Big in China Read online

  I had decided to wait until a few days after his surgery to return; everyone else would be there for the operation, my mother said, and he would need visitors afterward. My mother promised that she would call as soon as the seven-hour operation to remove his bladder and craft a new one from his small intestines was over, no matter what time it was in Beijing.

  I woke up with a start at 6:00 a.m., worried that I hadn’t heard anything yet. I drank coffee and tried to read a magazine until my phone finally rang. My mother, speaking through tears, said that when she and my sister arrived in the recovery room five minutes after my father woke up, the nurse already knew her patient’s name was Dixie Doc and that he played the trumpet. We both understood that this meant that although his bladder was gone, his essence was intact. She handed him the phone. Though his voice was reduced to a hoarse whisper, he sounded very much alive.

  It was the end of a long, emotionally grueling day in New York, but early in the morning in Beijing. I felt like I could fully relax for the first time in months. As I walked outside to take the kids to school, Theo came running up our walk, a tear trickling down her cheek.

  “Cathy’s dead,” she blurted, before breaking into sobs.

  Cathy died shortly after Tom returned from Beijing. He had barely made it back to his wife’s bedside at her parents’ home in Portland, Oregon.

  Cathy’s mother answered the phone, and a beat passed before I said anything. I panicked and contemplated hanging up, but willed some words out.

  “This is Alan Paul calling from Beijing. I just wanted you to know that Cathy was loved and is missed here.”

  “Thank you,” she said, with remarkable composure. “Cathy loved China.”

  Tom got on the phone and sounded a million miles away. I told him I was thinking of him and would do anything to help, but we both knew there was nothing I could do.

  Five days after Dixie’s surgery, I left my family in Beijing and boarded a plane to see my family in New York. It felt strange to leave the kids behind, and I had a nagging sense that I had lost something, constantly feeling for my wallet and making sure I had my backpack.

  Aunt Joan and Uncle Ben picked me up and drove me into Manhattan, where I found my father sitting up in bed wearing an ancient pair of giant glasses. He looked old and tired but far better than I had anticipated. I gave him a hug.

  The next morning, he was talking about checking himself out of the hospital and returning to Pittsburgh. It seemed like a bad idea, but nearly fifty years as a doctor had taught him one thing, he said: “Hospitals are a good place to die and a great place to get out of as soon as possible.” I saw him check himself out against doctor’s orders a few years earlier after a hip replacement, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Two days later, my father and I were strolling through the Pittsburgh neighborhood where I grew up. He walked gingerly—no surprise given that he was wearing a catheter—but was remarkably steady on his feet.

  The Pirates were playing the Dodgers the next afternoon, and he surprised me by suggesting that we “go down to the stadium, have a pulled pork sandwich for lunch, and watch the game for a while.”

  My mom dropped us at the door of PNC Park, we bought scalped box seats for twenty dollars and were sitting in the sun by the top of the second inning. The pulled pork was on the other side of the stadium so I ate a Pittsburgh-famous Primanti’s sandwich, while Dixie munched on some chicken wings. Few meals have ever been so satisfying.

  He thanked me for coming all the way from Beijing and sounded optimistic that he would have a good recovery, but he didn’t want to talk too much about how he was feeling. Being there together was enough. I had expected to spend a week sitting by a New York hospital bed.

  Two days later, I returned to Beijing, amazed at Dixie’s resilience. When I collapsed into my seat for the return flight, I felt relieved that my father seemed to be firmly on the road to recovery. But for the first time in a week I also began to reflect on Tom and Cathy and felt a crushing sadness. I missed Becky and the kids terribly and couldn’t wait to get back to them. Home was wherever they were—wherever we were—and I understood that with a new clarity.

  Chapter 10

  No Particular Place to Go

  We took to the roads as soon as we got our licenses, and I enjoyed piloting that rickety old Beijing Jeep with its booming V-8 engine. I felt hardcore and macho driving it, with every liver-rattling bump reaffirming that I was on a rugged, wild adventure. I started going regularly to the Sunhe Market, a run-down, sprawling place up the street from our house, on the side of Jing Shun Lu.

