River Town_ Two Years On The Yangtze Part 16

"Do you think it is a big problem?"

"Not now."

"Well, if it becomes a big problem, you should leave the job. That can be a very bad situation."

"I know," she said. "I don't think that will be necessary. But it is not such a good job, and if I have to leave, I will."

ONE OF TEACHER KONG'S DISTANT COUSINS had been kidnapped and sold into marriage in Anhui province. The woman wasn't a close relative of Teacher Kong, but they shared the same family name. We talked about her during a tutorial in which we discussed had been kidnapped and sold into marriage in Anhui province. The woman wasn't a close relative of Teacher Kong, but they shared the same family name. We talked about her during a tutorial in which we discussed fanmai renkou fanmai renkou, people who were bought and sold for money.

I asked if the woman had been able to escape her husband, and Teacher Kong said that they still lived together. She had been sold in the mid-1980s; now they had been married for more than a decade.

"She was relatively satisfied," Teacher Kong said. "Her husband had money."

To a certain degree this struck me as obvious-after all, he had purchased the woman. But apart from finances, wasn't she angry about the violation?

"I'm not sure, because I don't know her well," Teacher Kong said. "But I think she wanted to leave Fengdu. She was from a very poor part of the countryside, and you know that it is difficult for a woman to leave a place like that. Usually they aren't taken by force-they're tricked. Somebody might promise them a job somewhere else, and once they arrive they're sold as a bride. They're far from home and there's nothing they can do. I think that's what happened to my cousin."

"So she never came back?"

"After about five years she did. At first she was very ashamed-too ashamed to write. But after a while she got back in contact, and finally she made a visit home. Now she's been back a few times. She likes her husband. Quite a few of them turn out like that, if the women are from very poor places like my cousin. The only serious problems are with the women who are sold to idiots, or cripples, or old men. They're not happy if they have a husband like that, of course. That's when there's trouble, but as long as there's enough money most of the women aren't too upset."

"Usually they're taken far from home?"

"Yes, and sometimes that's a problem-the husband will live in a very remote area, and the women are watched so they can't get away. Some of them are illiterate and can't write home, or they don't know how to travel back. Does that happen much in America?"

"No," I said. "That doesn't happen very much in America. I've never known anybody who was bought or sold."

"It's not so common anymore in China, either. It was more common in the 1980s, just after the Reform and Opening started. Now it doesn't happen so much, but in the remote areas I've heard that sometimes it's still a problem."

EVERY YEAR AT THE BEGINNING of the American section of my literature course, we read the Declaration of Independence, which was in the textbooks. The Chinese publisher had included the Declaration because it smacked of revolution, which was always an appropriate subject for Chinese students. They never would have included the American Const.i.tution or the Bill of Rights. of the American section of my literature course, we read the Declaration of Independence, which was in the textbooks. The Chinese publisher had included the Declaration because it smacked of revolution, which was always an appropriate subject for Chinese students. They never would have included the American Const.i.tution or the Bill of Rights.

I a.s.signed the chapter, and then I asked the students to write their own Declarations, a.s.serting independence from something that limited them. Nearly all of the boys declared independence from the college, although a few responses were different. Marx, who was true to his name, declared independence from Money: We are slaves of the money, all of us, this is the case. But we all know clearly that money is only the thing that people create. We want our food, coat, car, and all of the things not controled by the money. We don't want to fight against money, because at least money has given us some convenience. But its harm is much bigger than the remittance. We must get rid of money. Money is the tyrant of our society. We must throw it off.

