Beijing Tai Tai Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Glossary

  Back Cover Material

  ‘This book rewrites the myth of the full-time expat mother.’

  —Lee Mack, Managing Editor, City Weekend Beijing

  ‘Both funny and insightful, McCartney's utterly honest account is a must read for anyone with an interest in China, in refreshingly frank memoir or in the subject of motherhood—whichever country you choose to learn it in.’

  —Jenny Niven, Associate Director of the Wheeler Centre

  ‘At once touching and humorous, accessible but full of food for thought.’

  —Barbie Robinson, ArtyFacts broadcaster, ArtSound FM 90.3/92.7

  ‘Hilarious! Kathy Lette eat your heart out!’

  —Dani Moger, mother, Melbourne

  ‘In Beijing Tai Tai, McCartney skilfully blends amusing anecdotes, personal family moments and the joys and frustrations of parenthood with glimpses of Beijing and China as seen through the eyes of an intelligent and insightful, well-travelled observer.’

  —Susan Whelan, World Literatures Feature Writer, Suite 101

  For Ian, without whom this tale would never have occurred, and our lives would never have been so enriched.

  tai tai (noun. f.) wife (the word is also used by expats as a tongue-in-cheek description for a woman who lunches, shops, has her nails done and probably fills her house with orchids)

  The Announcement

  How the news was broken, like a china teacup

  When my husband first announced we’d be moving to China from one of the quietest, most charmingly provincial state capitals in Australia, I was 95 per cent horrified.

  From a Californian bungalow with glossy floorboards and Tudor glass windows to a precariously constructed cement block in the sky? From streets with manicured lawns and the echoing pop of tennis balls to spit-laden, noise-polluted racetracks? From sunny strolls with the pram to harried, seatbelt-free taxi rides that strangulate the function of your heart?

  How to forgo the comfortable Known in favour of the scratchy Unknown? How to release breakfasts of pouncy bread, gourmet muesli and silky yoghurt with essence of dried fig, in favour of—er ... what do Chinese people eat for breakfast? And do they even have bread in China?

  I was a well-travelled, thirty-something woman when we received this 95 per cent horrifying news. I was well-educated, well-read and well-versed on the world, having already schlepped my working life around Europe and nearly every Australian state. I was liberal, open-minded, travel-hungry, ready for change, ever-primed for adventure, not a scaredy-cat, never shy of a challenge—all that.

  So it surprised no one more than me to learn that the prospect of living in China for four years made me 95 per cent horrified.

  Maybe my initial terror was due to the cushy life we’d been languishing in for so long. Maybe it was due to the rush of human rights propaganda that invaded my post-birth brain after a fifteen-year sabbatical. It may also have been the fact that China has remained towards the end of my lengthy travel list. I’ve never felt that ‘pull’ for China like I have for so many other countries around the globe. The Great Wall? Sure, I’d love to see it. The 1703 summer retreat of Empress Dowager Cixi, surrounded by the world’s largest classical imperial gardens and eight minority temples?

  Huh?

  Simply put: I just didn’t know anything about China.

  There. I said it.

  My fears were probably also compounded by the fact that the world was no longer about me and my husband any more. It was purely and simply about two other people. Our daughter Ella was three and our son Riley was just one year old when we received The News, and so our family was still heavily invested in a nappy-padded world—a world where everything is pastel and whimsically aesthetic and smells like lollies and cloisters snugly inside mother’s groups.

  I’ve never been part of a mother’s group. Having wanted and struggled to have kids for longer than expected, however, I had so bought into this artificially ‘perfect’ world of babies and toddlers. A world of sweet, harmonious perfection, tucked inside a pretty house with echoing floorboards, white rugs, hand-knitted toys and un-mineralised baby oil. Oh, and popping tennis balls.

