Levi Huang | forthesonorous

warehouse of grievances: a forgiveness essay

“陌生的人的礼貌才叫礼貌 . 熟悉的人的礼貌叫做生分.”

For strangers, it is politesse. For those closest, it is assumed.

A great kindness cannot be expressed in words, but most be expressed through the body’s actions. In Chinese culture, one does not say ‘thank you’ or ‘forgive me’ to those whom one considers closest.

Instead, a filial daughter boils the flesh of her forearm to cure her ailing mother, wears the bruise to sedate her father, writes a story to sate her hunger. Each grievance is sampled, collected, and bottled into the finest of wares – in amber flasks and brown jugs and ten gallon drums, exported in oak barrels.

They are her livelihood.

i. silence

Gender in Mandarin Chinese is a covert category with few surface markings. Grammatical gender is present through use of radicals - 亻 for male/human and 女 for female, but Chinese is not a gendered language in the conventional sense.

Let’s start with the differences between two Chinese sentences:

“他娶了她.” (He married her.)

“她嫁了他.” (She married him.)

The English verb “to marry” splits in translation. That is, to provide a corresponding amount of information in Chinese as “he married her” or “she married him,” the verb attached to the male subject is distinct from the verb attached to the female subject. For a woman, this verb is 嫁 (jia4), which may be defined as leaving to the man (thus creating a new home). For a man, the equivalent verb is 娶 (qu3), which may be defined as taking in of the wife. These two verbs are only used in the context of marriage. The choice of the one of these two verbs not only expresses the action-event of marriage, but also presupposes the gender of subject and direct object. Whorf says, “[grammatical patterns such as gender] attempt to say how experience is to be segmented, what experience is to be called ‘one’ and what ‘several.’” In this way, Chinese reflects and reinforces the fundamentally different ways that a man and a woman experience marriage, and thus, long-term partnership.

But why is the Chinese verb ‘to marry’ distinct? Is it the magnitude of import Chinese society places on the event? And if it is, then surely there is an equivalent for divorce.

There is an ancient term for divorce: 休妻, which translates to ‘terminate the wife.’ Specific legislation during the Tang Dynasty regulated this termination. Seven legitimate reasons a man could divorce his wife included:

Disrespect toward her husband’s parents.
Inability to give birth to a son.
Committing an affair.
Jealousy by the wife.
Developing a serious illness.
Gossiping.
Thievery.

But there were three reasons that a man could not divorce his wife:

She did not have a family to go back to.
She may not be divorced for the three years she is in mourning for her mother or father.
If the husband comes into money and he wants a new wife.

However, even if one of the above conditions are met, the husband could still divorce his wife if she had an affair or developed a serious illness. Unsurprisingly, there is no phrase for ‘terminate the husband.’

Traditional Chinese idioms support this expectation of wifehood: ‘a married-out daughter is like spilt water,’ advises a daughter to become part of the husband’s family, and like spilt water, she is not to return to the original household.

And yet, we are estranged from my paternal family. My father’s sisters believe that my mother married him for his wealth. My father’s most gracious compromise: that he no longer demands that my mother visit his family when we return to Taiwan. My aunts talk loudly about her disrespect. Does he make excuses for her?

My mother is the reason my father never returned to Taiwan. She does not know this. She is the reason he carved his soul into thirds, one wound tightly to a professorship at an American university, one buried in the childhood fields outside Taipei, and the last one mounted in his lonely Shanghai apartment.

My mother’s courage: opposite my father, legs crossed, arms folded over her chest. She turns away to wipe her tears. He berates her parenting and her silence, his jowls swinging with each accusation. His eyes bulge (he has a thyroid condition) and he is hoarse, petulant. She makes dinner for us afterward. Their marriage is a choice stretched raw and thin between diametrically opposed personalities, daring one another to admit defeat. Daring one another to speak honestly.

When we were younger, my brother and I went in my mother’s place to pay respect to my paternal family. An elaborate brass incense holder on a black lacquer table, its insides filled to the shoulder with soft gray soot. On the wall, portraits of my paternal great-great grandparents, great grandparents, and grandparents, all dead. I bow three times, knees locked, and insert the three joss sticks into the central incense burner.

ii. withheld

In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army overtook the capital city of Nanjing. Chinese soldiers were immediately rounded up, tortured, and executed by the thousands. At their discretion, Japanese soldiers brutalized, robbed, and finally murdered nearly half of remaining civilians. Over 20,000 women were systematically gang-raped and murdered. This became known as the Rape of Nanjing. In August of 1945, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally under the Potsdam Treaty. By December of 1945, over one million Japanese troops had been repatriated.

My ah-gong grew up in a small village in Lian Hua county, Jiang Xi province. In 1945, the village was small, the soil was red. Chili peppers were an entire dish. Ah-gong was fifteen-years-old.

It was spring when the Japanese marched through the village.

Mid-morning, he ran on thin strips of stacked rocks that demarcated different claims of rice paddies. Tiny green spring shoots peeked through red sludge. Long, thin stretches of domesticated earth ran in crooked lines of rice up to the steep incline of the Lu Mountains. Somewhere at the base of these mountains lay a footpath for the young women who spent their days harvesting wild sweet potatoes.

