The first look I had at my hosts was at Shanghai Airport. The first thing they did was hand me a mandarin, and I had the distinct feeling that they would turn out to be comical.
They were a middle-aged couple with their 20-year-old daughter who was alright to look at without being stunning. I found out very swiftly that they spoke no English, so I had to use my "basic-talk" Mandarin. Dad took us to a cheap Chinese restaurant in a 20-seater bus and then back to their house, which was in a densely populated working class area. Once inside, they started selling me the idea of staying with them for the six months I planned on studying Mandarin in Shanghai. I originally had the plan to stay alone somewhere - preferably away from the University and all the other English-speaking students, but I liked this new idea - I would get a lot of language practice.
Their apartment was small, and I wondered how three adults lived in it, while struggling to picture four. The kitchen and bathroom were on one side and the living area on the other. It held a double bed that we were now sitting on and which stared at a TV that I believe had no off button. It was big and like the bus with three passengers, was too large for the job it was called to do. Next to the bed was a sofa. At least that’s what it was in the daytime. At dinnertime it became a dining bench, complementing a fold-up table that came out from somewhere - I never found out where. At night pillows and blankets also appeared mysteriously and the sofa became a single bed. Everything in the house was multi-purpose like this. I don’t believe any item existed that wasn’t.
A balcony area out the back was where I was offered to sleep. It was narrow and doubled as a storage area and clothes line, so when I did finally lay down and look up, bras and undergarments would be hanging somewhere above my head drying, as boxes and bags piled all around. It was simulated claustrophobia, and reminded me of being a kid again. All I wanted back then were glow-in-the-dark stars to stick on my bedroom roof, so that when I turned off the lights and slept, it was like being in the outback under the stars. I never did get them and had felt like I missed out on an important part of childhood until today. Now as I looked up and saw the clothes, I was finally able to appreciate the bland ceiling I had always had. This balcony was also the furthest distance away from the daughter, who later adopted the name Julia. She was on the double closest to the kitchen, with Mum. Dad was next on the sofa. So to get to her, I’d have to get through the dad and then the mom.
On those first few nights witnessing Dad’s relegation to the sofa, I worried about the impact my presence had on family life. Did mum and dad usually take the double together? Then one night after I went out with Julia and some other people, we returned to find mum on the double and dad on the sofa, fast asleep. My worries were eased and I guessed dad had been as far away from mom, perhaps since Julia’s conception. I believed this more and more firmly as I witnessed the family dynamics. Mom was the boss, ordering dad around like a boy.
The bus it turned out was owned by Dad’s employer, a Japanese-owned company. He was their driver, charged with picking up the workers at various points around Shanghai, and getting them to work on time. I asked him what he did during the day. “I have a shower and a sleep at the Company, and sometimes drive a few friends or their things around”, he said proudly. It was strange because he got plenty of sleep at home and also took a shower. And what kind of a sleep could you get anyhow, with all these workmates busy working just beyond the consciousness? He would wake up to drive them home at 5 O’clock.
There seemed to be no limits to what he did with the bus outside that. And he did stretch those limits. Once I started University, he fitted me into the morning shuttle, which wasn’t too much out of the way. He also picked up some Chinese kids and took them to school, making it a quasi-public bus service. But this wasn’t from the goodness of his heart. Their dad was a police sergeant and would probably come in handy sometimes. Besides, none of the other workers seemed to mind. They got picked up and they got their seat.
On the weekend, without the inconvenience of workers to pick up and deliver, the bus was free for personal errands. All kinds of cousins, uncles and acquaintances came out of the woodwork at this time with all kinds of transportation needs. Dad drove someone here, picked up grandma, delivered furniture there and so on. The bus was utilized much more than on weekdays, as requests would peak. It had become a crucial member of the family, like the adorable child that all the family loves and wants to come and see. Dad was so patient and attended to all requests individually, and planning his run, but all he seemed to get in return were mandarins. People were always giving him mandarins.
