A Chinese Wife: "Follow"

Be obedient to father before marriage; to husband during marriage; and to son when widowed. (Confucius on the Virtues of a Woman: The Three Follows)
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She was raised to be obedient. More than any tough disciplinary regimen - from the sharp remonstrance of her mother’s tongue, to the stony glares from a schoolmistress, or an occasional small slap from the Chinese nanny “amahs” - the weight of her cultural environment was such that she would never have a chance to exhibit any real rebellion from within her. She had no choice but to be good all her life.

All her friends feared their own parents; but hers were known to be amongst the very strictest, so much so it was generally declared that they were a complete cut above the rest. “Your Ma-Ma always frowns. She’s scary!” accused one of her classmates. It was probably why no one ever came over to play; who would dare? She pondered endlessly that comment about her mother, and found herself surreptitiously examining Ma-Ma’s brow for hours on end over some days, just to see if this was so. It was true – her mother had raven hair that came to a point at the top of her forehead, which was known as a Widow’s Peak, and just below that were three deep furrows which seemed to sit there all the time. Ma-Ma’s permanent expression was indeed a frown, even if she was smiling further down in her face. It must have been the vestiges of her refugee life experience, when she had to escape from Shanghai to Hong Kong back in 1949, “When nothing was easy, like in your good lives, children!” as Ma-Ma had often told them. “You lucky you didn’t have to run away from Japanese bombings and then Communists, like me and your Ba-Ba. Our lives were so bitter.” And at that the three furrows would deepen into ugly ravines. If she was ever displeased, all she needed to do was to throw a moment’s glinty glance towards her daughter; and that fearsome frown would swiftly register, so the world would seem to freeze over with her certain disapproval.

An-Mei knew many, many such moments of her mother’s disdain over her behaviour. It could be anything: the wrong combinations of clothes to shoes, a bad piece of homework, fishing a tad too deeply for a choice morsel with her chopsticks, replying too briskly or with just too much edge in her small girl’s voice. That dreaded frown would deepen and quickly An-Mei would have to withdraw a hand, a phrase, lower her eyes, in fact bring all movement to a swift halt. It was crucial for self preservation. Or else. She’d seen her younger brother Yi-Chien make the mistake of tarrying a moment too long in some small act of disobedience, and the sharp thwack of chopsticks on knuckles, or Ma-Ma’s high pitched ranting would inevitably follow, like a violin played just a quarter note off key. It never ended there; there would be the prolonged scolding which ensued, some rhetorical demand for an explanation of what a long suffering mother like her had possibly done to deserve such unfilial attitudes. Often these words could get quite stinging and bring forth hot, silent tears. Crying aloud was never permitted, and the two children had to learn to stem the waterworks instantaneously at their mother’s insistence, so a small, sour lump would form in their throats which could take hours to dissipate. Ma-Ma would still drone on however and when she had run out of personal laments, would draw in their father’s perspective, knowing how much the children valued their Ba-Ba’s goodwill. Would they like Ba-Ba to hear about it when he came home from work?

That one always hit the mark of utter remorse. Everyone knew that Ba-Ba was soft in his heart for his children and would more often than not manage to appease his wife without resorting to further punitive actions. But often, because he loved her to the point of spoiling, he would find himself deliberately choosing to side with her, not so much for the sake of presenting a united front against wayward offspring, but simply to give his wife “face”. So the likely outcome would be an extension of some form of chastisement – perhaps standing in a corner for half an hour; or if the naughtiness was really bad, there could be bed and no dinner. For Chinese children, the idea of no food was an intolerable concept and the blackest penalty.

Seldom though would there be any form of corporal punishment. It never came to that for the children to have to knuckle under in complete subordination. Ma-Ma had two best weapons: one was a rolled up newspaper, which she would thrash hard at the sofa arm in front of a cowering child, and the sight of the little green veins popping out on her temples as she whack-whack-whacked the sofa was enough to deter any future repetition of a misdemeanour. Years later, when An-Mei had had her own children, Ma-Ma confessed to her that the loudness of the whacking was the actual weapon.

“They only hear sound and they are afraid. If you actually hit them with the newspaper, – it doesn’t really hurt so bad! But only if you have to, eh, try not to do as that give game away, ha ha!”

An-Mei was rather appalled at her own stupidity for not having cottoned on sooner. But regardless of that, she could never bring herself to try that one out on her own son or daughter. She’d rather go for an honest beating with an honest wooden spoon.

The other of Ma-Ma’s secret to success in child discipline was in these simple words, spoken very coolly, with no emotion at all. It was the lack of anger in her tone which terrorised.

“Go and fetch the feather duster!”