He struggled against the rocky terrain, slipping on wet rock and falling into wind-blown saplings and brambles. Eventually, he heard a neighbor’s urgent whisper, “Jian ping. Here! They’re over here!”

He assured his mother that he was unharmed and then they waited. His chest was tight and the elderly wept quietly through the night. The sky deepened from indigo to pitch black. Small clusters of families sat together, warming themselves by body heat. Ah-gong woke up when his brother shook him, “The soldiers are gone. They marched through the village. I’m going with some of the other men to make sure it’s safe.”

Guided by the faint lights in the village center, ah-gong and four young men slipped back into the village. The houses on the outskirts were mostly empty. The acrid stink of plastic and wood intensified near the heart of the town. Run down plaster houses with overgrown yards lined the city streets. The school was a beacon, its corridors still lit a bright fluorescent white. Silhouettes of young men hunched over their readings on the upper floors.

He slowed as they neared the dormitory complex.

A young girl lay on the side of road. Her neck broken, head propped on stone wall. She wore a long sleeved blue shirt. It was torn at the collar. Her left cheek bruised a deep purple. Her pants and undergarments ripped from her body. Her right hand pressed tightly against a wound in her stomach. Blood dried down her inner thighs. Her eyes were closed.

Today, ah-gong is 86-year-old. He is five feet tall with a growing paunch. Every morning he walks around the apartment complex and practices calisthenics as the sun rises. He is bald except for wisps of grey and white around his ears. He has a bulbous, veiny nose from eating only chili peppers for years. When he drinks alcohol, the veins glow blue and pulsate. He keeps his left pinky fingernail long so he can pick his teeth and dig around his hairy ears. He reads philosophy every night, paints calligraphy semi-professionally, and gives his seven grandchildren fat red envelopes filled with money every Chinese New Year. To this day, ah-gong refuses to eat Japanese food.

iii. generous

This one is difficult to describe. It’s provocative, romantic, unsettling. Not quite mature, yet – I would wait at least six more turns. I can show you the beginning, though. Young boys are all the same, but girls are smart. Girls are smart, aren’t they?

He is ten and I am twelve. His hand lingers on my inner thigh, inches up my pants. A hungry smile flashes across his face, then vanishes. My hand slides down his chest. His moves over my underwear. I look at the ceiling. My fingers linger on the hem of his jeans. I feel his cock through the denim. His fingers run through my pubic hair.

“Bad touch,” I catch his wrist.

I want him to be mine. I want him to stop touching me. I want him to touch me the way I want him to touch me. I let it slip to his mother that we play this game, that he has touched me. She cries.

Shame distorts his face. For years, he does not know how to approach me, touch me, talk to me. Shame distorts the way he remembers running his hand down my shirt, the way he speaks about boyhood. I feel nothing.

He is nineteen and I am twenty-one. He says, “I am not the kind of person to harm someone. I know about boundaries and consent and I take ownership of this, but I will never do this again. This was an accident.”

I say, “It’s not your fault.” Because I have nothing else to offer.

iv. lodged between heart and throat

forgive

forgive them all!

forgive

1 "大恩不言谢." 大恩不言谢. 国际日报, 29 Apr. 2015. Web. 03 Dec. 2016.

2 Ma, Y. W., and Joseph S. M. Lau. "The Dedicated Lover." Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations. New York: Columbia UP, 1978. 220. Print.

3 Farris, C. S. "Gender and Grammar in Chinese: With Implications for Language Universals." Modern China 14.3 (1988): 277-308. Web.

4 Chinese is a logographic writing system, wherein some related characters share a graphical component (a radical) that group the character to a larger classification. For example, words associated with water typically present with the radical 氵, such as 沉 (chen2), meaning sink or submerge.

5 In Chinese, there does not exist a proper way of explaining homosexual marriage: a man cannot take in a man, nor can he leave to another man’s home.

6 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, and John B. Carroll. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings. Cambridge, MA: Technology of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1956. Print.

7 "古代休妻的「七出三不去」指的是什麼？." 古代休妻的「七出三不去」指的是什麼？. N.p., 25 June 2016. Web. 27 Nov. 2016.

8 Bao, Jiemin. "Gendered Politics of Migration and Marriage." Marital Acts: Gender, Sexuality, and Identity among the Chinese Thai Diaspora. Honolulu: U of Hawaii, 2005. 47. Print.

9 Margolin, Jean-Louis. "Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 1937-38 : A Reappraisal." Margolin, Jean-Louis. French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, Dec. 2006. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.

10 History.com. “Japan Accepts Potsdam Terms, Agrees to Unconditional Surrender.” history.com (2009): n.pag. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.

11 Tsao Wen-yen, ed. Chinese Yearbook 1944-1945. Chungking: Council of International Affairs, 1946, p. 373.

12 Grandfather in Taiwanese. In this case, the maternal grandfather.

Levi Huang is a rising junior (’18) from Fayetteville, Arkansas. She graduated from Fayetteville High School and attended Kunstschool Genk with an emphasis in web and media design. A chemistry and English (creative writing concentration) double major, she also deeply appreciates 20th century Russian literature, silence, postmodern aesthetics, and overripe peaches. She plans to pursue a career in formulation chemistry while simultaneously writing a Big Emotional Novel.