Articles & Stories about Life in China

Chinese Adoptee

I post this poem written by one of my students who is a Chinese adoptee to America.  She takes an introductory Chinese class from me at the high school. She is curious about China and someday wants to return to study.  Her poem is not critical, just heart-rending in its innocent yearning to know her mother and motherland.

Unknown

Why did you leave?
Was the burden of bearing a girl so hard?
What did I do to push you away?
Was it that I could not carry the family name?
There are holes in my heart where you should have been
That has been waiting for you and has burned my skin

What could I do to get you back?
Was it hard for you to let me go?
What did I do for you not to want me?
Was it that I was too young to see?
I would do anything to know you are there
It was not my choice you pushed me elsewhere
Across the ocean and far away

Was it the fact you could not have more?
Why was it greed that made up your mind?
Why did you let this change our course?
What did I do to push you away?
There are holes in my heart where you should have been
That has been waiting for you and has burned my skin


What was your reason to give me away?
Why did you think it would not matter at all?
Was it not my heart that was being cut in half?
Why did you not feel the hurt in my chest?
I would do anything to know you are there
Across the ocean and far away

What you were missing when all I wanted was you?
Was it scary for you to send me into the unknown?
What would happen to me since I was alone?
Why were you not there when I spoke my first word?
Just a sign to know you cared and you heard
There are holes in my heart where you should have been

Why did you think that you could leave me
What you did to make me forget
Was not strong enough to fill up the holes you left

Greed got you to let go of me
Just so you could pass on the great family name
Even though my heart is sore
From the times you pushed me away
All I know is that you left me no clues
If I ever wanted to find you

Are there holes in your heart where I should have been?
Have you been waiting for me, did my absence burn your skin?
Did you wonder what I could have been?
Have you ever wondered if our lives were to cross
Would you ever inform me on the reason why
You chose to push me away that one day

I am still wondering where you are
Where you have been and where you will be
If our paths were ever to cross one day
There are still holes in my heart where you should be
Your absence has burned my heart where you should be
Your absence has burned my heart and soul
Until I know the unknown past that you hold

by Delany

Posted in the China Daily Forum

See Also - Awakening to the Whisper by Cathy Crenshaw Doheny

Our World, Our Dream by Cathy Crenshaw Doheny

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Mass in Yinchuan by John R. Sabine

From what I have heard, and certainly as confirmed by my observations in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia and where the action in this story takes place, there has been over recent years a dramatic revival in religious fervor in China – ­in both the traditional Buddhism and Confucianism, as well as in the Western religions. Islam has always been strong in some areas, especially amongst the Hui people of the western provinces and thus including of course Ningxia.

And so to my observation of Catholicism in practice in China today, as recorded in a letter written home to my family that day.

“Actually I went to Mass twice in Yinchuan, yesterday and today. So the tale really begins yesterday. Or to be even more accurate still, on the preceding evening, Friday that is.

That night I was surprised to meet at dinner at my hotel a young American couple. Any Westerner in Yinchuan is a rarity, so a woman was even more surprising. It turned out that she was (possibly still is) the Chinese correspondent for Reuters, and normally headquartered in Beijing. She had only recently been transferred from Japan, and this was her first trip out into the west. Her husband had come along for the ride. We got to talking.

As I understood her tale she was in Yinchuan in particular, and in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in general, chasing up three separate stories; a famous but rather radical poet, the current Moslem unrest in the area (really not much in Ningxia, though considerably more serious in several neighbouring Provinces) and the resettlement of nomadic tribesmen from the mountains of Southern Ningxia to areas nearer to the capital.

When she happened to pause at the end of this long tale of her various Reuters' assignments in that part of China, I made so bold as to suggest that there might just be another good assignment awaiting her right here in Yinchuan. For on a previous visit I had seen, on a building right across the street from the hotel, a large sign that said, quite clearly and in plain English, "Catholic Church". And, what's more, in the grounds behind the rather drab exterior on which was inscribed that sign there was indeed a real, genuine, true-to-life Catholic Church. Might not an exciting story be lurking there somewhere?

