The People’s Republic of Desire

26 A Cool Mother

I think to myself, "Gee, Jean is so demanding that she's just like my own mother. Father must like the same type of women."

"What's Mei been doing lately?" Jean calls me to pry out information about my mother. "She's just at home."

"I heard she is organizing a Sino-American forum on women in the twenty-first century," Jean says.

"Why wasn't I told about that?" I am surprised.

"There are always a lot of rumors about her," Jean says.

"Really? So many people are concerned about her!"

"That's right. She's always working on something. I can't believe that she could stay at home and do nothing but watch the children. She is probably cooking up something big."

"Really?"

"Yes. I recently learned that when Mei was young she looked like the pop star Faye Wong," Jean announces.

"Really?"

"They are both tall, with dark eyebrows and almond-shaped eyes, and they both have a bit of Beijing ruffian about the m, and a mysterious, unfathomable spirit. I guess this kind of woman is most attractive to men."

"Jean, why are you so interested in my mother?" Jean seems to have an ulterior motive for calling.

"Sometimes, I think, perhaps your father still loves her," she finally admits.

"Don't be silly, my mother now has three children. And you? Young and pretty and well educated – there's no need for you to be jealous of her."

"It's not jealousy. It's pure admiration. I know that your father will never love me the way he loved your mother. Every time he speaks of her, he has such an admiring tone. He doesn't hold any grudges against her at all. I feel just like the famous architect Liang Sicheng's second wife, always living in the shad ow of his first wife, the beautiful and popular Lin Huiyin."

"How can my mother compare to Lin Huiyin? My mother was one of those schoolgirls who were sent to learn from workers and peasants; she didn't go to college in China. In the States she didn't study for a degree, she had a child, and looked after her child, me." I try to make Jean feel better.

"Don't start. She doesn't have a college degree, but she speaks English just like an American, and for that alone, I am impressed. I took the TOEFL how many times, but as soon as I speak to a foreigner, I tremble."

"So she's got a talent for languages! That's it."

"Every time I see your stepfather John, he tells us, 'Without Mei, I don't know how I could go on living. She really is a gift from heaven,' and so on."

"Americans love to exaggerate. You know that." Being surrounded by so many insecure modern Chinese women has made me an expert at reassurance.

"Anyway, for a woman to be like her, to make so many men adore her, is amazing! Niuniu, you should learn from her!"

Yes. I should. Already in her late forties, mother of three children, Wei Mei is still popular and looks like she's in her thirties.

Everybody says that I have a cool mother. She always knows exactly what she wants. Mother is rarely confused. She is mixed Han Chinese and Manchurian. She has that kind of healthy, hard-working, hardship-enduring proletarian natural beauty that was popular in China in the 1950s.

During the Cultural Revolution, my grandparents were both revolutionary opera performers who followed the Gang of Four, and were among the intellectuals in favor with the party. When everyone else her age had been sent down to the countryside or to join the army, Mother relied on my grandparents' connections to obtain a job working as a shop assistant in a cooperative in Beijing 's West City district. At the time, this was one of the most comfortable jobs. Later, she worked as a cook's assistant in the kitchen of a city jail. Still, the job was located in the city and she always had enough to eat, not bad at all for that time.

I've heard from Grandma that toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mother had become one of the famous Beijing "hooligan girls."

When I ask Grandma what punk girls meant at that time, she says, "Well, punk girls were just girls who had a little more guts than others, wore more colorful clothes, and dared to speak to boys. In those days that was a really big deal. Your mother was just like that.

"She was careless and uncalculating, dared to wear her hair in bangs. At that time, it was a sign of petit bourgeois sentimentality – and she liked talking to boys, so naturally she was branded a punk girl. "

My grandparents were busy "struggling with people" all day and didn't have time to take care of their only daughter.