I was getting carted around with who or whatever was in need of transportation, and tagged along not because there was nothing else to do, but because it was a unique and fascinating way to see the Chinese. I also got to see a great deal of Shanghai in this way. On one occasion we were in the middle of town and dad was at a red light, first in line with me and somebody’s sofa. He noticed I didn’t have anything in my hand so he got out of the bus suddenly to buy some mandarins from a roadside seller. The seller, perhaps noticing dad’s need to get back to the bus, probably quoted a higher price, causing deep remonstrations and ill feeling. Dad looked indignant, and spent about three changes of the green light negotiating, while cars banked up behind him beeping horns, unable to get past. Eventually, when half the cars in Shanghai were lined up, awaiting the conclusion of the sale, he closed the buy, returned, gave me the bag of mandarins and moved on. As I tried to drop my head below the glass to distance myself from the debacle, I thought about the irony of the mandarins. In every house, at every meal, at every encounter we had been to, I was handed mandarins. It was the last thing I wanted.
Every Sunday night after all the weekend running around, there would always be a big dinner at the final person’s house. I was always the reluctant guest of honor, and people were always raising their glass to toast something with me, and drinking their beer in one shot. It was the first time in my life that I was physically able to comply and drink a beer in one go, since they were always warm. I could usually see the bottles waiting on the ground against a wall. I didn’t know why they never used the refrigerators. But as the weeks went by and my notoriety grew, the bottles waited against the wall more ominously in greater numbers. At first I noticed people getting drunk easily while I felt fine, and I thought they just weren’t familiar with alcohol. And by the end of the dinner and drinks, many of the 15 or so men needed help staggering out. Dad would be summoned back into transport mode to load up the bus with all these guys, accompanied by the occasional motorbike or scooter, and get them home. I would be cheery but otherwise fine and was gaining a reputation of being a great drinker, something I had also never enjoyed before. Frankly, I was starting to believe it myself, until I looked closely at the beer bottle one day. It contained about half as much alcohol as the average Australian beer that I was used to. I kept this information to myself.
In any case, the mood was always very festive as the drinks flowed, and it was fun to see other people dropping like flies. The only downside was that I often had mum sitting conspicuously next to me, on a table of men, repeating a simple mantra just before each call of “one shot” ~ “man man lai”, which means “drink it slowly”. It made me feel like the youngest son again who had always been told by mom not to do this or that, and under the circumstances, was quite hard advice to follow.
On about the third Sunday night session, which had involved a growing number of family attendees, I was sat down to dinner at the head of the table. Everybody looked expectant, and I felt so too. I noticed an excessive number of bottles against the wall, more than I had ever seen before. Tonight, it seemed, would be the session of sessions. They had obviously come with a game plan, as everybody had a glint in their eyes. One fellow who I barely knew charged both our glasses and called “cheers”, a signal to skull the thing, which I did. He did too before slinking away discreetly. Shortly after, a different fellow offered a different toast, before slipping away as discreetly. It seemed that they had decided to share the burden. When the next guy attempted the same thing, I called on all men to charge their glasses, even summoning those first two guys from another room. Everybody complied happily, as they did for the rest of the evening. Once again, many men ended the festivities very shakily while I maintained my reputation, just.
Living with this family had both the upside and downside that I got to feel like a Chinese kid, as the parents treated me like blood: the pressures, all the constraints. I was being told not to drink too much, and that I should do this and not that. Every part of my life was slowly being controlled. Mum even came with me on enrollment day at the University. There were a hundred or so foreigners in 10 levels of Chinese class. I only needed a pass in order to graduate back home and was thinking about a class somewhere in the mid-range where I could enjoy myself. However, at the front of an awkward enrolment line with a long line of foreigners behind who looked like backpackers on their gap year, mum argued at length with the head of the department that I must be in the top class, at some points raising her voice a few decibels. “He is staying with us”, she argued, “and will progress quickly”. It was a passionate performance that would have made great viewing for any bystanders, and I cringed helplessly every time a foreigner looked at her, and then to me, trying to put the situation together in their minds. I did end up in that top class where the teachers neither spoke nor understood, a bit of English. At first I didn’t understand a word they said and neither did all the other Koreans and Japanese in the class. But when the teacher wrote her point on the board, they all copied it, nodding as though they got the drift finally. I watched on helplessly.
