AlliterAsian (15 page)

That night Lao Yang couldn't sleep. It was the beginning of his second year in Canada. He never felt at home, not even for one day. He remembered clearly the first day of his arrival in Canada.

It was late summer. He came with his then seventeen-year-old daughter, Linda, to this prairie city he had never heard of before his wife became a graduate student there. When he and his daughter got off the plane, it was already midnight. At the airport Mei gave both him and their daughter big squeezing hugs.

He immediately felt embarrassed. His face flushed; he looked around and gently pushed his wife away, saying, “Be careful! People are watching us.” Then he turned to his daughter. “Your mama seems to be Canadianized.”

On the way to the apartment Mei had just rented for the family, Lao Yang looked out through the car window. “We seem to be driving in the countryside. There are no buildings along the highway. This doesn't feel like a city at all.”

“Yes, on the prairies, you don't see as many high-rise buildings as back home,” Mei replied.

When they got to their one-bedroom basement apartment, Lao Yang remarked, “What a hole, not even a rabbit would shit in a place like this.”

Mei was shocked by the comment, but did not say anything. In the small apartment, Lao Yang was surprised to see the kitchen open to the living room. He recognized the refrigerator and the stove top, but he didn't know what the oven was for. He was surprised that there was no fan above the stove. He asked his wife, “How can you cook without a fan?”

“I seldom cook.”

“Then what do you eat?”

“In the morning, I only have milk and cereal; I take sandwiches for my lunch at school. If I cook in the evening, I usually boil meat and vegetables. Sometimes I have noodles,” Mei replied.

Lao Yang felt sorry for Mei, who used to live a comfortable life in China. “What a simple life you lead here! Don't you miss your life in China?”

“A little bit. But I'm used to the lifestyle here now.”

“I've brought lots of things from home to fry your favourite dishes. You'll enjoy my cooking, won't you?”

“For sure! I missed your cooking,” Mei said. “However, there is no ceiling fan in the kitchen and the smoke detector is connected with the city fire system. So, we can't stir fry like at home.”

“Screw this place!”

The next day was Sunday. Lao Yang woke up very early, but stayed in bed with his wife.

Seeing her husband exhausted, Mei said, “We can sleep till noon, you know. In the afternoon, we'll go to the mall.”

“I want to go in the morning so that I can cook you a Chinese dinner today,” Lao Yang said, getting out of the bed.

“But the mall won't be open until noon on Sundays,” Mei explained. “So we can sleep in today.”

He was reaching for his slippers on the floor. “I'm used to getting up early in the morning. I might not be able to enjoy this kind of lifestyle. How can businesses make money if they close on Sunday mornings?”

“Even if they are open on Sunday mornings, there won't be many people.”

“Why?”

“They go to church. If they aren't at church, they're resting at home or taking kids to hockey or soccer practice,” Mei tried to explain.

“Church? Do you go to church, too?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you do there?”

“I like to meet friends there,” Mei said. “Next week, I'll take you to a church where my friend is a minister.”

“I don't think I'll like it. I won't understand a word of it.”

“It doesn't matter. We'll see some of my friends there. You can also learn English by talking with native speakers.”

“I'm too old to learn English,” Lao Yang responded quickly.

“No, you're not too old. People here go back to university even after they're retired.”

“They're different from us. They are stronger and have more energy than us Chinese. They eat cheese, dairy products, and beef.”

“We can eat the same things here,” Mei encouraged.

“It's too late. We're congenitally deficient in nutrients. My mama said that when she was pregnant with me, she could only afford cucumbers, which were cheap because they were in season. After I was born, there was the famine. Our family never had enough to eat before I went to primary school. After middle school, we were forced
to go to the countryside. You remember what we had as food on the collective farm?
Dachazizhou
,
^4
4
fentiao
,
^5
5
and
xiancai
^6
6
every day.”

Lao Yang went to the bathroom. Mei called out after him, “But now we can make up for what we lacked before; we can eat as the Canadians do.”

Later, in the kitchen, Lao Yang asked Mei, “What's for breakfast?”

Mei opened the fridge. “I have milk, cheese, juice, bread, cereals, and also fruit.”

“Do you have corn flour? I want to have corn flour porridge with pickles.”

“Sorry, no.”

“Screw this place!”

That first weekend, Lao Yang, his wife, and daughter were kept busy. Mei gave Lao Yang and their daughter a tour of the neighbourhood—the campus, shopping malls, and downtown. That Sunday, which was the first anniversary date of Mei's earlier arrival in Canada, the reunited family had dinner together. On the dining table were plates of fried dumplings, stir-fried vegetables, and crispy shrimp. Mei was very happy with the delicious dishes that Lao Yang cooked even though the apartment smelled of smoke. By putting a wet towel on the smoke detector, Lao Yang managed to do his Chinese cooking without setting off the alarm. He enjoyed the family being together.

The first few weeks, Lao Yang stayed in the apartment with his daughter, watching movies brought from China and chatting on MSN with family and friends back home. One evening, when
Mei came home from school, he was on the phone with a friend. Knowing his wife was in the room, he continued his conversation.

“Life is so dull here,” he said loudly. “Inside the apartment, I am facing the white walls. There is nobody to talk to, and here they don't allow smoking inside the building. Where we live, it's far from downtown. Outside the apartment, the only company I have is rabbits and squirrels.”