Of course there was. And Ms Reuters had already beaten me to it. She and her husband had in fact gone to Mass there just the previous Saturday morning. Saturday, they had been told, was the chief day for Catholic worship in Yinchuan. But the story really wasn't all that exciting – twenty or thirty elderly ladies, nuns she thought, chanting the Office and one elderly, or rather very elderly, priest. Worth a line or two perhaps, buried somewhere in the middle of a newspaper, but no great front-page stuff.

So she said. Oh boy! How wrong can you be?

Well, first off, as I said, I went along myself on the Saturday morning, yesterday that is. And all was more or less just as she had described it. Though with two interesting exceptions. There was not just one priest, but no less than three priests. And not just one very old priest, but one very old one and two very young ones, both of whom offered Masses also – on a small side altar, one immediately after the other – while the boss celebrated on the main altar. The other slight difference from the Reuters story was that among the worshippers there was also one young woman. Now I know about one swallow not making a summer, nor one young woman a whole congregation, but it was at least intriguing.

And so to this morning, Sunday – for I will admit that I was not all that convinced by this Saturday-only business. By this time, however and unfortunately, Ms Reuters and presumably her husband too had already gone back to Beijing.

But back to church, wherein the real story lies. As I again entered that church a few minutes before 7.00 am, but this time on a Sunday, I was at first confronted with much the same scene that I had witnessed on the day before. There were again perhaps 20 to 30 people present, predominantly elderly women – and probably predominantly the same ones that I had seen the previous day, and whom I was now pretty sure were indeed nuns, some were in fact in habits. And they were already well into their chanting of the Office, in Latin of course, with many sets of rosary beads in prominent display and obvious use.

So far little different, ­except for the one very salient fact that I was an hour early. Sunday Mass, or at least the one that I attended, was an 8.00 am affair.

And as the minutes ticked by, so did the congregation trickle in. By the time Mass was really due to start – I had been an hour early remember – that church was transformed. My one additional worshipper of the day before had now multiplied many times over. That Yinchuan Catholic church was now packed to the rafters. It would hold comfortably seated, I would guess, perhaps 250 to 300, but come 8.00 am this morning there must have been some 500 to 600 people present, packed in like I've never seen them packed in before. All Chinese but one – me! Old, young, adults, children, babies, male, female, the children herded up the front, the teenagers hanging around the back, a few of the men sneaking out occasionally for a smoke.

And the liturgy, wow! It was all great pre-Vatican II action, a full-blown tridentine Missa Cantata with lots of candles, incense, the whole works, including even a long (and probably if true to form also boring; I don't know) sermon. All with one absolutely amazing exception. There was no collection! Though I did indeed empty my pockets of all my Chinese loose change, however, mostly those light little aluminium coins, into the poorbox as I left.

At some point when the whole show was going full bore, just before communion perhaps, a little wizened old man came up to whisper in my ear. I had started out quite comfortably on the end of a pew, about two-thirds of the way back. As the church first started to fill the spaces around me had been rather neglected, but by this time I was as much jammed in as anyone else.

Was I a foreigner? What else. Was I a Catholic? Not necessarily so obvious, but probably a good bit better than a 50:50 chance. So, yes! Would I like to meet the priest? Would I ever. He was "ordinated", so my newfound friend said, before the Liberation (which, if my little Chinese history serves me right, means pre-1949). "Ordinated". I've come to love that word. He meant "ordained" of course, but to me ordinated seems just right.

And if it were all good old Latin, pre-Vatican II activity, were there no adjustments at all for Chinese culture? Well, perhaps one. Or at least only one that I could see. And that one, anybody could see. Sure they had lots of candles – plus the obligatory little man fussing around, jumping up and down lighting, extinguishing, moving, fixing them. We have just such a 'helper' back home. Probably every church does.

But in many places that we would have candles, and in many where I assure you we would never have candles, this church had lights. Dozens of lights, maybe hundreds of lights. On the altar, off the altar, around the holy pictures (which pictures, perhaps as much as anything, reminded me of my own pre-Vatican II youth – the absolutely stereotyped church plaster-art so common then all over the world), lights festooned every-which-where you could hang a string of lights. Little, Christmas-tree type lights – white, yellow, green, blue, red, pink, every colour you care to name ­and all flashing on and off to some marvellous hidden rhythm. Marvellous was just the word.