The six months tuition cost about a thousand USD, and so the first day was an important one: it was the day to hand over the money. Going to school then was like being in the goldfish bowl. All eyes were on. Locals loitered just beyond the University gates like buzzards waiting for death, hoping to exchange USD for the local currency. Everyone knew, it seemed, that here were lots of foreigners in need of local currency. While we were enrolling and signing forms, a New Zealand man in front of me was paying his money. He spoke poor Chinese and carried with him only USD. We had been given the impression from the literature that USD would do, but the enrolment clerk, who turned out to be a professor, told him that he needed to pay in Chinese currency. To save him from going and getting it, the clerk offered to exchange the money, which seemed helpful. The teacher pulled out a thick wad of Chinese currency and exchanged it at one of the poorest rates on record, pocketing about $100 in an instant. Then the guy paid with the Chinese currency.
The father often asked about Australia; what was it like? What was it like to live there? I usually told him it was pretty nice and clean. The houses were big and life was easy. During the first week of staying there, over dinner, he said, “Ken, let me give you a talk. We’re all family here. You take what you want. You want a banana, you take a banana”. He continued, ominously, “This is what we’re gonna do. I want you to marry my daughter and later, go to Australia. You get the big house and after a while, me and my wife will come to Australia. We will all live together in the big house”. He was so excited that I was unsure what I should say. It seemed that everyone was waiting anxiously, while the daughter kept quiet, head held low. I slowly, circuitously, changed tack, mentioning some complexities. I don’t know her, and she doesn’t know me. I moved onto the image of Australia. “Its not beautiful everywhere”, I conceded, “and life isn’t always easy but sometimes very desperate. Jobs are hard to find. Crime rates are high” I admitted. When he persisted, I did a trick that I often see with foreigners in my own country when the conversation is unfavorable. I did the old “I no speak a the English,” but in Chinese, and he eased off. The next evening over dinner, he would go through the same routine. The wife, watching like a shark, would scoff a little as she saw my response and knew I wasn’t into the idea. But as much as a scoff at me was a scoff at the husband, perhaps for playing his hand so early. Perhaps she had argued for a slow pull. I was always focusing on the negatives and problems, all of which wasn't precluding his interest enough, so I went for a new plan. “Ok” I said, “the thing is I have a girlfriend in Australia, a fiancé actually, and we may get married, so there's nothing I can do”. Without missing a beat he told me that its ok, with Julia, a real marriage would be ok. And a fake marriage would also be ok, so let's go with the fake one. After a while I decided to move out, but not until the end of the month and not until a handyman, a family friend came one evening to fortify a door.
This man was middle aged and weather beaten. He was built strongly and had the color of a man used to working outdoors, I imagined, on construction projects. He worked on the door, fortifying, welding, and adding extra steel and deadbolts. I didn’t know why it was necessary in a building on the 5th floor with neighbors and so many eyes around. Perhaps I attracted attention. I guessed the dad paid him only for costs and for some transportation at a later time. He stayed for dinner, although I had nothing to say to him. He ate, and spoke solely in the Shanghai dialect, of which I understood nothing. His life and mine were like a divide that could not be crossed. Then he noticed a bottle of alcohol lying on the edge of my room, the balcony. It was Glavya, a whisky based drink with some extra spices I brought with me for the winter. It’s the kind of drink that should be poured in a tumbler, and sipped since its high in alcohol. It’s the kind of thing that heats up the back of your throat and chest like a small fire. He was interested in it, and asked dad about it. Dad encouraged me to offer him some, and I nodded. Hosts do that. I was boxed in on the sofa so the man had to reach for the bottle and help himself. I had little control as he proceeded to fill a milk glass to the top. As it went “glg glg glg” I saw my money and expensive liquor flicker before my eyes. I have never seen a drink like this prepared in such a way and was now interested to see how he would manage drinking it. First he took a sip, and I saw the briefest of looks of anguish on his face: the kind of look you give when you have eaten something terrible. I suspected it was also a great deal stronger than he had thought. He then decided that, while he didn’t like it, he had poured it, and needed to act honorably. So, in the manner of removing a band-aid in one swift swipe, he drank the glass in one go as though he were sculling a beer. I blinked, amazed, no longer concerned about losing so much Galvya. I was now looking closely for signs of distress. I watched him intently, fascinated. How would his body respond to this onslaught? He immediately but casually filled up the empty glass with rice wine, concealing the inner emergency. Rice wine is low in alcohol, and its cool. He downed about half a glass as though he needed to take away the bad taste, in actual fact, trying to extinguish the fire. To his great credit, he did not cough throughout the process and the family, who knew nothing about alcohol, wouldn’t have known how much he had been hurt. I continued watching and was happy to see his face gain several tones of red. I then felt content that he too had paid for the liquor he drank. After this event, this is the man I feared would arrive on the Sunday night shenanigans, the ultimate secret weapon to put me away. Fortunately, he never did.
