magnanimous wealth thereby paying back favors to me and other guests. To refuse, would disturb the concept of harmony… and I knew I could cause more harm by doing that.

Eating compounded my aggravation. As we made our way to the South of China, the countryside and, finally a resort… I became disoriented. I began to ask myself questions like, “Was that before we had sucked the heads of the whole octopus and slurped up the fresh turtle soup?” “Or was it after the shark fin soup and the pregnant shrimp from the Yangtze River?” Had we eaten the hot curried eels along with the braised fish tails or was I confusing that with the meal where we had eaten the stewed goose foot? We had eaten tiny whole sautéed frogs from the rice paddies, hadn’t we? There were plates of stewed dog at every meal and there was always fish head soup.

We had eaten in a bare store room in the countryside with bags of cracked corn piled in the corner. We had picked at barbequed fat back and fish head soup from the ugliest fish I had ever seen… teeth an inch long that looked as if they had needed a good cleaning.  Here it was…head lopped off and boiled up in the pot along with cilantro… an ugly, poached fish head boiled up and given up just for me. I ate three bowls disdaining the brains I had been served and daintily picked at the flesh. Did I want three bowls of fish head soup? Of course not. Did it make a difference what I wanted? I did well with countryside eating, though, considering… after all, I had eaten soup made from all parts of the rooster with my family in the bodrogs of Romania off dishes that were less than sparkling. My city friends were eating so carefully, uncomfortable and worried about cleanliness, that they had little time to wonder about me.

It ended up being the eating, though, that began to tip me off… to make me very ill at ease. Most of our eating took place in 5 star restaurants not far from the 4 and 5 star hotels we slept in. Private chefs prepared course after course of the most extravagant, meticulously conceived dishes of China. They presented them to us in unique ways… the private dining rooms pristinely clean and lavishly appointed… the linen starched and fresh flowers on the table. The restaurant bills began to mount… extravagant lunches and ridiculously expensive suppers. My friends had mentally calculated the princely cost of the trip. All of us asked each other quietly, “Why? Why is he spending so much money?” No one spends money like this in China without wanting something in return. Yes, I had taught one of Number 5’s sons a little and a husband of one of the guests had gotten another son into an engineering school when his scores were not good enough to enter a medical school… and there was the favor that my friend owed me… but the repayment was far too much… even I knew this. Something would be required in return.

The hands of the clock that never seemed to move in that week finally ticked into our last meal together.  We ate in another 5 star restaurant among the rice paddies.  Perhaps thirty dishes including the appetizers were on the table. Most were delicious, but who cared to eat in the heat and the surfeit of food we had been force fed for days? Still, I trooped on as best I could…cranky at my status of “guest”… promising I would never get myself into this situation again. One of the guests, the one I coped with least, suggested to one of the sons during dinner that he should treat me really nice… make a relationship with me, because, perhaps, I would take him to Spain… everyone stopped eating, chopsticks in mid air… the silence pregnant with the audacity of the suggestion… all our faces a complete blank. Perhaps it was what some were thinking… a trip to America… a trip to Spain… the idea made flesh among the platters of flesh. I will never really know. As the silence thickened, I continued eating… as if the foreigner there could understand nothing.

~~~

I returned to the privacy of my own life. I repaid my host with the purchase of an expensive Western fountain pen slightly less commensurate with the cost of the trip so that the would not lose face… a foreign gift from France he would never use. He would love the idea that it was a foreign thing, just as he had liked that I had been the archetypal foreign presence on his trip. Perhaps he would give it to one of his sons. There would be no plane tickets to Spain, no Grand Tour for his son as a return gift from me should it have been expected… the remaining undercurrents of the week creating only a distance in me that I would begin to cultivate.

One memory continues to puzzle me… a little thorn in the heel inside of my shoe. Number 4 and 5 had taken us to see their mother. She lived down the road from the pond in an ancient house with a broad, high front porch. Her house was dirty and worn out… her blouse wrinkled and her feet unwashed… the yard tumbledown and dusty. Yesterday, we had eaten 14 courses for lunch. Tonight, I wouldn’t be able to keep track of the excess. Number 4 had taken me out to a manmade lake he had created on land rented from the peasants… a land contract for lengthy years. It had been a quiet, beautiful place with possibilities. He had made a fine, sweeping gesture across the lake and uttered two smug words, “Wo de”…mine.

My Chinese friends were horrified at the mother’s condition and said so. I was honest and said that I could not imagine any of their children treating them that way in old age… after all, old age is revered in China, is it not? Perhaps… not. The story was that Number 1, 4 and 5 sons were charged with caring for the father who had died. Number 2 and 3 sons… the mother. I had met Number 3 son, the richest of the brothers I had been introduced to. He had wandered in and out of our visit… seemingly wishing all of us would leave. We did leave… but we all took this memory of their mother with us.

And what of my Chinese friends after this trip? It had all started out with their trying to do a nice thing for me. I like to travel… so they would take me traveling. There were things I loved about going… southern city streets with sycamores trimmed like walls to keep out the sun…cities of shade in all of that heat… nard blossoms perfuming the air as people sold them in woven baskets along the streets. I loved being in a place that had so much history… Sun Yat Sen… the Kuomintang… the Taiping Rebellion… the Japanese occupation… an onerous comprehension of cataclysmic events in the bright sun of our blistering days. I loved the countryside enjoying the roses of the small cottage garden… their fullness as they hung their heads in the sleepy heat of the afternoon… the languid swarm from the bee keep in a grove at the side of the road… water buffalo grazing near rice paddies.

Can one can assimilate a culture not one’s own? It seems like a thought of high ideals and brotherly love… a story of adoption… or, perhaps, companionship. Yet each side of a cultural story must surely contain different opinions and aspects… flaws as well as great truths expressed differently. A Chinese friend once told me, “If you lived in China for one thousand years, you would still not really understand the Chinese.”

That journey to the south will change me. I will find myself drifting away from these friends to make friends with others of a more mutual understanding. I will begin to maintain some boundaries and will no longer naively perceive my life and China as two rivers flowing into each other and becoming one in a false aura of understanding. I will meet a far more practical understanding further downstream in lovely little inlets that will leave me awestruck, and sometimes merely smiling. I will learn to stand on my own two feet in a way I never experienced before. Loneliness in China will rarely touch me, and I will feel my stance solid even when the ground moves beneath my feet… until I am merely living life… not just a life in China or anywhere else. Occasions of deep connection will come. There will be relationships that will last a lifetime, but I will be careful to cultivate and maintain some reserve, yet a respect for our grave, ingrained difference. In China, that is known as harmony.

Walking along the side of a lake on our last day, I asked my young Chinese friend who had just gotten married if she missed her husband. Her “no” held a little scoff. The other women tittered. That “no” trailed off into an unexpressed story that I may never hear or comprehend. I walked along lost in my thoughts. I remembered love… the longing in absence almost as deep as the presence… the joy of giving without expectation. Had she ever felt these things? Would I ever know?