Update on Saozi (Eldest Brother-in-Law's Wife)

Things haven't gone the way I'd hoped for Saozi.  I imagined a showdown, a confrontation, a dramatic standing up against emotional abuse once her own children reached adulthood. These days, divorce is far more acceptable than ever before in China, even beyond city boundaries: Saozi could have chosen this route, but hasn't. Instead, she remains with an unfaithful husband whose other woman lives but a short ride from her.

Why has Saozi stayed with Da Ge?  I've always wondered...

She's approaching fifty, has a pivotal role within the extended family, even has a daughter-in-law and two granddaughters who live with her now in the house paid for by her husband's earnings from fifteen years ago.  In everyone's minds it's his house.  If she were to divorce, it would be expected that she would leave.  Where could she go without a significant income of her own?  Alone?  Impossible.  To her brother?  Embarrassing.  Her elderly parents? Humiliating.  To another man?

I wonder if that thought has ever crossed her mind, the notion that she could find another man to provide for her.  But how?  She's tied to the street she lives on, connected intimately not just with her own children's and grand children's lives, but with her mother-in-law who lives five steps away, a sister-in-law across the street and three other sister-in-laws' families who live within a mile's radius? How would she find a lover, even if she wanted to? She rarely leaves the street.  No matter how disappointing the marriage is, could it be that even if she were to miraculously find another man, remaining is preferable to cutting free and losing her other relationships?

And what about finances?  Money's very hard to earn, especially if you're an illiterate rural woman.  Saozi tried running a small school supplies shop a few years ago, but found it hard to make it worthwhile.  Her children don't have the capacity to support her - her eldest son has an uneducated wife and two toddlers of his own.  He's of very limited intelligence but manages to bring home a meagre, steady salary by working at a nearby electronics factory.  Saozi's younger two still live at home, her daughter without a job and her middle son employed as a driver by his wealthy uncle.  Though Da Ge's income is unsteady, whenever money runs low he turns to his wealthy younger brother to pass a construction contract his way meaning that from time to time he earns great amounts.  Would Da Ge provide for Saozi if she cut the ties?  I doubt it.

I wonder, too, if the desire not to accept the status quo is strategic.  If Saozi were to move aside, Da Ge could finally bring his mistress into the family.  He'd win; she'd lose. Or does love play a role, too?  Does she have an incredible capacity for selflessness?

At this point, I'll share that over the past few years, the plot thickened around her. Four years ago a baby boy was born.  Da Ge, doting on his newly born son, decided to come public with the news. Mama of course berated him, but the aftershocks calmed and eventually the dust managed to settle.  After all, baby boys are precious, no matter what the circumstances of their birth.

For a short time, the baby lived with his mother in the apartment Da Ge had provided all these years. Soon though, Da Ge began bringing the baby home for visits and in time his desire was clear: Da Ge wanted to raise his son within the extended family.  Within a year or so, the boy had permanently joined the family.  For a while De Ge would regularly take the boy to visit his mother, but the bond with his biological mother diminished.  These days the visits are infrequent.

Over time, Saozi became the boy's primary caregiver.  We're not close enough to talk about it, so I can only imagine that it was with dismay that she heard the news that a baby was born, that it was with mortification that she first witnessed the boy come into her home, that it was with resignation that she realised the child would soon enough be living with them, dependent upon her not only for daily necessities, but for emotional warmth and support.

I've seen, over the past few years, how she's accepted the child.  She feeds him morsels of meat out of her own rice bowl, wipes his runny nose in the cold, pats him down and dusts him off when he falls in the street.  He's spoiled, everyone says, by his doting father, so he's a tough nut to crack.  There's rebellion inside him. The few times I've spent time with him, I've seen him take other children's things, tantrum, lie... he's certainly not the easiest child to like.

And so...it cannot be easy on Saozi.  Is it yet another case of mei banfa, another hands-in-the-air, what-am-I-to-do scenario for a stoical woman I know in China?

If you're reading this blog...

This blog has always created a dilemma for me.  I keep it anonymous.  I don't share it with colleagues, friends or family because I do not want to reveal the identity of the women I write about.  Why? There is a doubt within, a fear if you like, that if I do, somehow - inadvertently - trouble might ensue.  I love these women and their families and would never want anyone to come into harm's way.  My husband tells me I should not worry...but I do. 

But...I'm also craving feedback on my writing.  So, if you stumble across it, please consider sparing a minute to leave a comment or two.  I'd appreciate that so much.  Blink Blink

An Astonishing Choice

Pesticide

I'm on my way.
Determined, at last,
To leave.

