now, though, i am experiencing a reprieve from the nausea and it is time to tell a story. one thing that i often miss while living in china is listening to the stories of the people around me. this is part of what pushes me to learn chinese, though i am growing more and more aware of how difficult real fluency will be, and it will certainly not be attained in just one year. but now that i am meeting more and more english speaking people, i am being given the opportunity to hear more and more stories. these stories are so different from ones that i know, and sometimes it takes me weeks to wrap my head around them- some things are so different from anything i have ever been used to- and i'd like to hope that these stories change me a little. this is one i have been thinking about for a month or so:
i was talking with a girl the other day. she is my age, a university student, from a family of three children. she is intelligent, asks questions uncommon to china, can argue, and wants to travel. her english is admirable- she has been learning for two years and we can carry conversations that avoid weather, favorite foods, and the hobbies we often partake in.
and so we are talking, and i ask of her family, does she have siblings, where is her hometown, does she (like so many others) want to return there? and she responds: two siblings, her parents live in a large city in a different province, and she wants to travel.
how do you have two siblings? i ask.
in a place where the one child policy has been dictating birth and family planning for almost thirty years, it is unusual to meet people my age with families of more than two children. there are a few exceptions- from what i can tell, urban ethnic minorities are allowed two children, while their rural counterparts are at times able to have three or four. the han chinese (the people group that accounts for about 92% of the population) are given stricter guidelines: rural families are allowed two children on a case by case basis, and urban couples are allowed one child. if another child happens, the family is punished with a fine, and they have to pay for the extra child's schooling. if the first child a couple has is a girl or is disabled in some way, they are able to petition for the right to have another child (hopefully a boy). if they are allowed another child, they usually have to space it out by 5 years. and that is it. there are exceptions made for twins (twin boys are especially lucky), and the actual execution of these rules varies by province and officials, but this is pretty much what i understand about the one child policy.
so, you can imagine my surprise when i heard this han girl telling me she was from a city and had two other siblings. she went on to tell me her story. her father is the only man in their entire family- she has a few aunts, and none of them had male children. according to the family, it was now up to her father (and mother) to produce a male heir and thus continue the family line. or something like that. i still can't quite grasp the full import of being totally responsible and accountable to the family. or the seriousness of the need to have a boy. in this family, the first child was a girl. not good. her parents were ready to try again, so they (and the rest of the family, i guess) petitioned the government to allow them to have a second child-to try for a son. the officials said 'have at it, in five years' and they did. five years later, the mom was pregnant with a baby boy, but seven months in, she miscarried. and the family was devastated, especially grandma. at the pressing of the family, they tried again, and a year or so later, my friend was born. grandma had the foresight to have her daughter-in-law give birth quietly at home, so there was a small conference as to what to do with this second girl baby. there was no way the government would let them try for a third child, but there was also no way that grandma was going to not have a male heir. so they hid her. they did not kill her, but they sent my baby friend to the countryside to live with another grandmother, and then they told everyone the baby had died at birth.
about a year later, they had another baby. at long last, they had a boy, and everyone was very happy. even my friend is very proud about her brother. there was a little prince to carry on the family after her father's death. my friend stayed in the country, was raised by her grandma, and saw her family once ever year or so. as long as she can remember, she has understood the importance of her brother, and she accepted that she had to be hidden from the government officials. until she was fifteen or so, she hid among the other children in her grandmother's village, and she knew that everyone else in her family (besides her parents and siblings) thought she was dead. around this time, in order to give her a better education, her parents confessed. i don't really get the details of this part, or why they waited so long, or if they intended to confess... but they did. and they paid an enormous fine, and her mother went to jail for a few weeks, and now she is in college and her sister is in college, and her brother is in college but prefers gambling and alcohol to learning.
the most impressive part of this to me is that she is not bitter or angry or hurt. not at all. she loves her family, loves her brother and her grandmother. this is what they had to do. perhaps she is even a bit thankful for not being completely abandoned or even killed. these things happen here, too. i do not know if this is the formative story of her identity, or if this is the part of her story she tells to foreigners because she knows it shocks them. there are so many things that i do not know about her, but this story she told me keeps me thinking about how similar we are, and how differently we have lived.
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other news is this: somehow the internet is magic and i am able to have a washington based internet telephone number. skype, for a small (extremely small) fee, has now given me a phone number and a voicemail and also free calling to the united states. what this means for me is that i can call people without spending 2 cents a minute, but what this means for you is that you can call me just as if you were calling me when i was living in washington. for the same amount of money, which is maybe free if you have a good plan. if i am on my computer, i will answer. if i am not on my computer, it will go to my voicemail, where you can leave me a message filled with love and kindnesses. or a poem or a song. and then i can call you back. so, if you are simply dying to call me every day and leave me loving messages, my number is (360)746-2780. it is always nice to hear from friends. especially around the holidays (hint). and i will try to reciprocate. i love how magical the internet is sometimes.
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