Life inside China: Part 1
I had a play date with one of my students yesterday. I met Ellie and her mother, Sandra in front of the main school campus at 3pm yesterday. Bonnie, another girl in Ellie’s class was rollerblading with Ellie when I showed up.
Sandra, or Bi Ling Li, is Matthew’s co-teacher where we work at the main school. Her daughter, Ellie, or Cheun-cheun, is in my 2A class (Bonnie is also in this class). Sandra is in charge of the English teachers at the main school. She has worked for Wuchang Experimental Primary School for eight years now. Her husband, whom I didn’t get a chance to meet yesterday, teaches piano at the music conservatory located next to the main school campus. Bonnie’s parents are both teachers at the music school as well and both families live in apartments on the school’s premises.
After Bonnie and Ellie finished rollerblading, we walked to Sandra’s apartment. The music school is beautiful and yet another oasis from the chaos of construction occurring on Jiefang Lu and all surrounding areas. Sandra informed me that the school has concerts all of the time and implied that she’d inform me of the next one.
The play date idea evolved from the fact that Ellie was in a piano competition a few weeks ago. I asked if I could attend and it wasn’t possible. For this particular competition only the judges were allowed in the room. Sandra offered for me to visit her apartment some weekend to hear Ellie play. I was delighted with the invitation. It is so rare that I get to glimpse Chinese life away from the foreign filter. The feeling that carried throughout most of the day was one of sincere gratitude at being able to experience life as it really is for Sandra and Ellie.
We arrived at the apartment, located on the top floor of an older tenement building. I raced with the girls up six flights of stairs and whooped and hollered with them as they tried to get away from me. At the fourth floor, I saw an open doorway and inside the apartment, a warm glow surrounded four old people sitting around a folding table. Each one was sitting perfectly still, back straight as an arrow, with eyes closed and hands folded in front of them. The peace emanating from the room was enough to stop time, but the girls were shrieking and getting away from me so I moved on and up.
At the top, Ellie threw open the door to her wonderfully comfortable apartment. She and Bonnie flung their shoes off, grabbed plastic slippers and dashed around the living room and into Ellie’s room before dashing back to me, each girl taking a foot and trying to pull it up to take my shoes off.
Ellie is tiny. Absolutely tiny. Bonnie is taller and only slightly more filled out. Both girls are little lithe wisps of delight, but Ellie’s delicacy is made more startling by her vivacious energy when she’s in her element. Yesterday, she was certainly in her element. Bonnie and Ellie have grown up together at the music school. Ellie is still 6 (and in 2nd grade!) and will be 7 this December. Bonnie turned 7 in September.
Sandra and Bonnie’s mother entered the apartment shortly after the girls and I, and found me some slippers. Looking down at the things, I thought there was no way they would fit me, but surprisingly, they did. Sandra tisked my sockless feet and warned me of catching cold. It was at least 75 degrees yesterday and I was wearing jeans and two long sleeve shirts, but I have witnessed the overdressing effect before. In fact, just yesterday morning, as I took the bus to meet Sandra, a woman boarded the bus with the most adorable baby girl bundled as if ready to experience her first blizzard. The woman’s mother sat next to her and both women fussed with the baby’s clothing. The woman plopped the baby on her lap and pulled up the leg of her overalls to expose a pair of puffy legwarmers underneath. Below the warmers, there were tights and large wool socks came up and above both the warmers and the tights to completely block potential drafts. After the little girl’s layers were readjusted, the mother picked her up, turned her around and exposed a completely bare bum! I just don’t understand it! Even if you lose the majority of your heat from your head and feet, there has got to be someone out there who says that bare bums on babies isn’t exactly compensated for by five layers of leg warming material!
All day yesterday, Ellie would speak to me mostly in English, but every once in awhile she’d blurt a request in Chinese and look at me expectantly, hoping I’d understand. If I didn’t understand, she’d put her little hand on her hip and stamp her foot and restate the request in English. It was wonderful! Bonnie isn’t usually the most vocal student in class, but seeing Ellie’s ease with English, she didn’t want to be upstaged so she would speak some sentences in English too. I was delighted, as were their mothers. Sandra and I chatted about living at the music school, Ellie’s piano teacher’s wedding (which is tonight), the cost of apartments, light gossip about Wuchang Experimental Primary School and Sandra’s desire for students to practice their oral English as much as possible. In between these chats, Ellie or Bonnie would rush in and grab me and scream, “Lillis! Come HERE!” Ellie had her own room which I’m pretty sure is a major coup in China. In her room stood a shiny black piano. She also had a computer in her room; each piece of equipment covered by finely crafted and yellowed lace.
