Learn Chinese with Me

It was an elderly female judge in a black rope, urbane and benign, and she went:

“……The contract of marriage is most solemn and is not to be entered into lightly, but thoughtfully and seriously with a deep realization of its obligations and responsibilities.

……….no other words of mine or any other person truly marry each of you to the other. That is done when you exchange your promises and commit yourselves to this marriage and each other.

By entering into this marriage, you are pledging yourselves to a lifetime in which each will enrich the life of the other. You will be partners standing together to cushion the difficulties of life. Rejoice in your partner’s graces. Nurture your marriage carefully and watch it grow gracefully.

…….To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as you both shall live?

……You have joined yourselves in solemn matrimony. May you strive all your lives to meet this commitment with the same love and devotion that you now feel. For love is truly the greatest gift we are given to share: love’s compassion is the glory of life. Delight in each other’s company and never take the other for granted, for you are destined to enjoy the blending of your two lives.”

And like this, a marriage was made.

The word for “marriage” in Chinese is “婚姻”.

“婚” originally means the woman’s family, and “姻” the man’s family. So marriage, in the Chinese sense from ancient times till this day still, means the uniting of the two families rather than the two individuals.

And it’s two very different things for the two families. The woman’s family loses a daughter while the man’s family gains one: for traditionally the bride goes to live with the man in the man’s family. There are even two different words for “marry” for the bride and the groom. The bride “嫁”: that she leaves her birth home and goes to the man’s which would be her new home hence. The groom “娶”: that he fetches a woman to his home to be his wife.

“结婚” is the word for “to get married”. “结”, with the silk radical on the left, means to “tie the knot”, and “婚”, the woman’s family.

Is it good to throw off traditions then? Or do these traditions and customs define who we are and where we come from? Modern China certainly is a strange country. Mao was one to smash feudalism, old values and old traditions. Yet after him, and maybe because of him, nation and family become ever so dominating that there is hardly any space for the “individual”.

Then oughtn’t our past, our tradition free us instead of constrain us? And isn’t “the human”, “the individual’s” responsibility to use everything to strength themselves? That they utilize everything to the end of their strength and happiness?

It’s a more complex matter than could be sorted out neat and clear. Luckily we could have a hundred and more ideas of ourselves, didn’t that eight-year-old little girl, with her blond hair and hazel eyes and children’s smile and children’s sensitiviy, say that she is a little bit Chinese because her uncle lives in China?

And if you personify the city San Francisco, you could say that she is so many things, and she has gone through an awful lot, then precisely because of these, she gains her strength and acquires her charm.

So so in my red dress I listened solemnly to the woman judge’s words: “to have and to hold from this day forward……..love is truly the greatest gift we are given to share……”, a line from an ancient Chinese poem came to my mind: “执子之手，与子偕老”. And, perhaps a little naively, I believe that love made this marriage and millions and millions more and that to tie that knot is to say, with all the seriousness and solemnity love demands, to the person in front of you: I love you everyday, oh everyday and more.

It was a queer feeling to meet a city, to walk on a street the first times, to pronounce the names that were foreign (Sutro Baths, what’s Sutro? Is it Japanese? Sutter Street, but what does “Sutter” mean? ), it was odd to be out of your own familiar setting and see, for the first time, strange houses and trees that have been there long before you came, to see people who have been living their life all the while here without you giving one thought of them until now.

I did this nearly a decade ago with New York City. That was a more intense feeling because I had come all the way from the other side of the world.

This time, I came from the other side of the coast to, San Francisco, the Old Golden Mountain: 旧金山。

It’s very much like being born again. Though unlike a new baby, you are conscious of yourself and the fact that the strange world around you has long been there before you came.

There are moments, as you walk in a new city where you have made absolute no marks, no stories, there are moments of void and the feeling of a ghost, a shadow. For it is the illusions, the attachments, the connections, the stories and memories we made and we had, it is these illusions make a place and ourselves real: the students you have had so many lessons with are living in this or that building in Upper East Side. The Q train you take often has hectic schedules on weekends. And after all these years, you still don’t remember that B never runs on weekends. You have walked Prospect Park so many times that you feel that you know every bench and every tree. The Park Slope Food Coop you go to once a week and get all your provisions, after all these years, feel like an old and comforting friend. You have a friend living at one side of the park, on the other side lives another who you no longer talk to. You had your third date with this person at BAM, and after you moved, you used to walk across the street to watch a movie there on a Friday night, alone or with a friend.

You have made your marks there, if only for yourself and the few people that know you, you have had good moments and bad, and in this way, by making your stories in that city you claimed it yours, and you could say, I love it or I hate it because it is yours.

Now I’m at the starting point again, to make new marks and create new stories in a new city.

It makes me laugh whenever I read or hear San Francisco described as “vibrant”. If you come from New York, there is nothing “vibrant” about San Francisco. It’s very much a sleepy town where there is a good chance that you talk a walk on a sunny afternoon and see nobody out on the streets. At the first glance, nothing seems to be happening here.

But it has its quiet charms. It was an amazement to me to walk a few blocks from our guest house at Outer Sunset to be on a, what seemed to me, wild beach. The sea roars, white sea gulls, black crows and groups of tiny birds I don’t know the name of are constantly in your presence. You know on the other side of the ocean it’s Asia, it’s China, though you could only see the part that meets the horizon. It is possible in this nature-dominated presence to, momentarily, forget about human activities, forget about commercials and doings, this ocean, these tides have been here millions of years, and I am a passing moment. Always, after a walk on the beach that is never crowded, the problems and troubles I am having in life become smaller and less important, and I would go back to my life, only a ten-minute walk away, with a brave heart, recharged.

And the people here, on average, are cordial. It seems that they don’t have to fight for their survival like a savage as you would in New York. Almost every day, one person or another would say “Good Morning” to me with a face as happy as a child’s. Though it’s such a small act, it always makes me feel good, it makes me feel welcomed. They are happy that you are there: their faces seem to say. They assume that you are a good person, the way children assume adults are.

Why are the people here content and happy? That, for people from the East Coast, must be a mystery and suspicious. Don’t they know that life is hard and anguish absolute and there are many disappointments?

Old Golden Mountain 旧金山, it’s the gold rush, it’s the silver strike, it’s a bet, a railroad, it’s millionaires’ mansions, it’s an earthquake and a big fire, it’s the courage and will to rebuild, it’s the native who eats acorns at the shore, it’s Spanish, it’s Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Italian…, it’s tech, the driverless robot cars. It’s gay, it’s straight, it’s bi and pan….. It’s San Francisco where it never gets cold, and nature, forever at your doorstep, has a way to calm your mood and tranquil your being.