None of the girls wrote about money, and few of them declared independence from the college. Many wanted to be free from their parents-they wrote about how their mothers read their diaries and prevented them from choosing their friends freely, especially their boyfriends. Quite a few of the girls declared independence from men entirely. One student wrote: The laws and G.o.d give each man equality. They give us freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of speech, freedom of loving, and so on. However, my boyfriend almost abolishes the freedom of my speech and deed, the freedom of my loving.He is an all-controlling person. He and I are open-minded. He could speak with anyone he would like to. He could play with his "little sisters." He could also laugh and laugh with them. I don't know around him, how many "little sisters" he has. But he hates my doing these. Before our love, I had had many friends. I liked to chat with them, to go for an outing, to have a joke with them, etc. At that time, I don't know what's the meaning of mental pain. I was like a happy bird. Now, when he saws me talk with boys, he must snap at me. Even more, he doesn't show due respect for my feelings. I lost my friends. I am so alone that my characteristic also changes. Sometimes for trifles, I might fly into a rage. I can't find own original image. I can't bear his rudeness. So I decide to leave him forever. When he knows my idea, he threatens me. He says, "If you leave me, I will kill you." My dear! What can I do?I still believe laws and G.o.d give each man equality. Now I'll declare loudly that I must be independent! Freedom and independence are more important than anything else in the world, including love!

NOT LONG AFTER my telephone conversation with Anne, she wrote in a letter that the Hong Kong man had cooled in his pursuit of her. She was satisfied with the job, and now a former cla.s.smate from Fuling was coming to Shenzhen to try her luck. They were to live together, along with Anne's older sister. my telephone conversation with Anne, she wrote in a letter that the Hong Kong man had cooled in his pursuit of her. She was satisfied with the job, and now a former cla.s.smate from Fuling was coming to Shenzhen to try her luck. They were to live together, along with Anne's older sister.

Anne was always concerned about her sister, who had a tendency to bounce from job to job. The last time Adam had spoken with her, she had described her sister's current job, which sounded more or less like part of a pyramid scheme. Those scams were very common in Shenzhen, as well as many other places in China, and Anne's sister had naturally found a position toward the bottom of the pyramid. Adam and I both suggested as tactfully as possible that Anne should encourage her sister to find a different line of work-pyramids were collapsing all over China, and the government was currently cracking down on them. Anne gave me an update in her letter: My sister's situation is getting better now. Frankly, she is more capable than me. What she lacks most is luck. Although these days, she has done very bad in getting money, she is successful making friends and having experience, which we think will be good for whatever job she may have in future. But my parents, especially my mother doesn't think so. They are getting worried about her, because she is already twenty-five years old now, but still has neither a stable job nor a boyfriend. It's a very funny situation-when they got know that I had a boyfriend, they were so upset, even became angry. As I was still a little girl in their eyes-three or four years makes so big a difference!I have read every letter (two total) from you for many times; it has been a great pleasure to "talk" with an elder man who can always come up with wise ideas. My father may be a wise man, but I'd rather act like a spoiled child before him; we seldom talk seriously.

A couple of weeks later Anne called from work. I asked her about the Hong Kong man, and she laughed.

"He likes all women he sees," she said. "Because of that he is not such a problem."

She told me her job was going well, and I asked how her sister was doing.

"She is fine."

"Does she have a new job?"

"Yes. She answers the telephone."

"What do you mean by that?"

"People call her," Anne explained, "and she talks to them."

"She has conversations with them?"

"Yes."

"Do many people call?"

"Yes."

"What do they talk about?"

"About troubles."

"What kind of troubles?"

"About affections!" She giggled after saying this and there was a pause.

"Does your sister like the job?"

"I think she likes it."

"How is the salary?"

"She makes six hundred a month," said Anne. "But if more people call, she makes more money."

"Who calls-are they men or women?"

"I think half are men, half are women. There are many people who call."

"Why do they call?"

"Everyone here in Shenzhen has many troubles."

"Why is that?"

"There are many troubles about affections. Some people say there is no real love in Shenzhen. People are too busy with earning money to exist."

DURING OUR FIRST YEAR IN FULING, Adam's best freshman student had been a girl named Janelle. She was so far ahead of the others that there was no comparison, and something about this intellectual distance also set her apart socially. She had no friends in the cla.s.s and spent her time alone, often talking with Adam or me to practice her English. At the end of the school year, she seemed depressed, and then for some unknown reason she went home early, missing her final exams.

