Wish You Happy Forever (24 page)

“The cicada lives underground in larval stage for sixteen years,” he said, leaning in closer so we could hear him over the din of cicada romance. “Then it pushes to the surface, develops wings, and flies to the trees. From the trees, it sings for six days. And then it dies.”

“A strange and sort of beautiful life,” I said.

“Not over,” he said. “Then we eat it.”

“We do?”

I looked down at the crunchy, formerly delicious nugget poised between my chopsticks. Set it down quietly. Sipped and sloshed the icy beer.

“Mr. Hu, this morning when you told me about the bad fortune of Zhoukou, you mentioned the problem of AIDS. Do you think there are children, AIDS orphans, who might need help?”

“Oh yes. Many. It is sad. Our provincial government is working on the problem.” He explained that the government plan was to spruce up the hardest-hit villages, adding clean wells and clinics and methane digesters to turn pig manure into gas. And then take the children away.

“Expert teams are working in many villages already,” he said. “And we are moving all the children who've lost both parents into special new housing. And the grandparents too, if they are still living. They are called Sunshine Villages! Nineteen are under construction right now!”

“You mean like orphanages? And so the children have to leave their own village?”

“Of course, if the grandparents are healthy and not too old, the children can stay in their own home. No one else will take them.”

“Not the aunts and uncles?”

“Often they are sick too. If they are not sick, some will take the children just to get the land.” He stopped eating. Lit a cigarette. “It is not an easy life in the countryside,” he said.

“Mr. Hu, will you take us to see some of those children?”

He didn't answer for a long time.

“This is difficult,” he said slowly, blowing smoke into the night. Just us and the bugs. “We know Half the Sky. We know your heart is good and you help many children. We welcome your help here in Henan. But . . . this is difficult—”

I waited.

“Foreigners are not allowed in the villages,” he said finally. “The people are embarrassed. They are very poor. The AIDS, it came from selling blood, you understand. It was a way to build a new roof, educate their children—they didn't know.”

They didn't know that their blood would be drawn into a centrifuge to extract blood products to sell to pharmaceutical companies. They didn't know that their good blood would be mixed with bad blood lurking in the already-used needles and centrifuge equipment—blood tainted with HIV—and then passed back into their own clean bodies. They knew only that each time they sold their blood, they received fifty
yuan
. . . six dollars. So they went back again and again. Now they could pay school fees, pay their debts, patch the mud walls of their homes. They shared what they knew with their sisters and brothers and even their aging parents.

And then some began to get sick with fever and sores. A few died. The lucrative blood stations, some of which, although they were official Red Cross stations, were owned by the relatives of a high-ranking provincial official, quietly shut down.

Over the years, more and more villagers got sick. They could no longer work, so they sold their few possessions. Their children stopped attending school; they couldn't pay. They stayed at home and took care of their parents as best they could. Many of the children were still very young. They knew that the blood money had been used to give them an education and a better life. Knowing that, they watched their parents die.

“I wonder,” I said quietly, “if children like that, who have known only family life, village life, will be okay in those Sunshine Villages. They have already lost so much.”

“Yes,” he said. His eyes were glistening in the dark. “And I do understand you wish to help. You must be patient.”

AT DAWN WE
drove back to the Zhengzhou airport. Our Air China flight to Nanchang was canceled. The only remaining flight that day between Henan and Jiangxi, two “underdeveloped” provinces, would be on a forty-seat Dash 8 turboprop.

“Would you like to wait and take the Air China flight tomorrow?” ZZ asked hopefully. She was not a fan of small planes. But I needed to get back to our build in Nanchang to hold my little daughters.

The plane looked old and tired. With some trepidation (well, a lot on ZZ's part), we squeezed into the last two seats.

We taxied. We stopped.

“There's a problem with the brakes,” said a voice on the intercom. “Please wait a moment.” A few seconds passed. We taxied again. Now I was worried we were going to take off with bad brakes. We stopped again. Two flight attendants passed out boxes of some sort of green juice. They had enough for only six rows. I was in row seven, ZZ in ten. I was debating using my foreign status to get a green juice for ZZ, when suddenly everyone stood and started getting off the plane.

I followed the crowd and climbed down the flimsy air-stairs. We all stood in a huddle in the shade of an engine and wing, watching a lone mechanic trying to fix the brakes. Some of the passengers were right next to a propeller that was still lazily coming to a halt. I tried not to look at them until I was certain the thing had completely stopped.

“I'm sorry, ZZ,” I said. “I guess we should have waited for the big plane.”

“
Mei wenti,
” she said. “No problem.
Eating bitter
is Chinese way.”

Ten minutes passed. Most of the passengers were squatting now. Some shared fruit and watermelon seeds.

“Must eat bitter to taste the sweet,” ZZ said.

We stood under the plane wing for almost an hour. Not a single passenger complained.

FINALLY BACK IN
Jiangxi Province, I scooped my beautiful little daughters into my arms. I thought about Jingli and Baobao, hurting and alone. I thought about the children in Henan, their parents gone for blood money.

Children eating bitter.

“You two are the most precious gifts in my life,” I said. “How can I be so lucky?”

“Mommy, that's a big squeeze,” Anya said. “Don't squeeze our dinner out.”

“I just love you so much.”

“We do too, Mommy,” Maya said.

“
Wo ai ni,
” Anya said.

“Anya said
Wo ai ni
to Feng
Ayi
, and she told us Chinese people never say ‘I love you' like that to children,” Maya said.

“Really?” I said. “Well,
Wo ai ni
anyway.
Wo ai ni
big-time. Forever and ever.”

