Home Is a Roof Over a Pig: An American Family's Journey in China
320
Home Is a Roof Over a Pig: An American Family's Journey in China
320eBook
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Overview
When Aminta Arrington moves with her husband and three young children (including a daughter adopted from China) from suburban Georgia to Tai’an, a city where donkeys share the road with cars, the family is bewildered by seemingly endless cultural differences large and small. But with the help of new friends, they soon find their way. Full of humor and unexpectedly moving moments, Home Is a Roof Over a Pig recounts a transformative quest with a freshness that will delight.
“A brutally honest and fascinating peek at life for an American family living in a foreign country. I was engrossed in the story as Arrington used her humor, and ultimately understanding and flexibility to survive, realize, and eventually love the contradictory land of China.” —Kay Bratt, bestselling author of Silent Tears: A Journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage
“The power of Aminta Arrington’s Home Is a Roof Over a Pig is you can see both sides of the ‘China coin’ from it—something most people won’t get just by traveling through, or only by hearing about China in Western languages. Read it, it will help you dip into the real China.” —Xinran, author of The Good Women of China
“A military wife turned ESL instructor’s sharp-eyed account of how the adoption of a Chinese baby girl led to her family’s life-changing decision to live and work in rural China . . . Candid and heartfelt.” —Kirkus Reviews
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468304190 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ABRAMS, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]
GATE
* * *
The Chinese writer Zhang Ailing said that every butterfly is a dead flower flying back to look for her lost life.
Perhaps that explains why I found myself arriving in China with a husband, three children, nineteen pieces of luggage, and a contract to teach at a local university. Three years before, my husband Chris and I had traveled to one of China's poorer provinces to adopt a beautiful baby girl. We named her Grace Amelie — her middle name French like her older sister's, her given name Grace because she was a heaven-sent gift. But as we finished up the paperwork and prepared to fly home, something began to nag at me.
It started at the hotel, when we took off her layers of clothes and the rag that served as a diaper, and replaced them with the cutest outfit we had brought with us and a fresh Pampers. For I knew I was changing her. And I was changing her yet again when I gave her her first bath, put her in a high chair, and babbled to her in English. It nagged at me when we boarded the airplane, landed her on U.S. soil, and happily told her she was now an American. For even though we were giving her a family and a place to belong, I knew I was changing her identity. And she was losing something.
Yes, the truth was, I had come to China, in part, looking for the life my daughter had lost.
* * *
From the moment we got off the plane in Beijing, people stared at us. One woman walked to within a few feet, set down her bags, put her hands on her hips, and openly gawked.
As we stood in line to board our next flight, the deplaning passengers filed past, separated by a glass partition. Suddenly, one of them caught sight of the five of us and motioned to the others. The passengers all crowded in, noses to the glass, pointing and unabashedly taking us in, as they might a rare white Bengal tiger at the Beijing Zoo.
We were dropped off in front of our new home in the middle of the night. We walked up two flights of bare concrete steps to a tiny two-bedroom apartment that didn't have enough beds for the five of us.
"There's no running water," Sally from the university's foreign affairs office said apologetically. "It gets turned off every evening."
We left the unpacking till morning and huddled together in the available beds, exhausted.
The next morning I tripped over open suitcases and made my way to the window for my first daylight look at our new surroundings. Outside I saw a long red line of contiguous courtyards. They were affixed to a drab contemporary apartment block, making them even more striking: an explosion of red brick and verdant vines, of character and history. Inside the courtyards, elderly women chatted on stools or tended small gardens. The courtyards looked like pieces of the village, a part of the old world taken with their residents to the city when they had come seeking a better life.
Each courtyard had a gate. Like the courtyards, the gates were all slightly dissimilar, some with tile roofs, others with wrought-iron doors. Faded red paper couplets adorned with Chinese calligraphy marked the sides and tops of most of them. Each gate, though composed of worn bricks and aging tiles, managed to look grand, as if to say boldly and with just the slightest amount of condescension: Is one really making an entrance if one doesn't pass over a threshold and under a roof?