This short declaration would strike the dark fear of God into An-Mei and her brother, and both would spontaneously burst into tears and pleading. The feather duster was made of a ridiculous clump of real chickens’ feathers, a mix of russet, hornet green and orange plumes glued to one end by some backstreet artisan to a thin bamboo cane. The idea was that Ma-Ma would hold the feather clump end, and wield the bamboo end upon tender but offending rumps. Or worse, the back of chubby little calves, where it really hurt. The walk, accompanied by piteous sobs, to the servants’ quarters to retrieve this offending weapon, was the longest one that any child would know. Both children had seen and heard enough from friends, classmates, and watched enough black-and-white Cantonese movies to know vicariously the enduring burn of a welt from one flick of such a cane. They sometimes scarred for life, and was to be avoided at all costs.

It was not that An-Mei’s parents were cruel. No, not at all. They were just Chinese in the way they viewed child rearing, and for all intents and purposes were considered the better parents for their highest standards. It really meant that they preferred more extreme measures to ensure meticulous obedience. They’ve got the discipline side down pat so their two could never set a foot wrong. But neither did they indulge their daughter and son in public praise; no, that was mere braggery. So An-Mei and Yi-Chien would sit with neatly crossed ankles in the parlour of their uncle’s house at the beginning of each summer vacation, and their ears would burn when Auntie Ying Ying boasted endlessly about Cousin Bernard’s school exam successes.

“Aiya! He finally came fifth in the whole class for his English, and seventh in Chinese. We so proud lah!” she would announce in her sing-song voice.

An-Mei had won the English prize for the third consecutive year across her year group, and her brother had also retained his unchallenged dominance in Classical Chinese and won the Art trophy again. They watched their mother like hawks, but Ma-Ma would avoid eye contact with them, only pursed her lips slightly between doughy smiles of encouragement for Auntie Ying Ying.

“Ah of course you so proud lah! Bernard always try so hard. What a wonderful son. Not like my two, no good for anything.”

That last line always stung. When the children reasoned with their mother afterwards in the privacy of their own home, Ma-ma would only say, “We know you are good pupils. What does it matter anyone else know? And anyway, it is your duty to study hard.” But when Ba-Ba came home, he would always gather one child into the crook of each of his arms, press his warm, smiling cheeks into theirs, and tell them that he would take them to eat Japanese food that weekend. Sushi became an early passion for the children, and both would continue to celebrate their life’s achievements over tuna te-maki or uni negiri handrolls, well into their adult years. It was remarkable how a bit of raw fish sitting on a bed of sour rice could evoke a depth of consolation that is beyond explanation.
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Whenever An-Mei looked back into her childhood years, she always thought that she was as stupid and mindless as a cloud. She hadn’t had a clue about anything in life, because her mother was so over protective and controlling with her children, they never thought much of anything for themselves. Both were totally dependent and compliant. At age eight and seven, they didn’t even know how to cross a road no further than ten yards. Both were conditioned from toddlerhood to reach up blindly for an adult’s hand whenever they came to a curb. An-Mei had known several humiliations when as a very young child, she would reach up and grab a hand and begin to walk ahead, only to hear smaning behind her. To her utmost shame, she would turn to find her own mother laughing at her because she’d taken up a stranger’s hand and was walking away with them. She always thought that she should have been rewarded for such faithful trust, blind though it was; but this willingness in compliance would become ingrained and never really leave her.

She also thought of herself as a quiet, placid child. But Ma-Ma always said differently.

“You always so naughty, such a monkey! Not like your brother. See, he can sit there all day and paint, never make sound and never trouble for anyone. You! Jumping up and down. What to do with daughter like you?”

So Ma-Ma sent An Mei to ballet lessons with a White Russian émigré from Kiev. Madame Nerinskaya, formerly and briefly of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, had escaped the Bolsheviks by travelling all the way through Russia and across the border to pre-war China, ending up as a cabaret “hoochie coochie dancer” in nightclubs off the Bund, and living a hard life with her mother and a pet Chihuahua. Eventually the Pacific War would drive her to Hong Kong, like most foreign nationals. Her beloved mother died enroute, she ditched the Chihuahua, and set up her own ballet school off the Kimberly Road in Kowloon’s Tsimshatsui district. Her tiny studio was not five minutes’ walk from An-Mei’s home.

It was love at first sight. Madame took one look at the slim but strong frame of six year old An-Mei - with her high waist, long limbs and big, expressive eyes – turned towards Miss Virginia her trusty pianist, and exclaimed in her heavy accent.

“Virginia Virginia! Look look! The feet, the arches. Vodt!!”