No, there was one more intriguing Chinese feature – the front of the Church. The structure was tall and thin, as churches mostly are, of light cream-coloured brick and perhaps twenty, maybe thirty, years old. Post-Liberation I would think. And much as one would expect to see in any not-too-rich, not-too-poor, not-too-imaginative small town or city anywhere in the Catholic world. And on the front, which featured the regulation two small symmetrical spires, was more of the same that you would see on Catholic churches the world over – a cross, a large IHS and above the two and again symmetrically placed doors, in capitals, the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

Omega was upside down!

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Rebeka's Tea Party by Jytte Holst Bowers

It could have been the best birthday for an eight-year-old, but Rebeka knew it would be the worst.

She was in China, far away from her home in Pennsylvania.  Her parents taught English. She went to a Chinese school—and didn’t like it.

They lived in a guest house at a large university in Shanghai.  Her mother and father were excited about China, but Rebeka wasn’t. Not at all.  She had no friends.  She didn’t understand the girls in her class.  They giggled and pointed fingers at her and never asked her to join them in their games.

“They can’t speak English, only Chinese.  They are dumb,” she complained to her parents.

“Rebeka, we are in China,” said her mother.  “It is their country.  Try to speak Chinese, just try. Then you might make some friends.  Why don’t you invite Fu Ping and Fu Ling to your birthday?”

Fu Ping and Fu Ling were twins.  They were in Rebeka’s class.

“They can’t speak English.”

“Maybe they think you are dumb, Rebeka.  You don’t even try to speak a few words in Chinese to them.  Come, I will take you to school!”  Her mother took the large bamboo basket over her arm.

Old Wang, the gate keeper, waved to them. “Oh, you go to school, little Mizz. I wonder what they teach you today? Maybe some Chinese, aieee.”  He stroked his beard and grinned at Rebeka.  He had been to America when he was young.  Rebeka stopped by the gate every day when she came home from school. She loved to talk with him and watch his Minah bird, Ping Pong, which hung in a cage right outside the gate house.  It chirped and flew back and forth.

Rebeka and her mother walked through the market.  While the mother filled her basket with vegetables, Rebeka ran over to the old woman who sold pottery. Oh, there it was: a small tea set with tall mountains reaching into the clouds painted on the cups; waterfalls which tumbled down into the river where fishermen were steering their boats with long oars.  The handle on the teapot was a dragon. and its head made the knob on the lid.

“Oh mother, look.”  Rebeka pulled her mother over to the stand.  Isn’t this the most beautiful set you ever saw?  I wish I could get it for my birthday.”

“Yes, it certainly is.  It is simply lovely, but who would you serve, Rebeka, when you don’t want to make friends?”

“They can’t speak English—they are dumb.”

“Well, come along,” her mother sighed.  “You will be late.”

The school was a low yellow brick building right outside the market gate.  The green tile roof glittered in the sun.  On each corner were dragon heads like the ones on the teapot.  Fu Ping and Fu Ling stood outside the gate.  They were dressed alike in lovely flowered skirts and white blouses.

“Zao an,” Rebeka’s mother greeted them in Chinese.  They smiled and bowed their heads.

Everyone smiles at mother.  No one smiles at me.  They don’t like me at all, Rebeka thought.

“Rebeka, say good morning to your classmates in Chinese,” said Miss He, Rebeka’s teacher.  Rebeka liked Miss He; she could speak English, but Rebeka shut her mouth tightly.

Miss He sighed.  She sounded just like Rebeka’s father, her mother and Old Wang.

“If you don’t try, Rebeka, you won’t get any friends.”  Rebeka closed her mouth even more tightly.

With the school over the children scurried out through the gate.  Fu Ping and Fu Ling followed Rebeka. They chanted in Chinese and pointed to her eyes and nose.  Rebeka ran down one alley in the market, up another.  She hid behind a stack of crates.  The girls saw her and chased her.  They were giggling and made faces.  Rebeka tripped over a basket with tomatoes.  Her eyes filled with tears as she picked up a large one and waited until the twins had passed her.  Then she threw it with all her strength at the very moment that Fu Ping turned around.  It hit her right over her eyes. The juice ran down her face and beautiful white blouse.  She yelled and ran out of the market gate with Fu Ling right behind her.

Tears ran down Rebeka’s face as she ran toward her home.“What’s the hurry, little Mizz?  What’s wrong?”