At the start of the second year, Adam had cla.s.s for the first time and called roll. Everybody was there except for Janelle, and Adam asked if she was sick. A few students shook their heads. n.o.body said anything.

"Will she be here later?" Adam asked.

"No," said Shannon, who was the cla.s.s monitor. "She will not come back this year."

"Why not?"

"She is dead," Shannon said, and then he laughed. It was a nervous and humorless sound, the sort of Chinese laugh that was simply a reaction to an uncomfortable situation. It wasn't difficult to distinguish these laughs from normal ones, but nevertheless they always sent s.h.i.+vers down a waiguoren waiguoren's spine. The students had their heads down and Adam quickly changed the topic. On that day cla.s.s was a long two hours.

The subject was difficult to broach and we never heard much about it, because none of the students had known Janelle well. All they could tell us was that during the summer she had jumped off a bridge in her hometown. When the Chinese commit suicide, it's common for them to jump off things-bridges, buildings, cliffs. Sometimes in the countryside they eat pesticide. They tend to do a much more thorough job of killing themselves than Americas do, especially American women, who often take pills and are saved by having their stomachs pumped.

Chinese women are more likely to commit suicide than Chinese men. More than half of the female suicides in the world take place in China, where the suicide rate for women is nearly five times the world average. China is the only country on earth in which more women kill themselves than men.

In Fuling there were plenty of signs that things could be difficult for women, and Adam and I had strange experiences with women who seemed unbalanced. During our first year, a freshman girl used to lurk outside Adam's apartment, accusing him of loving her. Adam tried to reason with her, asking why she believed this, and sometimes she said that she had heard it from her body. Other times she invented a story about how Dean Fu had called a meeting and told all of the students about Adam's interest in her. Once she angrily accused Adam of being too timid to pursue her, and she said that, like all Americans, he was a coward and a liar.

I had my own troubles with a woman named Miss Ou, who worked in a downtown department store. She was in her mid-forties, unmarried, and she telephoned at strange hours-at six in the morning she would invite me to come and see her. She gave me gifts: chopsticks, books, hand-knit sweaters. She was a kind, harmless woman, and at the beginning I tried to be friendly, but soon I was overwhelmed by her desperate loneliness. Every two or three weeks she sent me poetry and brief sayings that she copied out of English textbooks or translated herself. "We open up the future dream together!" she once wrote. "Harmonious family condition is the fatal term of the success of career."

Occasionally she sent me longer letters, like the one ent.i.tled "Keep the Trees of Love Green Forever": You should fully realize that woman is the unexhausted source of the strength of man. She can affect him, give him self confidence, lead him up, make him exciting, she can make timid brave, make weakness strong. It all depends on how the woman excavate the great potential power of her own.Good woman is a school, she will affect, encourage, and model you (man) with a kind of magical spirit. Benefit you all your life. Man should enter this school to refine himself. The man who has ideal is the most powerful one.

While it seemed that Fuling women were far more likely than men to feel isolated and frustrated, I had trouble untangling the reasons behind this unhappiness. Gender relations were hard to understand very fully, because these were sensitive, private issues and I was an outsider. But even from my distance I sensed an enormous gap between the experiences of local women and men.

In particular, I noticed that they had vastly different relations.h.i.+ps to money. In my mind, money was a male quality in Fuling-it was something that I naturally a.s.sociated with men, and to some degree it was connected to the standard dress code that represented local masculinity. City men almost never wore shorts, regardless of how hot it was, and in cool weather they dressed carefully in Western-style suits with the tailors label left prominently on the sleeve. In hot weather they wore bright silk s.h.i.+rts and thin polyester slacks. They clipped beepers and cell phones prominently to their belts, which were wrapped one and a half times around their narrow waists. They carried their money in fat black leather purses. They were finicky about shoes-most men wore dark loafers, which they kept well polished. This was part of the routine when I had dinner with a group of well-to-do male friends in town: first we would have our shoes s.h.i.+ned, all of us sitting on a row of curbside stools, and then we would go to a restaurant.

