丢脸 (diūliǎn): losing face
America, 19--
Memories were odd, little contraptions; not unlike a music box designed to play the most mismatched tunes at random times. One never remembered what they expected, nor when they expected.
When Meng recalled her immigration to America, she couldn’t remember the date, her age at the time, the plane they took or the airport they arrived in, the tedious customs process or the wearisome drive to their minute apartment.
She remembered two things: the smell of freshly made pork dumplings drifting through the air like a calling to her empty stomach and her father’s words.
“It’s a good investment,” he’d said. “Now, Meng can have a better life.”
At the time, Meng had barely understood the concept of better, except in relation to candy, where she knew that “better” meant more. So she’d looked up at her father, lifted her arms, and asked him to explain what he meant.
Her father had knelt on the ground and told her, “We gave up everything to come here, to America, so you can go to a good school and do great things.” He patted her head and continued, “Don’t lose face, okay? I know you won’t disappoint us. You’re a smart girl.”
Meng hadn’t quite grasped the meaning of losing face either; at least, not in conjunction. She comprehended the words “lose” and “face” individually, but not strung together. If her father didn’t want her to lose her face, she simply wouldn’t.
1998
Meng remained stationary at her desk, methodically working through a set of math problems. Outside, other children played tag and jumped rope, their squeals reverberating through the schoolyard.
A wadded clump of paper hit her hand, knocking the base of her pencil off-kilter so it slashed across her homework, painting a twisting streak of graphite.
“Hey! What did you do that for?” Meng demanded, glaring at the offender, Kaitlyn, an eccentric girl who’d taken a liking to her and enjoyed besieging Meng with school supplies.
“You should come out and play.”
Meng sighed. “I have to finish this.”
“Why?” Kaitlyn asked, wide-eyed and innocent, and completely unfathoming. “You’re already so good at math.”
“I can still get better.”
Kaitlyn harrumphed, crossing her arms and pouting, but she didn’t press further. She set her head on the desk. “Can you come to my house on Saturday? My mom said we can have a playdate.”
Meng hesitated, pencil braced against the paper, doodling exaggerated faces and animals in the margins. “I’ll ask my mom.” She continued to draw long after Kaitlyn had left.
True to her word, Meng confronted her parents after dinner, but as always, their answer was no.
The next day, dejectedly, she gave Kaitlyn their answer.
Kaitlyn smiled and said it was alright, as she’d said several times before, but Meng saw the bitter disappointment in her smile. After that, she didn’t bother asking Meng to hang out.
And so Meng sat at her desk, scribbling on her papers, preoccupied with her only friend: education.
2004
Once in a blue moon, in the sweet summer before Meng’s vacations were consumed by summer school courses and summer internships, her parents flew them back to China where they stayed with her grandparents.
They lived in Nanjing, not in the bustling city, but closer to the fringes, where it was quieter, warm at night, and mosquitoes buzzed as Meng ate her ice cream, laughing with her grandmother over the hot pot they’d just had. The sun was beginning to set, its light softly illuminating the trees and bushes, and the streets were still busy, packed full of street food vendors and other tourists.
They walked back to her grandparents’ apartment and ascended the three flights of stairs. When they entered, Meng took off her windbreaker and hung it up in the closet.
Her grandmother pinched her belly fat and said, “You should eat less.”
Meng tugged her shirt down, embarrassed. “I don’t eat that much.”
“Your grandmother is right,” said her grandfather, from where he was sitting on the couch. “And it doesn’t matter how much you eat, as long as you exercise and stay fit.”
“I—I don’t have time,” she stuttered. It sounded like a lame excuse, but it was, sadly, true. Meng couldn’t find the time to exercise between struggling for the highest grade in all her classes and doing several extracurriculars while attempting to maintain some semblance of sanity. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to sleep now.” Meng feigned a headache, pressing her hand to her forehead. She stumbled off to another room, an uneasy feeling jabbing at her chest like a hot tong.
In the bedroom she shared with her parents, Meng asked her dad, “Do I really need to lose weight?”
He patted her on the shoulder, sorry and sympathetic. “They’re just trying to help you. They know how hard it was to get married so they don’t want you to suffer. It’s what’s best for you.”
Meng laid down in bed, pulled her blankets up to her neck, and went to sleep, trying to ignore the nagging sensation of humiliation and worthlessness that plagued her.