But first -
A final glance

At chickens
Pecking at melon seeds
Strewn across the yard

As unaware as you, my son,
Taking your usual repose,
your snoring soothes.

I like its steadiness.

But I must go.

I'm on my way.
Determined, at last,
To leave.

I'm sound of mind
And this pretense must end -
Today.

She wishes me gone -
the pest - you've heard her say
So finally, at jiu shi sui*,

I'm resolute:

I will no longer stay.

A few swift swallows
Is all that it will take.

* = 90 years old

Update on Mei Mei (Youngest Sister-in-Law)

I love Mei Mei.  She's the sister-in-law who best knows me, with whom I never fail to feel loved.  She's a beautiful soul - gentle and wise - ever willing to patiently select words I can understand, given my limited Chinese vocabulary.  Ever sweet, ever thoughtful, ever kind.

Mei Mei's adopted daughter has turned out to be incredibly spunky, quick minded and independent.  I know Mei Mei sees her daughter's potential and realises she's especially bright.  It's always beautiful to see them together - to hear the articulate, animated little girl engaged in conversation with her Mama, surprisingly in Mandarin rather than the dialect,  since this is what is valued today.  When we visit, Mei Mei sometimes rides her electric bicycle to our new house in the ancestral village.  Her husband's village is about 15 minutes ride, and quite often, her daughter will be balancing confidently with her hands on the handlebars, perched on the seat in front of Mei Mei.  I'd be terrified, but for them it is absolutely normal to transport a little one like this.  Often, I've seen families of four or five all riding along a road on one small moped.

Right now, both of Mei Mei's teenage sons have, to her disappointment, stopped attending school.  They stay home much of the time - sleeping irregular hours and watching copious amounts of television, but they both also like to venture out to Internet cafes to play games.  The eldest boy might be found hanging out with other idle friends, but the younger son, an introverted fourteen-year-old, seems happiest in his own company. They are both too young to legally work in factories though the sixteen-year-old has dreams of following a friend to Shanghai as an unskilled migrant worker.  Mei Mei at this point refuses to let him go, knowing he is inexperienced and worrying that he could easily find himself in difficulties.  For now, it's mei ban fa, but surely the boys will soon enough need to find ways to support themselves.

Mei Mei is, naturally, concerned about finances.  For the past few years, she has toyed with the idea of working in a local plastics factory but as her daughter's been so young, it has not been a viable option.  However, now that her little girl is in kindergarten, she thinks about it more and more. It would involve a twelve-hour shift six days a week, something Mei Mei tells me she would not be afraid of at all.  It would certainly help as her husband continues to struggle to make a living selling pork each morning in the marketplace.  They rely heavily upon their own fields and chickens for food. But it is not wise, and Mei Mei deep within knows it.  There's no safety control and she's heard that the chemicals could make her really sick. That they have already harmed other workers' health forever.

Worried about Mei Mei being tempted, a couple of years ago we bought a village house from Mei Mei. It was the house she and her husband had begun to build and wanted to complete when she asked to come to work for us in 2007.  It's useless to us, really, but we knew that finances were overstretched and Mei Mei, unwilling to accept a gift, insisted that we take the house which still stood as an empty concrete block almost ten years after its initial construction. She had never managed to decorate it, living instead no longer on the main street of the town, but in a third home they had erected adjacent to her parents-in-law, another three-storey house of which she has managed to decorate the ground floor only. She used the money we gave to pay off some long-term debts and the rest I suppose went towards other daily expenses.  We kept the transaction secret so that no jealousy would develop amongst other siblings (though deep inside, I know the favouritism's there).  Not even Mama knows.

A few months ago, knowing that money continued to be tight, we started sending a small amount to Mei Mei each month.  In return, she goes over to our newly-built place in laojia once in a while, checks there are no problems, gives the place a clean.  We're fangxin le this way,  knowing that she doesn't need to put herself in harm's way by working in a factory and knowing she can still have time to spend with her daughter after school.  It's no solution to their financial challenges, but it's what we can do.  What we want to do, for I'll eternally feel grateful that when I had no option but to work, she moved over a thousand kilometers to look after my children for me.