  It was widely known as the Kite Market, because of the huge, brightly covered kites that individual vendors sold in front. It was a dusty, dirty place with a parking lot filled with craterlike potholes and ringed by vendors selling produce, “antique” knickknacks, and cooked food like scallion pancakes and noodles.

  Anchoring the market was an outlet of the Wu Mei convenience store chain, a bizarre bazaar stocked with such staples as rice cookers, blouses, chili peppers, grain alcohol, and cigarettes. I once inexplicably found Pabst Blue Ribbon there—I never saw it again in China—and bought two six-packs. But the market’s real heart was next door in a huge warehouse-like building, which housed everything from produce to hardware, butcher shops to DVDs.

  One time I took my Chinese teacher Yechen with me to help negotiate a price to repair an old TV. He always warned me to be careful, worried that Chinese merchants viewed foreigners as little more than walking ATMs. In the back corner of a back building, we found a small electronics repair booth. As we waited for the repairman to return from lunch, we chatted with his wife and a couple of her friends. They had never met anyone quite like the educated, erudite Yechen and were shocked that he could speak English. Listening to us talk, they didn’t believe he was Chinese, repeatedly asking whether he was Japanese or Korean.

  Yechen laughed and insisted he was Han—an ethnic Chinese. Finally believing him, they pointed at me.

  “Look how big and strong the American is compared to us,” one said. I probably outweighed my slight teacher by fifty pounds. “That’s because we only eat rice, and they eat meat and butter every meal.”

  The opportunity for such interactions was a big part of the reason I loved shopping there, even though one friend’s driver so disliked the filthy place that she finally asked her employer why she insisted on returning to the market. “Even we won’t shop here, so why do you?” she asked.

  We liked it because it was fun, and the adventure started long before the shopping even began. I loved bouncing my Jeep across the wrecked parking lot, but I knew that pretending I was a frontiersman didn’t make much sense.

  Back home, we had purchased two minivans based on federal safety tests and obsessed about buying proper car seats for our children. Now we were piling them into the back of a thirteen-year-old car that seemed likely to drop into three sections if it was rear-ended and that had backseat seat belts that barely worked. This was in line with the fact that our safety standards had plummeted with amazing speed immediately upon arriving in China.

  When we went downtown on our very first weekend, Kathy Chen called us a car service, but the five of us piled into a seatbelt-less taxi to head home. We handed the driver a printed business card with our compound’s address, just hoping he would get us back from Fundazzle.

  I crawled into the front seat, folded myself into a cagelike device, and felt guilty buckling my seat belt; Becky was crammed into the small backseat with three kids and no restraints. Jacob was staring out the window, watching Beijing go by, but Eli was flopping around the floor, and Anna was scrambling toward the gearshift and reaching for me. Becky and I were trying to corral the kids and force them to sit back and stay still while the driver yelled at us, not because he was worried about a kid flying through the windshield but because they were putting their dirty feet all over his seat’
s cloth covering.

  We were behaving as if living in China protected us with a cosmic force field, but the opposite was actually true; the road fatality rate there is freakishly high. That was little more than a passing thought until one night when I was driving home, down Jing Shun Lu, with all three kids jammed into the backseat. Rebecca was not with me so I had no way to control the kids fighting in the back as I maneuvered the treacherous road. Unsecured by the floppy seat belt, Anna’s car seat was swinging around, toppling onto Eli, who screamed and pushed the seat flying onto Jacob on the other side. They were all yelling at me and at one another.

  We were surrounded by trucks, most of them carrying massively overloaded payloads extending off every side of their beds, without any flags or markers. This was a typical night. Large trucks were banned from driving in the city’s core until 10:00 p.m. As the hour drew near, trucks flooded down from the north, making an always tough drive terrifying. When we finally got home, I told Becky that we had to buy a new car.

  She agreed, and we both assumed that a few weeks later we’d be driving a new vehicle. We began searching for a minivan with seven seats and two airbags. It says a lot about how cushy expat packages can be that most of our friends were surprised that we had to shop for and purchase our own vehicle.