This wasn’t to be the last time dinner would be eventful. On another occasion, probably as the old man was gearing up for his next installment at marriage making, he received a message on his beeper. The pager was a big thing in Shanghai in those times and the old man had one, as well as a cell phone. He peered at the pager for a moment, squinting, as though this was not a number he was expecting. He stopped his dinner, went to the kitchen where the phone was, and presumably called the number. What ensued was some sort of argument. It was in Shanghai dialect and so I understood nothing, but it lasted 30 minutes. The three of us waited patiently for him to finish, while the food slowly cooled. Eventually he finished, sat down solemnly and started to eat, a signal that all could tuck in. The mother asked him what had happened, while Julia kept her head listening intently for details. This conversation also took place in Shanghai so I understood nothing. He muttered a sentence unhappily and then they didn’t mention it any more and they all ate. Eventually I asked what had happened, 'since we were all family'. It was especially unusual to me since he always made his calls quickly, less than ten seconds, since they were charged on a time basis. But if somebody called him, he was much less hasty to end the call. "They dialed the wrong number" he said in a way that made me think they had committed a crime. Unsure what that meant I asked for clarification, and he elaborated, “A man called the wrong pager number.” “Hmm” I said, “so why did you have to talk for 30 minutes?” He thought it was a serious question. "I had to tell him that this is my work pager, and he's not allowed to call it wrongly. I had to tell him off". Eventually I couldn’t help laughing. Julia, and the mum, were also seeing the funny side and were trying to keep a serious face, and eventually, once he started to smile, they did too.
On one of the weekends, we went to another city, Suzhou, where an aunty lived. Friday night was long as we went to different parts of Shanghai to go and collect various family members. Eventually the Minibus was full of people - and mandarins, and off we went. I was hoping the aunt had her own mansion or hotel because there were lots of people to sleep. When we got there I found a standard apartment that had two bedrooms and a living room. The math didn’t add up so well but anyway. Finally it was time for bed and the men were to be in a room and the women in another. There was a single and a double, and some floor space. I was offered the single, but the mentee driver was sick so I told him to take it. They would not let me have anything less than the double bed, and Dad, ever my personal butler, would be sharing it with me. I have never slept this way before, but I tried. However, every hour or so, I would look up and he would be doting right over me - a grown man - checking to see if I was warm enough. It was a long night.
There was a character who always loitered around who I could not place. He was a kind of friend of the family, and had been Dad’s bus driving men-tee. Dad taught him to drive and subsequently found him a job at another company. He was at every family occasion and assisted every movement of goods, even though he had a minibus of his own that he could have driven around. I guessed it was a Confucian thing like the samurai, serving their masters til the end. But when we were all at home, mum never said a kind word about him, and dad never defended him and Julia never mentioned him at all. I liked him and called him Arthur. He held his liquor well, and out of respect never drank to his limits on the Sunday night sessions. And often I went out with him but he never let me pay, no matter how hard I tried. He had a way of making me feel special, and once invited me to his home for dinner. Naturally, I was the special guest, a role I was becoming proficient, albeit tired of. His mother regrettably prepared a dish of frogs and one of snails, which everyone thought was sensational news. They probably wouldn’t get such delicacies without me, and they all respectfully waited until I had dined from them before they would take some. In essence there was no way I could avoid eating them. Halfway through dinner, which was in a house whose second floor was only half sheltered, I needed to go to the bathroom. I asked inconspicuously where it might be, and a minion was ordered to take me. To my surprise we went to the front door, where all the shoes were. My usher was putting his shoes on, so I did too. Was I being taken to a special toilet? We took umbrellas because it was pouring, and walked up the street, made a left after about 50 meters, walked on, did another left and right and after a few minutes were at a public bathroom. We paid a coin to get in. The smell hit me once I walked in to what a toilet in prison may look like. There was a long metal trough that reminded me of the taps we drank water from in primary school. I was taking a pee into the trough while holding onto the umbrella since it was an open-air bathroom and it was pouring. It was a tricky maneuver. Next to me was a local man crouched and squatting with his back to the trough kind of facing me, doing some heavier business. He looked at me and nodded, without an umbrella and oblivious to the rain. I got out of there as quickly as possible shuddering, wishing I had known about the facilities earlier. I would have held on.