Some Fuling men allowed their pinkie nails to grow a full two inches, because this was a sign that they didn't do manual labor. A number of my male students had nails like this, which looked absurdly feminine on hands that clearly had been toughened by work in the fields. But none of the students planned on returning to the peasant life, and their nails were a clear indication that their lives were moving forward. Most of the long-nailed men in Fuling were of this transitional social cla.s.s; they tended to be former peasants who were finding success as cab drivers, clerks, or small entrepreneurs. The truly rich rarely grew out their nails, because their wealth was already obvious enough from their expensive suits and cell phones.

The pinkie nails, like so many male accouterments, represented money-indeed, men in banks and shops occasionally used their elongated nails to count out bills. Fuling women also had their share of accessories that showed they were from the upper cla.s.s, but on the whole these indications were less bluntly obvious and materialistic than those of the men. Upper-cla.s.s males even wielded their leather purses in a far more showy manner than the women ever did. When one of these men paid a bill, he would ostentatiously open his purse, allowing bystanders to see a fat wad of cash.

It was clear that men controlled most of the money-they were quicker to earn it, quicker to spend it, and quicker to talk about it. They had more opportunities than the women, who were less likely to go into business or find lucrative independent jobs like driving a cab. In the end, money simply meant more to the men. I had trouble imagining what Fuling men had been like before Reform and Opening, because money struck me as such a fundamental part of their ident.i.ty.

And it could be a distinctly tedious part, at least in my eyes. After a year in the city, I found that I least enjoyed a.s.sociating with one particular socioeconomic group: the young moneyed male. There were exceptions, of course, but when I tried to define the average person from this group, I saw a man driven by a set of goals and aspirations that were so narrow they became a sort of caricature of showy masculinity. He tended to be pa.s.sionate about acquiring beepers and cell phones, and he worked hard to acc.u.mulate increasingly advanced videodisc players and karaoke machines. He smoked Magnificent Sound cigarettes constantly. He tended to be loud, and he was very conscious of face, carrying himself with a certain swagger. On weekends he sometimes engaged in senseless drinking compet.i.tions with his male friends, challenging each other to shot after shot of baijiu baijiu. If he wanted some illicit excitement, he found prost.i.tutes at a karaoke bar or a beauty parlor.

I realized that this was an unfairly narrow prejudice, and during my second year in Fuling I became friends with several wealthy young men who didn't match this stereotype. But nevertheless I found that it was easiest to make friends from the middle and lower cla.s.ses. I was far more comfortable with somebody like Teacher Kong, who was thoughtful, interesting, and not in the least materialistic, and most of my boy students lacked the swagger of the Fuling rich. Even a small entrepreneur like Huang Xiaoqiang, who clearly spent a lot of time thinking about money, wasn't inclined to present the sort of macho facade that was standard among relatively wealthy men. In fact, this facade was often only skin deep, and it merely took time to penetrate beyond it; but in the end I didn't have the patience. Apart from a few exceptions, I essentially wrote off that entire cla.s.s of people.

I also developed these prejudices from looking at my own behavior as a man in Fuling, especially when I partic.i.p.ated in the macho routines that played such a large role in local upper-cla.s.s male lives. During our second year, Adam and I both became tired of the banquet routine-the senseless compet.i.tive drinking, the constant bullying, the baijiu baijiu strategy. It had been entertaining during the first year, largely because we had so few social outlets, and some of the banquets were among my most humorous memories. But they were also some of the most embarra.s.sing. For Christmas of my second year, the college held a banquet that coincided with a visiting delegation of cadres from Chongqing. As far as alcohol consumption went, it was hard to imagine a more auspicious coincidence than cadres and Christmas-that was like having nine planets line up at exactly the same time. From the moment I first heard about this event I knew that it would be ugly. strategy. It had been entertaining during the first year, largely because we had so few social outlets, and some of the banquets were among my most humorous memories. But they were also some of the most embarra.s.sing. For Christmas of my second year, the college held a banquet that coincided with a visiting delegation of cadres from Chongqing. As far as alcohol consumption went, it was hard to imagine a more auspicious coincidence than cadres and Christmas-that was like having nine planets line up at exactly the same time. From the moment I first heard about this event I knew that it would be ugly.

