Friday 20 December 2013

I have a friend who… (Taiwan)


I’d found an en suite double room to rent in a 3-bedroom flat.  The son of the old couple (in their 60s) was away at national service, coming home only on the occasional weekend, and the daughter was studying in America, they told me.

One day, I was accompanying my landlady to the market down the road when she said to me, “I have a friend whose daughter has married a foreigner.”  I knew at once she was talking about her own daughter, but decided to go along with it.  (I’m quite good at acting and looking stupid.)  She continued, “My friend is afraid to let people know.”  Why, I asked.  “Because they’ll look down on her.”  I said, “Well, you tell your friend not to be afraid.  There’s no guarantee that a Chinese man will make a good husband.  Besides, if her friends are that kind of people, then they’re not worth being friends with.”  I could feel a palpable relief on her part.

A few weeks later, she came to me with a wad of airmail envelopes, all pre-addressed, saying, “These are from my daughter in America.  I cannot write English, so she sends these, pre-addressed, for me to send off my letters to her.  Can you check if it’s correct?”  I thought, “Surely her daughter ought to know her own address?  Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to tell if an American address was correct or not, America being such a big country and addresses being so specific.”  

I took a look all the same, just to keep her happy.  Everything was correctly spelt as far as I could see, but I noticed that the surname was not right.  Let’s say her name was Wang Mei Ling (Wang being the surname):  the name on the envelope was Mei Ling Simmons.  I said to my landlady, “Everything looks OK, but the surname on the envelope is not Wang but Simmons.”  My landlady said, “Oh, she’s a lodger with a family surnamed Simmons, so I guess she’s used their name to make it easier for the postman.”  

Very odd logic, changing one’s surname (which is ultra-important to the Chinese identity, even more so than one’s personal name) in case the postman got confused.  I then realised why she was showing me the envelopes:  after my open-minded and sympathetic response to her story about “her friend” whose daughter had married a foreigner, this was her way of letting me know her daughter had married an American.


(Taiwan, 1975)

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