Beautiful as Yesterday Read online

  “How’s Dongdong? How tall is he now?” she asks about her grandson, referring to him by his Chinese name.

  “Alex’s one point two meters tall now. Very naughty. He can’t wait for your visit. You’ll love him.”

  Fenglan suddenly remembers that her daughter forgot a sweater the last time she visited, but before she mentions it, Guo-Mei says that she has to go to bed. Then she says good-bye and hangs up.

  Her older daughter’s calls are usually brief, and her voice sounds tired, which makes it difficult for Fenglan to ask questions.

  Nor does her daughter write long letters. Though most of her letters look bulky, they contain mainly photos. At first, these were group photos of her and her classmates and professors at U.C. Berkeley, then of her and her husband, and now, since their son, Dongdong, was born, most of the pictures are of him. Dongdong turned six two months ago, yet Fenglan has never met him. Her older daughter says he has asthma and is very sensitive to air pollution—that’s why she cannot bring him to China, where the air quality is poor.

  In the next few weeks, Fenglan begins to buy gifts for her two daughters, her son-in-law, and her grandson. She asks neighbors and friends with grandchildren and salespeople at toy stores what six-year-old boys like. Some say animal picture books, some say toy guns and fire trucks, others say clothes printed with pictures of Mickey Mouse. The more thoughtful ones say, “Your grandson lives in the United States, the richest country in the world. He must have a lot of toys and clothes already. Buy him snacks and sweets.” In the end, she is confused by all the ideas and decides to buy a bit of everything. One of her suitcases is packed with gifts for Dongdong. The other suitcase contains her clothes and shoes for different seasons, a big Chinese chopping knife, said to be unavailable in America, and various Chinese cooking ingredients, like dry pepper flakes, fermented black beans, star anise, and fennel seeds.

  The gift for her son-in-law gives her a headache. She doesn’t know if she should see him as a Chinese or as an American. He speaks little Chinese, yet he has a Chinese face and even a Chinese name: Bohan. She thinks it’s a very elegant name, quite traditional, even poetic; according to her daughter, it was given to him by his grandfather. After telling her this, however, her daughter quickly added, “Call him Bob. It’s his official name. No one calls him Bohan now that his grandpa has died.” Bob? Fenglan shakes her head. It sounds like a firecracker bursting. Bohan sounds much better, with a lot of Chinese culture in it. But what does her son-in-law’s name have to do with her? Whatever he prefers, she will have to call him. So his name is Bob and he is neither a Chinese nor an American, she decides at last. After thinking long and hard, and having gone to many stores, Fenglan eventually buys him a cashmere scarf at the oldest department store downtown. The salesgirl is friendly and helpful, spending half an hour suggesting colors and styles. The final purchase is dark gray, made of the best wool from Xinjiang Province.

  It is much easier to choose gifts for her daughters. Fenglan wants to buy jade pieces of their astrological signs: Guo-Mei is a rabbit and Guo-Ying a rooster. She consulted Granny Li before making her final decision, and Granny Li said that a rabbit is responsible, amiable, and stable, and a deep green jade pendant will be a good match; a rooster, sensitive, adventurous, and passionate, should wear a light green bracelet. Fenglan doesn’t know anything about jade, so she takes Granny Li’s advice, thinking that, even if she bought the wrong styles, jade would be the right choice: it is known for being auspicious, and it looks nice on girls. These two jade pieces cost her quite a lot, but she is happy: she feels she now has something to leave to her daughters, who might even pass them on to their children. Also, since her daughters have been sending her money regularly, buying nice gifts for them, she reasons, is a good way to return some money to them.

  Whenever her daughters send her money, she tells them not to. “You’ve worked hard to earn your money. You should save it for the future in case you need it,” she says. To sound more convincing, she adds, “My retirement salary is not much, but it’s enough to live on. I also get a pension from your father’s jail regularly.” But her daughters continue sending her money anyway, asking her to buy better-quality food, to replace the fridge and washer, to hire a maid instead of cooking and doing housework herself, to buy American or European-brand medicines rather than less trustworthy Chinese ones. “You should enjoy yourself after being poor for most of your life,” they say to her.

