Ok, it’s not Peggy Sue, but the name of that movie stuck in my mind and it’s topical. Actually Lily got married, December 13th which is a lucky number combination in China. If you’ve followed these notes about my time in China, you probably read about Lily the college student at the time and not one of mine who I met in the middle of 2008, just before the end of my first year in China.
She’s a young, smart, feisty, stubborn, beautiful and very traditional girl from Changting, a small-for-China town in the mountains in the western part of Fujian Province. I won’t repeat the Lily stories here, just that she was with me in Shanghai for a while, helped me enormously and finally could no longer resist the pull of culture, tradition and family so returned to her hometown at the end of 2010.
In China, there isn’t a lot of safety net for people when they get old, so there’s a lot of pressure to establish a family and other connections to secure a future. And in China, girls getting toward their mid-twenties think they’re old and if they don’t get married soon, they won’t at all and that will be the end of them.
There’s a forty-year age difference so don’t even go there, although I sure thought about it a lot and I’m going to miss this girl as long as I am breathing. If you’ve lived in China for four or five years as a white guy, then be judgmental – otherwise, you can’t possibly relate. Anyway, she went home which was inevitable at some point, but the particular timing came from the mother of a friend of hers who finagled a much sought after and highly valued government job. The rest, as we say, is history
Lily as I knew her, ((I won’t use her Chinese name now) was good to me and agreed to see me a few times after going home – including a sweet visit to her hometown, but the writing was on the wall and apart from a few exchanges about translation and business things, she pulled away as she had to.
It wasn’t pleasant, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a hoot of laughs at the end, even at the beginning – I wasn’t kidding myself; I’m stupid, but not THAT stupid. I learned about her marriage by accident.
Someone who read these narratives for some reason, an English speaking ethnic Chinese who lives in Malaysia wrote and asked about visiting Changting, Lily’s hometown, because it’s one of the ever-fewer places left that is not touristy and its off the beaten path. I put her in touch with Lily who, of course, was generous with her help, time and advice. When the visit happened a week or so ago, Lily also invited these folks to her home for dinner, showed them around town and did all the kind things she just kind of does that were so helpful to me and others who crossed her path. They took to her immediately as everybody I’ve seen her meet does – she’s got an awfully infectious personality.
She didn’t want me to know about her marriage, out of compassion and sensitivity for my feelings, but due to a few e-mails read out-of-sequence, my friend from Malaysia spilled the beans. From what I understand, Lily’s married a fellow who also works for the government and has enough respect around town to be the recipient of gifts from the citizenry which is typical of well-placed government officials and workers. An awful lot of Chinese I know end up with partners deemed “suitable” which usually means found or accepted by a committee of family. The Chinese are the most pragmatic people I’ve ever met and suppress every other emotion in deference to practicality. I know nothing about Lily’s courtship so I won’t say more. I just hope she’s happy.
So the end of the story is that the young girl who meant (means) so much to me will be OK, safely back in her culture and traditions with as secure a future as anyone can have given that the partners both have government jobs. She was really frantic about that and in the last weeks in Shanghai as she made her decision to leave, she’d have nightmares all the time. As she eventually explained it, she felt like she was in a cage not of her making and that the communal society that makes up China can pull back even the strongest independent minds to conform. I’ve seen that with western-educated Chinese who’ve lived in the US or Canada for years who get sucked back in after they return to the mainland. It’s a shame.
Logically and in fact, it’s a nice ending and a load off my mind too since I knew she was pretty poor there for a while and unhappy, but she wouldn’t take money without working for it. And I also knew that in a smallish, traditional, country town like Changting, there might have been social penalties for carousing with an old white foreigner.
I’ll never be able to thank the girl enough for the experience and for the kindness she showed me – or for all the help with my business and the hilarious adventures we had all over China. There’s nothing like seeing China with a native, a person of some talent and insight, a great sense of humor who isn’t a tour-guide.
This thing is killing me of course, and her getting married just before Christmas which is about the same time she left for home last year makes for a difficult holiday, but hey, what can I do? I know this — I got really, really lucky – it was her initiative from the get-go, a real surprise to me and that kind of thing is unlikely to happen again. I’m a old guy for God’s sake!
Good luck, Lily – have a happy life. And thanks.
Lily
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