  A couple of people told me they purchased cars with the help of “Beijing Bob,” who was said to make the process quick and painless. After browsing his website, I told him we were interested in one of a confusing array of Chinese vans that had something do with Mitsubishi and were all grouped together on his site, mysteriously ranging in price from about $14,000 to $24,000. He said he would arrange for us to see them. Bob spoke English with a heavy accent and I assumed he was Chinese, but eventually I learned that he is actually an expat from Sierra Leone, Africa, who favors shiny suits.

  The next day, Bob’s employee “Alice” called and said she could take us to see Mitsubishi and also vans “with Mitsubishi engines” at the same dealer. The place was “close, close,” she said. “Just off the Fourth Ring Road.” The Fourth Ring Road ran close to our house, but it circles Beijing and once Alice’s driver got on it, we turned south and drove nearly to the other side of the city, passing at least two Mitsubishi dealers en route. When I asked Alice, who was Chinese, about this, she pretended not to understand me.

  After forty minutes, we exited the main road and drove through a maze of side streets before emerging near a string of car dealers. Rather than pulling into one of them, however, we parked by the side of a dirt field bisected by a metal construction fence. Rebecca was coming from the office and she called to say Mr. Dou was lost, giving both of us pause; he never got lost. Alice’s driver took the phone, and he and Mr. Dou had a discussion that grew so animated I thought they would brawl when they met. I hadn’t realized yet that this is a common conversational mode for two Chinese men.

  A young woman appeared, peeling back a section of the fence to allow us through. We crossed the rutted dirt field and entered a large, unmarked hangar. Four vans sat in the middle, covered with a heavy layer of dust and grime. Alice cheerfully said, “Here they are.” The dusty cars represented the different models, from cheapest (manual transmission, cloth seats, no air bags) to most expensive (leather seats, dual airbags, DVD player).

  By the time Becky arrived, it had started raining. I walked back out to meet her at the fence and we exchanged a look that mixed humor and alarm as we crossed the increasingly muddy, rutted field. We asked Alice if we could take the top-of-the-line model for a test drive. Everyone seemed puzzled by this, but then agreed. We drove a 15-mph loop on the bumpy dirt road around the large building. The car seemed okay, and Mr. Dou approved, but I had serious reservations about the distracting in-dash DVD player, which could not be turned off while a movie was watched in the back.

  I also could not understand what made this car, which bore a Chinese logo, a Mitsubishi. “Mitsubishi engine,” Alice explained.

  “What about this one?” I pointed to the slightly cheaper model.

  “Mitsubishi design.”

  A few days later, I set out to buy a car by myself, driving to a Mitsubishi dealer near my home that I had seen from the highway. I inquired about a van, only to be told “mei you” (don’t have any). Maybe there was a “Mitsubishi design” or “Mitsubishi engine” showroom somewhere in Beijing.

  The salesman signaled to wait, then disappeared. A moment later, another guy emerged. He spoke English haltingly and with great effort, though he seemed to understand everything. He explained that his name was Mr. Liu and he had his own company, Expat Cars, to assist people like me.

  A few days later, we canvassed the city, looking at Volkswagens (too small), Buicks (too expensive—almost $50,000), and Kias (surprisingly too expensive) before ending up at another “Mitsubishi-designed” dealer, where the vans were housed inside a nicely lit building. They even had the option of leather seats and automatic transmission without that insane DVD player.

  The dealer was asking 168,000 renminbi, or $24,000. I was suspicious that Mr. Liu couldn’t get them to budge; this is a country where you haggle to the death over one-dollar socks. Mr. Dou visited the dealer and could only move them 300 RMB, so we knew we had a fair deal.

  Now we just had to figure out how to get the dealer all that money, because financing was not an option. I wired the funds into my Chinese account and converted it from dollars, which took several visits. When I had enough money in the account, I asked for a cashier’s check; the manager looked at me as if I had inquired if she laid eggs. They don’t do checks in China, so I could either transfer the money into the dealer’s account, or withdraw bags of 100 RMB notes, as most Chinese customers do.

