Dreaming in Chinese (23 page)

During our time in China, I was well aware that we were frequently breaking rules—intentionally or accidentally—both legal rules and cultural rules; rules we were aware of and probably rules we never knew existed. Breaking rules in China was an interesting contrast to breaking rules in Japan, where we had also lived for a few years, many years ago. In Japan, I felt as though the Japanese were lying in wait for us, confident that they would catch a misstep. (Which they did! Again, there were so many rules, and the learning curve was steep.) In China, I felt as though we were in collusion with the people, the
lǎobǎixìng
, in face of some larger authority.

Although spoken Chinese was too nuanced for me to manage in the subtle world of rules and rule breaking, I have discovered that the body language of Chinese—the shrugs, the looks, the shuffling—go a long way indeed as cues to understanding the parameters of a situation. Learning to read those cues became as important to me for our life in China as all the learning of the grammar and vocabulary of spoken Chinese.

24
The one-child policy has become a bit more wobbly and vague recently.

Dìzhèn
Earthquake

13.
Out of calamity, tenderness

O
NE FINE SPRING
day in Beijing, I was working on my laptop in our 21st-floor apartment. I suddenly felt dizzy and light-headed, and gripped the edge of my desk, wondering if I might faint. Then the curtain pulls began to sway, and the walls began to creak, and the floor felt wobbly. It was Monday, May 12, 2008, at exactly 2:28
P.M.
, and a major earthquake was thundering through the mountains in rural Sichuan Province, 1,000 miles to the southwest.

No phones rang, no alarms sounded, no one knocked on our door. I Googled “earthquake China” and within several minutes, there was a report from Reuters that the U.S. Geological Survey had noted an earthquake in central China. An English-language China Web site, Danwei.org, posted the first shreds of information at 2:47
P.M.
, not even twenty minutes after the earthquake had begun. Very soon there followed on the always-hyperactive Chinese social networks a flurry of text messages, twitters, e-mails and personal comments about the earthquake.

The state-run television networks were slow to warm up to coverage, as if not sure how big or small they were supposed to play the emerging news, but by Tuesday, the incalculable damage and almost unimaginable human drama riveted me and most everyone else in China to the TV and would do so for the next seven days.

News began dribbling in with bare-bones reports from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the quake’s epicenter. We saw the first scenes of devastation. As the week wore on, the most compelling moments were the raw human ones, with survivors and desperate parents watching and waiting in the shambles of Sichuan schoolyards. Even newscasters struggled to keep composure. I grabbed my dictionaries and searched as fast as I could for the words I didn’t understand to fill in gaps and piece together fragments of meaning.

There was something unusual about the TV programming and the TV language during early coverage of the earthquake. The programming was ragged and unpolished, and the language was unrehearsed and plainspoken, more like normal street chatter. This was a far cry from the usual carefully scrubbed and scrutinized productions, with their official jargon and heavy words. Everyone agreed, at least at the beginning, that the government was allowing “unprecedented transparency” in media coverage.

My list of new words grew. Some of them came up over and over again.

dìzhèn (
earthquake
);
zāihài
(
calamity
);
ānwèi
(
comfort
);
yǒnggǎn
(
brave
);
jiù
(
save
);
liǎojiě
(
understand well
);
ānpái
(
plan
);
kào
(
depend on
);
jīhuì
(
chance
);
huīfù
(
recover
);
jīnglì
(
energy
);
bēi
(
to carry on one’s back
)

Some of the words began to assemble into a curious collage, highlighting one thing about the Chinese people that was new to me, and another that confirmed something I already suspected.

The first was about the tender side of the Chinese, a side normally kept well hidden. These are the words:

ānwèi
(
comfort
);
kào
(
depend on
);
bēi
(
to carry on one’s back
);
liǎojiě
(
understand well
);
zāihài
(
calamity
)

After nearly two years of living in China, I had built up a stockpile of everyday experiences that I would describe as anything but tender. Getting through a day meant routinely being scared off sidewalks by bicycles, strong-armed into or out of crowded elevators, edged out of a seat on the bus by hale young men, jostled aside in a line of any sort. I had to bargain (or at least try to get a fair price) for everything from vegetables to socks. I regularly dodged balls of spit as people cleared their throats and shot out phlegm, oblivious to others around them. I often saw screaming arguments over fender-benders, and the occasional brawl on street corners in respectable parts of town.

I grew used to a China that I thought of as rough and harsh. With newly honed instincts, I began to move through my day on-guard, elbows out, eyes scanning, and comfortable playing both defense and offense. It wasn’t about physical danger, which I never for a single moment felt in China. Instead, it was about the bruising, wearing, embattling encounters of simply getting through everyday life, with so many people who all seemed to want to be just slightly in front of wherever I happened to be.

Of course, there are exceptions and tender moments in China. Everyone loves little children, and dotes on them. Most people also love pets, especially small dogs and birds. Some young people apparently still get lectures on chivalry toward their elders. On one red-letter day, I was running for a stopped taxi, just ahead of a downpour. Approaching in a run from the opposite direction was a teenage schoolboy, sporting a bright new-school-year-red Young Pioneer’s scarf tied around his neck. He saw me, abruptly stopped, and in an almost Elizabethan gesture, gallantly bowed and waved me into the taxi. It was a remarkable moment.

But overall, tender was not a word I needed to learn. So I was surprised when I caught wind of something like it in the national reaction to the earthquake.

Anwèi
, meaning “comfort,” was a new word to me. I listened to a TV reporter describing the arrival of Premier Wen Jiabao in Sichuan. He was going to the ravaged towns to
ānwèi
, to comfort the people. Premier Wen often appears with children on TV or in photographs, and he always looks comfortable around them. “Grandfather Wen” they call him.

Maybe I was fooled, but even to my seasoned skeptic’s eye, I caught nothing in this footage that looked staged. Wen balanced on one knee, eye to eye with the children, and comforted them. The children were crying hard, not just whimpering, but sobbing with their whole small bodies. Wen enveloped them in his arms, instinctively, and said, “
Bié kū, bié kū
.
” “Don’t cry. Don’t cry.” He knelt there for longer than he needed for a photo op, until the children had quieted down. He was wearing sneakers, and when reporters tried to cover a little slip-and-stumble he took in the rubble, he abruptly brushed them off, reproaching them for diverting attention from the real mission at hand.

Premier Wen Jiabao comforting a young earthquake victim

All that week, I would watch the strong tend the weak. Policemen guided weather-beaten farmers down the mountain paths. “
Xièxie xièxie. Gǎnxiè gǎnxiè gǎnxiè
.” “Thank you thank you thank you thank you,” the old people nodded and repeated, over and over and over again, because it seemed they just couldn’t say it enough. The hapless were
kào
, depending on the strong.

Firefighters carried the injured, often as big or heavy as they were themselves. Soldiers carried old people, a generation that looked so tiny and fragile compared to the taller, and sometimes even strapping youth of today’s better-fed China. Teenagers carried small children, and small children carried smaller children.

The very curious image in this footage was the profile of the carrying: everyone, from soldier to young child, was carrying someone on his back. In America, this “piggyback” posture is usually part of field-day games. But in Sichuan, this style is still pervasive.

Bēi
“to carry on one’s back.” When I asked my Chinese friends about it, they said, “Oh yes, that’s how you do it in Sichuan. The terrain is hilly and treacherous and steep. You’re usually on mountain paths, and the only way to carry is on your back. That’s the way Sichuan people do it.
Bēi
.”