Tiger Mother - Part II, Men of The House

(If you happen to stumble in this post, you could start with Part I).

Uncle Engineer:

After Grandpa died, the family was under the care of two of his oldest children: aunt Er and aunt San. The men of the house were tied up by their work outside the village: uncle E worked at a National Railway Base in Changsha.  I am not sure what job that uncle Playboy held while he married into Mom's family, but what I know was that he was not home much either.

I grew up believing that uncle E single-handedly designed the Wuhan Bridge standing over the Yangtze River - while this could be true for other smaller bridges in various locations in China, Wuhan Bridge, however, was designed by a team of Russian and Chinese engineers.  Uncle E was one of the members in that designing team.  Needless to say, he was best accomplished and respected man in the family, although what I heard of him was usually not about his achievements, instead, was often about his charms, intelligence, nuttiness, attentiveness - his charisma. I "knew" him as a man of every girl's dream.  Aunt Er, as I was told, was not only beautiful, she also was the best-mannered, well-educated, and most graceful woman of the girl-kind.  Mom had a few family photos, in which I "met" aunt Er and uncle E and cousin Qingyun, their daughter.  Aunt Er had curving and small eyes with the typical look of an ancient Chinese beauty, which is nothing like these modern Chinese beauties.  Uncle E looked like a movie star, his handsomeness was breath-taking.  Bro Qingding looks like aunt Er's clone: except for his triangle eyebrows.  Sis Qingyun looked like her father’s clone.  I saw Bro Qingding in person only once so far when I was 22.  He was so irresistible that I immediately drowned in his charms - he is the first and only man with whom I fell in love at the first sight.

Aunt Er, aunt San, and Mom looked quite alike, but somehow Mom was not regarded a beautiful girl in the family, probably because she did not have her oldest sister's sophistication.  Aunt Er died at age of 49 to pneumonia/TB.  Uncle E then married to another woman and then died soon after that without any additional children.  Stepaunt died in early 90s.

Sis Qingyun was "brain-damaged" due to meningitis that she got when she was little.  I used quotation marks because I don't know whether she was truly retarded or just had peculiar personality.  Also since her parents were first cousins, which often makes me wonder whether it was the root of Qingyun's unique personality or retardation.  Qingyun had two marriages and 2 children, one from each marriage.  None of her 2 husbands is retarded.  Qingyun died of cancer few years ago.

Uncle Playboy:

In contrast to uncle E, uncle Playboy was not favored by the family, although he was multitalented: was a stage-performing artist specialized in Beijing Opera; a post office clerk from late 50s to late 60s; a Chinese traditional medical doctor with specialty of infertility from late 60s to late 70s; and finally, a calligrapher worked in "Wenhua Gong (cultural palace)" until his retirement in early 90s.  His calligraphic work has been collected by many art museums including the Stele Forest of Calligraphy in Sichuan province.  Practicing Zhong Yi (Chinese Medicine) was uncle Playboy's surviving tool since his formal job with a steady income at the post office had been taken away - he belonged to the "5 Black Categories".

I visited aunt San and uncle Playboy for the first time in 1976 when I was 14.  Their 5 children are 13 to 4 years older than me so they all teased me like I was some sort of retards.  It was a summer holiday and Mom and Dad allowed me to stay there for a whole month.  I found uncle Playboy funny, witty, and extremely and amazingly good-looking.  No wonder people called him by his nick name!  Unfortunately, other than being teased by him at the dinner time every night, I don't recall what else happened involving him during my stay.  It seemed that he came home only at dinner time, he would joke around while we were all eating our dinner.  No one would respond to his jokes.  He also liked to tease me about my funny look and accent, he called me names, like "Guangxi Lao".  Now I finally figured out why I did not see him after dinner - I had taken his spot by sharing a bed with aunt San. 

Two years after my first visit, I went to Guiyang once again for a summer holiday.  This time, I found out where uncle Playboy lived - his office where he "saw" his patients.  It was an old, dark, and narrow room with a tiny hospital bed.  I was told whenever the family has guests, he retreated to this place.

The third time I visited Guiyang was the summer of 1983, I was just passing by on my way to Sichuan - I had a whole month travel plan ahead of me.  So I only stayed a few days.

