What the Chinese Don't Eat (7 page)

‘Oh poor thing, you must be working too hard to remember that tonight is Chinese new year’s eve.’ People sympathised. I suddenly lost confidence in my knowledge of Chinese culture. I had to phone China. The only one who wouldn’t laugh at me was my mother. ‘Are you OK?’ She sounded worried. ‘Yes, I’m fine. I just want to confirm when Chinese new year is. Is it tomorrow?’ (It falls on a different day each year, according to our traditional agricultural and lunar calendar).

‘No, why? It was only two days ago that you wished us a good
xiao nian
[‘small new year’, a day for praying to the god of cooking]. Why do you wish to see seven days pass in 48 hours. Tell me honestly, are you well?’ I felt really well after proving I was right all along.

A few days later, I went to Cornwall. Everybody greeted me with a ‘happy Chinese new year’. I prepared a rich Chinese celebratory dinner for my British friends in a charming cottage near Penzance. With a glass of red wine and a half-drunken head, I called a friend to wish her a happy new year (China is eight hours ahead). We have been close since 1989 when I had my first radio programme.

‘Are you all right, Xinran? It’s midnight here … I need to sleep for tomorrow’s big new year’s eve show. Call me back in 10 hours if it is not urgent.’ She sounded annoyed.

‘Oh, no! I am wrong again.’ I felt so hopeless. I couldn’t tell my friends around the table that it was the wrong date; they were all drunk on Chinese happiness.

‘I love Chinese new year and the way it goes on and on,’ a British friend said when we had another new year’s eve dinner, this time on the right day, January 21.

‘When do the festivities end?’

‘Traditionally, there are 15 days from new year until the Yuan-Xiao festival, when the first full moon arrives. The Chinese not only have a special meal called
yuan-xiao
for this; but most people also go out to Kan-Deng – in other words to see the lights, made out of hundreds of different materials such as clothes, bamboo, metals, and also electricity and computers.’ I hated my poor English, which failed to describe how marvellous those lights can be.

‘Lucky Chinese!’ I could see how jealous my British friends were. ‘Lucky Chinese?’ For most Chinese, the 90% whose parents were farmers before the 1990s, this was the only time for them to have a rest during a whole year of physical hard work on the land.

‘Is this the year the Chinese call “The Year of Monkey?”’

‘Yes, it is.’ I feel very sure about this answer.

‘Which monkey is it?’

‘What do you mean?’ I had never heard such a question from my Chinese friends.

‘Yes, you have “different monkeys”, according to “Wu-Xing” – the five kinds of natural objects: metal, wood, water, fire, earth. You could have a wooden monkey, a fire monkey, etc. I read it in a newspaper.’

I picked up the phone again and tried to get help from two friends, one a radio presenter and the other a university professor. I obviously really need to improve my knowledge of Chinese culture.

‘The monkey in the Chinese calendar is the same as the other 11 animals and matches the 12 sorts of times and years. The “wood monkey” possibly comes from the novel Monkey King. This is your question, isn’t it? But you are Chinese.’ The professor was talking in a funny voice, one I had not heard before. The presenter knew what I was talking about: ‘I have read about that in foreign magazines. Just two days ago I read that it was Buddha who “set up” these 12 animals and matched them with metal, wood, water, fire and earth. You know that’s wrong, Xinran. The 12 animals have been in Chinese recorded history for more than 3,000 years. Maybe this sort of street talk was in a western newspaper masquerading as Chinese culture?’

On the way back to London, my mobile rang. It was a message from a journalist: ‘Happy Chinese new year, Xinran. How many monkeys are there in the Chinese lunar calendar in the whole of Chinese history.’ I have no idea. I feel lost in my rich and deep culture again.

As the sea rose, the cocklers rang their families in China. If only they had known about dialling 999

On February 5, 20 Chinese cockle pickers failed to return from work to celebrate the Yuan Xiao festival – the last day of Chinese new year. They never came back to their families and friends; to their motherland. They lost their life in the cold sea of a strange country.