Ellie removed the lace from the piano at one point and sat at the bench, her tiny frame engulfed by the shiny black instrument. She played a couple of famous classical pieces, none of the names familiar to me, and then Bonnie followed suit. At one point, Bonnie tried a difficult piece and her mother sang the notes as she played. Sitting in the room, afternoon sunlight warming everything it touched, I felt like I was in an inner sanctum. It still escapes me today how someone who loves music as much as I do can have absolutely no talent for expressing my love. I felt my heart melting to the music these tiny little girls created with small, delicate fingers. Bonnie’s mother sat at the piano when the girls became restless and performed a very complex piece that practically had me swooning. Her cell phone went off during the middle of it and for a second, classical music from a real piano competed with tinny Chinese pop music from a cell phone speaker. Whoever was on the other end of the call asked Bonnie’s mother to come help with something and so she left us.
Around this time, Ellie’s grandmother arrived. Sandra informed me that every Saturday, Ellie went to visit both sets of grandparents, but since she had her play date with me yesterday, the grandmothers would come to her. Her paternal grandmother arrived first. Sandra told me that there are short nicknames to differentiate between paternal and maternal grandparents, just as there are words to differentiate little sister from older sister and little brother from older brother.
From this point on the evening was pleasant and filled with conversation and Ellie showing me things that were dear to her. Family albums came out and I was introduced to a phenomenon that appears to be very important to the Chinese: beautiful, made-up photos in fancy clothes and make-up. We call them glamour shots in the US. I saw them as an ostentatious egoism at first, but now note that it is more of a cultural thing than anything else. Ellie has a book of these “glamour shots” from when she was three, and then the whole family did it this past summer. Photos of Sandra in a big white wedding dress, her husband in a tux and Ellie posing as the flower girl. Photos of the three of them in a modern take on Tang Dynasty attire. The books are extremely fancy. Mya, the French Canadian teaching Kindergarten at the other branch school just recently had a book done. Lisa wants to have a book made to surprise Colin with. Eileen and I want to do it as a joke…I think we both secretly relish the idea of playing Chinese dress-up and having photographic proof of the experience. You can even have a poster made afterwards.
Sandra has an “Aiyi” – the word technically means “aunt” but in this case is used to mean “housekeeper” – and she served dinner around 6:45pm. Bonnie and Ellie argued about sitting next to me and so we rearranged the table so that each girl could sit on one side of me. Sandra sat at the head, the grandmothers were across from me and the Aiyi sat at the other end of the table. The dishes served were amazing: a plate of salted pork with the fat slabs still attached and extremely spicy sausage, a dish of eggplant, one of tomato and egg, a rice noodle soup flavored with beef, mushrooms and Chinese cabbage, a dish of Chicken cooked in Coca-Cola (something my great-grandmother used to make in Georgia), fried spring rolls, fungus and green peppers, white cabbage cooked with garlic, a whole fish backed with spices and peppers encrusted on top, and the delicacy, duck tongues. The duck tongues didn’t taste like much to me, but Sandra told me they were very expensive and a real treat. At first, the things looked like fried bugs, but then I realized upon closer inspection that the duck’s jaw was still attached. A duck’s tongue is mostly bone with a bit of flesh surrounding it. I had to eat four because the grandmothers kept putting them in my bowl and I didn’t want to refuse an expensive delicacy. Dinner was wonderful and the two girls kept putting morsels in my bowl, which I’ve become quite familiar with. I think the whole table felt I was inept at using chopsticks and wanted to make life easier for me.