And then the next time I saw uncle Playboy was 1987, when I was 25.  I was going there to accompany Mom.  It was Mom's very first visit to Guiyang and also unfortunately the very last trip for Mom.  She was diagnosed with 3rd degree cervical cancer in 1984.  Since the tumor was too large to be surgically removed, the doctors did chemo/radio therapies on her.  Three years later and after having been in and out of the hospitals countless times, the primary tumor disappeared.  Doctors may have told her that it might have metastasized to other places which would soon take her life away.  However, Mom and Dad did not tell us anything.  They just made various travel plans for Mom to go about the country to visit her family.  Mom had been to Shanghai first to spend some time with aunt Jun's family and then she went to Guiyang to spend some time with aunt San and aunt Dai's families.  I went to join Mom as soon as the summer holiday started. 

We all knew it could be the last time that Mom would be with her sisters and we were all very sad, but in the mean time, everyone there was also trying to enjoy every minute that Mom had left.  

One night after cousins were gone back to their respective homes after our routine dinner gathering, Mom and aunt San went to their shared bed, I should also have gone to my bed that was in the living room where uncle Playboy was still watching TV.  He didn't seem to be getting ready to leave, which was a bit surprising.  Uncle Playboy was a different person ever since he got his government job back.  It was way early for my bed time anyways, so I joined uncle Playboy.  He then started to tell me his childhood stories that involved Mom.  As Mom's second cousin, uncle Playboy shared part of his childhood with Mom and aunt San.  According to uncle Playboy, he loved Mom at least as much as, if not more than, he loved Aunt San.  But Mom was 6 years younger so he could only marry to aunt San at that time.  I was interested to hear Mom's childhood stories so I kept asking him for more.  But all he could say was that he loved Mom very much.  He then whispered nervously to my ears, “You are so beautiful, you look just like your Mom when she was young.”  Then he suddenly started to tell me things about his work as a doctor.  He bragged about the power of his magical Chinese medicines that could turn cold women into hot women, meaning he could cure woman's frigidity.  Then he asked me to stick my tongue out so he could examine it.  He checked it out for a few seconds and said that he could give me some Chinese medicine to adjust my Qi.  According to uncle Playboy, my kidneys were too weak, they needed to get stronger (FYI, he was right, I found out that I had few small kidney stones a year or two later).  After that, he asked to check my pulse and then he said, "I'll make you a healthy girl." - if I was not mistaken, I believe he meant to make me a girl with strong sexual desires.  His play went on.  He asked me whether my boyfriend and I had active sex life, I was speechless.  He told me that male impotency was quite prevalent and he also was able to cure them with special Chinese medicines... Finally, he reached the point, "Sex is a very pleasurable and a girl like you should be enjoying it a lot."  My reaction to that suggestion was, "I am a virgin and I would not lost it to anyone that I am not in love with."  Then I realized that uncle Playboy was holding my hand the whole time after the pulse checking.  Since he was a doctor and I was a biologist, talking about sex between us was not troubling me too much.  However, to say that I did not know what he was doing would have been a lie.  Everyone has a desire for pleasure, I guess, especially at that time I had already a boyfriend with whom I had practiced such human behaviors already!  I was quite curious about how far this conversation would go even though I had no idea about what I would do if things had gotten out of hand.  While all these went through my mind, I felt that he was taking my hand on his aroused manhood.  Yes my friend, he was my uncle and I know what you are thinking: it was creepy and disgusting.  But honestly, that was not how I felt at that particular moment.  Part of me was really curious to find out what he would do to seduce a women.  Another major part of me was scared: Mom and aunt San, his wife, were sleeping next door.  I was more scared of him being caught than me being raped.  Gently and slowly, I took my hand back and sat there with my eyes staring at the TV screen.  I was trying very hard not to make a strange sound to wake up Mom and aunt San.  Luckily, he soon finished his business by himself and calmed down.

Uncle Playboy just demonstrated to me how he got his nick name.  Mom has 4 beautiful sisters, he married to one and must've wanted to sleep with all the other three!

I reckon that he "loved" all the beautiful girls that he met as much as I "love" all handsome men that I meet.  It's a human nature.  While I may not necessarily take any actions to those handsome men that I love, I don't blame him for loving Mom, his little sister that he loved since childhood.  He was out of line, of course, but that happened at a special time - he was possibly dealing with the fear of losing Mom.  In fact, uncle Playboy and Mom had never seen each other ever since the family split.  Mom died less than a year after her visit to Guiyang.