  There were carefully structured days of best-for-baby routine coupled with pedantic meals served in expensive ceramic dishes with silver baby cutlery. There were daily Baby Einstein DVDs, mini-maestros music education and Gymboree, all bundled up in flashcards, fluffy toys and fun. Essentially, I was up to my eyeballs in the whole coo and caboodle.

  Having this idyllic routine unplugged was a precarious position to be in. With babies, life isn’t about challenges; it’s about eliminating the challenges for the sole purpose of clinging onto any semblance of sanity. And the ideal way to do this is in making life routine. Making it easy. Focusing, honing and committing—not diversifying, risking and freewheeling.

  Going to China with two small kids and leaving our nappy-padded comfort zone was going to need more diversifying, risking and freewheeling than I’d ever called upon before.

  My life called. It was time to tuck a baby under each arm and plummet into the abysmal Unknown. No wonder I was 95 per cent horrified.

  The Adelaideans

  Be careful what you say out loud...

  I’ve revealed many things to my Xiansheng (pronounced ‘see-anshung’, aka my husband) over the years—from my fear of untucked sheets to the fact that I would follow him to the ends of the earth and live in a tin shed if I had to. I specifically told him this: ‘I will follow you to the ends of the earth and live in a tin shed if I have to. In fact, I will move anywhere in the world with you except Adelaide and China.’

  Be careful what you say out loud. Six months later, we were posted from our home town of Melbourne to Adelaide, and now eighteen months later, we are on our way to Beijing.

  Not a word of a lie.

  Moral of this statement? Just be really careful what you say out loud, because the all-permeating, all-knowing caretakers of Karma will hear it and will stick it to you. Not such a bad thing given that whatever we avoid in life probably needs to be part of our lives, as was the way with my facetious comments and subsequent uprooting from our beloved Melbourne.

  Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, is in many ways a world-class city, but in many ways it’s also a large country town. The capital is known for its clique of long-term Adelaideans—the offspring of a long line of South Australian residents so thick, even their accent differs from the rest of the country. Many Adelaideans will probably agree: unless you’re born inside it, you’re always a bit of an outsider. As a result, Adelaide pulls the reputation with other state-dwellers for being a little, well ... let’s just say it’s hard to get into the well-established ‘clique’.

  I was nervous about this reputation, and having already lived in most Australian states by the time we left for Adelaide, it was with some authority that I abided by this somewhat tongue-in-cheek character assassination of our South Australian capital city; an assassination similar to the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne as the cultural capital of Australia, and the affectionate stab at Queenslanders for being a little—er ... slower than the rest of the country. It’s wonderful that Australians have such a great sense of humour and hefty aptitude for self-mockery.

  So, typically, because of this somewhat ridiculous paranoia, Karma swooped down and gave us a posting straight to the inner’burbs of Adelaide.

  We stayed eighteen months, and—surprise, surprise—we loved it. It was a wonderful experience. And I was let into many a ‘clique’. In fact, I easily slipped into some of the loveliest cliqu
es I’ve ever had the fortune to be cliqued in. Some fascinating women welcomed me (and the kids) with open arms, and our time in this town holds some of the fondest memories of my life. So much for clichés, let alone cliques.

  It was when we left Adelaide, however, that I realised a clique is only a clique if you’re standing on the outside of one. When we left, the bubble enclosing my clique healed over almost instantly, shutting me outside. I was given a send-off fit for a queen, yet once the Adelaide hills disappeared from view, it was as though I no longer existed. The gates to this town closed, the vortex sucked back in on itself and everything within it was swallowed up in that lovely little world, with the door firmly shut. Telephone calls and emails may enter that place but it seems they rarely leave. So I guess, after all, Adelaide did live up to her reputation—out of sight, out of clique.

  No matter. My memories are still fond. And anyway, we had larger seas to navigate; the China Sea, in fact—and it would take all our focus to deal with the potential cliques ahead. In Beijing.

  Like I said, be careful what you say out loud. Or better yet, go ahead and make your grandiose statements and ponder hard on your rut-like beliefs, and then wait for the biggest dose of reality since crow’s feet.