In old China, women rarely went beyond gates such as these. They remained in seclusion, guarded from prying eyes, retaining their mystery at the expense of their freedom. The gate also defined insiders from outsiders, family from strangers. Where one stood in relation to the gate defined who one was.
I knew this society clearly defined me. I was a stranger. I was a foreigner. I stood outside the gate.
* * *
Chris had gone for a walk and came back with a smile on his face. "It's China out there," he said. "We are in the real China."
The real China. That was what I had wanted. A China of raising children, taking crowded buses to work, sitting on stools playing Chinese checkers, hand-washing laundry and hanging it out the window. A China of homemade dumplings, acupuncture, and the ancient and remarkably accurate Chinese medicine. A China that would astound me with its history and civilization, and force me out of my American conveniences and show me a way of life unchanged by the centuries. I wanted to experience the China that my daughter came from. This was the China I had wanted.
Twice before I had traveled here, once with my mother-in-law, visiting the top tourist attractions in the big cities; once with my husband when we adopted Grace. Both times I saw hints of the real China — a mother holding her baby over a dumpster while he peed through split pants, sunburned peasants selling fruit on the street, a dark alley visible through a circular doorway teeming with activity — but for the most part I had been safely ensconced with other foreigners in high-end hotels that served buffet breakfasts with English muffins and French pastries. This time I wanted a China not sanitized for the consumption of Western tourists. But now, as I faced the noises, the stares, the smells, the crowds, I was less sure.
I've always been one to fall for romantic and ideal notions. I married my husband because I had found my soul mate. Practical considerations, such as our ten-year age difference or utter pennilessness, didn't factor in. I chose my college major, political science with an emphasis on international relations, because I was fascinated with it. I had no idea how it would ever translate into future earnings. I dreamed of fighting poverty in the third world, of bringing Muslim and Christian women together, of owning a family farm. I cried when the orphaned Oksana Baiul won the Olympic gold medal in figure skating, and cried again when Princess Diana died. Cynicism and I cannot breathe the same air. I expect the best of everyone and dislike reading news reports, watching movies, or believing stories that might suggest otherwise.
I'm a small-town girl. Lynden, Washington, my hometown, has a church on nearly every block and the majority of its families, including my own, are descended from Dutch immigrants who left their big families and small farms in the Netherlands in hopes of opportunity in the larger expanses of America, eventually settling in Michigan, Iowa, South Dakota, and Washington State. In Lynden, as in other Dutch communities, everyday life is centered on the Christian school and the Reformed church, whose ethic is "work is worship." I attended school with the children of my parents' own classmates, secure in my identity as Roger and Marlene's daughter, and Lue and Lucy's granddaughter. Life was happily busy for my three little brothers and me — a pattern of high school basketball games, summers working in the strawberry and raspberry fields, and potlucks after church on Sunday with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. I went to college in the Midwest, as my parents had, not able to imagine higher learning without flat landscapes and bitter winters.
After Chris and I married, I immediately started graduate school in international relations in Washington, D.C., and happily (albeit naively) became the instant mother of his two sons, precious fifth- and sixth-grade boys, each with a mop of naturally curly hair just like their father, each of whom opened their heart to me and allowed me the privilege of being their mom. For five years we were a family of four. Life revolved around Chris's career in the U.S. Army, along with ball games, swim meets, and Boy Scouts. With my master's degree in hand, I dreamed of making my mark on the world of diplomacy. Instead I held a variety of low-paying, under-stimulating jobs, feeling typecast as a military wife and limited by our numerous moves.
Two months after 9/11, I gave birth to Katherine. Three months later Chris deployed to Afghanistan, leaving me with a baby, two rebellious teenagers, and a raging case of postpartum depression. When Chris returned the boys graduated from high school and we began the lengthy process of adopting from China. The day we finished the adoption paperwork, after months of visits with doctors, social workers, and notaries, we found out I was pregnant with Andrew. He was born in September of 2003; we received our referral for Grace six weeks later. The following year we traveled to China to adopt Grace, said good-bye to our oldest son as he shipped out to begin his own army career, moved once again, watched as our second son struck out on his own, and prepared for Chris's yearlong deployment to Iraq. While he was gone I stayed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, with our three little ones, none of whom was potty-trained. It wasn't that big of a deal. Military families do stuff like that all the time.
