Toward the North Read online

  “But that ‘scientific way to cultivate the land’ was said to have a success rate of ninety-two percent; yet, it failed us. Do you still want to try? Just for the sake of arguing, say I was willing to try again—but what if we get another girl?”

  “Then we are not destined to have a son, and we’ll take it.”

  “Three daughters! Our family would certainly be like the one in the film A Sweet Life.”4

  “Three daughters are not too many. We would still be two short of five golden flowers.5 Life is a gamble. If you dare to take the risk, there is a chance of success. If you don’t, then there is no chance at all. Just now Tang’s wife told me she heard of a ‘comprehensive scientific way to cultivate the land,’ and it’s a sure bet.”

  “Are you kidding me? We tried ‘the scientific way,’ and it didn’t work. Now you want to try a ‘comprehensive scientific way?’” Sheng Jiqi snapped.

  Feng Jian was really serious. “We did not give the method enough time during last round. You shouldn’t take this matter lightly. This method is, scientifically, one hundred percent sound. Your task now is to take good care of yourself.” And he couldn’t help cracking a joke: “You know, if the land is fertile, the crop will be bountiful.”

  “Do you mean to say if we do not get the desired harvest, my land is barren?”

  “Shut up! You are talking nonsense!” Feng Jian took up Nana’s tiny hand and gave Sheng Jiqi’s face a couple of gentle pats. They burst into laughter while Nana started wailing.

  When the baby was barely a month old, Feng Jian was already pestering Tang and his wife, Tian, for the “comprehensive scientific way to cultivate the land.” According to the theory, they had to keep testing Sheng’s body temperature to figure out when she ovulated, in addition to continuing with the diet and the soda rinse. They also had to consult a chart that listed the most opportune dates to conceive a boy, taking into account the husband’s and wife’s birthdays. If one of those days overlapped with the wife’s time of ovulation, then the couple would certainly produce a son. Tian took a lot of trouble to get a photocopy of the chart from a colleague of a friend’s friend. She passed on the chart to Feng, a map for the treasure trove he had dreamed of so long.

  Whenever Feng got a moment, he would unfold the chart on the table and study it just like a soldier studying a military map, murmuring to himself, gesturing with his fingers, and doing mental calculations. He was as serious as a general planning manoeuvres just before a battle of vital importance. To indulge him, Sheng Jiqi did her best: she followed the recommended diet, took her temperature, and kept up with the daily soda rinse. She followed the “comprehensive” method to the last detail.

  While the Fengs were trying, Tian gave birth to a boy. Feng Jian was impressed by their successful implementation of the method, and now was even more convinced of its effectiveness. However, Tang and Tian told him that they hadn’t used the “scientific way to cultivate the land,” but had just let nature take its own course. Moreover, they pointed out that the chance of having a boy or a girl was fifty-fifty, without the help of science. And they would have preferred a daughter. But no matter how hard they tried to convince him, Feng Jian would not believe them. He simply could not imagine anyone would prefer daughters to sons, as Tang and Tian claimed.

  He and Sheng Jiqi sped up their preparation now. On even higher alert, they were like soldiers on a battleground, eyes squarely on the target, body and mind intensely ready. Once the moment came, they would charge forward. Whenever the most opportune day drew near, Feng Jian would become super hyper. He was so eager to do it that he was like an experienced farmer who had the plough and seeds ready and waiting. As soon as the spring came and the cuckoos sang, he would go to the field and plough and sow without delay.

  One Sunday, still a week before the special day of that month, Sheng Jiqi sensed something going wrong. Her period was about a week late and she had symptoms of morning sickness. She woke up Feng Jian, who was sleeping in.

  He rubbed his eyes, still not fully awake. “Could that be possible?”

