My first friend in Kunming was Hesao, the woman who cleans our apartment three times a week. She is not my closest friend, but sometimes I think she is my favorite single thing in China.
Hesao literally means Wife of Big Brother He, but that's not the name her parents gave her back in the village 51 years ago. Soon after we first met in 2000, I asked her to write her real name for me. She explained that she had never been taught to read or write, but then sat down and with the large, clumsy strokes of a kindergartner, wrote her real name, Jiang Gui Ying. Since she was born after Chinese Liberation in 1949, it hadn't occurred to me that she hadn't gone to school.
You may recall that when we arrived here last time, in 2000, my listening comprehension was abysmal. Needless to say, Hesao speaks no English whatsoever, so both then and now, she is the person with whom I speak the most Chinese. Since she has been cleaning the apartments of foreign teachers for many years, she knows to speak slowly and simply. She has always been tolerant of my mangled pronunciation, and, in fact, has seemed grateful that I could speak Chinese at all since I sometimes I had to translate for foreign teachers who knew even less. Having now returned to Kunming with much improved listening skills, I realize that she actually speaks very little Mandarin. It's the Kunming dialect she favors, and it is from her that I am now learning a little Kunminghua.
She is deeply solicitous of us, bringing us her special pickled garlic, fussing over our health, and unearthing the most exquisitely embroidered household items she can find because she knows I like them. She arrives with an unpredictable range of gifts: the embroidered shoes I was unable to find myself and more recently, a mysterious terry cloth doughnut-shaped thing to slip over the toilet seat so our rear ends won't be chilled this winter. However, she never appears subservient. In fact, she is quick to correct my pronunciation when I am reading Chinese aloud and even quicker to correct what she perceives as my domestic failings. Generally, she says we are both clean and orderly, but we should not keep the honey in direct sunlight nor store detergent in the same cabinet as dishes. When she would arrive to find me with a towel around my freshly washed hair, she unfailingly pointed out that in China people have the good sense to take showers at night rather than in the morning. I am obedient. This time round, I shower at night, just like she recommends.
Of course, there are all kinds of things she doesn't comment on, from the Buddha on our refrigerator to a recent haircut. I often wonder what she thinks when she sees my polar fleece hat covering a pot of tea. Since she probably has no idea what a tea cozy is, how could she even guess what I am trying to approximate?
Hesao shares my opinion that John is a mechanical genius and praises his ability to fix everything that breaks and improve all that hasn't yet broken. However, she had no comment when I pointed out the canal he created out of chewing gum on our bathroom floor in 2001. You see, the drain in our bathtub had sprung a leak so anything longer than a 45-second shower resulted in a flooded bathroom floor. The plumber who came to take a look did exactly that and nothing more, so John got creative. He reasoned that we needed a canal to direct the water from the leak to the drain in the bathroom floor. He planned to make this canal out of putty and I learned two different words for putty, but none of the plumbing supply stores in northeastern Kunming sold it. So, we used the next best thing: chewing gum. It worked great and I must say John's craftsmanship was A++. Hesao was speechless, but obligingly avoided stepping on the canal walls when she mopped the bathroom floor.
When we arrived in 2000, there was a brand new plastic-enshrouded washing machine awaiting us. Let me tell you right now that Chinese washing machines in no way resemble American washing machines and require a lot more human interaction. As soon as I looked at that thing, I knew I hadn't the first clue about using it. I opened at the Chinese-language instruction manual and wondered why they couldn't have included some helpful pictures because Harvard surely never taught us the vocabulary of washing machines. I turned to Hesao for help. She informed me that she was equally unsure about how to use it since she washed everything by hand. In fact, if I didn't object, she would have scrubbed our sheets in the bathtub.
While we were back in America, Hesao learned to use an electric washing machine. I suspect she was taught by her new daughter-in-law. Now, of course, she is an expert. Not only do I not use enough detergent or put the mysterious frisbee-like disc in the proper place during the spin cycle, but I don't even have the sequence of events right. And why on earth would I wash the blue towels with the black jumper and khaki pants that attract so much lint? Sometimes I would feel like I was in a TV commercial as Hesao admonished me about the correct way to get my laundry clean and bright. Recently, it has been agreed that laundry will be handled by the expert and I will do the ironing. My feelings aren't hurt.
Hesao is not just our laundress, but also our my shopping advisor. Before I ever buy anything for the first time, I check with her about the correct price. I usually go to the local market while she cleans. For the first several months we lived here, as soon as I returned with the vegetables, she inquired about every price I paid. Satisfied that I was shopping sensibly--and admitting I sometimes got zucchini for a better price than even she did--I no longer have to account for my vegetable purchases.
Last month, in an attempt to make our fake black leather sofa more attractive and more comfortable, I gathered a bunch of unused pillows, bought some of the striped cotton fabric worn by China's ethnic minorities, and had new pillowcases made for the living room. Then I held my breath, awaiting Hesao's reaction. My yuppie Chinese friends had already expressed surprise at the use of minority fabric. I can tell that in their eyes, it is not intriguingly multicultural, but just plain weird. However, Hesao seemed genuinely delighted with it and repeatedly told me how good-looking it was.
But then came the big question: how much had the village dressmaker charged me to sew the three pillowcases? I told her 15 yuan (just under US$2.)
Hesao exploded! Fifteen yuan for such a simple job---that was just outrageous! Look how simple it is! I acknowledged that it was simple, and that in America, I could do it myself, but because I don't have a sewing machine here, someone else has to do it. I pointed out how nicely she had sewn the invisible zippers.
Hesao was not placated. She ranted about how much she hated it when the villagers overcharged the foreign teachers. Not only are we providing an important service but we're not paid THAT much. It's just terrible. The dressmaker should know better.
I told her that I didn't think the dressmaker cheated me. Sometimes she doesn't charge me at all for small jobs and her prices for clothing have always been fair. Hesao was hyperventilating at this point. Finally I told her that five yuan for a pillowcase was something I could afford and she shouldn't get so upset about it.
"Five yuan?" she asked. "I thought you said 15."
I clarified that 15 was the total. It was five per pillow and hemming the tablecloth was free. Hesao appeared to melt with relief. As soon as she regained her breath, she admitted that five was actually a very good price because the dressmaker had, after all, done quite a nice job.
John has sometimes pointed out that while Hesao is indispensable as a shopping advisor, in many ways, she really isn't a particularly good housecleaner. Her main agents in the battle against dirt are water and elbow grease; her tools include a bamboo-handled mop, a broom that came straight out of the Stone Age, and a collection of rags that reside on a kitchen windowsill when not in use. However, she suits me perfectly because we share the same concerns. The windows are always clean and the white tiled floors are spotless. Neither of us gets too worked up over dust.
Many foreigners believe that the reason our housecleaners don't get too worked up over dust is because their real job is to spy, not to clean. Last time we lived here, Allegra and Evan joked that not only was Hesao not really illiterate, but that she actually had perfect understanding of English. After all, she was not really a lowly cleaning woman, but rather one of the government's top spies.
I don't flatter myself into thinking the college, never mind the Chinese government, is really that interested in our domestic life. But if I'm wrong, then we are being spied on by the kindest and most helpful spy in the world. When did James Bond ever warn his subjects they they would catch cold if they didn't start using a warmer quilt?
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