There were more than thirty cadres at the banquet, and by the time the parade of holiday toasts was finished, Adam and I were shouting Sichuanese swear words and firing toy plastic pellet guns at each other from across the restaurant. At least this was what I later heard; I had no memory of the last two hours and only knew what Sunni and Noreen told me (they also handled their share of toasts on that evening, although most of the attention had been focused on Adam and me).

In another culture I would have woken up mortified, but that was the least of my concerns the next morning. I was hungover, and badly bruised, but I knew there was no point in making apologies, because none was expected. Probably every single cadre had made a jacka.s.s of himself at some banquet within the past year, and without question their enjoyment of the event had been heightened by Adam and me being out of control. That was where the pellet guns came from, after all-a visiting foreign friend suggested the gift and the cadres instantly recognized their potential as a Christmas present. Somebody bought the guns on the street, loaded them, and put them in our hands.

Alcohol was always a viable excuse for bad male behavior in Fuling. Once in my first year I was eating dinner by myself in the college cafeteria when a group of three drunk physical education students came to my table, taunting and laughing at me. I tried to ignore them, but they just pressed closer, brus.h.i.+ng against me while their insults became louder. Finally I stood up, and for a moment a fight seemed likely, but the cafeteria staff stepped in and escorted the students out. But that was all the staff did-they didn't take any names, or alert the college authorities. They made sure the students left, and then they apologized to me and explained that the three young men had been drunk. In their view, that was all that needed to be said-the drunk students weren't responsible for what they did.

While male drinking occasionally led to aggression, I mostly disliked its tediousness. When I looked back at the most vivid banquet of my first year, when the literary magazine had recruited me to write my d.i.c.kens essay, I saw it as a humorous incident but also as one that was full of wasted opportunities. The table had been full of intelligent, well-educated people, and yet virtually all of the evening's energy had been focused on making Teacher Sai drink when he did not want to. It reminded me of high school parties, except these men were in their forties and fifties. After the Christmas banquet in our second year, Adam and I finally took the original Peace Corps advice and refused to partic.i.p.ate anymore in the compet.i.tive drinking.

But this was a decision that we had to make ourselves, because n.o.body expected us to behave responsibly and not act like drunken fools. In the end, this was probably my strongest prejudice toward men in Fuling, and especially upper-cla.s.s men-on the average, I didn't see their lives being shaped by particularly high expectations. It was like any extremely male-dominated culture in which men are given more leeway than is healthy, and in Fuling it became even more p.r.o.nounced when male pride was swollen with financial success.

While I typically avoided a.s.sociating with wealthy men, there were moments when I was tempted to extend this prejudice to all young men. Again, this was an att.i.tude that I tried to resist, but to a large degree it was a natural reaction to all of Fuling's anti-foreigner hara.s.sment, which invariably came from young males. Every single day that I spent in the city, people shouted at me, and probably less than 5 percent of these catcalls came from women. Generally it was the result of men trying to be macho: if I saw three young men walking toward me, I could be almost certain that one of them would shout something at me to impress his friends. In that sense it was similar to any sort of hara.s.sment in America, which typically comes from young men, but in Fuling it was far more routine.

It didn't take me very long to come to the conclusion that men were far more likely to give me trouble than women, and I shaped my routines accordingly. If I went shopping and saw two people selling the same thing, I invariably went to the woman first, because there was a much lower chance that she would cheat me or mock me. I knew other Peace Corps volunteers who followed the same pattern; it was a prejudice, but one that stemmed from experience.