Before the Cultural Revolution had finished, Mother managed to leave China. At that time, she had married Fan Wen, who had suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Grandma has told me that Fan Wen's father, Fan Yingchun, was a nobleman from a wealthy old Chinese family, who at the end of the 1930s went to the States to study metallurgy. There he met Fan Wen's mother, Marguerite, a Frenchwoman who was studying there. This girl was interested in Asian culture, she herself was half Chinese, and she adored Fan Yingchun. They gave birth to Fan Wen in Minnesota in 1945.

After the People's Republic of China was established, Fan Yingchun, his head full of revolution and idealism, said he wanted to return to China to serve the motherland. His wife refused, but Fan Yingchun was determined. He left his wife for his country and returned to China, taking his little son Fan Wen, who at the time could speak only English and French.

During the Cultural Revolution, Fan Yingchun, returning from overseas and with a mixed-blood child, was accused of being an American spy. He was beaten up every day by Red Guards. Having suffered too much humiliation and filled with grief, he abandoned all hope and committed suicide. He electrocuted himself.

He had given up everything to make revolution for a new China, but in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, he gave up his own life!

Without his father, timid Fan Wen was an orphan and drifted around Beijing. He was beaten and cursed, suffered cold and hunger, was dirty and decrepit, cast himself here and there, but his Chinese improved day by day. One day, he went to the cooperative to buy some tea, and there he met Mother.

Grandma says that she was surprised that Mother fell for Fan Wen. "Your mother was unrestrained and fearless. Fan Wen was timid and quiet, soft-spoken, scruffy and clumsy, and much older than your mother. I didn't approve of the marriage, but your mother was a rebel. She ran away. Now, you're just like her, a little rebel!" Grandma points at my nose.

"Tell me more." I beg her.

Deng Xiaoping came to power, policies were relaxed, and Fan Wen left, taking his new bride, Wei Mei, to find his mother in the States. At the time, Fan Wen knew only that his mother's name was Marguerite. He didn't know what she looked like.

Marguerite had remarried. Her new husband was a successful Irish psychiatrist. They had three children, two boys and a girl, all of whom were grown-up. They lived in wea lthy Tiburon, in northern California near San Francisco.

Marguerite treated Fan Wen and Mei very well. She told Fan Wen without misgivings that after all those years, in her heart she still loved Fan Wen's father Fan Yingchun. She had cried for him for a long time.

In order to make up for Fan Wen's suffering in China, Marguerite rented a house for her son and his wife, Mei, who had never received a formal education and could not speak English, and enrolled them in English classes at an adult educational school. She also deposited $10,000 in their bank account for Fan Wen to attend university or start a business.

Mei and Fan Wen led a typical new-immigrant lifestyle. They studied, worked, adapted, struggled, complained, cursed, and resigned themselves to their fate.

But everything changed that Christmas.

During the 1970s, it was very rare to meet a mainland Chinese person in the United States. Marguerite's three children returned to their parents' home in Tiburon for Christmas, and met their half-brother Fan Wen for the first time. Marguerite's second son, Mark, even brought his Taiwanese colleague, Dr Chen Siyuan, a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, so that Fan Wen and Mei could meet some Chinese friends. I have never met my Uncle Mark, but there meet him and thank him someday.

Mei was always a good cook. She cooked a Chinese and American – style Christmas banquet for Marguerite's whole family, which everyone complimented profusely. Her apple pie and fried dumplings, as well as her beauty and generosity, left a deep impression on everyone.

Especially on Mark's friend Chen Siyuan, who loved gourmet food. Perhaps the Chinese saying "To win a man, you have to win his stomach" has some validity. It has never been a problem for Mei to find a man. Perhaps I should improve my cooking skills? No – Lulu enjoys making soup, but still has so much failure in love. Perhaps it's Mei's strength that Chen Siyuan fell for. Chen Siyuan is a meek man. Until this day, it is still difficult for me to imagine that he pursued Mei while risking being branded a wife-stealer. What was the force behind this? Chen Siyuan has told me that he is simply enamored of the straightforward manner of northern women. It was something he hadn't seen in those bashful southern girls. Mother was the first northern Chinese woman he had met. He said later, "Northern Chinese women are strong and they let you know what they want, not like other girls, who love to play games and keep you guessing all the time."

