Breakfast with Mary
On Saturday morning, I slurped noodles at the local noodle shack with one of my first-year students, Mary. Mary is a pop-star-in-training – perfect complexion, perfect posture, a sweet disposition, a flair for bright lights and a gift for language. Her English is about as good as a first-year student’s English gets.
For example, she told me she would get a haircut later that day, so I asked her if she’d get a Mo-hawk. Without a moment’s hesitation, she replied, in her sweet, earnest voice, “No, I will get my hair cut like Rolo.” She meant Ronaldo, the Brazilian soccer star who wore a hideous triangular clump of hair atop his head for the last World Cup. The ability to joke in English, and actually be funny, is rare among my students. With Mary, she does it all the time.
The discussion about the haircut led to Mary explaining that she’s taking an elective class on Saturdays about how to apply make-up. The course meets at the college and is open only to girls. “They also teach us the proper way to sit and stand,” Mary explained, “and methods to make our skin more white and to keep thin.” Noodles are tough to choke on, but I nearly did upon hearing about university-sponsored charm school in 2003.
Mary then explained that she could eat only half her noodles because “she is turning into a very fat girl.” Again, near-death by noodle choking. Mary has the figure of at best a celery stalk, although she does look very healthy. I told her as much, and that neglecting to eat will make her only less healthy, and more ugly, as she gets older. Mary then explained that, when she started university, she was 35 kilograms, nearly weightless, and now she’s up to 55 kilograms. “Many people tell me that I’m very fat,” she explained.
And then I told her that I would go to Shaoshan, the hometown of Chairman Mao, on Sunday. I asked her if she wanted to join us. No, she said, on Sunday I have all-day lesson about joining “The Party.” I asked her what this class consisted of. “They teach us about loving our country and studying its history and pledging ourselves to fight for China,” she explained. “Mostly, when they are saying these things, we are sound asleep.” Again, she said this in the most earnest, innocent voice, and it was hilarious, almost enough to make me overlook the reality of her joining “The Party” at age 18, surely without proper mental preparation. How's that for a weekend: all-day charm school on Saturday, all-day brainwashing on Sunday.
As we walked out of the restaurant, Mary explained to me that her mom is an English teacher. I told her that must be why she has such good English. She replied by stating that, when her mother was her age, her mother was very beautiful. But, she explained, her father was very ugly. “And so my poor mother had me, this ugly, terrible baby. I am so sorry for my whole life to be so ugly for her. I look like my ugly father.” By this point, I stopped arguing with her; she seemed content to bask in her groundless, baseless misery.
Sadly, people probably do tell Mary that she’s fat and that she’s ugly. Each statement could not be less true, but this is a society covetous of Western standards of beauty – white skin, physique of an anorexic sparrow – and excruciatingly blunt and cruel in judging its women by those standards.
A friend of mine who’s taught in China for four years says that it’s not at all uncommon for Chinese parents to tell their female children that they found them in the garbage, and to deny them full rights to the family name and inheritance. A trip to the drugstore reveals aisles of creams promising to “whiten skin,” and the slightest hint of sunshine makes women rush for their umbrellas, lest they get a bit of vitamin D. It’s such a contrast from the West, where people lie on a beach, or slow broil like hot-dogs, seeking an extra coat of varnish. We have what they want, but we want what they have.
All of this shite made me extra sympathetic to my female students. Being a dude never seemed more attractive. In fact, one of my first-year students, a very sweet, diligent girl who happens to be tall and not beautiful in the conventional sense, calls herself Rex in English. “Why Rex,” I asked her. “Because I wish I could be a boy,” she explained.