  Sheng Jiqi was worried. “Why not? Do you remember that classmate of yours who is now a visiting scholar at U of T? A while ago, we invited him over for supper. You drank that evening. I told you that you shouldn’t drink because you get drunk from a sip of beer, but you didn’t listen to me. You kept saying it was not an everyday event that you would run into an old friend in a foreign city, so you would not mind getting drunk at all. When your friend left, you started to fool around. You insisted that nothing would happen if we did it. Also you refused to use any protection. Have you forgotten?”

  Feng Jian put on an innocent air, saying, “Did I do that? I … I don’t remember.”

  Sheng Jiqi was furious. “You were drunk. I tried to reason with you, but you didn’t listen. Now you’re trying to blame me. Are you saying that I have been…?”

  Feng Jian immediately backed down. He comforted his wife by admitting that he himself was at fault, that the most important thing was not laying blame but figuring out what to do, because he clearly remembered that, according to the chart, that day was for conceiving a girl.

  “What should we do? What should we do? Should we…?” He wanted to suggest an abortion but did not know how to tell his wife.

  Sheng Jiqi came to his aid. She told him that she would go to see her doctor for a pregnancy test the next day, and they’d decide what to do when they got the result. When the test confirmed that Sheng Jiqi was indeed pregnant, they talked and talked, and eventually Sheng Jiqi agreed to an abortion, though very reluctantly.

  However, just before the appointment, Sheng Jiqi changed her mind. As a woman, she felt very badly for her unborn daughter. Why should a boy get the chance to live while a girl would be aborted? Aren’t we living in a modern era? Why is a son treasured more than a daughter? Isn’t that patriarchal and inhumane? Sheng Jiqi told her husband that if they aborted the fetus, she would never bear a child for him again. Also, if they kept the baby and it happened to be a girl, she would not go through another pregnancy, ever again. She was a human being, not a breeding machine. She had decided that she would no longer act as the means to ensure the continuation of the family line for the Fengs.

  Feng Jian was in a dilemma. Sweet talking was not working this time, and he did not even dare to try intimidation. So he had no other option but to wait and hope. The day for the abortion drew closer, but they could not come to an agreement. Sheng Jiqi called her doctor to cancel the appointment, saying that she might have miscalculated the time of her last period and therefore she did not actually know how far along her pregnancy was. She said she would like to figure that out and then make another appointment. Her doctor told her that she could have an ultrasound done before the abortion so that she would know for sure. Sheng Jiqi couldn’t say no. Even though her delaying tactic hadn’t worked, having an ultrasound was a good option. She remembered Tian once said that a woman could say no to abortion even when she was in the operating room.

  The doctor who did the ultrasound was very thorough. He repeated the whole procedure and even asked another doctor to double check. Sheng Jiqi became more and more impatient, recalling that the ultrasound when she was pregnant with Nana was very quick. Why was it taking so long this time? She was just about to ask if something was wrong with the fetus when the doctor told her that she was having twins. He asked her to look at the two shadowy shapes on the monitor and then asked if she intended to go ahead with the abortion. Sheng Jiqi was stunned, and, after a very long while, said she had to consult her husband first.

  When Feng Jian was informed, he immediately abandoned his original stance and staunchly objected to the abortion. “There have been no twins in my family, not ever. It’s a one- in-a-thousand chance to have twins. Of course we’ll keep them.”

  “What if they’re girls?”

  “That won’t change a thing. I’ll then be the fat
her of four golden flowers.”

  “You set your mind on having ‘Jia-Na-Da/Canada’, didn’t you? What do we do if we have two more girls?”

  After a short silence, Feng Jian said, “We’ll still have ‘Jia-Na-Da/Canada.’ There are so many girl names beginning with a D—say, Diana, Debbie, and Daisy. Our third child, no matter if it’s a boy or a girl, will have a name with a D, and his or her pet name will still be Dada. And what do we call our fourth child? Well, she can be Jennifer. Remember my classmate in the States? His daughter is a Jennifer. Her Chinese name is Zhihua, which sounds like Jennifer. Our daughter will be Zhihua—a flower. She can be a flower of Canada. What do you think?”

  “Whatever! Four children, all at once. I guess we’ll always live a life of poverty.”

