My Host Family!

I thought that, since I have a dearth of super exciting events/activities to report (life is great, class is hard but good, I went to a “hot yoga” aka Bikram yoga class this weekend and it was lovely…), I would write about a central part of my experience here, which also happens, luckily, to be one of my favorite things about my life here: my host family. There’s so much I could say, and I have to go to bed soon, so I really truly am going to keep this short.

I think that for now I really want to focus on my host mom, because I’m a little bit obsessed with her. She’s 38 years old, works for Wrigley (yes, the gum company…not sure what she does exactly, but she gets free samples which she gives me…), and spends most of her time either at work or helping her daughter with her homework. Seriously…she leaves at 7:30 each morning, gets home between 6 and 7 pm, and spends most of the weekend and every evening from after dinner until 10 or 11 helping her daughter with her homework. And Judy is only 10…I shudder to think what life will be like when she has to prep for the all-important high school examination. Every so often, Liu Mama goes shopping or to lunch with friends or her sisters (she has 4 sisters, I think), plays mah jong in the neighborhood center where we eat dinner, and she’s gone to dinner/karaoke with her colleagues a couple of times. Her English is very good, and she is also very good at helping me with my Chinese—a perfect balance. In fact, I learned this week that she used to be a Chinese teacher (for Chinese 5th graders, so she taught reading and grammar and stuff), 10 years ago she said. She’s very glamorous and always looks very pulled together, with lightly highlighted and wavy hair, a tiny frame, and the much-desired pale skin (which she’s pretty proud of, I think, given the fact that she laments how dark her daughter is), and could definitely pass for much younger than she is. Yesterday, I spent a good amount of time looking at old family pictures that they showed me; my favorite pictures were the ones of Liu Mama and He Baba (my host mother and father…in China women are prohibited from taking their husband’s name) in 1997 (so pre-Judy) on vacation in rural China. In all of the pictures of my host mother, she is in very “model-ly” (just coined that word…) poses…and funnily enough, all the pictures of my host dad have him in sort of classic men’s model poses, looking pretty awkward. There are very very few pictures of the two of them together, and most are these glamour-shot type photos. It made me smile to think of this young married couple, in their late-20s, the product of post-Deng China and fully urban Shanghairen, thinking up pictures and poses (although I’m almost positive that my host mother would have been the driving force and certainly creative director of the shoot….) along the banks of a very rural looking river and in front of cliffs, etc. The glimpse into their life together was both endearing and illuminating, and for whatever reason moved me.

As I mentioned before, my host mother doesn’t cook at all. I thought that was weird at first, but it’s become clear to me that her work is pretty all-consuming, and on the weekends I can understand why she doesn’t want to spend her time cooking. One fact, casually mentioned last week, that most clearly shows the importance of her career in her life, is that she sent Judy to live with her parents until Judy was 5 so she could work. Her parents live in Shanghai (I haven’t met any family members yet, even though they all live in Shanghai…), but an hour away, so Liu Mama saw her daughter once a week for the first 5 years of Judy’s life (until she started school, I guess). AH. I sort of freaked when I heard that, because it totally brought home the realities of being a young, upper middle/upper class professional in China, and how much more intense work and pressure and the drive to succeed at all costs is than in America. I don’t think that it’s necessarily worse here…my family seems very close-knit and happy, even if they’ve only been living all together for 5 years (half of Judy’s life was spent living with her grandparents, half with her parents….crazy). And in America, professional women either have to scale back their careers or hire nannies or other “help” or send their kids to preschool…and I don’t think of any of those options as inherently bad in and of themselves, because I’m used to them and I think that each can be good or bad depending on the particular situation. So I guess sending your child to be raised by your parents seems harsh to me because I’m not used to it, the same way that my host mother curiously asked me about whether I had babysitters as a child, and whether my mom worked (she mentioned that on TV it seems like Americans mom often stay home with their kids…I didn’t know how to react to her question/statement, since it’s true but also not true at the same time…this post is getting more and more inarticulate…).

OK I ran out my personal clock and am going to bed now. I have tons more to say about Judy and my host mom and my host dad, but I will have to say it another time.

Tomorrow I’m going to a reception at the US Consulate for students studying in Shanghai, and Friday I’m going to this panel on green companies/ technology/ activity in Shanghai and China in general. Both very exciting. Will let you know how it goes. Peace.