All of these reactions and prejudices made it even more difficult for me to sort out gender relations in Fuling. My own life was contradictory: while I instinctively learned to be more wary of males, I nevertheless found that my closest friends were men, and I was far less comfortable a.s.sociating with women on a one-to-one basis. If you were a male waiguoren waiguoren in a small Sichuan city like Fuling, there were tacit barriers that stood between you and the women, and I avoided crossing these divides because I didn't want to find myself in trouble. The Peace Corps staff had all but formally recommended that we avoid dating in these small towns, because people were so skittish about in a small Sichuan city like Fuling, there were tacit barriers that stood between you and the women, and I avoided crossing these divides because I didn't want to find myself in trouble. The Peace Corps staff had all but formally recommended that we avoid dating in these small towns, because people were so skittish about waiguoren waiguoren. But even if there hadn't been such a recommendation, I would have seen at a glance that such matters would be complicated, and it was something that all of the male Peace Corps volunteers in my group took seriously. There were seven single men, and over the course of two years not one of us had a romantic relations.h.i.+p with a Chinese woman.

As a result, local women were always somewhat mysterious and foreign, which was probably why xiaojie xiaojie was one of the first Chinese words that Adam and I incorporated into our everyday English speech. It meant "miss" or "young woman," but it also conveyed the foreignness of the women in Fuling, as well as the barrier that we felt because we were was one of the first Chinese words that Adam and I incorporated into our everyday English speech. It meant "miss" or "young woman," but it also conveyed the foreignness of the women in Fuling, as well as the barrier that we felt because we were waiguoren waiguoren. In fact this is a term adopted by virtually every foreigner living in China, partly because young women workers are ubiquitous in certain jobs-as waitresses, shop a.s.sistants, train attendants-where they are addressed simply as xiaojie xiaojie. But at the same time there's a complicated vagueness to this term, because it can also refer to the sort of young women who can be found in karaoke halls or suspicious beauty parlors. People in Fuling spoke of san pei xiaojie san pei xiaojie-"three-with girls," who worked in karaoke halls. Men could drink with them, sing karaoke with them, and dance with them. And for enough money some of the three-with girls would perform a fourth "with," sleeping with the customer.

It was impossible to define exactly what xiaojie xiaojie meant, because it stretched across a broad range of implication. Anne was a meant, because it stretched across a broad range of implication. Anne was a xiaojie xiaojie and so was Li Jiali, the prost.i.tute who had pursued me at the teahouse. and so was Li Jiali, the prost.i.tute who had pursued me at the teahouse. Xiaojie Xiaojie was a vague term, which was appropriate because it was difficult to define exactly what was expected of young women in a place like Fuling. They weren't like young upper-cla.s.s men, whose aspirations could be neatly summarized, and I found that I had no equivalently simple definition for the average young woman in Fuling. She was expected to marry young and promptly have her child, and yet her childbearing was strictly and legally limited. She was expected to have a job and earn money of her own, but job discrimination was even more severe than in America. Traditional morality was breaking down, but this happened unevenly and in unhealthy ways; prost.i.tution was becoming increasingly common and so were love affairs. I was amazed at how many of my young married friends in the city were cheating on their spouses, but divorce still came with a definite stigma for the women involved. was a vague term, which was appropriate because it was difficult to define exactly what was expected of young women in a place like Fuling. They weren't like young upper-cla.s.s men, whose aspirations could be neatly summarized, and I found that I had no equivalently simple definition for the average young woman in Fuling. She was expected to marry young and promptly have her child, and yet her childbearing was strictly and legally limited. She was expected to have a job and earn money of her own, but job discrimination was even more severe than in America. Traditional morality was breaking down, but this happened unevenly and in unhealthy ways; prost.i.tution was becoming increasingly common and so were love affairs. I was amazed at how many of my young married friends in the city were cheating on their spouses, but divorce still came with a definite stigma for the women involved.