An-Mei stood in her stockinged feet at her first lesson, feeling very much like that clueless cloud that she worried she was, and didn’t know what on earth she’d come to. She didn’t understand why her mother had left her with this strange and slightly moustached foreign lady, and couldn’t make out at all to what she was referring. She did her best to skip and gallop around the small parquet floor with the other little girls, who were dressed in perfectly white tunics, pink sash belts and black leather ballet slippers. An-Mei only had on an old party frock which she was outgrowing. Once or twice she crashed against her classmates when they changed directions unexpectedly, and she felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment.

“Never mind Dahhlink! Don’t stop! Never stop! You just follow! Follow! Da?” shouted Madame Nerinskaya repeatedly. An-Mei recoiled somewhat at the woman’s warm breath which smelled of cats and alcohol. And indeed, her teacher would sit stamping out the beat of the music whilst sipping endlessly at a glass of whisky and Coca Cola, with one of her seven rescue cats weaving itself in and out of her hairy, gouty legs.

As the class moved on swiftly from one exercise to the next, so An-Mei barely had enough time for real shame to register and remain. There was just too much novelty to contend with that first day, and she wasn’t really sure whether she enjoyed herself at the end of it. But she went back the next week. And the next. And the one after that. Ma-Ma was very pleased with herself that at last she’d found something to occupy her restless daughter.

After six months An-Mei had grown confident enough not to crash into any more of her classmates. She didn’t even have to follow them much, but gradually worked her way up to the front row, right before the large mirror with the odd, damp patch behind it here and there. Madame would draw chalk circles for each child to stand in, and from the confines of her own small disc, she saw her own reflection move for the first time in a completely unexpected way, and was mesmerised by herself. She grew to know in her own body that it was to flow and fold in such and such a way, to the rise and fall of the tinkly piano music that Miss Virginia would faithfully hammer out week after week. She fell in love with the little set enchaínements, when one step moved into another, building up into a surprise leap into the air, or a fairy pose, or a lovely little concluding curtsy. In another year she was sent for her first grades exams and passed them with honours; this she would repeatedly do until she’d gone through all her senior grades. She became Madame’s pride and joy, and her complete “Dahhlink”.

Even Ma-Ma did not realise that her daughter had such natural athleticism and a gifted body: her every joint was slightly hypermobile so that it afforded the very best “line” to appreciative eyes; her high insteps beneath slim ankles were the envy of many future rivals. These, combined with her superlative musicality and rhythm, an instinctive flair for physical drama, and most importantly, a yet untapped depth of passion - proved her a consummate classical dancer in the making.

Over the course of years she did become an outstanding prima ballerina with the Hong Kong Ballet. By her late teens and earliest twenties she was dancing all the leads in the classical repertory and in roles created just for her. As fate would have it though, she would then meet her husband-to-be at the height of her abilities, marry him to everyone’s immense surprise, and move away to England where he had his home. This new husband however, did not appreciate the dance as a worthy career for a respectable Chinese wife, and it broke her heart to have to choose one over the other.

Her mother was relieved that she had met a professional, reliable man and married into his respectable family. Ballet as a childhood hobby was fine, but to continue to flaunt her body on a public stage, that was something else. So the irony that it was Ma-Ma who had kindled An-Mei’s love for the dance in the first place, was totally lost on her. On the eve of her departure for England, An-Mei sat folding her belongings endlessly into the rosewood trunks which were part of her wedding trousseau. She’d come across a pair of her satin pointe shoes, held them against her cheek as her eyes filled with silent tears. She still couldn’t cry aloud; it was all that childhood training in mute weeping.

“Aiya An-Mei.” Ma-ma sighed, sitting down at the edge of her bed. “You grown up now. No more jumping up and down like monkey! Marry cockerel, follow cockerel. Marry dog, follow dog. You understand? So it must be for all Chinese girls.”

But her heartache was more than just about the loss of dance. In the many roles that she had assumed onstage, An-Mei had discovered a place where she was set free from the containment of her well behaved self. In the swell of well loved ballet scores by Tchaikovsky and Delibes, or in the off-centred placement of her body and limbs in modern pieces set to Philip Glass or Stravinsky, she was able to live briefly a kind of wanton liberation as someone else. Now she was to be someone’s wife, and nothing else. She would still fail to grasp a more fundamental truth: that however the discipline of dance had built in her an indomitable spirit and an inner resolve to endlessly persevere and overcome, it was but another regime that whipped her into a semi-permanent state of obedience, submission and rigidity.