  Her Wanbao fridge and Water Lily washing machine, both purchased ten years ago, are still in use. The Wanbao is a little noisy but keeps her food cold, and the Water Lily, though it does not spin well and often leaves the clothes too damp, does a decent cleaning job—she just needs to hang the clothes on the clothesline on the balcony a little longer. In one of her bedroom corners is a Butterfly sewing machine that her husband bought her as a New Year’s gift thirty years ago; she used to love it, taught herself how to sew, and later made most of her daughters’ clothes and shoe pads with it. But she doesn’t use it anymore; it is a souvenir from the past.

  People from her generation tend to keep everything. If a product still works, they don’t replace it until it breaks. The advertisements in newspapers and on TV are, of course, attractive, but older people don’t open their wallets easily, as young people do. The popular notion that “the old has to give way to the new and the better” doesn’t take root in their minds.

  As much as Fenglan doesn’t want her daughters’ money, feeling herself a burden to them, she needs it, and feels fortunate to have it. She deposits most of it in CDs, with half-year, one-year, and five-year terms. Her husband’s grave is in the countryside, and she has to send his family temple and his relatives there one thousand yuan every year—not long before her husband died, he asked her to do so. Her health is deteriorating: she suffers from shoulder and back pain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease…the list on her health record keeps getting longer. I’m like an old piece of furniture that can collapse anytime, she sometimes says to herself. Every visit to the hospital and the pharmacy costs money, and though her factory reimburses a certain percentage, she has to pay a good chunk of it out of her own pocket. If her factory delays the reimbursement, which often happens, she has to take money out of her savings account. Last year, half her retirement income and her husband’s pension went to medical bills. If not for the money her daughters had sent, she would have had to stop some of her medications.

  She knows she’s lucky compared with many of the people with whom she goes to morning exercises. Not being able to afford to see a doctor, they either leave their diseases untreated or buy cheap medicine from an unlicensed doctor or even a street vendor. The media often report that hospitals throw out patients because they can’t afford to pay. The fear of getting sick has compelled many old people to exercise diligently. All kinds of qi gong, which are said to be able to cure diseases, are popular. Fenglan practiced xiang gong herself when it first became popular, but she never managed to exude fragrance from inside her as some loyal followers claimed they could.

  Fenglan also saves for her daughters. She fancies that they might move back to China someday, with their husbands and children. How fast China is developing! Whenever she sees a new high-rise, a new supermarket, a new park, she marvels, thinking that it’s a world for young people, like her daughters and their children. She has heard and read many stories of the government promising privileges and high salaries to lure overseas talent back. Some of the promises include free housing, free transportation, and no-interest business loans. But even with those, she imagines, if her daughters did come back, they would need money, and her savings could subsidize them. Whenever she thinks of her daughters moving back, she smiles. They can live in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, wherever they choose, but at least they would be able to visit her on every holiday, and sharing the same time zone, they could call her more often.

  Old Tian, a neighbor, often says to her with admiration, “How nice it is to have daughters! Th
ey’re considerate and sensitive, like inner cotton vests to keep you warm. Unlike sons—they only think of their own families, and you’re lucky if they don’t ask you for money.” He envies her, but she actually envies him too. Every weekend, Old Tian’s two-bedroom apartment is filled with his sons and their wives and children, and even if they bicker and fight constantly, there are at least sounds and activities in his apartment. She has only the TV and radio to keep her company, the emptiness of the room saddening her. In the afternoons, when the sunlight fades, her heart dims. Sitting in front of the TV, she glances at the telephone often, hoping that one of her daughters will call; it is nice to hear their voices. Often, as if her younger daughter has sensed her mother’s thoughts from across the world, she calls, and they usually talk for a while.