The last time I saw uncle Playboy was about 2 year after Mom died.  Uncle Playboy came to our hometown Nanning for an exhibition of calligraphic work in Guangxi Art Museum.  This time, he brought his “secretary"/mistress, the last lover of his life.  I again turned a blind eye to his betrayal to aunt San.  I guess I simply didn't know how to hate a handsome and talented man who I always admired.

Uncle Playboy died in late 90s to pancreatic cancer at age of mid 70.

_________
P.S. my true forgiveness to uncle Playboy is possibly rooted in the fact that I had fell in love with two of my cousins: Bro San, uncle Playboy's second son, and Bro Qingding, uncle E's son.  Love stories will be told in later posts. Stay tuned.

Home alone, again! - the last love story

I've finally figured out why I am more productive when the hubby is out of town: I must have been trying to impress him so that he comes back home with heightened appreciation of me as his super wife and kids' supermom. All these years, I might have been under appreciated, who knew!

Ever since we met, I thought that I had the upper hand, especially given that I am 10 years older therefore 10 years wiser, right?

Fabrice and I met at work in year 2000. He came from France for a supposedly short postdoctoral training - he had a 2-year fellowship grant so he planed to head back his home country as soon as the grant-funded period would end, which also means that he did not intend to develop special bonding with me or anyone else in the U.S..

At the first sight, we did not even like each other. He thought that I was too loud and I thought he was too witty, by too witty I mean his sense of humor was too European. So love at first sight did not happen between us. One day, after "knowing" me for 1.5 years, he came to ask me where he could find a Chinese bamboo steamer, I told him in China Town. Of course I also offered to take him there the following weekend - I know, who would pass the opportunity to get to know a handsome guy like him, even though that required me to put up with his Europeanness. We got a bamboo streamer, some Chinese groceries, and spices. Acting as his local guide granted me a dinner in his apartment and also defined the turning point of our relationship. After dinner, he asked to kiss me. He said he liked me the moment when I sat down in his passenger seat with my two legs folded like a typical Chinese. I said, "No, it would be easier if you'd asked me to sleep here." I did not stay with him that night, but I moved in only few weeks after that.

Few months after that, he moved into my apartment since his apartment was emptied twice, first by burglars and second by flood/Storm Allison.

The following summer, after 6 months into our dating life, Fabrice took me to France. That was the first time that I visited France, with a bonus of having a local guide and lover, triple exciting. We stayed in Dijon with Pierre, one of the two Fabrice's childhood best friends. While Pierre and I were left alone -Fabrice had a short conference to attend in the U.K. - he told me quite a few Fabrice's romantic stories, introduced me 3 (!!!) Fabrice's ex-girlfriends, and as if these were not discouraging enough, he even said to me, "Fabrice's would never get married."

With all the newly acquired knowledge, I decided to play along. I did not expect to the relationship going anywhere anyway, I was just using Fabrice to get over Theo, I thought to myself. After Fabrice came back from U.K., the 3 of us did everything that the boys loved to do: caving, rock climbing, canyoning, hiking, partying, drinking... (no group sex, I know what you are thinking!) While I could feel that Fabrice then was in love with me, I was in doubt about our future until that nigh after the party with Fabrice's friends in Dijon:

One of the 3 ex-girlfriends of Fabrice (he later explained that she was not his exGF, I blame Perrier for this) flirted a whole night long. I was right there, and I could not speak French, but that did stop them. Eventually, I left the 2 "love birds" alone since I felt more and more in their way. Fabrice did not come after me but Perrier did. He was more attentive than Fabrice, either because he felt sorry for me or because he felt dutiful as he was used to being my translator by then. After the party, I kept quiet in order to draw Fabrice's attention so that he would realize his wrong doing and then would apologize to me.

But he fell in asleep faster than a narcoleptic dog. I felt like being abandoned in that foreign land. I felt sad and extremely lonely, and it had been long time that I had not felt that way.

So I got up to make my early return to the U.S. arrangements. An hour or so later (it must be about 3 am), Fabrice and Perrier found me in a phone booth close to Perrier's apartment. It was then I confessed that I was jealous and I was no longer a free spirit.