I sometimes wonder what the future has in store for Mei Mei.  I suspect her eldest son will find some way to learn a meager living, will find a girlfriend for himself and will, like so many others around him, marry young and start a family of his own.  I expect the younger son will become a quiet loner, unable to connect to others and therefore reliant upon his aging parents.  As for their little girl, I believe she has incredible potential.  I imagine that she will forge her way through childhood, make it against the odds to university, leave the countryside behind, and then, in a Chinese daughter's filial way, ensure that Mei Mei is never left wanting.  And Mei Mei will be ever thankful that she did not hesitate, in spite of her economic difficulties, to open her arms and her heart to another person's daughter on that chilly day in November 2009.

Update on San Jie Jie (Third Sister-in-Law)

Though she still lives in the same street, hings have changed a lot in the past four years for San Jie Jie.  For one, her home has changed.  Like so many others, the urge to build a bigger, more modern home has resulted in a large, three-floor extension behind the simple but adequately-sized two storey home.  As a result, the family now has plenty of room, more than it really needs, including a far more modern kitchen and bathrooms with hot running water.

How have they been able to afford this additional space?  Since losing his job as a migrant worker, San Jie Jie's husband fell into something of a depression.  Neither of them wanted him to go away again, and so San Jie Jie's wealthy younger brother, feeling for them, offered his brother-in-law a job as his construction company's purchasing manager.  This came as a huge relief and provided them with a regular, adequate income as well as a chance to live together again in the hometown with their children.

Quickly, though, each of their children has married.  Not long after their eldest daughter completed her nursing degree, she found a boyfriend and fell in love.  A few months later, she found out she was pregnant and a wedding was quickly arranged.  She never did end up working as a nurse.  Two years later, it was the turn of San Jie Jie's son to get married; his girlfriend, too, found herself expecting and so another wedding took place.  This year, their youngest daughter, now twenty-two, got married on Labour Day.  I saw her a couple of weeks before the wedding and joked that she must be pregnant. Both San Jie Jie and her quiet daughter smiled.  'Mei you,' came the reply, but a couple of weeks after the wedding, I heard the news:  she, too, is expecting.  Her son's wife, is also once again also pregnant. By Spring Festival the baby will have arrived.

San Jie Jie is now kept busy and happy with grandchildren.  I don't think she expected that within three years, she would have five grandchildren, all of whom live within a stone's throw of her home.  In fact, her son and his family live on a floor of the new extension and rely heavily upon San Jie Jie and her husband for childcare and support.  Her daughters are also nearby.

I can't help wondering how many more grandchildren will come along in the next few years.  Sons are definitely desired.  Their eldest daughter's first child was a girl and so she tried again.  If San Jie Jie's younger daughter gives birth to a daughter, no doubt she will also try again until she finally also has a son.  It's funny, I always think, how even the women have such longing for sons, how they can somehow, even in this day and age, think that they need to have boys.  It is evident to me that they love their beautiful little girls and yet, without a boy, families do feel a lack of success, a lack of completion... 

Update on Er Jie Jie (Second Sister-in-Law)

Although Er Jiejie and her husband made a lot of money, taking on a business was an extraordinary pressure.  Mentally and physically, it was incredibly hard work to run their own marble factory.   It was also dangerous both in terms of the machinery, noise and toxicity but they could not let that worry them - for owning the factory meant that they were able to send their son to a top UK university to gain a Masters in International Law.

Once he'd graduated and found employment, there was far less economic pressure.  Their daughter was by this time married and their son-in-law seemed able to provide for her.   They began to toy with the idea of selling the business but it was hard to give up the wealth it had brought.  It took a terrible car accident two years ago to help them make a decision. Er Jiejie's husband almost died in the crash.  Severe head injuries led him to lie in a coma for days and it took several months for him to return to good health and spirits.  While he recovered they sold the factory.  With some of the profits, they opted to build a modest new home, this time in the small town where Mama, Baba, Dage, San Jiejie and their own daughter live.

These days Er Jiejie spends her days helping her daughter to take care of her two young sons.  The family gain immense pleasure from this for the eldest grandson, now five years old, is an exceptionally bright, entertaining boy and the baby is even-tempered and sweet, too.  They now live within walking distance of each other and Er Jiejie seems ever willing to help with her two highly energetic grandsons.

She's waiting now for her son to also marry.  He is twenty-six and has a girlfriend, a young, overseas educated engineer with whom he lives in Shanghai.  Er Jiejie frequently whispers to him to get married as soon as he can.  She encourages him to have a baby, too, offering to raise the child in the hometown for the first few years because she knows her son and his wife would still need to build up their careers.  I find her perspective incredible for two reasons - first that she would volunteer for such a responsibility but mostly because she doesn't consider the long-term emotional effect being a thousand kilometers away from his parents could have on a child.

