decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

decker,
mariner,
corps,
graduate,
discriminated,
whips,
Vinson,
Mexico,
balalaikas,
deadwood

That is a literal translation from the interview tape with a client who appeared in my office, a well-known Bay Area charity, recently. I wound up spending the better part of three days with Sleepy Lobster (I tried calling her Quiet Pine, but she insisted that her "life name," the name the world had given her, was her true name now). She was short, hardly over five feet, maybe around 40. When Chinese women settle into their maturity, they seem hardly to age at all for decades, until suddenly they’re old. Sleepy Lobster had dutifully written a birth date on the form, but we had long ago learned that such facts, by which Americans literally live and die, are infinitely malleable to recently arrived Asians.

I asked many questions, I listened, I recorded everything.

At the end of three days, I couldn’t get her story out of my mind. I took the tapes home. Over a period of weeks I transcribed them and then translated the sentence fragments into standard English. There were still gaps. I had her come into the office again and with the aid of a native speaker of Fujianese was able to fill in various gaps.
                     --Carolyn Vinson, Intake Counselor

The Story of Sleepy Lobster

I was lucky to survive. I was born in a village that was little more than a commune near the South China Sea. From birth my left hand was deformed. My parents gave me a beautiful name, Quiet Pine, but because of my hand the villagers all called me Sleepy Lobster. They said I was lazy and never worked. They didn’t understand that I was ashamed of my hand and tried to hide all the time.

Yes, I was very lucky to survive, because I was discriminated against in two ways, my hand, and my gender. Many parents in rural China at that time would think nothing of exposing an unwanted female infant, especially one with a useless hand. For reasons I will never know, my parents kept me. They protected me as much as they could. When I stepped outside our room, I was always afraid, but inside our room was safe.

Evenings, my parents would teach me writing, reading, arithmetic, or they would take me out. We would walk the fields, always away from other people. In the slow summer twilight, my parents would work, showing me how to prepare, plant, tend, harvest the rice.

On special days, National Day, the Lunar New Year, Autumn Moon Festival, my mother would prepare a picnic, and we would walk past the fields, to the nearby small river and follow a path a kilometer or two to the sea. There we would eat. Those were my happy days.

When I was maybe seven or eight, they got me my own plot, a corner of the commune farm, where the land sloped upward to the chalky hills. Nobody wanted to worked the place. The soil was thin. The upward slant made watering difficult. But it was mine. I worked it well until the commune moved away.

It happened suddenly. No warning. One morning a corps of army people appeared with many trucks. A big fat man who filled his green uniform like an overstuffed dumpling had us all gather. He announced that the commune was moving far away. The people’s paradise in Sechuan province needed our help. He gave us an hour to pack the few belongings we would be allowed to take.

Back in our room, my parents whispered to each other as they packed. My father took me aside. "You must stay here, Quiet Pine." He was the only person who ever called me by my birth name. "If you go with us, they will see you can’t work. They will whip you and take you away from us." His eyes were full of tears. My mother did not speak. They finished packing. And then came the most shocking moment of my life. My mother hugged me and kissed me. My father hugged me and kissed me and said, "Wait till night before you go out."

After sundown, I went out. I was alone. The dirty concrete buildings, like army barracks, jammed against one another, two meters apart, were empty. People had left many things. Clothes, cooking utensils, even food. No one ever came back. No one from the government ever came. It was as if the commune had never existed. The rice paddies and the vegetable gardens returned to nature, except the few that I tended.

I was very happy. I had a freedom, a simple freedom, to go outside anytime I wanted to. I was very sad. My family was gone. Weeks, months passed. I was never lonely, because I had never had friends. And the sadness for my parents became a constant, distant part of my life, like the mountainous small islands I could see in the evening mist off the coast.

The ocean became my friend. With my own life, I could have a happy day anytime I wanted one. I would prepare a small meal, pack it in the basket my mother had used, and go sit where we had picnicked. The ocean and I had many long conversations. Some days in whispers, some days in shouts. My delight was when I would find a lovely piece of deadwood brought to the sea, as a gift from the little river. I collected the pieces, cleaned, and dried them, and set them about my room for decoration. I came to enjoy looking at them, seeing many things in them: people, animals, landscapes even.

Once, a fisherman had run aground near the mouth of the river. He was working to free his boat and came over to talk to me. I shared my food with him, and he soon went away. When he finally got his boat free, I saw him staring back at me as he headed out to sea. He was the only person I spoke to during my time alone in the old commune.