So, I started my trap to get him.

First step, I asked Fabrice for a ring as a Christmas gift, "Why a ring?" he was not expecting that, because I told him many times that I did not intend to get married, especially to him, because he was 10 years younger and he was a French (who can trust French, they love everyone, right?). "Oh, don't worry, I have not changed my mind. I like to wear rings and it's just a ring, not a marriage proposal." I answered.

He probably was not convinced by my answer but bought me a ring soon after I asked for it. It's a cute one with the world's tiniest diamond on it. He got it from France. Perfect, he was in!

Second step, I asked him to go for a summer vacation with me and I suggested us to go Hawaii. He said what about other interesting spots other than a tourists flooded Hawaii. I told him Hawaii was nice and sure enough, we spent wonderful 11 days in Maui! Until today, we both often refer that trip was our honeymoon. So, he was in the trap deeper!

Third step, I made him stay in the U.S.. When our relationship became more and more serious, we started to imagine where we could live together after we finished our postdoctoral fellowship. He said, Canada, Australia, U.K., Holland, Switzerland, even Denmark. I said, "Honey, U.S. is the only country that I would consider." Since then, he never left the U.S..

Fourth step, I asked him to marry me. In 2004, after living together long enough, I said to him, "I think you should meet my father now. He has to know who I am living with." He said, "Yes, let's go to China." "Remember my father is old and he does not like it if he knew that you and I are not married. So, I am going to tell him that we are married. Otherwise, he will put you in another room." Well, what waited for Fabrice in China was a wedding - Chinese style, completely arranged by Bing, my older brother. The second morning after we arrived China, Fabrice and I were sent to the photo studio to get our "Wedding" photos taken. The 2 of us spent a whole day changing costumes, being put on make ups, and fighting for the jetlags. And that same night, about 100 people (family members and school friends of mine) showed up at the big wedding reception banquet. One month after that, we got our legal marriage license because I told him that we should not lie about our marriage to my Chinese people.

Last step, I asked him to give me a couple of kids. And now we had Mia/Zhuzhu and Remy/Niuniu.

Life has been happily ever after, indeed.

I know that I was indecent and calculating. But a girl has to do what a girl had to do.

But things becoming out of my hands lately. I am losing power after living in this happy life for the last 7 years. Fabrice is now formally my boss, both at work and at home. The worst of all, I did not even realize that until today, after I spent a whole night trying to cut Niuniu's hair while he was sleeping!

"Niuniu needs a hair cut." Fabrice said to me few days ago. "Good luck with that." I said. I had already tried few times before but Niuniu's answer was consistently no. Then the day before Fabrice left for Washington, he said, "Niuniu said he would let you cut his hair now." I immediately put our lovely son in front of the mirror by sitting him on the edge of the sink like last time. He screamed and I let him go.

Tonight, in the middle of my rewriting "tiger mother blog" (BTW, I deleted the most of it by accident!) after tucked the kids in bed, I received an email from Fabrice. He said, "Good news, I will be back in Town tomorrow 9 am." WTF, that would be a whole day earlier! My plan changed at once. Instead of writing, I went to get comb and scissors - I needed to cut Niuniu's hair before Fabrice's coming back home. The damn kid woke up each time I tried, so a 20-min haircut has become a 4-hour one.

Well, Niuniu has his haircut finished and I have this blog written: "One stone killed 2 birds," as we Chinese like to say.

Wow, I am a pushover, what a discovery!

Tiger Mother - Part I, Mom was born

Chinese mothers are no different from mothers of any other ethnicity. Good mothers do whatever to make their youngsters strong, healthy, and independent so that they are capable of surviving in this world. It's biology!

From now on, I'll write stories about Mom and Dad, so that you would know how we become who we are today. These could become parts of a future book that I am thinking of writing after I'll retire from my current job. I have not decided in which language I would write about my book yet. My Chinese has gotten worse over the years for lack of usage while my English is becoming better. Let's start with the Chiglish version, shall we? 