  “Do not worry. Canada will help us raise our children.”

  “I am done with having babies, son or no son. Can you accept that you might not ever have a son?”

  Feng Jian replied very seriously: “I gave it a lot of thought yesterday and got it figured out. There are so many parents who have no son, and there are those who do not even have a daughter. We should be content with our girls. In fact, daughters are closer to their parents. People like to say that you raise a son and he will become someone else’s son eventually, while if you bring up a daughter you’ll get a son for free. We will have quite a few sons in the future. That’s fine by me.”

  Sheng Jiqi was surprised at Feng Jian’s about-face, but this big change was more than welcome. However, she still felt badly for him and really wanted to comfort him. She racked her brains for what to say, and eventually said, “It would be great if we could have a Feng for a son-in-law. Our daughters’ sons would then be Fengs.”

  Feng Jian was overjoyed. He liked the idea and suggested that they should start befriending acquaintances and people from their hometown who had the family name Feng. If they carried out the search while their children were still young, he was sure that one of their four daughters would find a Feng for a husband!

  While they were anticipating, happily and excitedly, the prospect of having a Feng as a son-in-law, the telephone rang. It was their family doctor. He wanted Shen Jiqi to have an amniocentesis. He explained that she was already thirty-six, and considered at higher risk of having a baby with defects than a younger woman. If the fetus had a problem, an abortion could be arranged.

  So, Sheng Jiqi had the test when she was sixteen weeks pregnant, but didn’t hear from her doctor that the baby was fine until the twentieth week of her pregnancy, when an abortion was really no longer an option. The doctor asked her if she wanted to know the sex of her babies. Sheng Jiqi immediately replied: “Aren’t they both girls?”

  Her doctor asked: “How do you know?”

  Sheng Jiqi had no ready answer to that question. After all she couldn’t tell her doctor that they had used the “scientific” way. Thanks to her quick wit, she replied: “I just guessed. Could you tell me?”

  “Guess again.”

  Sheng Jiqi became so tense that her heart beat seemed to have stopped. “Two boys?”

  “One baby boy and one baby girl,” her doctor then replied, one word at a time.

  “Really?” Sheng Jiqi’s breath was short and her heart was pounding. She had to hit her head and stomp her foot in order to prove that she was not daydreaming. At first, she felt relieved that she could finally unload the weight of the “revolutionary mission.” She had managed to produce a real Jia-Na-Da, and had a flower of Canada thrown in for free! Then, she began to feel weighted down again. Feng Jian was still doing contract work, and since he was certainly not a giant with three heads and six arms, how could they manage to raise so many children? She was on such an emotional rollercoaster that quite a long while passed before she remembered to call Feng Jian at his work place to share with him this long overdue happiness.

  Feng Jian reacted like a scholar in traditional China who had finally made the breakthrough after many false starts at the civil service examination. He was ecstatic. In a matter of minutes the entire company knew that he would have a son and a daughter. Even his supervisor, who always pulled a long face, let Feng Jian leave early to celebrate with his wife.

  There is a Chinese saying that when one has good news, he will be light-headed with happiness. So it was with Feng Jian. He drove like the wind on the 401. He didn’t realize that he had hit 140 kilometres per hour. He recited a Chinese couplet, repeatedly, while nodding: “Tend to the flowers with great care but there is no bloom; yet, plant a willow branch unintended and the branch turns into a shady thicket. A willow thicket!” Suddenly a siren screeched, and he knew that he had been caught speeding, again.

  When the dark-skinned police officer got out of the patrol car and held out a hand for his licence, Feng Jian recalled the previous incident. He sincerely hoped that this officer would also take into account his soon-to-arrive twins and cut him some slack. Hesitantly he told the police officer: “My wife will be the mother of Jia-Na-Da! Really, she will have a boy and a girl! Two little Canadians!”

  Hand still in mid-air, the policeman asked, extremely confused, “What did you say?”