Still, what it shows is that to Er Jiejie, and probably many others of her time and place, the nuclear family is still very much an alien concept.   It's a very different world, no matter how quickly it is changing...

Update on Da Jie Jie (Eldest Sister-in-Law)

I've just re-read what I wrote four years ago about my eldest sister-in-law.  It gave my heart a few twinges recalling memories that had faded from my mind.  I have to also admit that I thought it was a nicely written sketch.

I've had more chances to see Da Jiejie these past few years.  There is still formality between us, incomprehension on both sides, but also a comfortable familiarity.  When we travel back to the hometown we always stop by her home to sit for a while on the veranda on low bamboo chairs.  We'll eat melon seeds (okay, I'll pretend to because although I love the taste I have still, after all these years, never gotten the hang of cracking each shell with my teeth, extracting the seed and spitting the exterior onto the ground), drink hot green tea out of paper cups and, if the season is right, peel pomelos or mandarin oranges picked from her trees. She'll reach for my hand when it's time to leave, patting it with her rough, calloused hands while telling me to duoduo baozhong - take care.

Da Jiejie has a new home now, built directly behind her 1980s two-storey brick build. I liked the old home quite a lot, for it was of a good size for her family of four and set back from the village street.  Like most others in the area, it was symmetrically designed with a double-door entrance and a three-inch wooden doorstep over which guests naturally stepped.  It's bad luck in China to step on that piece of wood.  The main room featured, typically, a large round dining table in the centre as well as a wooden altar at the back, above which hung Chairman Mao's portrait. There were no sofas or armchairs for no matter what the weather, when free-time was to be found, locals took a nap or squatted outdoors on bamboo chairs.  A lack of air conditioning meant that in summer the shaded porch was preferable to the sweltering temperatures indoors and, vice versa, a lack of indoor heating meant it was inevitably warmer outside in the weak sunshine than indoors.  Leisure and comfort are relatively new concepts and whenever I visit, I marvel at the fact that even today, few family members invest in comfortable indoor chairs.

I've diverged.  A room led off from each side of the main room - one a grain storage area and the other the son's bedroom.   What I liked about this house was that, unusually, concrete steps attached to one of its outside walls which led to a hallway and two bedrooms above. I liked to stand in the space outside these bedrooms, lean on the balcony and look out towards the mountains or down at their quiet yard in which brown chickens pecked at the earth and the old pomelo tree stood.

That home is considered old-fashioned now.  Like scores of other villagers over the past few years, Da Jiejie and her husband have built an enormous new structure - a deliberate insurance to show the land is theirs as well as something of a status symbol.  They borrowed a great deal in order to build an imposing four-storey concrete building and, although they have not got the funds to decorate most of it, feel proud of its potential.  Although, like many other gargantuan houses in the vicinity it lacks character and is minimally furnished, it is a definite improvement.  For one thing, Da Jiejie now has her first indoor bathroom with running water.  Equipped with a chrome shower head, a ceramic squat toilet and a sink, it's decorated simply, but is a huge step up from the awful pit they used to use outdoors.

Da Jiejie is busy these days.  She continues to grow vegetables, peanuts and fruits for her own family's consumption which takes a lot of time, especially in the warmer months.   She's also a grandmother now.  Her daughter had two sons in quick succession which makes her extremely proud.  As her husband's village is slightly off the beaten track and he drives for a living, Da Jiejie's daughter often stays with her own parents when he's away, bringing her two toddlers along on her moped.   Da Jiejie is still waiting anxiously for her son, already over thirty, to find a girl to marry.  She worries that he'll never find a bride, that he'll never have a son.   He's always in her prayers, just as her daughter was a few years ago.

Da Jiejie has continued to be a devout Buddhist.  In the past few years she has visited several important temples in the area.  As a result of the construction of the new home, she's moved her small shrine into one of the upstairs bedrooms of the old house.  Now, she has a large room in which to burn offerings and to pray.  She's bought a beautiful wooden Buddha for her shrine and never lets the incense stop burning.  She took me up there last year to show me a trail of smoke on one of the walls.  She is certain it is the spirit of a guardian dragon that followed her home from one of her temple visits.  When she pointed insistently at it and shared the story, I admit that I pretended to see what she did in order to please her.

Who knows, I thought, seeing nothing...maybe she's right.  I'd like her to be.  The longer I live, the less sure I am about such things.