For years after marriage, she would feel like a bird with its wings clipped so that it remained grounded, and in her dreams she always flew in dance. Her husband expected nothing more than the conventional Oriental trophy wife – a woman beautiful to behold whilst never asserting sufficient impact in herself to overwhelm her husband’s aura. An-Mei became a shadow, but not so insubstantial that she could not carry “face” to boost her husband’s standing before people who mattered. So there would be the required performances as hostess to his many soirées: the Rotary Club dinners, the charity auctions with grand raffle prize draws, and cricket club tea dances. That last one was always tricky, being the accomplished dancer that she was, she had nevertheless to be restrained in her waltzes, foxtrots and cha-cha-cha’s so no one would suspect that she was once onstage as a professional. No, that would not do as it was not considered respectable in the kind of company her husband now kept.

However much An-Mei considered herself a free thinker and independent woman, she was always conditioned to follow the authority of another. From her father’s household, to her teachers and instructors’ classrooms, her artistic directors’ and choreographers’ studios, and then her husband’s life of academia and social climbing. Each would in turn command An-Mei to be this way or that, whenever she occupied a corner of their world. Her heart was always programmed to follow the voice of someone other than her own.

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Who would have thought that this quiet, thought-less cloud of a girl, would finally have her epiphany. It took her husband’s betrayal to shake her out of her stupor. And so nearly thirty years later, after a lifetime of deference, perfection as wife and mother, and the endless surrendering of her own dreams, An-Mei finds herself suddenly alone, divorced, with her parents long gone, and even her own children grown and flown the nest. For the first time in her life, she was free to do whatever she wanted. But it was such a costly freedom, she found she didn't want it. Don't zoo animals have cage habits? By now, her habits had become so self-regulated and predictable. It occurred to her then that she did not know what to do with herself, because suddenly there was no one whom she was to follow. It took her nearly two years before she would query the point of pursuing her self-imposed meticulous routines. Whom would she please, and who would declare any form of appreciation? Or rebuke for that matter. She felt distinctly uncomfortable, lost; and cheated for having been so good, so perfect all her life. Throughout the violence of the divorce she could never cry; and now she still sat dry eyed, rubbing something that felt like a big rock sitting on her chest.

Until one day, quite out of the blue, she realised that she'd had enough of asking herself the same questions that remained unanswered. She did the unthinkable: she booked herself a holiday in the south of Spain. That in itself was counter cultural in her world: in her dancing days, she was not allowed many things, amongst them horseback riding, motor bicycles, skiing, or sunbathing. The first three could ruin her legs, the last spoil the image of a pale Sleeping Beauty, tragic Swan Queen or ghostly Giselle. Within weeks there she was, sprawled on a sunlounger on the terrace of her rented villa in the Costa Brava, tanning herself unashamedly in forty degree heat and wall to wall sunshine, at midday. She drank up the sun as though her life depended on it. It seemed she had saved up a lifetime of rebellion for that fortnight of searing August heat. She slept late, woke late. Ate breakfast at three in the afternoon, or not at all. She abandoned her beauty routine of decades and peered barefaced into the deep blue of the Med some miles in the distance; sometimes for hours. She did nothing, because nothing had to be done.

After several days of padding around barefoot, wearing nothing more than a bikini top and shorts, something deep within her stirred in the Iberian heat, and An-Mei felt a strange sensation: she felt alive. It was as though an iceberg had begun to melt. There was a moment when she unexpectedly recalled what it felt like when she was dancing some of her roles, when the An-Mei people thought they knew disappeared for a couple of hours behind the façade of a character. Only this time, a new character surfaced from within the depths of her: a stranger, but not a stranger; like someone you met once in a dream, who seemed all at once familiar and yet was totally unknown. Had An-Mei had the courage to plumb the depths of this character, she would discover that this was a woman hungry for freedom, and for life in all its rawness, novelty and chaotic oddness. Had she dared look her full in the face, she would have finally met herself, the woman that she was always meant to have become. Somehow, in the scorched loneliness of the La Mangan sun, the real An-Mei had escaped, never to be captured, or hidden again.

She got herself an English-Spanish dictionary and started to venture into the local daily markets, blurting out bad Spanish and collapsing into hysterical laughter with the shopkeepers when they hadn’t a clue what she was saying. She felt like she was sixteen, but without a curfew. After the first few days sitting in the villa, she realised that she was starving. She paced up and down for half a morning debating with herself whether she could possibly eat out alone. She won the argument against herself, and in one swift motion jammed her floppy sunhat tightly onto her head, hid behind her large sunglasses and marched out deliberately towards the tapas bar in the small village nearby. Again she ordered everything in her ridiculous Spanish - carafes of Rioja, downing huge glasses of it for courage as she pointed to every tray of unknown local delicacies under the glass counter. She ate with gusto, everything that was previously forbidden because it was fattening or suspicious in polite company. So she swallowed octopus dripping in olive oil and spicy paprika, mopping up the juices with hard crusty bread. She sampled deep fried ham and cheese croquettes, gnawed through plates of air dried jamon, and nibbled delicately at mini empanadas – bite size tuna pastry parcels made fresh each morning. She knew that every pair of eyes in the bar was upon her: the sad, beautiful Chinese lady who glowed in her newly acquired tan and sparkling eyes; but she determined not to care, and continued to taste and savour everything with as much relish as she could muster.

