Fu Ping

A Novel

Anyi Wang, Howard Goldblatt

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• ISBN:
  9780231550208
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Nainai has lived in Shanghai for many years, and the time has come to find a wife for her adopted grandson. But when the bride she has chosen arrives from the countryside, it soon becomes clear that the orphaned girl has ideas of her own. Her name is Fu Ping, and the more she explores the residential lanes and courtyards behind Shanghai's busy shopping streets, the less she wants to return to the country as a dutiful wife. As Fu Ping wavers over her future, she learns the city through the stories of the nannies, handymen, and garbage collectors whose labor is bringing life and bustle back to postwar Shanghai.

Fu Ping is a keenly observed portrait of the lives of lower-class women in Shanghai in the early years of the People's Republic of China. Wang Anyi, one of contemporary China's most acclaimed authors, explores the daily lives of migrants from rural areas and other people on the margins of urban life. In shifting perspectives rich in detail and psychological insight, she sketches their aspirations, their fears, and the subtle ties that bind them together. In Howard Goldblatt's masterful translation, Fu Ping reveals Wang Anyi's precise renderings of history, class, and the human heart.

Chapter One

NAINAI

Fu Ping showed up one afternoon at the house where Nainai worked. In the lane little girls jumping rope created a faint echo off the walls as their shoes scraped the concrete. Yellow rays of afternoon sun—it was after three o’clock—shone brightly. The sunlight made their dresses sparkle. Following the directions in Nainai’s letter, Fu Ping walked to the end of the lane. She stood in the open doorway, blocking the sun’s rays. Although she could not see the faces of the women in the hallway, the sun at their backs traced their silhouettes. One of them stood up. So, Fu Ping, you’re here.

All Fu Ping said was, Nainai.

Nainai was Li Tianhua’s grandmother, but not by blood; she had adopted him in order to have a grandson. Back when the matchmaker had come to Fu Ping with a marriage proposal, she had stressed two points: first, Li Tianhua had attended middle school, and second, his grandmother was a nanny in Shanghai. So even though he was the eldest child in a large family that lived on the brink of poverty, it was not a hopeless case. Nainai, who had been widowed early on, had no sons, and her married daughter belonged to another family. That left the adopted grandson as her sole heir, and she had made his schooling possible. She had come to Shanghai as a housemaid at the age of sixteen, thirty years before, long enough for her now to be considered “old” Shanghai. She had achieved considerable status among neighborhood household helpers. Fu Ping, orphaned in childhood and taken in by her father’s younger brother and his wife, had placed great importance on her marriage prospects, but she kept that to herself, wanting to bide her time. She lowered her head when matchmakers called, would not say yes and would not say no. If a candidate came to the house, she steadfastly refused to show her face, choosing instead to spend the day at a girlfriend’s house and not coming home until whoever it was had left. Actually being taken to a prospect’s house was out of the question, so her aunt was forced to go alone. I need to get the girl married, she’d think, or people might accuse her uncle and me of not caring enough about our niece’s future. So when she returned home, she reported everything to Fu Ping: how the man had kind parents and well-behaved younger siblings, how the eldest of his younger sisters was already engaged, how the house was to be spruced up the next year, and so on. Still Fu Ping would not say yes and would not say no. Until, that is, Li Tianhua’s name was mentioned. On the day he showed up, instead of hiding, she stayed to cook a meal and prepare tea. Observing from beneath lowered eyelids, she saw a pair of black cloth shoes, held close together, not especially large and slightly narrow; the round, somewhat pointed tips were in sharp contrast to the white gauzy socks, and the arches were slightly elevated. Those were not the feet of a man who worked the fields, those wide, flat feet made for standing in mud and water. She could tell he was not someone who made a living by the sweat of his brow. Before long, the matchmaker brought the betrothal gifts. In addition to the usual knitting wool, fabrics, and colored thread, there was also some traveling money, which Nainai had included so the girl could see the sights of Shanghai. And that was how Fu Ping arrived at the house where Nainai worked.