I sometimes wondered but no one came. The buildings of the commune actually stood quite close to the Guangzhou-Shantou highway, a busy route, traveled day and night by trucks, army vehicles, curtained cars of party officials. An unpaved road led directly from the highway to the commune. Yet no one ever turned in. I soon became careless about being seen from the highway and would walk about freely whenever I wanted to. No one took notice. No one stopped.

I knew I was not entirely alone on this stretch of coast. A few kilometers away were scattered large houses, brightly painted, some two and three stories, with fine red tile roofs. My parents had explained that they were pirates’ houses, built when the South China Sea was a wild and dangerous place. Many native families, they told me, had founded fortunes by becoming mariners and plundering passing ships. They built these mansions with their profits. I could sometimes see activity around the houses. But no one ever came.

As time passed, I added one other chore to my life. The low, rocky hills around the old commune were dotted with graves. In old China, land that could not be farmed was considered useless and thus belonged to no one. There was no reason to own it. It is an old, old tradition that anyone can use such a place for burial. In parts of rural China, you will find no cemeteries, just isolated graves dotting the unfarmable hills. You notice them because they are whitewashed, at least the ones whose families keep them up.

With my commune empty, at some point I began to worry about the nearby graves, which I could tell were falling into neglect. Who knew when if ever the family members would be able to return. In my spare time, I began a round of visiting the nearest graves, removing weeds, sweeping each small site. When I finished, I would sit and read the inscriptions. There were many characters I didn’t know. Partly this was because my reading lessons had stopped when I was still so small. Partly, I think, it was because some of the graves were very old. In spring, I would take flowers.

That was my life as I grew from childhood to girlhood. All the while I tried to keep up my lessons. The commune library with its many schoolbooks had been left behind. I had some success with reading and learned to travel with the books. I went many places in my self-schooling, to Paris, to the Sahara Desert, to India, to Mexico. I even tried to improve my writing skills. But I could not follow the math books, though I tried very hard. I had many questions and no one to answer them. There were music books, and even a battered balalaika, from the time when Russia and China were good friends, I suppose. I tried many times to play it but grew tired of the awful sounds it made, groaning under my bent fingers.

One of the old children's books changed my life. It was called "American Dreams." I was surprised to find it. It clearly came from the time before the Revolution. A simple intermediate reader, it contained stories about various cities and places in America, with nice color pictures. I saw a picture of a big statue of a seated man, looking very wise, very sad and very thoughtful. As soon as I saw it I knew my American dream: to go to see that wise, sad man. The little story under the picture told how this man had guided his country to free the slaves. I wanted to stand by this statue and listen and maybe hear words about my own country and freedom.

I know, I know. Silly dreams of a silly uneducated peasant girl! But listen, and I will tell you how my dream came true.

Maybe I was 30, 33, I’m not sure, because my life at the beginning of living alone was so difficult, I think I lost track of time, including my birthdays. My life was continuing as it had since everyone left. Crops were always good enough. I always had plenty to eat, and more clothes than I could ever wear. I was not happy, I was not unhappy. Remember, I had no comparisons. It was my life, from day to day to day, and I lived it as well as I could. Probably I would have continued those days until I died but for two interruptions, one big and noisy but not very important, the other small and quiet and very, very important.

The big noisy interruption came when the government decided to change the small, busy Guangzhou-Shantou highway into a large busy highway. I didn’t know the word then, but they were building a freeway, a 500-kilometer freeway between the two cities. Noisy machines with hundreds of workers came and changed the road.

I was frightened and fell back into my youngest life. I hid again, going out only at night or on a weekend day when they were not working. I felt that if anyone saw me, I would lose my little bit of life, my little freedom, my little land, my graves, my ocean, so I hid by day and worked by night.

Some months passed and they finished the part of the new highway near me and moved on. Silence, peace returned. Except the new highway was noisier than the old, because everyone drove so fast. And now I got my first hint that the world, about which I knew nothing, was changing. Brightly colored large double-decker buses appeared on the new highway. Some of them had names I could read, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, even Shanghai. The buses would go by very fast but not too fast for me to see that the people in the buses looked different. No longer wearing the old, drab uniforms, they were all dressed differently. Old, young, they all looked happy because of their clothes. I didn’t know what to think.

The other, smaller but much more important interruption came the next year. Late one afternoon I was tending a grave a few hundred meters from the edge of the paddies. So intent was I on my task that I heard nothing, but I stopped my work and knew someone was watching me. Frightened, I went back to work.

I heard steps, which stopped at the grave. What to do? I brushed my hands on my trousers and stood up. I took a deep breath and turned around.