  Yet her older daughter rarely calls.

  It puzzles Fenglan that her second daughter calls often but hasn’t been back to China since she attended her father’s funeral, while her older daughter visits her every year but rarely calls.

  Her older daughter must look down on her and her father, she surmises. She was a factory worker for twenty years, and her husband a low-level warden for fifteen years. Her older daughter was especially cold to her father, which used to upset Fenglan because she knew how much he cared for her.

  “People who use their brains manage people who use their muscles.” She remembers her husband telling her this ancient saying, which he had heard first as a small kid from a teacher in his village. Later, after he went to school, he learned that it was from Confucius. Even during the time Mao was promoting the slogan “The poorer, the more glorious,” her husband’s only thought was to give their daughters a good education. Some of his friends laughed at him. “A dragon’s son is a dragon, a phoenix’s daughter is a phoenix, but a rat’s son only knows how to dig holes. You aren’t an intellectual yourself, isn’t it ridiculous to dream of sending your children to college?” He ignored their sarcasm and carried out his plan all the same. He used to be a chain smoker, a pack a day, but after their daughters started school, he quit smoking and used his cigarette money to buy them textbooks. If they stayed up late preparing for an important examination, he did not go to bed until the lights in their rooms were off, killing time in his room by reading the newspaper over tea. The last few months before their older daughter took the entrance exam for college, he packed up the TV and the radio and put them in the closet, so there would be no distraction. He took two shifts at work to earn extra money to buy fish and meat for her. All these things he did joyfully, as if every little sacrifice he made would reward him generously in the future.

  Though he inquired with their daughters’ teachers often about their grades, he rarely asked their daughters directly because he was ashamed of his ignorance. He had never studied chemistry or physics, knew nothing about algebra and English, and his knowledge in history and geography was minimal. Once, their younger daughter, then in middle school, asked him about the major lakes and deserts in China, but he had no answer. The next day, he bought a topographical map and a geography book, hiding both purchases from his daughter, afraid of being laughed at. He studied them industriously, but when he was ready to answer his younger daughter’s question about the lakes and deserts, she cut him short, saying she already knew the answer.

  Despite his concern about their daughters’ studies, he was careful not to put pressure on them—he had read that some children rebelled, left home, or became mentally disturbed because their parents were too strict with them. A colleague’s son, a classmate of their older daughter’s, was an example. When Yizhong was in the last year of high school, his father checked his homework daily and would reward good marks with money and punish him for less satisfactory marks with more homework. For a while, his father was pleased with his method, telling all his friends that his son had leapt into the top five in his class. But on the first day of the college entrance exam, Yizhong had an anxiety attack and couldn’t finish his test. He retook the exam three years in a row but did poorly each time. He finally gave up and became a clerk in a supermarket. Whenever Yizhong’s father talked with Fenglan’s husband about his son, he would burst into tears.

  The day their older daughter received the admission letter from Beijing Normal University, her father cabled every relative he could think of, and though he was usually quiet and self-effacing at work, he distributed ten-jin candies and numerous packs of cigarettes among his colleagues. Even the prisoners in his ward got some. In his jail, he was the only one to have a child go to college, not to mention that she was going to study in Beijing, the capital. What could have brought more honor to him and his ancestors?

  But their older daughter alienated herself from them further after she went to college, spending little time at home during breaks, and even when she was home, mostly locking herself in her room, reading. To please her, her father bought her a set of newly translated works of Roman and Greek philosophers, which cost him a month’s salary, only to find out a few months later that they had been eaten by termites under her bed. Once, Fenglan and her husband peeked at the books that their older daughter was reading: the authors were all foreigners, and the translated titles contained terms like democracy, freedom, human rights, and right to vote. They were scared by their discovery: they knew that these words and phrases were typically used by political radicals or dissidents. Both their work units had organized studies of the anti-westernization documents issued by the central government in the past few months.