They called their families and told them they were going to die when the freezing waves reached their chests. But they did not call 999 for help.

They were paid unbelievably little to do dangerous work for their bosses, who can make up to £20m a year. There are warning signs about ‘quicksand and dangerous tides’ near where they died, but they would not have understood them. They spoke no English. Yes, they may have been illegal, but they had basic human needs and should have had basic human rights to protect them. Why didn’t they?

They were driven overseas by dreams of gold, and by ignorance. They came from a country that had no independent legal system before 1992, nor a welfare or social system. Their motherland is improving and developing now, but it is too late for them.

In 1997, when I came to Britain, I had the two most difficult months of my life. First was the house-hunting. It took me 45 minutes to get by tube from Bayswater to Queensway; in fact, you can walk from one to the other in five minutes. I found a very cheap place in north London. It had three bedrooms and one living room, and was occupied by 15 Chinese men who all
worked in restaurants. They shared a tiny kitchen and a bathroom, but kept a storeroom aside to let to a translator who could help them deal with local government. I tried to explain that I was not well enough qualified to take their very cheap room, because my English was poor, I had no knowledge of the law and of how things worked in this country. I could not understand their papers from the Home Office. But I saw how scared, insecure and lost they were, the massive worry in their begging eyes and thirsty words. I felt so sorry I couldn’t help them.

A few days later, I finally found a place near Queens Park, in north-west London. As I carried my luggage out of the tube station at 9.30 that evening, I was followed by four men and a big dog. After making sure they were indeed following me, I called 999 and asked for the police. ‘Please help me; I am being followed by some men and a big dog.’

‘Where are you? What do they look like?’

‘I don’t know where I am now, because I tried to get away from them, but I just left Queens Park tube station. On the right. But …’

‘Just tell me – what can you see around you?’

‘Sorry, I can’t understand. You speak so quickly. Oh, my God, they are coming. Help!’ My body started shaking; I could hear the men approaching me. I stood and tried to be still and thought very quickly how I could face this dangerous situation with my fighting skills, which I had learned at military university 20 years before.

I was lucky, the police arrived just as the four men stopped me. Afterwards, I thought about those Chinese men in north London, so I went to tell them about 999 and how useful the police had been. But no one was there. A man in the next door corner shop told me they had disappeared a few days before.

In the summer of 2002, I got a call from a stranger, a man
from Fujian province in south-east China. He was working in a Chinese restaurant washing dishes. He had fallen over in the street and injured his back; he could not see a doctor without an interpreter. His friend had found out my telephone number from a record of reservations at the restaurant. I went to see the man and sent him to hospital. On the way back he told me that, as a refugee, he had been given accommodation, shared with five other Chinese, and £48 a week to live on for the first few months or so. He was not allowed to leave Britain for 10 years. He was now working to repay his family’s debt in China. I asked why he had not called the police when he was stuck, unable to move, on the pavement for three hours, while waiting for his friend to rescue him. He answered me with a very miserable look: ‘Do you think there is a policeman or woman who can speak Chinese in London?’

On the seventh day after the death of the 20 Chinese cockle pickers, according to the custom of south-east China, I poured a glass of wine on to the earth to pray for them to go to heaven.

I may be Chinese but my knowledge is still just a spoonful of tea in the ocean that is China

I find it more and more difficult to be a Chinese woman, both in the eyes of the west and of China. For westerners, I am not traditional enough; for people back home, my knowledge is not sufficiently up to date.

Years ago, I took English lessons in London. At one point my teacher asked who knew something about China. Three hands were raised.

A: Chinese respect food as their heaven, like strong tastes and slow cooking. They respect old people and serve meals to the oldest first.

B: Actually, most Chinese like sweet and light food cooked quickly. And people do not live with older generations any more.

‘Which of you is Chinese?’ my classmates asked.

A: I am Chinese.

B: Me, too.

Me: Me, three. (A silly phrase I had learned from my son PanPan.)

My teacher said: ‘China is huge; there must be very varying lifestyles. Could all of you tell us some common things about China today? What about the single-child policy or the women’s situation, for example?’