Once I had moved out and into some student accommodation, Arthur paid me a visit, and took me out for dinner. As usual, he wouldn't let me pay. It may have been the first time there was just two of us. He had a confession to tell me. He was Julia’s boyfriend. They were in love. Mum and dad didn’t know this news. If they did, they would not approve. While I was living at the house, he was able to see Julia a fair bit under the guise that he was seeing me, and often we all went out a bit, as well as other cousins, without the parents. Now, he admitted, it was hard to see Julia. “I have told Julia that I’m coming to talk to you and she agrees” he said, “and we need your help”. “What kind of help?”, I asked. “Well, the parents like you, so if you ask Julia to go out, they will be happy. Then I can see her. So on the weekend, you call their house to take Julia out. I will pick you up take you down there or wherever you want to go, and I can go out with Julia”. It was untruthful and I liked it, so we did this every weekend. I made the call, and found the family very excited. When I went to their house, they had packed a lunch for me to take. Outside and around the corner, was the 20-seater bus, and I got Arthur to drop me off somewhere favorable, often with a friend of mine. Later in the day we would rendezvous and get Julia back. It worked out well for everybody for a long time.
At one point, I invited Arthur to dinner. He had done a lot for me and never let me pay for anything. He was happy to hear this news, indeed may have been waiting impatiently for it, and offered to choose a place. He asked if Julia might come along which was fine. When the day came, he picked me up and we went to a French restaurant in a nice area. He brought some extras besides Julia , a sister and a cousin. It was hard to keep the costs down with all of them and besides, he had always been generous. As each dish came out and I wanted to say “whoa” , I heard his words all those times before echoing: “have more Ken, have you had enough, is there anything else you want?” Ever the benevolent host, as much as I wanted to stop the bleeding, I could not. That remains the most expensive dinner I have paid for at a time when money was scarce.
After moving out I shared a room with a Japanese student who had a room of books and whose friend came to give him a haircut in the room. But I still kept contact with the family. By this time I was doing some part time work teaching tennis to business professionals. One was a manager for a large and respected department store, and the family was very excited to hear this news, for Julia was graduating from college. She was looking for just this kind of work, in a Department store. At a Sunday night dinner once at their home, after an escapade with Arthur, the mother asked for a favor, which was the least I could do. She would like me to get an interview with my tennis student. This was an easy enough proposition - they had many staff and always needed more. And I was about to confirm that indeed, this would be easy, when mum continued: “This is how its gonna go. You talk to the manager and book up the interview”. “Sure, no problems” I agreed. “Then when the day comes you don’t need to go, you just tell us where and when”. "Sure" I said. “And I will take Julia down there” said mum, “and so in the interview will be the manager, and me, and Julia” she announced. Puzzled, I confirmed whether mum would sit in on the interview, “yes, because I need to check out if everything is good”. Julia said nothing and I said nothing for a while. I recalled the passion mum put into getting me into the top class at uni. It was an impassioned performance that you might see at a student rally. This interview would indeed be a good story, but I didn’t want to destroy my standing with my student, and so told them I would see what I could do. When next I talked to them and they asked about the interview, I had to convey the sad news that the department store was currently not hiring.
This was the last time I saw them, as I moved on and back to Australia sometime after that. As usual when I left for my university accommodation, they urged me to return, and handed me some mandarins.