  Reality, here we come.

  Beijing Bound

  Can long-held preconceptions really shift?

  If there is anything (beyond apathy and the violation of human rights) that gets my guns blazing, its parochialism. Living in a one-horse town doesn’t make one parochial; it’s purely a mindset. It’s the ludicrous (and dangerous) idea that nothing actually exists (or matters) outside one’s own immediate area—or worse—outside the confines of one’s own skull.

  I like to think that my aversion to living in China has naught to do with parochialism, but rather a distinct Lack of Knowledge or a decided desire Not To Know. It may also have something to do with my self-righteous opinion that because of a), b) and c) from the annals of world history, China would not be a good place to live. If you asked me what a), b) and c) were, I probably wouldn’t even be able to tell you any more—the opinion is just that fiercely and innately ingrained.

  But I do have other reasons, beyond human rights and history, to be sceptical about life in China. Trips to the Chinatowns nestled deep in Australia’s capital cities had often been a sticky experience in my younger days. Noisy, cramped and perennially grubby, the food was always too saucy, too salty and too pineappley for me, and the service officious and oftentimes cold.

  I’ve often wondered if our petite but ballsy Asian neighbours simply dislike tall blonde Western women, particularly after a visit to Hong Kong in 1987 with a friend. I’m not sure if we were tailed by the curse of the Blonde Demon Dragon or whether we just looked suspiciously whorish, but both of us were consistently treated like crack hookers in Hong Kong way back then.

  Hindsight being a wonderful thing, we were pretty young, pretty wild and pretty much drank our way through every bar in town before raping the shops of every high-heel shoe known to mankind (to be worn with black leather miniskirts) and smoking our way around the night streets. So, admittedly, there was a distinct possibility we fitted the ‘Oh look! Two Western sluts—let’s snarl at them, shove them off the escalators and spit in their general direction!’ (yes, this actually happened) picture.

  I also remember a Chinese woman I used to work with in Sydney. I was eighteen, she was a 36-year-old life insurance underwriter, yet her only means of verbal communication was to giggle. And yes, she could speak fluent English. It drove me bananas.

  So, yes yes, because of the Ignorance and Fear behind my lifelong reasoning on China, Karma swooped in and posted us to Beijing. It said: ‘Cast aside thy disposable nappies and thy expectations for lowfat vanilla soy decaf lattes and get thee to a flat, grey Communist city where you may just be subjected to dislike. Get thee there and findeth out.’

  And so I’m having one last low-fat vanilla soy decaf latte. And like all good followers of Karma, we are going. Tomorrow.

  The Wild Ride

  It’s only just begun...

  I won’t go into the shenanigans surrounding our journey to Beijing. After the intense stress of dividing and packing every earthly belonging, the heavy immunisation schedule (we are still pincushion sore) and my attempt to coordinate the upheaval of an entire family with only a small part of my brain functioning at full capacity, I was hit suddenly by the crashing reality that we had missed our flight.

  I was standing in the middle of the busy check-in counters at the airport, clutching the handle of our overloaded luggage trolley when the realisation hit. I just sort of slid to the floor in a silent cry that gave way to a series of horrendous, very public sobs (I’m still embarrassed). The kids instantly took pity, and stood over me with their hands on my head like mini popes blessing a heathen. Poor Xiansheng ran around like a chook with its head cut off, trying to pinpoint the reason we got our flight time wrong and who was to blame. It didn’t matter—the sobbing was out of my control now.

  After a stiff gin and tonic and a bracing swim in the airport Hyatt, we settled in for the night before leaving for Beijing early the next morning.

  Would this mix up and delay be a harbinger of doom for our new adventure? We were now arriving on the fourth of the month and the number four is a seriously ill-fated number, according to the Chinese. The Mandarin word for four— si—is very similar in pronunciation to the word for death. What would this terrible omen mean for us?