When a woman had an affair with a married man, people said that she tou ren tou ren, or tou hanzi tou hanzi-"stole men." There was no equivalent phrase that meant to steal women. If a single man had a romantic relations.h.i.+p with a married woman, people described her as shuixing yanghua shuixing yanghua-"as fickle as the way the water flows and the willow seed blows." Again, this phrase couldn't be applied to men; even the language did its part to protect them from being blamed for their indiscretions. Other aspects of Chinese were even more bluntly s.e.xist. If you wanted to call a woman a b.i.t.c.h, you could say that she "stunk three-eight," because March 8 is International Women's Day.

Fuling women lived under complicated expectations, and the economic pressures of Reform and Opening seemed to weigh particularly heavily on them. In the countryside, many of the men had left to work in urban areas, and for every stick-stick soldier or construction worker in the city, there was a peasant wife back at home, tending the farm alone. A total of 66 percent of China's agricultural workers are female. Social scientists believe that this imbalance is partly responsible for the high female suicide rate, which occurs predominantly in the countryside. Rarely do these rural deaths seem to be the result of poverty; in fact, most happen within a relatively affluent and well-educated cla.s.s of peasants. Adam's student Janelle was a textbook example of this trend: she wasn't poor, and she had academic opportunities that were unusual for peasant girls. But Janelle's career path most likely would have involved returning to her hometown to teach, which probably had been a depressing prospect for somebody so bright. I suspected that she had recognized clearly her own potential, as well as the bleakness of her future: to become a rural schoolteacher, marry young, raise a child. In the end it was more-or less-than she could bear.

Of course, things were worse in other parts of the world. Women in China could go much further than in most developing countries; there was no comparison with the Middle East. Also, there had been clear improvements in China, where post-Liberation reforms had made it easier for women to work, and the Communists had always campaigned hard against wife-selling while supporting women's right to divorce. Chinese women were also much better educated than ever before-but in a sense this only served to make them more aware of their plight. Like so many aspects of Chinese life, the issue of women's independence had reached a transitional stage, and it seemed to be a particularly painful one.

Everything was further complicated by the influence of traditional collective thinking. The longer I lived in Fuling, the more I was struck by the view of the individual-in my opinion, this was the biggest difference between what I had known in the West and what I saw in Sichuan. For people in Fuling, the sense of self seemed largely external; you were identified by the way that others viewed you. That had always been the goal of Confucianism, which defined the individual's place strictly in relation to the people around her: she was somebody's daughter, somebody else's wife, somebody else's mother; and each role had its specific obligations. This was an excellent way to preserve social harmony, but once that harmony was broken the lack of self-ident.i.ty made it difficult to put things back together again. I sensed this whenever I read personal accounts of victimization during the Cultural Revolution, because these stories were surprisingly full of shame-one day a person was a good Communist, and the next day the winds changed and he was a mortified Counter-Revolutionary forced into the "airplane" stance at a rally, his arms outstretched and bent painfully back. The s.h.i.+ft in itself was not so remarkable-irrational political purges happened the world over-but the strange part was that so many of these victims were racked by shame, clearly believing that they were somehow flawed. It was like a target of McCarthyism immediately breaking down and admitting that he was wrong, or a Holocaust victim hating herself because she was indeed a "dirty Jew." Often it seemed that in China there was no internal compa.s.s that was able to withstand these events.

Group thought could be a vicious circle-your self-ident.i.ty came from the group, which was respected even if it became deranged, and thus your sense of self could fall apart instantly. There wasn't a tradition of anchoring one's ident.i.ty to a fixed set of values regardless of what others thought, and in certain periods this had contributed to the country's disasters. The Cultural Revolution showed how Chinese society could become completely unhinged, but to a lesser extent there were bound to be problems during any sort of transitional period. And in recent decades nothing had been more disruptive to social roles and expectations than Reform and Opening Group mentality seemed particularly troublesome for women, who lived under a strange combination of strictness and uncertainty. When compared to men, their traditional role in Chinese society was much more narrow, but the new economy resulted in frighteningly vague expectations and demands. On the whole these changes were undoubtedly positive, but they were happening so quickly that freedom could easily look overwhelming to somebody who was caught in the middle.