Chris returned home safely with his unit in January 2006. It was now August, and we were in China.
* * *
"You should go out and explore," Chris said, trying to encourage me. He had grown a beard to celebrate his retirement from the army, but he still possessed the bearing of a soldier.
"I think I'll stay here and continue unpacking," I said, not wanting to leave our tiny sanctuary.
"I'll unpack and watch the kids. You just go."
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Of course I'm sure. Besides, we're hungry. I found a small grocery store and you could pick up some things we need."
He escorted me to the door, nearly pushing me outside. A steady flow of older people, arms filled with large onions and cabbages, walked along the quiet alley in front of our building. The campus had the feeling of an old neighborhood: old people, old trees, old streets, old courtyards. Cars were few; bicycles, plentiful. Along the quaint streets, people stopped to chat or poked their heads out of their courtyards to say hello to neighbors.
I stared at the building I had just exited — the foreign teachers' apartment building. It was a four-story rectangular block. The closest color to describe it would probably be a grayish-brown, but it seemed to have no intentional color at all, like dishwater. The building's best feature was a modest courtyard decorated with a few potted plants and trees. Other than the courtyard, it looked identical to the other buildings surrounding it.
Across the street I spotted a small, rather unkempt park. But at its center was a Chinese pavilion, its tile roof flowing down into curves like the skirt of a pirouetting Cinderella, a jewel of traditional Chinese simplicity in a setting of drab apartment blocks and 1970s-era academic buildings.
I left the campus, stepping along the faded sidewalk tiles of dusty Ying Sheng Road. There on the next corner, just as Chris had described, was the Jiayuan (pronounced Jah-ywen) supermarket, really more of a small grocery. Inside, chicken feet were prominently displayed at the counter, next to purplish "thousand-year-old" eggs, fresh tofu, and seaweed. What would I feed my hungry children? There were no tater tots, no cream of mushroom soup, no cheese ravioli. In fact, there was no cheese at all. And no butter. After walking the aisles, I picked up some peanut oil (the only cooking oil to be found), a five-kilogram bag of rice, a carton of long-shelf-life milk, and some vegetables.
I wanted to buy eggs, but I didn't know how. There were no egg cartons — only a plastic milk crate filled to the top with brown and speckled eggs, with a few downy feathers and chicken dung mixed in. I posted myself a few feet away and, while pretending to consider the array of vegetables, watched a woman ask for a plastic bag, carefully pick out her eggs, then hand the bag to the woman behind the meat counter who weighed it and attached a price. As soon as she finished, I copied her every move and was rewarded with a dozen eggs. Feeling more confident, I took my groceries and headed for home. I still had no idea what to expect in the coming days, but at least today we would be able to eat.
* * *
A few days later, we walked our three children to the local kindergarten. Outside the gate were bicycles, motorcycles, three-wheeled carts, electric bikes, and a few scooters. Grandfathers smoked while their grandchildren played at the playground. The lobby was packed as everyone tried to register — no lines, no order, only a swarm of hands and arms and legs pushing forward.
Inside dimly lit classrooms we saw rows and rows of tables, crowded with rows and rows of black-haired children, reciting in unison. My daughters held my hands and I squeezed them tightly, assuring them that all was well.
Our older daughter Katherine Mireille, four, looked up at us with shocked eyes when boiling hot water was poured into her metal drinking cup. I gave her a reassuring smile and helped her find her chair at the table where the teacher indicated she could sit. She raised her eyebrows accusingly when she heard about naptime, but her father just patted her on the back.
In another class, we sat Grace, three, and Andrew, two, on little orange chairs with chipped paint and told them if they needed to go potty, they could just use the room to the right with its raised trough over which several boys and girls were all squatting together in one straight line. I smiled at our children, letting them know this would be just fine.
We watched the different classes do their synchronized morning exercises, raising their hands and clanging shakers, which were made from old beer cans filled with tabs and taped over. We smiled at the other parents and grandparents, so curious about the foreign family in their midst. We purchased blankets and linens for naptime and paid extra money for their lunches.
Then my husband indicated that the teachers wanted to start their day, that we were in the way, that we should probably go.