After dinner, Bonnie, Sandra, Ellie and Sandra’s mother and I walked down to meet Ellie’s piano teacher. There is a ceremony in China called “folding the quilt” – it is the preparation of the marriage bed. The bride-to-be chooses an old woman from a happy and prosperous family to make the marriage bed. Ellie’s piano teacher chose Ellie’s grandmother. As we walked to the teacher’s house, I was made overtly aware by the teacher that my presence was not wanted. She barely said hello and it was the first time in China that I have felt invisible and out of place. I’m not sure if she was trying to be rude on purpose, but she made it very uncomfortable for me and before we arrived at her apartment, I tried to make my apologies and leave for home. Sandra and the children wouldn’t hear of it and I felt it really wasn’t Sandra’s choice to make, but she insisted on my staying to see the ceremony. She had also invited me to the wedding, which, I’m thankful I declined before meeting the bride-to-be.
One thing that I really liked occurred on the way to the teacher’s apartment. She stopped into a floral shop to order her bouquet. The wedding was less than 24 hours away and she was just getting to the bouquet. Although everything is bright and shiny and synthetic in terms of materials, I think I like the methods behind planning a Chinese wedding – it seems VERY low-key. In fact, the ceremony is all about bringing family together, eating, drinking, being merry and having a big party. It is very casual. I am speaking not from experience, but from what I’ve heard. And I will be able to confirm this hearsay in a couple of weeks as I’ve been invited to Christina’s wedding on Nov. 18th. Christina, the co-teacher at the branch school who helped me when I first moved in. She assured me that I can bring my camera and I plan to document the entire occasion.
Ellie’s piano teacher lives on the 24th floor of a very new and very fancy apartment building near the music school, but not owned by the school itself, which means the teacher and her husband will have to pay more for it than if they lived on the school’s campus. We arrived and she continued to snub me openly. Sandra tried to include me but I found it was better to keep out of her way. A huge plasma screen television filled most of the living room and her fiancé put a Korean love story on. I sat and watched this until Ellie came running over with the Glamour shots wedding book of the happy couple. This is rude, but it is amazing what these glamour shots people can do. I found the teacher to be quite plain looking – especially because she was sulking (probably because I was there) but in her photos she looked like a total knockout. This is the case with every glamour shot I’ve seen so far: Season’s, Christina’s, and Sandra’s. They all look like more attractive versions of themselves. I think it has something to do with the lighting and a bit of airbrushing that goes on behind the scenes.
Ellie was sitting next to me with the book on her lap, but then she placed it on my lap to point out her favorite pictures. Three women arrived who I assume were the music teacher’s friends and she walked over to me, and picked the book up out of my lap. I was incredibly embarrassed and wanted to leave. Then Sandra made me go into the bedroom to watch her mother perform the ceremony. The piano teacher hurried in after me and stood right in front of me and then beckoned her friends into the tiny room. I immediately walked out, feeling the urge to escape more than the bedroom. Then the music teacher got a phone call and frantically rushed out of the apartment, her friends in tow. I was then able to go take a look at the ceremony. Ellie’s grandmother made the bed and fluffed the pillows and tucked small red envelopes stuffed with money under the four corners of the mattress cover. Then she filled red silk bags full of peanuts (for a fast pregnancy) and sunflower seeds (for the birth of a boy) and various other nuts and seeds. These were placed under the pillows.
The oddest part of the ceremony came when two Caucasian dolls were removed from plastic bags, fully dressed and with real blonde hair and moving blue eyes with real lashes, a boy and a girl. The dolls were the size of two three year olds and were placed on the bed, resting on the pillows. It was the most absurd and mildly scary thing I’d ever seen conducted for a couple of newlyweds. I didn’t ask what the white dolls were for. I assume they were very expensive and that they were another ostentatious sign of wealth.
When the bed was made, I stood awkwardly at the door, hoping to make a run for it before the music teacher returned to find me still in her home. Luckily, we made it out of there without running into her. I walked along the street, Ellie literally hanging onto one hand and Bonnie gingerly holding a finger of the other hand. Ellie was whimpering quietly that she didn’t want me to go home but I could tell she was one foot in the bed because we paused for a moment and she rested her head in the crook of my arm and I swear I heard snoring before I gently shook her to move on. I said my goodbyes and parted ways at the music school gates. I experienced acceptance and barriers all in one day and found it very interesting and very real. I don’t for a second hold the music teacher’s behavior towards me against her. After all, it is her day, her life and her bedroom. Why should she open her arms and allow a foreign stranger into her world? I’m just thankful Sandra and Ellie were so willing where the music teacher was not.