  I opted for the wire and two days later, Mr. Liu drove our new van to the house, complete with license plates and proof of insurance. It had been months since we decided to make the purchase. We drove downtown to meet one of Rebecca’s reporters. “Nice car,” he said. “What is it?”

  I smiled. “Mitsubishi engine and design.”

  Chapter 11

  Lonesome and a Long Way from Home

  Returning to Maplewood after one year in China reminded me of the feeling I had leaving the hospital after our first child was born. Everything had a brighter, more intense focus and I sensed that nothing would ever look quite the same again.

  On a family stroll into town, the tree-lined streets became objects of fascination. We marveled at sights that were common in leafy, suburban America but seemed wondrous coming from dusty, dry Beijing: chirping birds and scampering squirrels, a cool, gentle breeze and morning light filtering through the dense overhead foliage.

  I was looking at everything with new eyes, making the familiar suddenly look foreign. Something had changed within me, and I was trying to sort out exactly what it meant. Within a few days, though, everything began to look normal again. It started to feel like I had never left, as if the whole year had just been a vivid dream. This was both comforting and disturbing.

  As the weeks rolled by, we made pilgrimages to Beach Haven, New Jersey; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Bay City, Michigan. Visiting these familiar, favorite places and the friends and family in each of them was comforting, but the cumulative effect of dragging kids and bags from place to place for a month was quite the opposite.

  I started to feel lost in time and space, not quite on vacation but definitely not home. Eventually, I felt strangely disassociated from everything; I was neither here nor there. I was longing for Beijing and wondering just what, exactly, I wanted to get back to. I missed my house and possessions—the things you see every day that ground you and remind you who you are—but it was deeper than that. When I unexpectedly heard an elderly Chinese couple speaking Mandarin in a park in Bay City, I felt like hugging them. Instead, I just said “ni hao” (hello) and engaged in some light chitchat. It fueled my desire to get back to Beijing. We were ready to get back to our lives
. We were ready to go home.

  When Rebecca and Anna returned to Beijing so she could get back to work, I stayed in Maplewood with the boys for another week. It was a plan that made sense when we were booking flights months earlier, but that now felt like a mistake. I wasn’t surprised to not enjoy the family separation, but I was shocked to sit in Maplewood feeling so homesick for Beijing.

  I tried to relax and make the most of my extra week, getting together with friends for two freewheeling basement jam sessions that reactivated my musical passion. I bought a new guitar to stay motivated, a beautiful Epiphone 335, with a big, fat body and a vibrant sunburst finish. After all those musical near misses, I was determined to make something happen.

  At the airport, I detuned the strings to reduce tension on the neck and checked the guitar, secure in its hardshell case. Then I boarded the plane with my boys, somewhat apprehensive about flying solo, but relieved to not have Anna with me. Her calling card was falling asleep shortly after boarding, taking a catnap, being brutally awake for the entire flight, and falling back to sleep on descent. She was still too young to be distracted by electronics for long, so we would read, draw, patrol the aisles, and play with the Chinese kids who were always traveling with their grandparents to or from a visit to their parents.

  Still, I knew there would be rough moments. There always were. People sometimes asked for advice about how to handle long flights with kids, as if I had become a guru. But the only tangible thing that experience provided was the knowledge that you will eventually, somehow, make it alive to the other side of the world.

  That seemingly obvious point becomes invaluable to remember when things are at their bleakest—when you are somewhere over the Arctic Circle, seven or eight hours from landing and contemplating whether or not it’s possible to unscrew your head and place it in the carry-on compartment.

  On each of these endless flights I had reached a point where I swore that I just couldn’t make it—usually about halfway through, when we had eaten a couple of meals and assisted the kids in reading, drawing, playing their Game Boys, and watching two movies, only to realize that we had seven hours to go, I was bone tired, the kids simply would not sleep, and every battery was dead. Then I would somehow do the impossible and get the kids to sleep, often with Jacob spreading out on the floor, against all FAA regulations. By the time we got up, descent would be imminent, light illuminating the end of a very long tunnel. And so it was this time. Fifteen hours after boarding, we landed in Beijing.