“Everything, Old Wang, everything,” Rebeka sobbed.  “I threw a tomato at Fu Ping.  It hit her between her eyes.  I spoiled her blouse.”

“Why Rebeka, why?” Old Wang looked at her.

“They tease me all the time.”

“And what do you do?”

“Nothing.  They’re dumb.  They can’t speak English.”

“I see.”  Old Wang stroked his beard for a long time.  Rebeka thought he had forgotten her.  She began to walk toward her apartment.

“Rebeka, come back.  I will tell a story.”  Old Wang knew many stories, and people liked to listen.

“When I was a young man, you see that is long, long ago,” he laughed and pointed to his beard and to his bald head, “I was in your country.  No one understood me.  No one cared.  I had no friends. Ah, I thought, maybe if I could speak their language it might be different.  Oh, it was difficult, especially in the beginning.  People thought that I spoke funny, but when they understood that I tried to speak their language they wanted to help.  And suddenly I had many friends who wanted to teach me how to speak English.”

Rebeka walked over to Ping Pong.  She poked at its cage. So what, Old Wang had friends.  “Many.”   I’ve none, and now I’ve hit Fu Ping and ruined her lovely blouse.  I should try to speak Chinese; they all tell me that.  Why can’t they speak English?
“Ching lai lai, Ping Pong, Ching lai lai,” the bird chirped. It jumped back and forth in its cage.

“What does that mean?” asked Rebeka.

“It is Chinese,” Old Wang laughed.  “Every evening I let him out of his cage for a little while.  When I want him back I say ‘Ching lai lai.  It means ‘please, come here.’”

“It sounds just like music.”

“All languages are music, Rebeka, if you learn to listen.  Now I have taught you your first word.  I think that you will be a very good student.”  He took Rebeka’s hand, and they walked out of the gate.

“Where are we going, Old Wang?”

"You will see; you will see, little Mizz.  Now say ‘Dway bu chi’.  That means ‘I am sorry.”

“Dway bu chi,” Rebeka repeated.

“Very good, very good indeed.”  Old Wang stopped in front of a small grey house at the end of an alley.  He knocked on the door.  It was opened by a small lady.  Behind her stood Fu Ping with a big bruise on her forehead and her sister, Fu Ling.  Old Wang greeted them and began to talk.  Rebeka thought that he was never going to stop.

He turned toward her.  “Now Rebeka.”  He pushed her right in front of Fu Ping. “Now it is time to use your Chinese word.”

“Dway bu chi, dway bu chi,” Rebeka whispered.  Fu Ping stood quiet for a while.  Finally she took Rebeka’s hand.  Old Wang, the mother and the girls were smiling!

“Everything is going to be all right now, and they think you will learn to speak Chinese very well,” Wang said.  “I asked them if they wouldn’t like to come to your birthday.  You don’t mind that, little Mizz, do you?”

“Oh no, no.  It would be very nice—so very nice,” Rebeka replied.

The girls came.  Old Wang came, and so did Miss He.

“Huangying guanglin,” said her mother.

Fu Ping and Fu Ling gave Rebeka a beautiful fan.  Miss He gave her a book about the Monkey King, the beloved little Chinese trickster.

“Rebeka,” her mother called from the kitchen, “the tea is ready.  Invite your friends to the table.”  Her mother opened the door into the small dining room.

“Ching lai lai,” said Rebeka.  The twins laughed and took her hands.  Old Wang’s present stood in the middle of the table: a large birthday cake, decorated with a big red dragon spewing fire.  And there, right there beside it, stood the beautiful tea set from the market—only more beautiful than Rebeka remembered.  She could almost hear the waterfall tumble into the river.  The fishermen’s oars splashed and made rings after rings in the water.  Fu Ping and Fu Ling’s happy voices blended with the ancient Chinese scenery.  Old Wang had said that languages were like music, and Rebeka, had finally learned how to listen.

“Now you can serve tea for your friends,” her mother laughed, and that was how the worst of birthdays, the one so far away from America, turned into the very best after all.

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The People are real, warm and welcoming

There is a magic door; to enter requires a sheaf of papers, stamped, signed, stamped again. Followed by a long walk across a high bridge, over a deep ravine, into a great hall where thousands of people stand in snaking lines, sweating in the subtropical heat.

