By Sophie Liu-Othmer
       
It was dark with only a few distant stars in the sky.  Shadows of mountains protruded into the sky like menacing ghosts.  My father was pulling our wooden cart.  I could hear my father’s breath in front and his feet stumping through the mud.  The wooden axle on the two wheels made a sharp squeak, like an excited mouse.
 
Mommy murmured from under thick covers, “Darling, move closer to me.”

I was wrapped in a black cotton coat. I sat at the head of the cart to block wind for Mommy.  She had just given birth to my younger brother. 

Dou Dou (Struggle Struggle) was born on January 4, 1969 in the Shan Xi (Mountain West) province of China. Our great leader Chairman Mao had decided to start a political movement called Cultural Revolution two years before.  During the first stage of this movement, the goal was to remove power from any bourgeois leaders in the country. The national slogans were “Suspect Everything,” “Down with all of them,” and “Civil War,” to turn a “bourgeois dictatorship to proletarian dictatorship.” All was to ensure that China not move toward capitalism.

There was chaos in the local Teachers Training School where Mommy and my father worked.  No one knew who would be accused as an antirevolutionary the next day.  The revolutionary who was in charge today could be a leader of the bourgeois class the next day and deserved to be “trampled on by a thousand feet.”

Mommy lay on the cart in a pool of sweat and old blood under a pile of damp quilts.  Cold wind buffeted my face.  Carcasses of harvested corn stacks sporadically covered the fields on both sides of the narrow dirt road.  For some reason I knew I needed to be very obedient that night.  I was only four, but I could tell something out of the norm had happened.  I had seen pigs slaughtered for The Chinese New Year; bellies cut open, insides yanked out.  I now recognize that same steamy bloody odor.  A protective instinct rose in me.  I made sure the quilts were shut tight, so wind would not get to Mommy, who was so dependent on me now.  My father asked if I was falling asleep.  I said no. 

He sighed, and said, “Mommy didn’t plan to have a little brother for you.  We actually went in a few months ago to have an abortion, but the hospital was out of power.”

Sweat ran down his face and neck.  I felt like crying.  I was scared of this darkness around me and Mommy’s helplessness.  My father’s tenderness only intensified my fear.  We had started out early that day, but we still had more than 10 miles to go, and the road had turned bad.  Whoosh, whoosh, my father’s broken shoes made such a big sound in the silent night.  Wolves howled at a distance.  There were large pot holes on the dirt road.  Ruts from previous carts were treacherous.  My father had a strap on his shoulder to help keep balance.  He pulled and pulled.

Rain turned into snow later that night.   Flakes floated like flower buds scattered by a fairy.  Very gently and elegantly they touched the old dirty cotton warmers on my feet.  My whole body was covered with a thin shell of ice.  Icicles drooped from my eyebrows.  In the distance, I could see the lights of town.

Mommy was so weak that night and so helpless.  At that moment I swore I’d never cause any pain for my parents, and when I grew up I would protect them forever.  Now I am an adult with a happy family.  No worries about food and shelter.  Did I keep my promise?

I see images of misery from China displayed, reported, and portrayed in American media. They are chosen to deliver a message of suffering, and are used to draw sympathy and charity.  Are there other purposes? To contrast that misery with American comfort, so Americans will feel lucky that they are not one of those unfortunates? 

For me, those images are representations of my parents as I witnessed on that stark night.  They delivered a different message to me.  Suffering? Yes.  But there is no self loathing and no plea for help.  In addition, there are also sublimity, courage, and humility.  That night instilled in me a profound respect and love for my parents and millions of others like them.  I don’t think the American media is conscious of the full implications of these images when they decided to use them.  A respect for those people is often missing and ignored. 

My younger brother is the fifth and the last of our siblings.  He is now an accomplished film maker.  He has made five films, all winning some sort of award, with one winning both the Best Director and Best film in the Tribeca Film Festival.  His most recent film was a finalist for the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.  Mommy died at an early age of 56.  Perhaps she can rest in peace now, knowing her hardship that night had not been wasted.

On August 15, 1987, I came to the U.S. on a student visa. Now I am 45 and hold an American passport. Being a Chinese immigrant has been a bittersweet experience. A Chinese would describe the feeling as having tipped over a five spice (sour, sweet, bitter, hot, numb) bottle. Among the mixture of emotions, one stands out as betrayal, and subsequently anger.  It was detected during our dinner conversations with my American husband and two children over issues involving China and Sino-American relationship.  I often feel very protective of China.  So much that I could be described as a mother tiger.  Fiercely defensive, hair standing up, teeth showing, claws shining with sharpened nails. 

I have worked hard to be an American and I am an American now. But when people I want to be with have no respect for people like my parents, I feel it is such a betrayal to my memories of them.  It is as if I had left them out there in the open, vulnerable on the cold and desolate mountain road. 

As a Chinese American, I realize I live on a margin in this society.  I don’t mind yielding glory and spotlight to the mainstream, but to sell out my parents is not my plan.  Choosing to live in duality requires reconciliation between my Chinese past and American present.  I have reduced salt and soy sauce in my cooking and increased diary in my diet.  From walking on a dirt road in China to driving a SUV in Twin Cities, Minnesota, then reverse to walking and biking, I changed from an obedient ‘good little Chinese girl’ who always respected and believed in authority to a woman whose faith is grounded in hard work, knowledge, and intelligence.  The transformation has been arduous, yet enlightening.  Strangely enough it is my American present that has brought out the Chinese mother tiger inside me.  I will always stand by values of that night.  With integrity, I roar.

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