A grandmother she may have been, but she looked younger than Fu Ping’s aunt. Her hair was still black, and from the front it looked like a bun, though that was a result of how she tucked the short hair behind her ears. She wore a blue cotton jacket with long, looping buttons down the front and a mandarin collar. Nainai lacked the fair complexion of most city residents, but did not have the swarthy look of country folk either; rather, her skin had a faint yellow tinge. It was taut on a round, full face, but was not delicate—tough, perhaps, and resilient, but not old. Her hands, too, were like that, with large knuckles covered by skin that was starting to show its age. By this time, Nainai had nearly shed her hometown accent, but did not speak like a Shanghai native. It was more a hometown dialect with a Shanghai lilt. Her posture was erect, both when walking and when seated at the table or at work; but when she squatted down, she rested on her haunches, legs apart, the sign of a countrywoman. Nainai’s features, too, were like that: a nicely shaped, delicate face. She was somewhat portly, not at all the look of a countrywoman. But when she spoke, her lower lip protruded slightly, her upper lip hung back to reveal a glimpse of her teeth, and that did bear a faint resemblance to those trenchant village women. A youthful injury in the corner of one eye had not left a scar, but had formed a barely noticeable dimple in the corner. Sometimes, when she looked in a certain way, the dimple made her appear to be gazing at something out of the corner of her eye, and that lent her a slightly trenchant charm. All in all, though she’d lived in Shanghai for thirty years, Nainai had not been transformed into a true urbanite, and yet she was no longer a rustic; she was, instead, a hybrid—half urban, half rural. This half-and-half hybridity made her a special type. When she and women like her were out on the street, one look was all anyone needed to spot them for what they were: nannies.

Back home in the Yangzhou countryside, leaving home to work as a nanny was a long-standing tradition. For some it was a permanent occupation, for others more temporary. Like Nainai, there were women from surrounding villages who had lived in Shanghai for years and become full-fledged, registered residents of the city. Most had been widowed young, or were married to shiftless, unreliable husbands, and had not delivered a son. That was the case with Nainai. Bereft of family support, these women were forced to be self-reliant. The longer they stayed away from home, the less often they returned. And when they did, the visit was usually short-lived. They were no longer used to their hometown environment, which habitually led to bouts of diarrhea or a rash, and that sent them right back, often bringing along another woman or two to find work in a city household. Sometimes they wrote letters home, urging one of the village women to come to Shanghai to find work. As time passed, large numbers of women from neighboring villages were living and working in Shanghai, most in the same general area. Since some of the employers were related, or at least acquainted, the women who worked for them saw one another often, something that made adapting to life away from home easier.

Nainai had lived in Shanghai thirty years, virtually all that time on or near Huaihai Road in the flourishing Western District. Like all residents of a city’s urban core, she viewed the quieter outlying districts as inhospitable countryside. In reality, those outlying spots, such as Zhabei and Putuo, were where others from her hometown had congregated. Most were boat people who had come down on the Suzhou River as a result of wars or natural disasters. When they found a spot of unclaimed land, they threw up a rush tent, sort of like a boat cabin, and moved in. Then it was off to the factories to find work. They constituted at least half of Shanghai’s industrial workforce. But Nainai would not associate with those people. She had acquired the urbanite’s prejudice of viewing only Huaihai Road as the true Shanghai.

After working in Western District homes for decades, Nainai had encountered every type of family imaginable, and that made her a woman of wide experience. She once worked for a Shaoxing opera actress who was under contract to play old women roles, for which she was given a regular, substantial salary. Her husband was a plastic surgeon in private practice. Childless, they owned a large flat in a building that catered to foreign nationals, with an Indian doorman and an elevator operator who spoke English. And so Nainai learned a few English phrases, “good morning,” “thank you,” “come,” “go,” and the like. She was not expected to cook or do laundry; her sole task was to clean the carved mahogany furniture, with its mother-of-pearl inlays, with a fine-bristled brush. She did not stay long, could not get used to the light work or the lack of human contact. Her next employer lived in a long lane at the eastern end of Huaihai Road, a typical family with lots of children, where the husband, who worked in a foreign company on the Bund, was the sole breadwinner. She shared household duties with the wife, which included looking after the children. The wife had a gaunt, sallow face and was a sloppy dresser, giving one the impression that she was the maid. Not a day passed that they didn’t worry about the family finances, and they were often late with her wages. Nainai hadn’t been there long when the husband was diagnosed with a lung disease and stayed home to recuperate. Despite the woman’s tearful pleas, Nainai gave notice, not only forgoing her last month’s wages, but even spending some of her own money to buy shirts and shorts for the children. Such a demoralized existence was not for her. She also worked for a middle-class family in which both husband and wife were employed and left their four children in her care. They were a loving couple; if anything, the husband was a little too caring with his wife for Nainai’s tastes. He had milk delivered daily and warmed it for her in the morning; if she complained about the smell, he spoon-fed her. His attentions to his wife came at the expense of his children, who were drawn to Nainai right after she arrived. She liked them in turn, partly because they were so well-behaved; yet she decided to give notice. She simply could not abide their father’s disgusting behavior. Having lost her own husband when she was quite young, she lived a chaste, widowed life, and could not bear to see a loving couple. But she hated having to part with the children, and even after she went to work for another family, they often came to see her; she introduced them to the children of her new employer as playmates, as friends. The two families lived in neighboring lanes, but the status of the new family’s lane, with its apartment buildings, was a couple of rungs above the old one. The husband was a doctor; it was, by then, post-1949, so he had shuttered his private clinic and now served as the head of a municipal hospital, traveling to and from work in a chauffeured automobile. He was a stern man who never once spoke to Nainai, nor ate at the same table with her. Yet he was the sort of man she held in high regard, a gentleman. His wife was a good woman as well, genial, generous, never cozying up to her husband in front of her or the children. If only the children hadn’t been so insolent. The eldest, a girl, had barely started middle school and was already into modern fads—permanent waves, brassieres, wearing her mother’s nylons, and forever complaining that Nainai ruined her clothes by scrubbing them—truly, a spoiled young lady. Her two brothers were a little better, but still haughty. They ignored the children of her former employer when they came to play, practicing the piano instead, always a fast number, while their visitors shrank off to one side, a sight that hurt Nainai deeply. But they were, after all, children, who could not put on airs for long, and they were soon playing together. Then one day the husband came home early from work and noticed that someone else’s children were playing in his house. He said nothing at the time, but later had his wife tell Nainai to ask the children not to come anymore. Stung by this rebuff, a few days later she found an excuse to give notice. She, too, had her snobbish ways, but she also had her pride, and could not abide arrogance in anyone.

