Beautiful Country: A Memoir

Qian’s parents decided that their nine-year-old daughter was now old enough to find her way home after school. She felt very grown-up to be taking the subway by herself each day. She enjoyed people-watching on the train, but she was also wary of some of the people she encountered. It would be a long time before she felt comfortable enough to read on the train. Boarding the train each day was a large man with a walking stick—Qian quickly realized he was a seeing person pretending to be blind. The man sidled up to young attractive women and manipulated them with his fake disability. Qian saw his behavior as a trapdoor, one of many to fall into.

On multiple occasions, men exposed themselves to her on the street and on the subway. Qian always felt as if she had done something bad or shameful to prompt their behavior. She became increasingly cautious and worrisome. On one occasion, a man in a yellow and white jacket watched her on the train as she read a book. Qian could sense his gaze before she saw him, so she scanned the car without taking her face away from the pages of her book. The way the man stared at her made her uncomfortable, so she got off at the next platform and onto a different car. The man followed her into the new car. Desperate to escape him, Qian waited by the door and slipped out at the last possible instance. She then stood on the platform to catch the next train. She changed trains and crossed streets multiple times on the way home. Although she never saw the man again, the memory of him watching and following her stayed with her every day.

Ma Ma’s mental health was deteriorating. Ba Ba stayed away from home, and Ma Ma confided in Qian that she thought Ba Ba might be having an affair. Once, when Qian arrived at her father’s workplace after school, she saw a woman nearly sitting in Ba Ba’s lap. Still, Qian reassured her mother that there was nothing to worry about. On one afternoon, after following up on an offer to do some modeling that turned out to be a scam, Ma Ma made her way home and dodged the subway fare to save money as usual. But this time, a police officer caught her and gave her a ticket. Ma Ma paid for the fare and waited for the next train. As she stood on the platform, Ma Ma felt compelled to jump onto the tracks. Ma Ma told Qian that her daughter was the only thing that stopped her from following through the suicide attempt. Qian internalized the guilt of her mother’s depression and anxiety.

After the incident on the subway platform, Ma Ma made changes. She studied for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exam, which would allow her to apply to graduate school, after learning from a friend about some schools that wouldn’t ask too many questions about citizenship status. She would be pursuing a degree in computer science as she had always intended. Before the Wang family left China, Lao Ye had given Qian a keychain with an inscription in Chinese: “Feet on solid ground” (158). This became Qian’s mantra throughout life, to focus only on the next thing in front of her, taking everything one step at a time. This is what Ma Ma was doing too, and they celebrated when Ma Ma passed the TOEFL.

Ma Ma took on a new job doing office work in a warehouse. Her new boss Henry Yee was Ma Ma’s most frequent subject of discussion at the dinner table. Henry Yee was racist and mistreated her and the other workers. He treated Ma Ma like a servant, sending her for his tea. The other woman in the office was also Chinese, and she was in love with Henry Yee. Qian took to calling the woman “Ai Ah Yi,” meaning “Auntie Love” (161). When Ma Ma took Qian to work with her, Qian watched as her mother spat in Henry Yee’s mug before pouring tea over the top. Ai Ah Yi worked quietly at her computer all day with few breaks. At one point, she asked Qian to approach her and asked how old the young girl was, remarking that her son “might have been nine, too” (165). 

One evening, Ma Ma returned home late. Ai Ah Yi had collapsed at the warehouse long after everyone had gone home. Ma Ma knew she must call 911 right away, but she worried about men in uniforms and the ever-present possibility of deportation. While she waited for the paramedics to arrive, Ma Ma cleared her things, sure that she would be found out when they arrived. But the paramedics only asked questions about Ai Ah Yi. When Ai Ah Yi eventually opened her eyes, they asked her who the president was, but Ai Ah Yi could only respond, “Henry Yee.” She’d had a stroke. Ma Ma visited Ai Ah Yi in the hospital and saw that she’d had no other visitors—only a vase of flowers from Henry Yee. After Ai Ah Yi died, Ma Ma placed all her papers into a box and put it on a shelf. Qian asked whether Ai Ah Yi had a son. Ma Ma did not think so.

After Ai Ah Yi’s death, Qian had a recurring dream in which she and her parents were being chased by uniformed men. They saw a fence and ran toward it, but Ma Ma and Ba Ba fell behind. As the uniformed men grabbed her parents, Qian realized the fence was peppered with human heads. Then the men and her parents disappeared, and the heads in the fence popped onto Qian.

Over time, Qian settled into a kind of normality in Mei Guo. She realized in fourth grade that she was smarter than her teacher Ms. Glass, which gave her a new sense of power. Her home life had also achieved regularity and routine. When her mother came home from work, she asked Qian about her day and shared her own stories. Ba Ba also asked Qian about her day but did not readily provide details about his own. At dinner, her parents often fought. Qian was happy when they refocused their attention on criticizing her; at least then, they were on the same side. They told Qian that she was fat and ugly, but also that she should finish all her food. Qian faced these critiques with mixed emotions. Only later did Wang realize that what they perceived as fatness was actually bloat from malnutrition. 

Weekends and holidays were spent with two other families who had moved to the United States from China. Ma Ma and Ba Ba remarked that they would not have spent time with these people in China, but, in the US, they could not be so picky. The families lived similarly to the Wangs, and each had one son. The adults mostly ignored Qian, and the families passed time watching Beijing Ren Zai Niu Yue, a show featuring immigrants who struggled to make it in America. Qian took the show’s family’s eventual success as a sign that she and her family could also be successful. She saw that money was the key to that success, so she decided that she would grow up to become a lawyer. She had read about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall at the library, and she knew she wanted to help immigrant families like her own. When she shared her plan with the adults in her life, including her father and her fifth grade teacher, they treated it with indifference and laughter. Qian decided to keep her plan to herself.