  Now, on this Mach-II day of departure, Riley, only just past the age of two, slept in for the first time in his life. He was also grumpy, noncompliant and incoherent to any instruction, especially when it came to customs or immigration officials. But it was okay—I was armed with Vallergan, a behaviour-numbing, sleep-inducing drug for tots. I packed that bottle in my hand luggage, fully cohesive of the warning that in a small percentage of children, the drug has the opposite effect and instead turns sleepy children into banana-wielding, lemonade-spurting maniacs.

  No problem—it wouldn’t happen to me.

  Halfway into our nine-hour flight to Hong Kong, I was ready to pop the aircraft’s rear door and parachute to freedom. Riley went bananas all right. He reacted so adversely to the Vallergan that ‘running amok’ took on a whole new meaning. He actually acquired the ability to ingest only and exclusively lollies, chocolate, apple juice and plastic texta lids. I remember at one stage taking him into the toilet to give the other passengers five minutes’ peace, but our darling little boy screamed like a banshee and unravelled every toilet roll in fury. He refused to go to the toilet at all costs and subsequently wet through every nappy onboard. He then, out of sheer exhaustion, fell asleep for a grand total of twenty, twitching, heart-stopping minutes (I don’t think I breathed the whole time and God forbid if anyone pressed a call button). Of course, because Riley had already used up all his nappies by this time, he whizzed in his sleep—right through his clothes, my clothes and the fabric seat, and we all three stank to high heaven for the rest of the trip.

  Now, before you think Xiansheng and I have raised a harem of monkeys, I have to mention that our daughter Ella, three months shy of five, sat in her seat and read a book, played a game, ate her dinner/lunch/snacks, watched TV, chatted charmingly with the hosties, played more games and read some more. She did not pee once during that entire nine-hour flight, and did not utter a single word of contention.

  Point made.

  Meanwhile, back at the Riley camp, when we finally got off the plane and into a nice, clean mini van, our son brought his eighteen-hour travelling circus show to a grand finale by vomiting all over the van’s seats and onto my shoes.

  The Chinese have a saying: the more ‘challenging’ the child, the greater the man. Truthfully, I am living in hope and will listen to anything they tell me.

  For now, though, I have China to contend with.

  We are here.

  The Fourth of May


  Welcome to Beijing

  When our aircraft landed in Beijing, I was nervous. Would a series of strategically placed cameras really follow us from the aerobridge to our bedroom door, with nary a moment of blank space betwixt? Oh, the propaganda in this propaganda-paranoid place!

  Disembarkation, immigration, luggage, customs—all uneventful. Easy, even. Then it was through the sea of Chinese faces waiting at the international gate, then out into the balmy Beijing night—so fuss-free, I kept looking behind me, waiting for a hand to descend upon my shoulder. Instead, it was the Beijing air that grabbed me by both shoulders and quite literally took my breath away.

  A yellowish cast was veiling the starless night sky—a sort of choking haze that grabs the inside of your throat as it goes down—and there was a distinct smell that I will never forget. It was sort of a smoky aroma, draped fragrantly between egg noodles and dust, blended with a very ancient low note, sort of what I imagine frankincense would smell like.

  Starry-eyed and too exhausted to cough, we clambered into the mini van and travelled along the airport expressway, all of us sitting quietly and staring at the rows of poplar trees lining the roadway. Through the tollway with the gaudy Chinese gate, then more road and more trees, until eventually the city of Beijing unfolded like a pop-up map, and we were swirling in on the new freeway extension to the Third Ring Road, and there we were, cruising the late-night streets of Dongzhimen, to our apartment (whereupon Riley promptly vomited).

  The Chinese reception staff in our building were really interesting to me. There wasn’t a hint of surly Chinatown waitress in sight. These people were lovely. They laughed off the vomit. They darted around to fetch our bags. They smiled. They grinned. They spoke English. They welcomed. They—they—seemed to like us.