Mei told me that Fan Wen and she had grown apart after they had come to the United States. Fan Wen always wanted her to take charge. Whenever he ran into difficulties, he always hid behind Mei. He took driving lessons for months but never passed his driving test. But Mei, after being behind the wheel for eight hours, had obtained her license, and started working as a delivery driver for a Chinese restaurant. Much of the time, Mei was the man of the house.

Because Fan Wen progressed more slowly than Mei, he was often angry with her over small matters. Although the handsome and erudite Chen Siyuan moved Mei with his sincerity and affection, she could not bring herself to leave the pitiable Fan Wen.

Finally Marguerite's son Mark discovered their secret. He supported their love and made a special trip home from MIT to reassure his mother, Marguerite. When Marguerite saw that Mei no longer loved Fan Wen, she could only agree. Fan Wen talked with his mother for three days and three nights. He nearly went crazy, but finally he agreed to a divorce. That was how Mei became Mrs. Chen. In 1977, I was born, a child of passion. In 1983, Father was posted to Beijing as the representative for Hewlett-Packard.

We returned to China when I was five. In Beijing, Mother helped foreign companies set up in China, organized cultural events for foreign embassies, and established sister-city relation ships between Chinese and American cities. TV presenters, diplomats, chief representatives of foreign businesses, and cultural attaches often came to visit our home. Mother was always busy and was considered quite a mover-and-shaker. The Chinese government even presented her with an award, naming her a cultural ambassador between the East and the West. I really admire her for her energy, yet I haven't inherited either her ambition or her social ability.

Compared to Mother, I might have had more sexual relationships with different men because my generation is more sexually liberated than the previous one. But I don't have Mother's complex life experience. Len, just one man, has already disrupted my smooth-sailing life. Mother never let men and their love control her life.

In 1989, when I was eleven years old, my parents suddenly divorced. To this day, the reason why they divorced remains a mystery. They have kept it secret. Friends who know them well guess that they separated because of political differences during 1989. This was the year that many Chinese students protested the government's actions in Beijing. You may remember the famous picture of the solitary student with a grocery bag in his hand, holding back the line of tanks by refusing to move out of their way. Even an event as volatile as the Tiananmen Square protest shouldn't have been able to tear apart two people who love each other, should it? But how can they allow politics to intrude on their personal life? It's stupid. My parents never quarreled when they were together. They separated peacefully. Neither of them has given me a satisfying explanation. They just said that they wanted different things in life. Mother looked after me alone, but there were admirers who pursued her. They bought me candies or chocolate to win me over. I used to be annoyed by so many visitors at home. I enjoyed spending private time with my father. He liked to take me outdoors, hiking in the mountains, camping in the woods.

Mother later married a white-haired American, who is the general manager of a Texas oil company in China. The old man is tall and thin, refined, and fifteen years older than Mother. I call him Big John. When Mother was forty, she gave me twin Eurasian little sisters. They study at the Beijing International School next to the Holiday Inn Lido. Mother and my stepfather, Big John, live at Riviera Villa near the airport, with celebrities and multinational company bosses as their neighbors.

Even though we are mother and daughter, we are as different as night and day. Mei is very practical. She loves a man's power and status more than the actual man. I am the opposite. I'm much more romantic and sentimental. I want to love someone for who he is. But I can't deny that Mother is more successful in dealing with men.

My father remained single for over ten years. I always feel that he loved Mother more than Mother loved him. I used to say this to him, and he said I was being unfair to my mother. Father put his heart entirely into his work after the divorce. In 1992, he left HP. With a group of colleagues, he set up the Chen Computer Company, manufacturing computer components for the United States and Taiwan.

Now he has several factories across China. Two years ago, Father married his former secretary, Jean Fang.