She felt at ease in Shanghai, and was so self-assured that she chose her families, they did not choose her. And she was firm in her insistence to work only on Huaihai Road in the Western District, and only for Shanghai natives. She would never have considered working for speakers of the Shandong dialect, Party functionaries who came down from the north. Someone once referred her to an army commander in a Hongkou military compound. She went to take a look, and though the salary for taking care of the children was high, she chose not to take the job. The family lived in a sparsely furnished building, with waxed floors and a row of sofas against the wall, much like a government conference room. The kitchen was large, but the pots were empty and the stove cold. Not even water was boiled there; soldiers brought that over from a communal boiler. The family ate in not one but several dining halls, the commander in one, his wife—also in the military—in another, and the children in yet a third. Not what you’d call normal family life, and certainly not for her. She did not care for military surroundings either—they were not conducive to family life. So she walked out of the compound under an expanse of open sky, onto a similar expanse of open road. Not another person in sight, nor a single house, a bleak, dreary scene. Who can possibly live in a hellish place like this? she fussed. Back in the countryside at least there would be a pond with ducks and geese, and farmers in the field with their oxen. You walk around and soon you spot a village, with chimney smoke and clucking hens and swallows coming south to nest. Gaze into the distance, and you see one brick house after another. The coarse red bricks, fired just once, are porous and less sturdy than the green ones, but red creates a beguiling contrast to the lush green of the surrounding willows. Nainai was recalling all the colors in her country home when a passing army truck threw up a cloud of dust that coated her face and body, dreary dust from head to toe.

Her homesickness had slackened by the time she was back in the vicinity of North Sichuan and Haining Roads, where the streets narrowed and shops, pedestrians, trolleys, and automobiles began to appear. Gazing down the lanes, she saw laundry drying and children playing, and she smelled cooking oil in the air. Here was a life she understood. The buildings in Hongkou were just too tall. Little balconies with black wrought-iron railings made the redbrick walls seen uncommonly big, too broad and too steep. That was true with the lanes, too—broad, big, and quite imposing, with vaguely oppressive verandas. The residents were a jumbled lot, with irregular features, an unsightly crowd that overshadowed the occasional attractive individual in its midst. This was a sight she could not bear. As she walked across the Haining Road Bridge at one of the wide stretches of the Suzhou River, she saw a congested cluster of ships sailing her way from upstream. Repelled by the stench rising from the river and the dampness carried on the wind, she did not feel at ease until she was back on Huaihai Road. When the new-style, relatively squat, shallow houses came into view, she could see all the way to the end of each narrow lane. They twisted and turned, with storefronts crowded up against each other on nicely proportioned byways. There were high-rises, but not like those at Hongkou, which had the fortified look of the Main Post Office; here the lobbies were only as wide as a single shop. Inside, elevators rose and fell in view of the people outside, with sunlight streaming in through stained-glass windows above the landings of a marble staircase beside the elevators. The elevator operators and the doormen were engaged in small talk, a word or two of their conversations reaching her ears as she passed. The street bustled with pedestrians, but they were orderly residents from the neighboring lanes for the most part, not a jumble of humanity. Everything was on a smaller scale, with interactive life that made it a good place for families. The locals simply looked better and were genteel, unlike Hongkou residents, who were sort of gruff. The locals knew how to dress, but were not slaves to fashion; precisely because they were familiar with the fads, they were staid, even a bit old-fashioned.

