Fu Ping Read online

  FU PING

  WEATHERHEAD BOOKS ON ASIA

  WEATHERHEAD BOOKS ON ASIA

  Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

  For a complete list of titles, see page 283

  FU PING

  A Novel

  WANG ANYI

  Translated by Howard Goldblatt

  Columbia University Press

  New York

  This publication has been supported by the Richard W. Weatherhead Publication Fund of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

  Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Pushkin Fund in the publication of this book.

  Columbia University Press

  Publishers Since 1893

  New York    Chichester, West Sussex

  cup.columbia.edu

  Translation copyright © 2019 Columbia University Press

  All rights reserved

  E-ISBN 978-0-231-55020-8

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wang, Anyi, 1954–author. | Goldblatt, Howard, 1939–translator.

  Title: Fu Ping : a novel / Wang Anyi ; translated by Howard Goldblatt.

  Other titles: Fuping. English

  Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2019] | Series: Weatherhead books on Asia

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018060636 (print) | LCCN 2019006199 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231550208 (electronic) | ISBN 9780231193221 | ISBN 9780231193221 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231193238 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women internal migrants—Fiction. | Shanghai (China)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PL2919.A58 (ebook) | LCC PL2919.A58 F8413 2019 (print) | DDC 895.13/52—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060636

  A Columbia University Press E-book.

  CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected].

  Cover design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee

  Cover photo: Back Lane, 1960. Photograph by Fan Ho. © 2018 by Themes+Projects / Modernbook Editions

  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

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  SHANGHAI, JUNE 9, 2003

  In the summer of 1998, a few of us went on a trip to Yangzhou.

  We took the train to Zhenjiang, where a friend picked us up by car and we crossed the river to reach Yangzhou. It was the rainy season, and the air was filled with moisture. Weeping willows and a stretch of rice fields formed a lush landscape, along with some unusual red-brick houses. That shade wasn’t the common rusty brick red, but a fiery red with washes of yellow. I later realized that it was a crudely fired red brick used by ordinary families. This scenery evoked a sense of enchantment and romance that reminded me of Li Bai’s elegant verse: “Leaving for Yangzhou in the misty spring month of flowers,” but in the style of a folk tune, like the Ming “hanging branch” lyric or “mountain songs.” At that moment, a face appeared before my eyes—she later became the title character in my novel Fu Ping.

  I grew up with a nanny from Yangzhou. I first learned to speak neither Shanghainese nor Mandarin, but the Yangzhou dialect. Her voice had a gentle, charming drawl that appealed to little girls’ affectations. She once bought me a handkerchief in apple green and fuchsia pink, the vibrant shades evoking the cheerfulness of magpies chirping in trees. My mother said it was tacky, but I loved it to death.

  Most of my nanny’s fellow villagers had delicate facial features. Their slim eyebrows curved upward when they smiled, as did the corners of their mouths. Their skin tone wasn’t dark and swarthy, like farmers who worked outdoors the year round, but rather a pale yellow, which could be considered fair among farmers at the time. So, my nanny’s relatives from Yangzhou all looked quite lovely and urbane.

  My nanny had an intriguing attitude toward relationships between men and women. When we became teenagers, she took on a personal sense of duty to keep a close watch on our behavior. She always felt the need to comment on schoolmates of the opposite sex I knew well and reported about them to our mother. But at the same time, she conspired with us to cover our backs. Once, I was “on a date” with this boy at home when my best girlfriend stopped by. My old nanny put on a show of talking to her in a loud voice, holding her off, which bought time for the boy to escape through the back door.

  There was another time when she pulled me behind the door and told me conspiratorily that she’d dreamed that so-and-so became my boyfriend; from then on I ran off any time I saw him. In any case, she was interested in these sorts of things, somewhat innocent and yet, to a certain degree, betraying human natural desires.

  Now that I was in misty Yangzhou, the past regained its color and emotional ties. I even thought that Shanghai’s concrete jungle was made softer, graced with flair by the customs of these people from Yangzhou. This was precisely why I wrote Fu Ping.

  Midway through the novel, Fu Ping is going to see her uncle, and she is about to enter the Yangzhou community in which he lives—but where should I have her go? An experience from ten years earlier leaped out of my memories. It was during the early 1990s, when some friends from Beijing came to Shanghai for a full-length television documentary on the Chinese population problem. It was midsummer, and I was taking a break from writing, so I went with them to visit different spots.

  For one of them we followed the sanitation workers on a motorized garbage scow on the Suzhou River. It was a picturesque day. Life on a trash-filled boat wasn’t as filthy and harsh as we had imagined. The deck was painted red and was so clean it sparkled. Everything was scrubbed spotless; you could even see the wood grain in the legs of the small stools.

  After the garbage was loaded onto the boat, it was covered by a sheet of canvas, white from repeated washings, and then tied down at all four corners. As the boat sailed along the Suzhou River, we passed through the narrow riverways squeezed between high-rise buildings; then the river opened up as we moved on. The concrete riverbanks were replaced by soft muddy slopes, and above those slopes were lush green crops and dense groves of trees; even the water gradually became clearer.

  Some of the boats coming our way were also garbage scows; they all shouted out greetings as they passed. Women were sitting barefoot on the deck and sewing on that beautiful day. The laboring life does, in fact, have real charm.

  Those sanitation workers, all from Subei, regardless of gender, had muscular bodies that could move nimbly on a cramped, rocking boat. They paused when they saw me because they hadn’t expected to see a woman onboard. After a quick discussion among themselves, one of them ran off and brought back another woman from the team who was to look after my safety. She threw a life jacket over me, grabbed my hand, and never released it, not even for a second. Her solid palm and artless smile contained a simple, direct tenderness. Afterward, I had lunch in their dining hall. The food had strong flavors: the stewed meat melted in my mouth, the fish was fried to a golden yellow, and the soup had the consistency of condensed milk, which suited the villagers’ sense of abundance.

  So I let Fu Ping go there.

  I wanted a downpour at the end of the novel. Let this city soak in w
ater, become crystal clear, and have the lotus flowers bloom. In the chaotic changing of times, normal life remains unchanged, and in normalcy lies a simple harmony, arranged based on the reasonable needs of human nature, producing strength for generations to carry on.

  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.