After she’d paid and enunciated her best “Adios!” she hopped off the high bar stool to a chorus of “Hasta luego, Guapa!”, a solitary wolf whistle, and much raucous laughter. She sauntered, deliberately slowly, out into the boiling heat of mid afternoon, hiccupped loudly and stumbled on the Moorish mosaic tiles at the bar entrance. More throaty laughter pealed out from behind her. She determined not to turn round and kept walking on, as though she'd seen someone she knew in the distance, and in as straight a line as she could manage on very unsteady legs. She’d never eaten so much that she could actually feel the food sitting in her stomach, but it felt good there for a change. Somewhere between her sternum and her navel, there was a new and uncustomary warmth in the area that the Chinese called “wai”. It was the place where your heart and soul were supposed to reside. If you watched a sad movie, or a gut wrenching romance, that area of your body would churn and knot. An-Mei’s “wai” had been cold for so many years, she found this new heat that was radiating out almost sensuous in its languidity. Suddenly she felt acrid tears stinging and gathering beneath her eyelids, as though she was a child again and Ma-Ma had caught her doing something she shouldn’t do and was about to scold. In chain reaction, that familiar hard, sour lump began to form in her throat and she thought she might throw up all her tapas lunch if she didn’t walk it off. So she strode quickly back up the gentle hill towards her villa, but that heaviness began to sit even more pointedly upon her chest, and the tears threatened to fall.

“Stop it. What’s the matter with you An-Mei! Must be all that Rioja.” she mumbled to herself. But she knew exactly what was really wrong: no bravado in a solo holiday, no false courage in surviving in a foreign clime could ever mask the sadness of her enforced singleness and state of abandonment. She no longer had a man to follow, no father, mother, husband or even son to obey, or to give her life meaning. And for the first time in her life, she really didn’t know where to turn, or what to do. She could reach out a hand, but no one would take hold of it and guide her across this wide void towards whatever was her future. There was no set choreography to bring her to any concluding state of grace. Spain would end, and she would have to return to the chill of a solitary existence.

Suddenly annoyed with herself, she stripped off her strappy top and thin cotton skirt, kicked off her sandals and snuggled into her bikini and shorts. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she gasped in surprise at the small bump that was her big lunch that she’d just consumed. No, she decided, it was not the right moment to sunbathe or swim after so much food. And she could hear her mother’s voice echoing between her ears.

“Never swim after eating or you catch cramps in your legs and you will drown! Never swim in the sea before you have cholera injection. Never eat water melon unless you have injection either. Don’t …..” it went on and on, the litany of don’ts and never’s.

She shook her head as if to shake Ma-Ma’s noise out, but she still tore off her swim wear again, and stepped back into her top and skirt. The pleasing warmth in her belly was beginning to fade and it alarmed her. She rubbed her chest and tummy in wide circular movements, then grabbed the keys of her hired car impulsively and jumped into the small Golf. Shifting it into gear, she edged down the slope and aimed for the main road out of the village. After only five minutes she was on the carreterra, the highway towards the next town, a fishing village about twenty minutes away. She found herself heading into the heat of the afternoon, and the sun’s rays landed through the windscreen directly against her “wai”. Grateful and feeling restored somehow, she did not want to lose this sensation of being comforted where she was most vulnerable. In that moment she understood why it was that dogs, cats and babies liked to have their underbellies stroked; it made them feel safe, loved even. She never wanted to have that icy sensation of emptiness and sorrow creep into her soul again, but she knew the memories and the hurt were always just round the corner, and she had to keep moving to avoid confronting them.

So she kept her foot firmly angled against the gas pedal, and pressed on towards the direction of the sun, taking every turn in the road to keep that patch of warmth directly focussed just where her heart was. She passed the turn off for the fishing village as she couldn’t bear to turn away from the heat on her chest. With the windows down, Spanish pop music blaring from the car speakers and her hair flying across a tear streaked face, An-Mei was finally free to grieve over all her lost dreams. She drove on and on towards the warmth, following a sun who would not betray her heart until it had to sink below the horizon of a cloudless, Spanish sky.