A: The situation for women has improved a lot since 1949. In my home town, everybody has the chance to get an education and a job.

B: Come on, that is not true. In our village, 75% of women
have not been to school; they work at home. And my mother, who is 48, can’t read and write at all. But she is such a kind mother to our three boys.

A: Three children? Impossible! How old are you? How could your parents escape the one-child policy?

B: I am 19. The single-child policy doesn’t work in our area. Some families even have six children.

A: Are you joking? They must be part of some minority nationality, such as Mongolian – then you can have as many as your family wants.

B: No, they are Han [who make up more than 90% of the Chinese population]. You can pay money to have extra children.

A: No, I don’t think you can pay to get around government policy.

B: But I am here, my younger brother is in London too. Do you …

‘OK, OK,’ said the teacher, ‘who is really Chinese, from mainland China?’

A: I am. I come from Chang-Chun, in the north-east of China.

B: Me, too. I come from Guang-Dong in the south-east of China.

Me: I come from Nan-Jing in the middle east of China. The students asked why our knowledge of China was so varied.

China has 56 ethnic groups, each with its own history, language and culture. It is 42 times the size of Britain and its 5,000 years of history have nourished wealth equivalent to that of modern Europe and poverty as severe as that of the Sahara. About 1.3 billion people make things, trade, and love, too, in hundreds of accents, different languages, customs and cultures. Moreover, political control, policy, developments and living
conditions are not comparable in different areas. This is why westerners hear such differing stories.

What I have experienced (as a journalist, radio presenter, columnist and guest professor) in China, whether in terms of environment or situation, can only be representative of a minuscule proportion, like a drop of water, or spoonful of green tea, in the big ocean that is China.

Also, I have been away for more than six years, while tremendous changes have been taking place daily. Every time I go back (more than twice a year), I learn new things, such as: how much more freely you can now talk about women’s issues; how to talk to young women in a ‘modern understandable language’ with their ever-expanding vocabulary; how to choose dresses in new materials and styles; how to use the new radio and phone systems; even how to order dishes that are now served in new ways.

The more I learn, the less I really know the China of today. But, because it is so far away from the west, and few Chinese books and little Chinese news reach here, it is easier for westerners and ex-pats to become ‘China experts’ than it is for people back home.

I was interviewed once about Chinese women in New York. The interviewer was well known as ‘a Chinese women’s expert’. Before we went on air, I asked him how he knew Chinese women so well. His answer was relaxed, but it shocked me. ‘I have been living in Chinatown for more than 15 years.’

‘Have you been to China?’

‘Not yet,’ he said blandly.

‘Do you have some Chinese women friends?’

‘Er … oh, yes, I know some of their husbands. I have more than 20 Chinese friends; they work in Chinese restaurants …’ If the red light had not flashed, I would have gone on with my foolish questions.

Afterwards an American woman told me that the interviewer had not talked in his usual way. She also said her husband had been disappointed: ‘Xinran is too Chinese,’ he had said.

What use is freedom and democracy to the poor if you can’t sell it by the kilogram?

On the train to Gillingham last Saturday I listened to
Peasants
’
Memory
, a CD from China sung by a group of women in a gentle rhythm and with deep feeling. The sleeve notes said: ‘In the Chinese countryside, this song sold very well’.

I knew how much those peasants and farmers liked this old 1950s song about Mao Zedong’s regard for his people, and how they looked back at it with fondness, when I interviewed them in the 1990s.

They were moved and warmed by the song because it showed Mao’s concern for them. But had he ever given them more than just words? I did try to find out during my time as a radio presenter in early 1990s with my women’s talk show. I was a little bit surprised by a woman in Shaaxi in 1989. She, with her deaf-mute husband, and three daughters, all under their teens, lived in a poor, empty, muddled house which had a hole in the roof covered by a piece of plastic paper, but had Mao’s picture on the wall.

She told how much she missed Mao: ‘He was such a kind person who understood us poor peasants.’