"What?" I said to him.
"I said we should go. The kids are settled. It's time."
And I looked up at him, thinking, you mean we are supposed to leave our children here? Our babies? Alone in this school where they don't understand a word and everything is so different? Stuck in classrooms with more than forty children? This is their education we are talking about, I implored.
"At least let me try to talk to Grace's teacher," I said.
"About what?" my husband said.
I need to tell her about Grace, I thought. I need to tell them that though she looks Chinese, she's an American. She doesn't understand their language. She doesn't know their customs.
But I looked at my daughter and realized that my anxieties had not transferred to her. She was oblivious to the fact that she was in a room full of children who looked like her. She didn't seem the least bit perturbed that they were babbling in an incomprehensible tongue. The room was filled with new playmates and that was all she needed to know.
"Come on," Chris said, reaching out for my hand. "It's time to go."
* * *
Monday morning I taught my first class. Our medical college lay nestled beneath the famed Taishan (pronounced Tie-shawn), or Mount Tai, the foremost of China's five sacred mountains and the pride of the city of Tai'an, even all of Shandong province. We lived on the university's old campus at the foot of Mount Tai, just at the edge of downtown Tai'an. But we taught most of our classes on the new campus, located outside the city and built about five years before our arrival.
The new campus announced itself with its main gate, a lone structure, jutting three stories high from an otherwise flat, barren landscape. The gate was a simple angular structure of two sides and a roof, devoid of any decoration except the five Chinese characters across the top: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]. Translated, those characters meant Taishan Medical College, although in its English-language publicity materials it was always upgraded to Taishan Medical University. Unlike the quaint courtyard gates outside our living-room window, this colossal gate was a hollow structure, a faux-marble-plated monstrosity. Sally from the university's foreign affairs office proudly told us it was the third largest gate in Shandong province.
In traditional Chinese, gate is written , a vivid representation of the courtyard gates outside my window. But in 1950, Mao began to simplify the Chinese characters. His great task was to modernize China's masses, which meant the masses needed to be literate. It was a difficult task: China had one of the world's most complex writing systems, and a population of 500 million, most of whom were peasants. Literacy at that time was an abysmal 20 percent. Over the 1950s and 1960s, about one-third of the Chinese characters were made less complicated and had their number of strokes reduced.
China is now quite proud of its 85 percent literacy rate and the simplification campaign is considered a success. But when Mao simplified the characters, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] became the deflated [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], not nearly as evocative. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] drew me inside, beckoned me to see for myself what lay beyond. I wanted to enter that traditional world of courtyards, hear grandparents telling stories, see three generations making dumplings together, smell the cabbage and garlic and peppers simmering over an outdoor wok. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], in contrast, seemed flat and functional, the modern China of monochrome matchbox buildings, garish facades, factories, pollution, and cement.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Home is a Roof over a Pig"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Aminta Arrington.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Copyright,
CHAPTER 1 Gate,
CHAPTER 2 Home,
CHAPTER 3 Teach,
CHAPTER 4 Population,
CHAPTER 5 Learn,
CHAPTER 6 The Exam,
CHAPTER 7 Winter,
CHAPTER 8 Mountains, Water,
CHAPTER 9 Foreign,
CHAPTER 10 Independence,
CHAPTER 11 Mount Tai,
CHAPTER 12 Words,
CHAPTER 13 God,
CHAPTER 14 Countryside,
CHAPTER 15 Return,
CHAPTER 16 Familiar,
CHAPTER 17 Same,
CHAPTER 18 Tired,
CHAPTER 19 Contradiction,
CHAPTER 20 Identity,
CHAPTER 21 Cold,
CHAPTER 22 Christmas,
CHAPTER 23 Unique,
CHAPTER 24 The Kitchen God,
CHAPTER 25 Silk,
CHAPTER 26 Hong Kong,
CHAPTER 27 Egg,
CHAPTER 28 Language,
CHAPTER 29 The West,
CHAPTER 30 Woman,
CHAPTER 31 Sports,
CHAPTER 32 Freedom,
CHAPTER 33 Relationships,
Epilogue,
A Note on Sources,
Acknowledgments,