"But one thing you don't have is freedom. For example, the freedom to have three children like me!" Baobao adds.
"Who wants kids? I don't want kids." Beibei shrugs. "Especially after seeing that your kids speak no Chinese."
"You're so patriotic, voluntarily applying the family planning policy?" Baobao snaps back.
"We are the first generation of Chinese women who have learned to love ourselves. I don't want to be called 'mother of my kids' like our mother was," Beibei states firmly.
"Not having kids might be cool now, but everyone grows old one day. Your children are the continuation of your youth. Even Hillary Clinton and Madonna have children," Baobao argues.
"You sound more like our mother now. I can't believe you've come all the way from America!" Beibei says.
Seeing that Beibei won't change her mind, Baobao asks the girl who is giving her a foot massage: "What do you say, as a woman – do you want children in the future?"
"That depends on who I marry," the girl speaks in a Henan accent. "If I got lucky, like you, and my children could be born in the United States, then I'd have five or six. One of them might even become president of the United States! If I married someone even poorer than me, then I wouldn't want children. I don't want to see my kid grow up in a place like this, full of smelly feet and smelly shoes."
Her words remind me of my stepmother Jean Fang, who has the same dream of giving birth to a candidate for American president. But I wonder to myself if Asian Americans can hold high positions in the American government? Even if they don't become president, I suppose their lives would be better than that of a foot massager.
"Both the rich and the poor have their reasons for limiting the size of their family," Baobao mutters. "I guess the one-chi ld policy works."
Beibei doesn't hear a word that Baobao says. She is looking at her own feet. She has them sprayed with the lemongrass foot spray she bought from the Body Shop. She sniffs her shoes, absolutely sure that her shoes don't smell. After all, she has sixty-six pairs.
HEIWULEI: Five black types, jargon used in the Cultural Revolution to identify those deemed to be reactionaries.
GAOGAN ZIDI: Children of high-ranking Communist Party officials: privileged rich kids in China.
LIU SI: The Tiananmen uprising of June 4, 1989.
ERHU: Two-stringed Chinese musical instrument. DA GONG: To work in order to make a living. It especially refers to peasants who migrate to the cities to become manual laborers. In a broader sense, it refers to all employees who work for others instead of themselves. Since entrepreneurship is encouraged by the market economy, many Chinese consider being a boss more successful than working for someone else.
75 In the Time of SARS
SARS has changed my life.
Gone are the days with decadent lewd banquets with ten people eating twenty dishes. At home, I cook frozen dumplings.
Gone are the days that a gang of friends raids my house, drinking up my collection and taking away everything I store in my fridge. Yinsi, or privacy, once such a foreign concept, becomes a notion that everybody embraces. They don't show up unexpectedly. Instead, they talk to me by e-mails.
I am the city girl who used to crawl from one party to another. Now I have time to read, write and meditate, and do yoga! Instead of window shopping for fun, I order everything from books to noodle soups online!
As for my friends, they do the same. Lulu plans to do an exhibition called Mask Fashions after the SARS epidemic is over. But at the moment, she hides at home, writing her first soap opera Love in the Time of SARS. She locks herself in the bedroom and writes eighteen hours a day. Her mother is back in Beijing to take care of her and leaves food at the door for her to pick up. Beibei is thinking of holding an outdoor concert outside a big hospital. At the moment, all the concerts her company has sponsored have been canceled, including Rolling Stone's first China trip. As for her personal life, for the first time in seven years her marriage has become monogamous. Both she and her husband, Chairman Hua, have temporarily shut down their extramarital contacts. Chairman Hua is even learning to cook. From time to time, Beibei comes home to find him in the kitchen. CC has written her first will after her parents sent their own will to her from Hong Kong. She spends most of her time talking with a doctor in England via Yahoo Messenger. He is her cyberromance.
I realize that it's not just the lives of my friends and me that have changed so dramatically, but the whole society as well.
Vegetarianism is cool now. Restaurants that used to make a lucrative business by butchering wild animals have lost money and closed down. Some see SARS as the revenge of the animal kingdom on greedy human beings.
Bar girls, karaoke girls, and travel agents are out of jobs.
I feel that SARS has made China more like the States: people flush the toilet after they use it. They wash their hands more often. They don't stand as close when they speak. They tend not to flock into places anymore. Shops and restaurants close earlier than before – around seven o'clock. Doctors have gained respect. The economy has slowed down, and the country is cleaner, less crowded, more environmentally conscious – the slow, laid-back pace seems a little unnatural here.
76 SARS Wars
Are humans born good or evil? Why does it make some people feel better about themselves when they put others down? Why is a sense of superiority needed to boost these people's egos? Regional discrimination is common in China, which has become even more evident during the SARS outbreak. SARS makes us wear masks as a protective measure. At the same time, the disease helps unmask our true nature, normally hidden behind the soft veils of personalities. Now, every raw emotion is exposed.
As usual, I log on to a popular Internet chat room to gather information for my stories and discover that a heated debate is raging.
It started with a provocative message from someone called Hong Kong Babe. Hong Kong Babe posts her message on the Web site owned by a mainland company. The message reads:
"You mainlanders make the Chinese look bad in front of the world. You mainlanders are so backward! We Hong Kong people are forced to suffer with you now. We want to go back to British rule!"
As could be expected, and probably hoped for, Hong Kong Babe's message creates a stir. Northern Love responds: "You must be a skinny flat-chested babe who is not civilized enough to speak putonghua. Don't you understand that the whole thing started because people in your region eat anything with legs except tables, anything that flies except airplanes, and anything that swims except ships? Because of your eating habits, we northerners catch the germs from you, who catch the germs from animals!"
Before Hong Kong Babe can reply, a message from Spring Ocean appears: "Hi, anybody from Taiwan? I'm from Taipei. Our situation in Taiwan is not as bad as Hong Kong because we aren't cramped; we have more space. We aren't as bad as the mainland because Taiwan is more advanced, medically and politically."
Hong Kong Babe finally posts a reply: "FYI: I live in the Mid-Levels on Hong Kong Island. Here, life is better than on the Kowloon side. Those who live in old, dirty, inexpensive places are more likely to get infected. The area where I live has many foreigners." Surprisingly, Hong Kong Babe does not draw more hostile responses. Instead, the message board evolves into a tug of war between two mainland cities.
Louis Vutton: "Hi, I'm from the mainland. To be specific, I'm from Shanghai. I feel safe living in Shanghai. Once again we've done a better job than Beijing."