Nainai walked along, no longer homesick. As we have seen, she had acquired the attitude of city residents, including their prejudices. Could anyone say she was not one of them? She was more familiar with the city than those young folks. Listen to her relate all the strange things she’d seen and heard, things you could never dream up. This street alone would have plenty of stories for you. Like the kidnapper who tapped a child on the head, causing him to lose his sense of direction, until all he saw was the street in front of him; he walked off with the man, right out of sight. Then there was the story of the ghost that cried in the middle of the night, and for this there was a name attached, that of a certain old woman from one of the lanes who heard it every night for a full half year, and then died. And there was the story of a wife who ran off with a servant, a woman who murdered her husband, and so on. Nainai knew lines from lots of dramatic offerings: The New Year’s Sacrifice, Wang Kui and Mu Guiying, The Butterfly Lovers, and Third Sister Yang on a Bed of Nails, most of the lines coming from popular local plays or Shaoxing opera. She could even sing a few of them! You can believe me or not, that’s up to you, but she had even seen Hollywood movies. Charlie Chaplin, for instance, she knew who he was. And she said his name like an American: Chap-lin. But she didn’t much care for American movies, mainly because of the happy endings; she preferred tragedies. The mere mention of one of the sad dramas had her in tears. Every child in her care had heard her tell stories that were perfectly suited to their youthful taste. She saw no need to faithfully follow a story line, preferring to hop from spot to spot, an episode here and an incident there, but always with powerful atmospherics, with a knack for exaggerating tales of horror and misery. In retelling The New Year’s Sacrifice, she focused on the scene in which Xianglin’s wife donates money for a threshold at the temple to avoid having her two husbands cleave her in half in the underworld. In Wang Kui and Mu Guiying it was the episode in which Mu Guiying returns from the grave, and in The Butterfly Lovers it was the final scene where the graves split open. The episode from Third Sister Yang on a Bed of Nails was particularly horrific. The children, their faces turned ashen from fright, would crowd around to listen and to tremble, and then beg her over and over, One more, tell us one more.

Sometimes Nainai told stories from her country home. They, too, were horror stories, but another kind of horror, the rural kind. Filtered through her agrarian view of the world, they incorporated bewitching elements, and were not always simple and straightforward. That is why they sounded a bit like stage plays, filled with local color. One told of a beautiful bride in a phoenix headdress and embroidered cape who was being carried to her new home in a sedan chair in a colorful procession; when she raised her head and looked around, she bared her teeth, revealing the true image of a ghost. And with that she brought ill fortune into a peasant’s home. There was also the story of the little demon incarnate. All the offspring of a certain couple had died in infancy, never later than their first birthday, to the devastation of their parents. Then one day a medium advised them to cut the toes off the next child to be born so he could not walk to the door. They decided to take the advice: when the scissors were poised to cut off his toes, the latest infant’s eyes snapped open—they belonged to a grown-up! This was the story’s terrifying climax. Then there was the story of the dying man who spotted chain-carrying generals and soldiers sent by King Yama of the netherworld to lead him away. Nainai made the rattling of chains and the clanking of weapons horrifying yet impressive, investing her tale with the vibrancy of a theatrical martial arts battle.

Those stories were all linked to Nainai’s own past. Widowed at a young age, the mother of two sons who had died one after the other, she accepted her lot as a woman born to suffer, preordained to seal the fate of her loved ones and destined to be self-reliant. After years of domestic work, she had accumulated some savings, but inadequate to outlast the requests for loans and handouts by a host of kin. Loans were really just handouts that sounded a bit nicer, for the money never found its way back. How many people she carried on her back! Her daughter was betrothed and her son-in-law wanted to attend high school, at her expense; she had to pay for clothing for her nephew, who was studying to be an actor with a county drama troupe, where the first three years provided only room and board; her younger sister’s husband was stricken with cholera and had needed an operation—again, her money. Now her grandson had a prospective wife, so naturally that meant she...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Statement
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• 1. Nainai
• 2. Employer
• 3. Fu Ping
• 4. Lü Fengxian
• 5. Girls’ School
• 6. Liar
• 7. Qi Shifu
• 8. The Grands
• 9. Aunt
• 10. Sun Daliang
• 11. Xiao Jun
• 12. Opera House
• 13. To the Opera
• 14. New Year’s
• 15. After New Year’s
• 16. Grandson
• 17. No Good-byes
• 18. Uncle and Niece
• 19. Mother and Son
• 20. The Flood
• Series List