2005
Meng waited with bated breath at her desk. The teacher was returning their tests from midterms. She sat there, and waited, and bounced her leg anxiously, and tried not to let the stress overtake her.
When the piece of paper landed on her desk, she snatched it quickly, intent on safeguarding it from prying eyes until she’d confirmed that the mark was satisfactory.
She flipped the page.
93
It was decent, she supposed, but nowhere near as high as she’d hoped. The midterm counted for a large chunk of her mark, so Meng wanted to raise her current course mark of 94 by a slight margin. This would only drag her down. Distantly, she wondered if asking for a retest was possible and whether or not asking for one would make her seem snobby to the teacher.
All around Meng, her other classmates were chatting happily about a recent album release and some upcoming sporting event which she didn’t know much about, their tests long forgotten.
She desperately wanted to know the others’ marks, so she could have a scale to measure herself with. After all, if 93 was the highest mark in the class, then, suddenly, it wasn’t so bad anymore.
A few seats behind her sat Wuying, who was already approaching Meng to ask about her mark. They consistently had the highest grades in the class so it wasn’t unusual for them to compare. Moments later, Wuying was asking, “How did you do?”
“Not bad, I guess,” Meng said, shrugging in an off-handed way to make it seem like she didn’t care. “I got a ninety-three.”
“Oh, I have a ninety-two.”
Relief flooded Meng’s system like a drug. Satisfied that she had a higher mark, she then went about reassuring the other. “That’s a great mark!”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Yours is better though.”
“Oh, but they’re both really good,” Meng said, even though seconds earlier she’d been disappointed over the exact same grade.
Wuying pursed her lips. “Meng, how much did you study?”
She’d spent most of the night before at her desk but gone to sleep at three or four in the morning (Meng couldn’t remember exactly anymore, though the answers to the exam were still fresh in her mind). A week or so in advance, Meng had started studying, a long time for such an abysmally low grade. “Oh, not that much. Just a little bit the night before.”
“Me too. I mean, it’s only the midterm, right?” There was a quiver in her voice, and Meng could see the bags under her eyes. “So I just studied a few days in advance. Thank god we got good marks!”
Meng nodded. “Studying is so annoying, I just do the bare minimum.”
Wuying yawned and agreed and they parted ways, having compared their marks.
A couple of months later, Meng walked into the classroom for the last time to take the exam. She had pulled an all-nighter and by then, she would have resembled a punched panda if not for the concealer she applied.
“Did you study a lot?” Wuying asked, seemingly uncaring.
Meng tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “No, not at all,” she lied. “I only studied a bit last night.”
“I didn’t study at all,” Wuying said. There were deep circles under her eyes and when she sat down at her desk, she stumbled a bit, dizzy and disoriented.
2006
A stack of papers sat unfinished at her desk where Meng was wholly focused on her laptop. She chewed her lip as she filled out the application.
Why do you want to join our program?
A thousand answers flooded Meng’s head: the prestige, because it’s the hardest program to get into, because your university has a good reputation; the money, because of the job opportunities it provides, because of the salary I could make after; the pressure, because it’s what my parents want, because it’s what other people expect.
But she settled on an unsettling answer: I don’t want to.
Slowly, she looked behind her. Stacked in a corner on top of each other, neat and unassuming, tucked behind a cabinet to draw as little attention to them as possible were her paintings. A portrait of her brother she’d done for his eleventh birthday, a painting of the night sky from when they went camping in August, a canvas filled with multi-coloured sunflowers that Meng had painted during the summer when she sat outside on the porch, looked at the sunset and felt compelled to capture the kaleidoscope of colours on canvas.
Meng swivelled in her chair, facing her computer again. She typed up the rest of her application, dredging up the last of her energy to seem enthusiastic in her words.
As Meng was shutting down her computer, her mom came into her room. “Hey sweetie, are you done with your applications?”
“Yes, I submitted applications to every school we talked about last week.” She stood up and walked over to the door.
“Good.” Her mother came closer, smoothing a stray hair and patting her head. “I know these past weeks have been hard on you. We have too, sometimes. But everything we do, we do for you.” She enveloped Meng in a tight hug. “We want the best for you.”
“I know,” said Meng, hugging her back. She stared at the stack of paintings in the corner of her room briefly, then tore her eyes away. “I know, Mom. I won’t let you down.”