------------------

Mom was born in early 1932 while China was under the control of Guomingdang (Kuomintang) in a small village close to Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province. Mom's Dad, Grandpa was a principal of an elementary school in the village and also a landlord who had inherited the land from his family (Edit: Aunt Jun just told me that her family's richness ran over 09 generations! Wow, that is shockingly successful!) Mom's family thus owned few helpers who grew rice and vegetables to feed the family. Therefore, unlike over 95% of the kids of Mom's age, Mom had food to eat and books to read when she was little. Schooling at Mom's time was a luxury, so although Mom was only in school for about 7 years, her level of education was already better than most of her peers. And that certainly should warrant her to marry into a decent husband's family (婆家), an ultimate goal/fate of every girl of Mom's time.

Grandpa and Grandma had total of 4 children together. But Grandpa had total of 7 children. How that happened? He married again after his first wife died when Mom was only 1 year old. So, Mom had 2 half sisters and 1 half brother. They were/are: 

1st brother – Uncle who died young to rabies 

2nd sister– Aunt Er Meiren (Aunt 二/Er)

3rd sister – Aunt Shan Meiren (Aunt 三/San)

4th girl – Mom herself

5th half sister – Aunt Juneau (Aunt Jun)

6th half sister – Aunt Dairu (Aunt Dai)

7th half brother – Uncle Xianshan (Uncle Shan)

Er (二) means the second of the family; Meiren (美人) means beauty. San (三) means the third. San in my youngest uncle's name means kind-heated (善). Can you guys keep it up, Chinese is not that difficult! 

As indicated by their names, Aunt Er and Aunt San were well-known beauties in the village. Having a wealthy and well-educated father, they were hot girls for matchmakers. If you have watched movie Mulan, you should get the picture. Grandpa was quite powerful in his time and place and he did not like to marry his daughters to their perspective husbands' home. Instead, Grandpa demanded his future sons-in-laws to marry into his house. This arrangement was against the old Chinese traditions but it was not impossible. Therefore, Grandpa's dowries did not go outside of the family.

Arranged marriages in old China could be made at the day of an infant was born. I am not sure whether this was the case for Aunt Er. What I know for sure is that her marriage was admired by all of her sisters and their girl cousins. I often hear stories about Uncle E (Youming Li), the husband of Aunt Er. I called it Uncle E here since he used to be a railway engineer. That means that he represented technology that was rare at that time. Plus, in order to become an engineer, Uncle E must have gone far to acquire his advanced degree since schools in old China were scarce, especially the ones that could offer engineering degrees (Edit: Aunt Jun told me that he was an graduate of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Wow!) 

Uncle E had gotten his degree and his handsomeness worth by marrying to Aunt Er, the number 1 beauty in town. Therefore, they were considered to be perfect match and a golden couple (Edit: Aunt Jun said that she was married at age of 16 before she even finished high school. No wonder her son is the same age of my youngest uncle, see below). Together, they produced 2 children: Bro Qingding and Sis Qingyun. Bro Qingding, the oldest cousin of mine, is the same age as Uncle Shan, the youngest son of Grandpa. I had the hardest time to comprehence this fact when I was first informed this at age 14. Does this mean stepGrandma was the same age as Aunt Er? - I'll find this out from Aunt Jun this Christmas when we shall be visiting her in NJ. 

After the birth of Uncle Shan, Grandpa was severely ill and soon passed away. Mom's the family lost a major and only income, therefore, continued education for Mom would become less of a priority. Mom and her second sister Aunt Shan were encouraged to stop going to school so that they could help out the family (Edit: Aunt Jun said in fact, Grandpa did not die until 1951 and he died at home. His house was taken away by the government only after his passing. See below.)

So up to now, you should pretty much figure it out that Mom was basically brought up by her oldest sisters Aunt Er and Aunt Shan, because her stepMom was too busy to take care of her 3 youngsters. As oldest children of the family, it's their job to help out (Edit: Aunt Jun corrected me here again. She said that Mom was brought up by Grandpa's sister and Mom even called her Mother, not Aunt. Good to know. Aunt Jun also said that her mother, Mom's stepmother was a very kind woman who did not have much power at home. She was an extremely kind woman who was well-respected by all Mom's older sisters.)

In mid 40s, Aunt San was arranged to marry her second cousin who was also known as a Playboy. No one in the family was fond of this marriage, especially Aunt San who'd rather go back to school. Aunt San was the rare one who enjoyed studying much more than her age-matched siblings and cousins. However, the family needed her sacrifices. To this date, Aunt San was still bitter about this premature "dropout". She was particularly not happy about her stepMomwho semi-forced her and Mom out of school early (Edit: Aunt Jun said this decision was made my Grandpa's sister, not Mom's stepmother).