IN THE MORNING
, I went along with the volunteers to Lushan National Park to see my second of four
most famous
resorts in China. After checking out the posh villa where Chiang Kai-shek, and later Mao, liked to cool off in summertime, we spiraled slowly up the mountain road behind a line of tour buses. More billboards. Ford Motors, then some giant swimsuited babes on surfboards—not a clue what they were selling. When we'd gone as far as we could go, we climbed one thousand steps to the Rock of One Thousand Clouds to see the Three Ancient Trees, planted by monks fifteen hundred years before. We washed our hands in a lucky stream and threw coins in the Cave of the Immortals.

My two little girls lit incense and said a prayer to Guanyin to thank her for helping us to help the orphans. I knew I was utterly and completely blessed.

Chapter 14

A Sparrow Sings, Not Because It Has an Answer, but Because It Has a Song

Beijing
Autumn 2004

Once back in Beijing, it was time to find a real office for Half the Sky. ZZ's living room would no longer do. My first choice was right in the heart of Ritan Park, “Temple of the Sun.” The place I had in mind was a modest imperial changing room dating only from the 1950s but fashioned after the original 1530 model. It was empty, dust-covered, and storybook elegant. Perfect. Across the courtyard, a little company of some sort had an office. Why couldn't we do the same?

“Well,” said ZZ, “there is no air-conditioning. There is no toilet. There is no water.”

“But look at those roof tiles, ZZ. And the painted ceiling—magical! Half the Sky should live in the Temple of the Sun!” I was clearly still in movie mode.

We ended up a few blocks away in Jianguomenwai Diplomatic Residence Compound—Jianwai for short. There were a number of more pleasant, less Soviet-looking options even before Olympic fever rebuilt the city, but the location (just blocks from Tiananmen Square) and the rents (fair) were incentive enough to keep the place fully occupied. After the Cultural Revolution and during the period of “opening and reform,” all foreigners
had
to live in a place like Jianwai—especially anybody connected with the media. Chinese had not been allowed entry without a special permit. Now Jianwai was home to assorted foreign media, international NGOs, and embassy staff from all over the world. Anachronistically and for no good reason I could think of, our Chinese staff still needed a pass to enter. Foreign faces zipped right past the guards. Some things about China weren't changing fast enough.

Around the time our new Beijing office opened for business with two actual employees, the Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that foreign organizations like Half the Sky could soon be actually, legally registered. This was a big deal!

Despite the fact that we were now running seventeen children's centers inside government orphanages, that we partnered with government agencies, and that we paid the salaries of about 450 Chinese citizens, officially we (like the AIDS orphans) didn't exist. Even as our government partners were beginning to trust us and depend on us to deliver on our promises, Half the Sky along with all other foreign NGOs in China inhabited a gray zone—no bank accounts or employees or any sort of legal anything. Our office lease was in my name, our bank account in ZZ's. All we had built could be shut down on a whim and at a moment's notice.

When official registration began on June 1, 2004, ZZ was among the very first on the very first day to submit our application. She made friends with the man who ran the NGO registration department. She called him every week and brought him sweets on the holidays. For four years. That's how long it took before the first foreign NGO was, in fact, registered in China. Unfortunately, it wasn't Half the Sky. It was Bill Gates's.

“
Perseverance furthers—
right, ZZ?” I said.

“Fools in a hurry drink with chopsticks,” she said.

DICK AND I
had this idea that if our year in China was really going to benefit our girls, we must, as much as possible, make sure they had a genuine Chinese experience. We wanted to give them the gift of their Chinese culture so that they would never feel that it had been taken away from them. The obvious first step was to enroll them in a real Chinese school.

At Fangcaodi Primary, a government-run school with an “international track” and impressive reputation, Anya, who was six, bravely tackled first grade. Maya, then eight, entered second grade for the second time because her Mandarin language skills were nonexistent. Within a week, she'd learned to despise everything about school. Chinese primary education at its most traditional is probably not much more nurturing than an orphanage. At Fangcaodi, the name of the student with the worst homework (usually our girls) was written on the blackboard each day. Sit on your hands or your knuckles got rapped. Ask no questions. But when the teacher left the room, the boys ran over the tops of the desks and beat up on the girls.

After the first day, when ZZ explained to our girls that when the teacher tells you, “
Ni bu hao,
” which means, “You are bad,” it doesn't really mean you are a bad person, teary-eyed Anya swallowed hard, then seemed resigned. She trudged back to school. She didn't know that big-kid school could be otherwise.

But Maya cried every morning and begged to stay home. She cried at bedtime too. Nothing could comfort her. So, there we were, trying to make life better for a million kids who had nobody, while ruining the life of the child who'd inspired it all.

We called every international school in Beijing. The semester was already under way; there were no openings—and we had no
guanxi
. Maya would have to become a grade school dropout.

“How about gymnastics?” ZZ suggested. “I think we can get Maya into Shichahai, the government sports school. She can learn half-day gymnastics, half-day academics. Maybe she can become Olympic star!”

Maya was ecstatic. She was free! And so we hired a homeschooling tutor to teach her Chinese and math in the afternoons, and Maya devoted her mornings to learning handsprings and layouts with China's future champions.

Our girl was not destined to become one of them. In zealous preparation for the Beijing Olympics, still four years away, little Chinese gymnasts at Shichahai were driven to peak performance hour after hour by unrelenting trainers. But Maya was a foreigner now; she was given foreign treatment. She was allowed to sit when she got tired, to give up when she failed. As the children around her ignored their blisters and bruises and struggled for excellence and dreams of Olympic glory for China—their parents sacrificing their only child (even the six-year-olds were boarders)—our little girl watched from the sidelines.