I saw a young man, dressed like the bus people. Behind him, in the distance beside the commune buildings, on the old dirt road I saw a large car, with a driver waiting beside it. I quickly concealed my ugly left hand, the first time in many years I had worried about it.

Though I thought I was concealing my fear, he read my face. "Don’t be afraid," he said. "I’ve only come to thank you."

I of course kept my eyes on his feet, knowing to look up would be the height of insolence. I also felt I shouldn’t speak. I nodded, to indicate I had heard him.

He sighed. "May I sit?"

Now I was terrified. What kind of trick was this, a rich stranger asking my permission to sit at the grave of a person of no relation to me? I nodded.

I heard him sit on the small bench beside the grave.

"I want to thank you for keeping my grandfather’s grave. I live there."

I saw that he gestured toward one of the distant mansions.

"I’ve been gone for several years. It tore my heart to be away, to be so neglectful of my filial duty. Now, I come back and find you have been doing it for me. I am greatly in your debt."

You understand, he was of course right. He had been extremely neglectful, especially since he was obviously rich and could have seen to the upkeep of his grandfather’s grave. And he was of course right that, because of what I had done, he was greatly in my debt. But we both knew I would make no claim on him. In the play of Chinese culture, it was his move, entirely.

"You are alone here?" he said.

I nodded again.

"For how long?"

"Fifteen years, I think. Maybe twenty. Since they closed the commune." My first words since I had spoken to the stranded fisherman.

"Ah."

Silence, except for the wind, the distant ocean, and my loudly beating heart. It was still his move. I expected him to offer me work, probably in his large house. That would be payment, more than enough, for what I had done.

"There have been many changes in China, in the world in those years," he said. "Do you know that Hong Kong is now part of China again?"

I shook my head.

"May I ask your name?"

Ai-yi! He was so polite, so gentle! I was terrified again. A long moment when I didn’t speak. I filled my chest with air, enough I hoped to speak the truth. Very loudly, I said, I shouted, "QUIET PINE!"

Another moment passed as we both realized the absurdity of what had just happened. We both burst out laughing. He stopped soon, but I couldn’t, because my laughter quickly turned to tears. I covered my face, knew he was watching, and then remembered he could now see my ugly hand.

The tears stopped. I lowered my hands and met his eyes.

This time, he looked away.

He took out a pen and paper. "Please read this after I leave. I’ll come back tomorrow for your answer. When I come back tomorrow, if you’re not ready to answer, I will come back the next day. For what you have done for my ancestors, I, for you, will have more patience than I have ever had, I think."

He wrote something, folded the paper and placed it on the ground by the grave. He got up and walked away.

I watched him go to the car, where the driver opened a rear door for him. They drove off. I watched them until they pulled in the front gate of one of the mansions.

I picked up the piece of paper and walked back to my room. I was restless, I wanted to read what he had written, but not there. This was a new feeling for me. It was as if my familiar, solid world had a crack in it, letting in words, people, feelings I had never encountered.

Uncertain and ill at ease, I decided to go to my friend. I walked to the river, followed the path to the ocean. For some minutes I sat listening to the waves.

I unfolded the paper. At the top, I saw his name and address in brilliant gold characters. Below, he had written his message.

Which I read that evening probably a hundred times. Could it be real? It must be a trick. But he was so polite, so intense.

Now you want to know what he wrote. Please, I must first say this, because what he wrote will be immediately believable and understandable to any Chinese person, while any Western person will consider it pure fabrication. That is because the Western people, with their wild, individual ways, don’t understand how we Chinese share certain dreams. Not all of us, of course, but most of us. And in a situation such as this young man found himself in, being greatly indebted to an ignorant peasant girl, he of course knew what my dream was. It is no surprise that he knew.

His message was simple. He wrote: "I will do whatever is necessary for you to go to America and to start a new life there, and I will try to find your parents. I will support you in America until you can support yourself."

Can you, dear Western reader, accept that easily? I could. I did.

He came back the next day, and I accepted his offer easily. My acceptance—can you understand, dear Western reader?—made him very happy.

Time passed, some difficult time, some sad time (he found out that my parents had both succumbed to malaria in the far south of China where the commune had been moved), but soon enough he made good on his promise, and I was on a bus to Hong Kong, then a plane to America.

Associates of his met me in San Francisco, and brought me to this place, with instructions to support whatever you American helpers decide is the best path for me in my new country.

I ask only one thing, and that is this. After I graduate from English classes, after my fear and uncertainty is much less, and after the tiny flower of hope now sprouting in my heart has begun to grow and open, you will help me plan my dream trip to stand one day for as long as I want at the feet of Mr. Abraham Lincoln.

END

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