  But Feng Jian was also very puzzled. Why doesn’t he envy me? Feng thought.

  Translated by H. Laura Wu and Cory Davies.

  “Jia Na Da/Canada” was originally serialized in The World Journal, March 29-31, 2005.

  1The name Feng Jian is a pun on the term “fengjian,” which means feudal or feudalistic.

  2China began to implement the “One Child” policy in early 1980s. The Fengs would have to emigrate to have another child.

  3Sheng Jiqi could mean “superior to a machine” or “a machine of procreation.”

  4A Sweet Life (1979) is a comedy that tells the story of a couple with six daughters. The film was part of the state sponsored effort to promote the Chinese government’s policies of family planning and birth control.

  5Five Golden Flowers (1959) is a well-known romance film. It features five female characters, all having the name Golden Flower, who are model peasants working enthusiastically for the commune.

  Grown Up

  XI YU

  TODAY IS HER DAUGHTER’S fifteenth birthday. Jiang Xue has noticed that many of her colleagues, particularly her Western colleagues, heave a long sigh when their children are growing up because they worry that they will lose control over them. In North America it seems quite common to consider a fifteen-year-old girl to be a woman already. Boys and girls date at younger and younger ages, and so their parents feel that they can no longer influence them. Jiang Xue usually sits there quietly when her colleagues discuss their children growing up; yet every sentence they utter finds its way directly into her mind.

  Since early this morning, Jiang Xue had been especially preoccupied with what kind of birthday present she should buy for her daughter, Wenwen. In fact, this gift-giving business for her daughter had been on her mind for a long time. In the past they had been separated from each other for several years, and, as a result, they were not that close. Whenever Jiang Xue thinks about this, she is overcome with regret.

  When her husband Liu Lihua went to the United States to study for a master’s degree, she accompanied him. But when the day came to leave their seven-year-old daughter behind in Shanghai, both mother and father were heartbroken.

  She believed that leaving the child behind in China was for her own good; however, Jiang Xue was on the opposite side of the ocean, and she missed her daughter day and night. And she hadn’t realized what the consequences would be.

  After three or four years, they eventually migrated to Canada. And as soon as they obtained landed immigrant status, they immediately applied to bring Wenwen over. They didn’t expect the daughter who stepped off the plane to be so grown up. She was a slim, graceful, and beautiful young girl with guarded countenance. Jiang Xue intended to hug her daughter warmly and give her many k
isses, but to her surprise, there was an unexpected aloofness in her daughter’s eyes. Jiang Xue flinched, and then shrank away.

  A while ago Jiang Xue had asked Wenwen whether or not she should organize a birthday party for her. Fifteen is an important birthday, Jiang Xue thought. Her daughter replied sarcastically, “What kind of birthday party? Get everybody around a table to eat cake? Don’t you think that’s a little bit childish?”

  Jiang Xue was stunned. Even grown-ups celebrate their birthdays. Don’t they get together with friends and eat cake?

  Lately her daughter has been on the phone a lot, talking to both male and female friends. Since they all spoke with the same Canadian accent, Jiang Xue couldn’t make out what sort of people they were—Chinese Canadians or Westerners? Whenever they called, her daughter went straight into her own room, and although Jiang Xue leaned on the door to listen, she could only make out a few isolated words and phrases and couldn’t piece anything together.

  Jiang Xue and Liu Lihua talked it over and decided that since their daughter didn’t want them to throw a party for her, they should let her make her own plans. The child was now grown up. It is only natural that she had her own ideas. Instead, the parents would give her a wonderful birthday present.

  Jiang Xue thought about it, and finally a pair of high quality shoes came to mind. Although Wenwen usually wore running shoes to school, on some occasions formal shoes were needed. The pair Wenwen now wore was two years old and was no longer fashionable. Even though these new shoes cost almost one hundred Canadian dollars—even more than that with tax—in Jiang Xue’s mind this kind of present was too ordinary. Such a gift wouldn’t impress the child or get her to recognize the depth of her parents’ love.