Sitting in glass cubicles, high chair bound, peaked capped officials watch with suspicious eyes the supplicants begging admission. As you inch closer you will see the occasional unlucky soul, who after being plucked from the line, is unlikely to return.

It sounds like a passage into darkness from the bright lights and exuberance of Hong Kong but crossing the boarder into mainland China is well worth the effort.

The area of China that radiates out from Shenzen, the city across the boarder, is divided into bands like an onions skin, and has different levels of economic freedom. Close to the monetary engine of HK it is fully geared to meet the expectations of western business; passing through each internal boarder post, paper work allowing, however the view of the buildings gets less impressive, the roads more challenging.

I was sitting in the back of a limo, thanks to my job at the time as a corporate buyer, watching the world go by when I saw a sedan turn off the beautifully laid main road. Its front end disappeared down a pot hole so large that the back end shot up three feet in the air. We glided on, and nothing would convince my, none English speaking, driver to stop and render assistance. I suspect he had been told to keep the idiotic Englishman out of trouble.

To my mind it is the dichotomies of China that make it such a truly fascinating place. Skyscrapers climbing majestically through the smog, green glass and chrome steel sit next to shacks woven from scraps of rubbish, perching on the edge of paddy fields.

Fabulously wealthy business men step carefully past beggars. Polished pavements drop precariously to dirt tracks at the end of a block. And most starkly of all the people; there is a saying that there is no such thing as small trouble in China. Get involved with the police or a local official and things can get complicated and expensive fast. On the other hand the ordinary, day to day, people are the warmest, kindest men and women that I have ever met anywhere in the world.

These people drive the dynamic growth of the world’s next super power. Turn your back, stay away for a few days, and when you return there will be six new buildings where a wasteland stood before.

Once I took out a photograph of my own children while at a business meeting and the next morning at breakfast the lobby was full of my Chinese colleagues and their own, much loved, children. Perhaps the sudden appearance was a little staged; trying to convince me that they were a Family organisation, but the love and laughter of both the parents and their kids was very genuine.

The food is remarkable, nothing prepares you for it. You may think that you know Chinese food, the western version that is, but you do not. If it walks, crawls, flies or swims, we will eat it, boasted a friend of mine as we sat down to eat. Starter; A clear broth with small white nuggets of meat that turned out to be snake, in which floated a three inch scorpion complete with stinger and claws. When asked how one went about eating it the advice was simple; “Watch out for the stinger it can scratch your throat.”

My guide promised to take me somewhere special to eat; having eaten in some wonderful, bizarre and down right odd places I was suitably intrigued. As the car pulled into the brand new shopping precinct I spotted our destination. Kentucky Fried Chicken, all I can tell you is that in China they must grow really small chickens judging by the legs.

I once visited a factory where a well known toy company had some of its products manufactured. I guess what you need to understand is how the corporate mentality of the USA meets the cost consciousness (I could use a stronger word) of the Far East.

The corporate quality handbook must have said something like, ‘bathroom must be provided for the shop floor employees. This bathroom must have the following in working order, an electric hand dryer, soap dispenser, mirror, tiled walls and floor.’ Truth to tell it had every single item on the list. Trouble was no one had insisted on an actual toilet instead of a hole in the ground and a roof would have been nice addition.

I checked out the sleeping accommodation that the factory provided for its workers. I was shocked, suddenly I wondered if it was morally right to trade with companies that set up such basic flats. I asked Sam my guide and friend why the workers stayed. What he said explained a lot. He said that twenty years ago the people were very poor, now each year things get better; these workers had come from villages where they had no running water or electricity. Here they have a steady living wage and heat, light and the promise of a new future.

I still believe that we in the West have a responsibility to insist that our suppliers behave ethically in doing so we help people to grow out of the wreckage of the past.

As you drive through the streets of the old town you will pass hundreds upon hundreds of tiny shops, little more than garages in which they have stashed saleable items. But I guarantee you this, in every street, under a bare light bulb illegally wired into the overhead mains, will be a snooker or pool table. Around it will be a dozen youths smoking, laughing and living their lives. It is easy to see all of China as a totalitarian state, grey and controlled if you only watch the media.

My advice, visit China, behind the flags and walls, the land and the people are warm, real and welcoming, if perhaps a little strange.

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