He paused, then continued, “No, nobody hunts them. I was told you need a hunting licence. Even for fishing, too. There are more rules and regulations here. No, this is not a country as free as you think. A lot of dos and don'ts. Even if you cough and yawn, you have to say ‘Excuse me.'” There was another pause. “Yes, a few of her friends invited us to dinner at their homes. I don't like going. I can't understand their talking. There are a lot of ridiculous rules even for eating. It's not good to eat noisily, to talk with food in your mouth, to take your bowl in your hand, to scratch the plates. Lao wai are so used to using knives. Even when the meat is too small to cut, they still try to cut it.”

Mei started to prepare dinner in the kitchen; Lao Yang was still on the phone. “Yes, she has several Chinese friends. The only fun they have is potluck parties. Every family brings a dish of food and they eat together, but I like to be with the Chinese families better than with lao wai.”

While glancing at his wife, Lao Yang walked to the bedroom with the phone to his ear and lowered his voice. “It's very hard. I've sent my résumés to several places. After interviews, you seldom hear from them again. However, two companies wrote to me afterwards, saying I could go for another interview if my English improved. I'm telling you, I'm too old to learn English.”

After a month, Linda started high school, and Lao Yang was home
alone. Mei only allowed him to cook one Chinese meal per day. He tried all kinds of recipes and enjoyed the task of cooking dinner for the family, but after that, he had nothing more meaningful to do.

After he failed several job interviews, Mei asked suspiciously, “What do you do during the daytime?”

Lao Yang replied coldly, “I read newspapers online.”

“Free Press?”

“No,
Shenyang Daily, Yangcheng Evening
paper, and some Chinese websites.”

“Why do you still read those papers since you are here in Canada?”

“I want to know what's happening back home. Oh, today's paper says that the price of the pork is higher than the same time last year. And the—”

“I'm not interested in what's happening there, but what's happening here,” Mei interjected. “I'm not the kind of person who lives in the Cao camp with his heart in the Han camp.”

“Well, I'm the kind of person who doesn't forget the past easily,” Lao Yang retorted.

“I didn't say you should forget the past, but at least you should base yourself in the present reality.”

He stared at her angrily. “What is the present reality?”

“To improve your English so that you can feel at home here!”

“I'll never feel at home here!” Lao Yang said loudly.

“We can't afford to argue any more on this issue. How about we speak English at home so that you can get used to English?”

“No way! I stay at home alone the whole day, and I wait for you and Lida to come home early so that I have somebody to talk to. If you all speak to me in this dumb language, how can I find any pleasure in living here?”

Lao Yang's face turned red. He was frustrated and angry.

After six months, with the help of Mei's friend, Lao Yang started work as a kitchen helper at the campus cafeteria. The first day Mei went with him to meet the head cook and the manager. After she interpreted his duties and responsibilities to him, Lao Yang managed to work there with his limited English.

Two weeks later, Lao Yang got his first paycheque. He proudly showed it to Mei and Lida at the dinner table. “The money is good,” he said. But while Mei and Lida were looking at the cheque, his face turned dark.

“But the job is too hard for me physically. And it's demoralizing when the boss tells me to work faster, faster!”

Mei felt sympathetic for him, but she said, “It's hard on anyone to work eight hours every day like that, but you only work three days a week. The other two days, you can go to a class to study English.”

“It's okay for now. But I can't be a dagongzai forever.”

“Ba, you won't be a dagongzai forever,” Linda said cheerfully. “You're a senior engineer, and they need engineers like you here.”

Mei also encouraged him and said, “Nobody says you have to do it forever. Once you improve your English, for sure you'll find a better job. But think of this—compared with our life and those years on the collective farm, life here is much better. We don't have to work in the fields from morning till night. There are lots of varieties of food to choose from if you don't like Western food.”

Lao Yang stopped eating and put his chopsticks on the table. “But for me, life here
is
worse than the life we had on the farm. What's the difference between working in the kitchen and in the fields? They're both labourers' work, only using the hands and not the mind.”

“They
are
different,” Mei said impatiently. “We were
forced
to go to the country to be re-educated by the peasants.”

“But here we have to be re-educated by lao wai. We have to learn
their language and their culture. When we lived in the country, we didn't have to worry about jobs, bills, or tuition.”

“Don't you understand that we didn't have any choice for jobs? All of us had to work in the fields. It's true that we didn't have to pay the bills, because there was no water or heat in the house, and all the schools were closed because education was banned. It was terrible!” Mei argued. “Don't you remember?!”

“At least I was not lonely,” Lao Yang complained. “In summer, we worked in the fields together. In winter, we prepared programs of entertainment for the local farmers. That was fun.” Lao Yang paused. He remembered that it was on the farm that he met Mei. She played the pipa and he played the flute in the same youth performing troupe. So they had literally made music together as a couple. Lao Yang could have been truly happy then, but of course, the terrible thing was that the Cultural Revolution denied young people further schooling at a crucial point in their lives. Dreams of living a better life could not be realized.

“I don't remember you having any fun while we were on the farm,” Mei said, interrupting his reverie.

“Well, of course I was not happy,” Lao Yang snapped back. “We were deprived of the opportunity of going to university.”

“But then when you were accepted into university after the Cultural Revolution, you were not happy then either,” Mei pointed out.

“I was unhappy because I was assigned to the university I didn't like.”

“You could have refused to go if you didn't like it.”

“You're talking nonsense!” Lao Yang fired back. “You know that I couldn't take the risk. I might have lost the opportunity to go back to the city if I refused the admission.”

“I have never heard you say when you were
ever
happy,” Mei said
angrily. “Don't think of the past! Think of the present!”

“Nonsense! Nothing of the present for me is worth thinking about! I have no profession, no money, no dignity here!”

“You don't have to lose your dignity just because you have no profession or money.”

“I feel ashamed that as a man I can't even support my family,” Lao Yang said in a subdued voice. His face twisted in misery.