The People’s Republic of Desire

12 Have You Divorced Yet?

Is Chile ma? – Have you eaten yet? – the most popular greeting in China? It used to be.

Recently, Lile ma – have you divorced yet? – has taken its place among young and middle-aged Chinese, especially in big cities where the divorce rate has risen to double digits.

In the yoga class that Lulu and I go to every week, we meet quite a few professional women in their late twenties, thirties, and early forties. From talking to them, I've learned that 50 percent of the women are divorced, including our teacher Gigi.

On her fortieth birthday, the class takes the health-conscious Gigi to a Haagen Dazs shop to celebrate. Some order ice cream and some order cakes. I order both tiramisu and a green tea sundae. Gigi, although we insist that she eat something fat-rich just once, orders Perrier.

As we eat our high-calorie and high-fat ice creams and ice cream cake, we sing Happy Birthday to Gigi.

Gigi looks gloomy and she twirls her spoon in the ice cream we've given her, "Gee, I'm not happy at all. For a woman, reaching forty is pathetic. Have you heard the popular saying? Twenty-something are like basketballs. Thirty-something are like volleyballs. Forty-something are like soccer balls."

"What does that mean?" I ask.

Gigi sighs. "In basketball games, players all try to chase the ball. In volleyball games, if the ball comes to you, you need to receive it. In soccer games, you kick the ball somewhere else." Gigi kicks her leg violently for extra emphasis.

"But maturity is a kind of beauty – isn't it?" I say.

"Right!" Lulu agrees. "Fashion magazines say that truly mature women are those who have children with their second or third husbands."

"Like Yoko Ono," adds another girl, trying to help.

"Like ZsaZsa Gabor," Lulu continues.

"Catherine Deneuve has two children. Neither is from her husband. Does it mean she is more mature than other women?" I ask.

"I guess I can never be that mature. Since I divorced three years ago, I haven't been able to find a man to marry. They all want younger women. I don't understand why there are so many young Chinese women out there for men to choose from. Even married men have more chances than divorced women." Gigi is very frustrated.

Lulu has told me what she heard about Gigi's husband. He was a professor who was involved with one of his students. The student landed a good job through his connections, but soon dumped him and ran off to the United States with an American man. He went back to Gigi, but it was too late.

After Gigi mentions divorce, other women start to ask each other, "Are you divorced?"

"Yes."

"How about you? Have you divorced yet?"

"Yes."

All of a sudden, all the women except Lulu and me find a common topic and share their stories with one another.

Ah Du says, "My first husband was nice, but he was a lousy lover. You see, in China, especially among the old generations, women are proud of being cold fish. Women who have sex drives are considered bad luck. I knew that. At first, I was frustrated, but I swallowed it. I meditated, practiced tai chi, tried every way to stop my natural urges. But things changed after I got into law school."

"You met another man?" Lulu asks.

"No. I learned from the textbooks that my sexual desires are protected by law. It is legitimate to divorce someone for bad sex!" says Ah Du.

"So you've become a smart woman who knows about your rights," I tease her.

"Divorce for me is like sex. Once you've done it, you want to do it repeatedly. Now I'm divorced three times. But in order to catch up with Liz Taylor, I have to quicken my pace," says Ah Du.

"Does dumping men make you feel good?" Lulu asks.

"If men can upgrade their computers, why can't we upgrade our husbands? All we want is the same thing: better and faster performance."

An art teacher can't wait to chip in with her story. "My ex and I were college sweethearts. We came from Guangxi, a poor province. He was kind but timid."

"Typical Chinese intellectual," comments Ah Du.

"Yes. After we graduated from college, he got a job as a librarian in Beijing, making only three hundred yuan per month. I was a schoolteacher, making five hundred yuan per month. He lived in his dorm with his roommates, and as a teacher, I lived with my roommates. We couldn't afford to rent an apartment."

"In those days, if you didn't work for a waiqi, a foreign company, or weren't a corrupt official or the relative of a corrupt official, you had no chance of buying a flat, " says Gigi, who understands the situation of the art teacher.

"Like many young, ambitious people, we managed to stay in Beijing, the city of opportunities, but we didn't have a place of our own. The only time we had together was when our roommates were not around," the art teacher said.

"So sad," says Lulu, shaking her head.

"We lived such a sad life for five years. Finally, my school assigned me a twelve-square-meter flat in an old building. There were many cockroaches, and the flat had no private bathroom or kitchen. I had to run fifty meters to use the public restroom," the art teacher exclaims.

"Life is about struggling," I add.

"As I struggled to survive, my former roommate Colorful Clouds appeared," the art teacher said.

"Colorful Clouds?" Lulu and I can't believe it when we hear the familiar name.

The art teacher nods.

"She wasn't smart enough to get into our college, but she sat in on the classes. She wrote love letters to our teacher. Our teacher thought she was shallow. Later, she seduced the father of a classmate and went to Beijing with him. We later heard that she married an old American and went to the United States."

"Sounds like a manipulative bitch!" chimes in another girl who isn't familiar with Colorful Clouds' notoriety.

"By the time I saw her, she had become the wife of a handsome American physicist and the mother of three children. She came back to Beijing and stayed at the Great Wall Sheraton." The art teacher's sob story continues.

"A posh hotel!" I say.

"She called me up and invited me to the free breakfast the hotel provided. I saw her act like a queen in front of me…"

"Who does she think she is? She only uses men," Lulu says.

"That is the whole point. No matter how we dislike her, through divorce and marriage, she could afford to stay in a nice hotel. What about me? I was a hard-working woman with a college degree, and a good and faithful wife, but I lived a poor hopeless life without even my own bathroom!" The art teacher cries out.

"Nowadays, the world is for bad girls. What is that saying again? Good girls go to heaven…" Gigi says. "Bad girls go everywhere," I add.

The art teacher nods. "I realized it, too. After ten years of marriage, I finally felt it was so stupid to be a good girl. Love and faith are meaningless when they can't give you a place with a private bathroom. I left my ex."

"What do you feel now?"

"It feels damn good to be a bad girl. I'm going to Australia with my new boyfriend next month!"

Lan Huahua tells her story. She is a new singer at Beibei's Chichi Entertainment Company.

"There was no particular reason for my divorce. Everybody I knew divorced, but I was still married, so it made me look boring."

"You divorced your husband just because you didn't want to look boring?" asks Gigi, sounding shocked.

"As a singer, the last thing you want people to think is that you're boring," says Lan Huahua.

"A good voice is not enough?" Gigi still can't believe her audacity.

"Of course not. To become a star, a celebrity, you have to have interesting things about yourself to tell the media. Divorce is just my first plan. If necessary, I should also be prepared to become a single mother, a lesbian, or a bi."

CHILE MA: Have you eaten yet? Traditional Chinese greeting, equal to "How are you?" This phrase expresses the importance that food plays in Chinese society.

LILE MA: Have you divorced yet? A new Chinese greeting, since the divorce rate in China is skyrocketing.

WAIQI: Foreign enterprise. With the market economy, those Chinese who are able to land a job with a foreign enterprise make several times more than their domestically employed countrymen. These people are both admired and resented by other Chinese.