A Free Life

"Congratulations! You're in charge there?"

"Basically."

Nan went on to describe his need for a waitress and the kind of money that person could make at the Gold Wok, at least two hundred dollars a week, cash, if the business was good. He told her that rent here was very low compared with New York.

"Maybe I should come," Yafang said in a joking voice, which surprised Nan.

"No, I can't pay the kind of wages you're pulling in." He knew that as the hostess she was paid by the hour. Besides, her work at Ding's Dumplings was less demanding.

"Here's the deal-I'll come if you divorce your wife." She giggled.

She sounded like a different person now, flirtatious and carefree, no longer the timid young woman tricked into an adult movie theater and then into bed by Heng Chen, that desperate man. She must be a capable hostess at Ding's Dumplings.

It happened that Yafang had a distant cousin studying somewhere in Georgia (she wasn't sure at which school), whose wife had just come to America from Jiangsu Province. Yafang wondered if his wife might be interested in the job, and gave Nan the phone number.

Then Nan inquired about his former fellow workers and acquaintances in New York. Yafang told him that David Kellman and Maiyu had married last spring, that Chinchin had gone to nursing school at the University of Co

"How about Heng Chen?" Nan paused. "Sorry, I shouldn't have brought up his name."

"That wretch has returned to China." She sounded flat and unemotional.

"Really? What happened to him?"

"He couldn't make it here. Such a loser."

"He got into trouble?"

"No, he had to go back. Maiyu said he was sick of America and he had come just to make money."

"He must've taken back a fortune with him."

"Not at all. He didn't even have enough money to buy gifts for his parents and relatives, so he sold a kidney."

"What? Is that true?"

"Why should I lie to you?" She sounded a little cheerful now. " How much did he get for his kidney?" "Twenty-five thousand dollars."

"I knew his parents often demanded he send them remittances, but I couldn't imagine he'd sell his own organ."

"He's a typical 'small man' and couldn't survive in America. A born coward."

"Still, it must've taken a lot of guts to sell a kidney." Yafang cackled. " Nan, you haven't lost your sense of deadpan humor."

Her remark puzzled Nan, who hadn't meant to be fu

For days Nan thought about the phrase Yafang had used on the phone-"small man"-which was a faddish term that appeared in the Chinese-language newspapers and magazines published in the diaspora. It had been coined a few months earlier by a woman in a scathing article entitled "Let Us Condemn Small Men." She criticized some male Chinese immigrants who, having encased themselves in the past, made no effort to blend into American society. According to her, these "spineless men," unable to adapt to the life here, would vent their spleen on their wives and girlfriends and blame America for their own failure. Under the pretext of patriotism and preserving Chinese culture, they'd refuse to learn anything from other cultures. To them, even American salt was not as salty as Chinese salt. All they knew about America was strip bars, casinos, prostitutes, MBAs, CEOs; they had no friends of other races and refused to learn English. They were like crabs trapped in a vat, striving against one another, but none could get out of it. Some of them, who had lived in this country for more than a decade, still couldn't understand movies like Rain Man, Dances with Wolves, and Peter Pan. They had never visited a museum, and neither would they travel to see Europe or Latin America. They didn't know how many i

Since the publication of that vociferous article in the Global Weekly, there had been heated discussion of the topic. A lot of men were outraged, saying the author, as a compatriot of theirs, should at least have some sympathy for them. They had already been mentally dwarfed and socially handicapped by living in America and by the tremendous struggle they had to wage for survival, so they didn't need her sort of twaddle, which just gave them more stress. Several meetings were held in American and Australian cities to debate the author's views. Many men wrote articles condemning her as a traitor, "a mere banana"-yellow on the outside and white on the inside.

Nan had seen that some of the men had indeed grown feeble and trivial, yet they were all the more megalomaniac. As for himself, he felt he was a better man than before. On the other hand, he knew that most of the labeled men were lonely souls who suffered intensely here. It was said that if a foreigner or immigrant lived in America for five years without family or close friends, the person would develop emotional problems. If one lived here for ten years isolated like that, one would have a mental disorder.

Nowadays it was commonplace for a woman to insult a Chinese man by calling him a "small man." That meant the fellow was a hopeless loser all women should hold in contempt.

14

JANET came and told Pingping that Dave and she had decided to adopt a baby, but that they'd have to wait three or four months before they could get a definite answer from the orphanage in Nanjing. The waiting list was long because lately a lot of American couples had begun to adopt Chinese babies and thus overwhelmed the adoption system there. In the Mitchells' case, Janet and Dave weren't sure whether they should continue to work with their agent or find another way to get a baby sooner. Janet asked Pingping, "Do you have a friend or relative who lives in Nanjing or nearby?"

"I have a cousin in Nantong, in same province. But we are never close because he betray my father in Cultural Revolution to protect himself. He just want to join Communist Party. Why you ask?"

"Dave and I wonder if we can find someone in China who can help us adopt a baby quickly. The regular process will take forever."

"I can ask my cousin, but I don't trust him. Let Nan and I think about this, okay?"