And often there wasn't anywhere to turn for help. Time and time again I saw this with my cla.s.ses; for the most part they were incredibly close and supportive, but they could be cruelly isolating when a member was somehow different. n.o.body had ever shown any interest in Janelle, and every cla.s.s had at least one student who seemed alone; more often than not it was a girl. Being different wasn't liberating, as it sometimes is in America, and this was especially true for women from a peasant background, who were unlikely to feel comfortable ignoring the opinions of others and blazing new ground. The result was that they became outsiders not so much by choice as by helpless inclination, which naturally made them feel that they were the ones at fault.

To some degree, Anne had been like this. She had never quite fit in with the others, but she was also very bright, socially gifted, and attractive. In the end, these qualities gave her enough confidence to ignore certain aspects of the group. But Janelle was only extremely intelligent, which probably served to sharpen her sense of isolation.

Often money lay at the heart of these stresses. Peasant women saw their husbands go off in search of work, gaining financial security but leaving their spouses isolated, and sometimes this loneliness destroyed them. Women could earn money themselves; this was a way of becoming independent, but a career could also result in the frustration of s.e.xism and the criticism of people who felt that a woman shouldn't strive in this way. A woman like Anne could go south to Shenzhen, where there was money; but Shenzhen money could be earned in many ways. There were xiaojies xiaojies who worked as secretaries and there were three-with who worked as secretaries and there were three-with xiaojies. xiaojies xiaojies. xiaojies like Li Jiali and like Li Jiali and xiaojies xiaojies like Anne. All of them were doing whatever they could to earn money. And they were surrounded by plenty of men who had sold their souls long ago, and often the women had to negotiate this uncertain world alone. like Anne. All of them were doing whatever they could to earn money. And they were surrounded by plenty of men who had sold their souls long ago, and often the women had to negotiate this uncertain world alone.

AT THE END OF THE SEMESTER, before the Chinese New Year, Miss Ou slipped an envelope under my door. Inside the envelope was a letter, a copy of her health certificate, and five hundred yuan. The letter was in broken English: Dear Pete,How long have to see you, where you has gone recently?Please remember: "First thing first." Can you tell me. May I help you?"Make every-thing risk must rise early.""Take a chance! All life is a chance the man who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.""Although language isn't complete interlinked, it isn't misunderstood to express love.""The best relations.h.i.+ps are these which we create at our own expense with our own honesty and understanding."Because not easy, so we should double cherish."Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them.""Bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.""A good wife and health is a man's best wealth." "Happiness is being married to your best friend.""Think more and become wiser." Your own are wonderful!May I ask a favor of? I sure you able to do something. I'm sorry to trouble you, I do appreciate your kindly help. Please to my home have food, spend Spring Festival together, shall we? The best of luck to you!Sincerely,

Ou Xiaomei

P.S. This is my health certificate.

The health certificate noted that she was 1.70 meters tall and weighed sixty-seven kilograms. There weren't any problems with her heart, chest, or lungs. Her teeth, nose, and ears were also good. She was listed at thirty years of age, which was not true; the certificate was a photocopy of the original and obviously this detail had been doctored. But everything else looked accurate.

On the upper right corner of the health certificate was a photograph of Miss Ou. The picture was at least twenty years old. It was a small black-and-white snapshot of a much younger Miss Ou wearing heavy-rimmed gla.s.ses and neatly curled hair. She was smiling in the photograph, a pretty young woman who looked at the camera with confidence.

The one-hundred-yuan notes were folded neatly in half. It was more than half of what Miss Ou made in a month. Even in America it was a good sum, sixty bucks, but in Fuling you could eat for two months on five hundred yuan. If you had that much money twenty times over, you could buy yourself a second child.