  To their relief, their older daughter did not get involved in a political movement and went to the United States after graduation, not breaking the news to her parents until she got the visa. Four years later, she helped her sister go abroad.

  Then, in another two years, Fenglan lost her husband.

  At three p.m., it occurs to Fenglan that she needs to get some cash from the bank—she has to buy decent clothes for her trip, mainly for the autumn and winter. Her visa allows her to stay in America till May, but she plans to return home earlier, though she’s not sure how much earlier. She considers going to the department store where she brought the scarf for Bob, but a quick calculation changes her mind. For that kind of money, she reasons, she could ask Young Song, the seamstress who lives on the first floor of her apartment building, to make her more than ten jackets.

  Young Song used to work at the same car-parts factory as Fenglan did, as a production line worker, but she was forced out when the factory went through a staff reduction.

  Compared with Young Song, Fenglan feels herself in a much better position. After all, she retired before state-run companies all over the country had begun to lay off their workers. Also, she retired as an office employee, with guaranteed benefits.

  She knocks at Young Song’s door and is greeted warmly—Young Song hasn’t had any business for a week. After choosing a few styles from Young Song’s fashion books for seniors and being told how much fabric is needed, Fenglan says good-bye. If she stayed a little longer, she knows, Young Song would complain about her life. “When I was about to go to school, I was told ‘Knowledge is useless.’ Then I became a Red Guard, then was sent by the Party to a remote village to be re-educated. When I finally returned to the city, it took me a long time to get a job. Then, you see, I was laid off for lack of education and now have no money to send my son to college.” She cries as soon as she starts her story.

  Fenglan sympathizes, but what can she do to help other than giving Young Song business now and then?

  After purchasing the fabric and delivering it to Young Song, Fenglan cooks some vegetables at home and eats them for dinner. Since last week, she hasn’t been feeling well and has been eating only vegetables. She has lost over ten jin, which she thinks is good—she is overweight. Also she believes the old saying “Nothing is more precious for an elderly person than being thin.”

  She needs to get a haircut the day before her trip, she reminds herself, so she will look good to her son-in-law and grandson. She used to ha
ve her hair cut at a salon in a small street just outside her building, but Old Wei sold his business and moved back to his hometown a month ago. A young couple now owns the place. Within two weeks they renovated the salon, making it look more like a disco than a barbershop. The huge double-glass doors are framed with colored lights that twinkle in the evenings; the walls are pink, with entertainment celebrities’ photos hung at odd angles. Everything looks new: the shiny, full-size mirrors; the black leather chairs; the color TV mounted in a corner playing the latest Korean romance movies. No one working in the salon has black hair. The men look like women with their tight pants and long hair, while the women look like men with short hair pointing upward like the quills of a hedgehog. A few days ago, passing the salon, Fenglan saw a man walking out, his arm tattooed with a half-naked woman. Since Old Wei moved, she has not patronized the salon. She heard that a haircut there now costs thirty yuan, six times of what Old Wei used to charge, and it is said that the barbers there don’t know how to cut old people’s hair. She will have to walk a few blocks to the barbershop recommended by Granny Li. It’s owned by a man in his fifties, and he charges the same price as Old Wei used to.

  Fenglan looks out the window, wanting to see if the moon is full—it’s the fifteenth according to the lunar calendar—but it’s blocked by a half-built high-rise. She turns on the TV: an advertisement for a Japanese whitening cream is on. The model’s face is as white as paper, and her curvy eyelashes are fake. Fenglan tunes to another channel: MTV from Taiwan. Four feminine-looking boys are running and jumping on the stage like they’re going mad. She turns off the TV, thinking of her younger daughter’s letter. She walks to her bedroom and opens the closet, where half the hanging space is still occupied by her husband’s uniforms. Stacked on the right are three identical black-lacquered wooden chests, the top two containing her daughters’ old clothes and the bedding they used during their college years.