Mom, on the other hand, was happy to be out of the school. She was a free spirit since young. She thought that reciting old text books, such as poems written by these famous poets, was silly. She even agreed that education would not help Aunt San that much since she was not the smartest one among her peers. The evidence was that her roommates (cousins) had better test scores yet they did not need to study half as hard as Aunt San. What they like to joke about was Aunt San had taught her cousins unknowingly since she was reciting her books so loud in the room that her cousins learned enough just by listening to Aunt San day after day – this explains why we are told to read bedtime stories to our kids could be quite beneficial!

Aunt San was an elementary school teacher in Grandpa's school before she married to Uncle Playboy (?). Together, they had 5 children from 1949 to 1958 with 2 years gaps between each - China encouraged big families in early 50s since Mao believed there would be many wars that would need man powers.

In 1949, China was liberated and the Guomindang's government was taken over by Mao and his Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Soon after that, Grandpa's land was taken away and redistributed to the peasants by the land reform movement-the slogan was Da Tuhao Fen Tiandi (打土豪分田地)-down with the haves, share the have-nots.

That, my friends, ended Mom's family's powerful years.

Pregnant and depression

Some women are high when they are pregnant and I had been one of them, once, when I became pregnant at age of 26 unexpectedly.  The fetus inside the worm emitted tons of dopamine to make me believe that I was the happiest person in the world.  However, the ecstatic state of mind was short-lived and soon replaced by shame and guilt because having children without a marriage was (still is) illegal in China.  So the fetus was terminated secretly before the end of the first trimester to save face of the family and future of myself.  I still remember the condemned look from the ob/gyn and nurse whose conscious must have been taken away by the education that they received.

The A&D abortion did not seem to cause any psychological damage to me, though. I was feeling relieved afterwards.

Moving forward 20 year later in 2006, I finally became pregnant once again after rounds of IVFs.  This time, the pregnancy was longed for and struggled to get, however, I did not feel ecstatic.  All I had in the first 10 weeks was worries and fears of losing the baby, following that was the never-ending morning sickness, food aversion, frequent urination, heart burn, random fall (I am bad at balance, could not walk right with a baby inside), irregular sleeping pattern: sleepiness in the first trimester and sleepless in the third trimester... the physical troubles were the easy ones to deal with, in fact, the constant psychological/mental illness such as stress and depression, which I did not even know that I was living with during my two pregnancies, were harder.

We Chinese rely on friends, not psychiatrists or therapists, in situations like this.  Yet all my friends were done with pregnancy issues, long ago!  They could not relate to "pregnancies at advanced maternal age".  Plus, we moved from one city to another, twice (due to job transitions) within two short years, which added more stress to the already stressful life.

Yes, my pregnancy at age of 44 led to chronic depression, except that it had not become clear to me until years later when the following series of events had happened:

- First, my big boss committed suicide at the time that I was struggling with my postpartum depression that I also had no idea about;

- Second, my direct boss and mentor was falling terminal illness when I was pregnant with my son.  He passed away one year after I gave birth for the second time.  Now when I come to think of it, my theoretically temporal pregnant-related and postpartum depression may have transformed into chronic one at this time without my knowing.

- Third, my bright PhD student unexpectedly became pregnant, which led to a baby and her ditching all the ongoing research projects.

The last one hit me hard, both professionally and mentally.  I started a self-blame game, back and forth, forth and back, endless.  Soon I found myself losing sleep and developed prehypertension.  It was then when I suspected that depression was no longer a word, it was reality.

It was almost unimaginable for me that I, a stereotypical extravert who often attributes faults to others, was depressed.

"Chronic illness into a good doctor (久病成良医)".  What, no, you have not heard this saying before?  It's Chinese wisdom.  We Chinese believe one becomes a good doctor if he has been ill long enough. Luckily, I did not isolate myself, nor did I conceal my mental problems.  So 2 pregnancies and 5 years later, I am slowly and progressively getting out of this depression.

I must say that I am now a much happier person than I was a few years ago.  Life again becomes good when the depression is out of it.  And I'll share with you what I did about my depression in my next post(s).

Stay tuned.