Little Soldiers Read online

  Chinese schools are a relative bargain. In China, public schools are managed and funded by an authoritarian government inside a culture that prizes education. It’s also common knowledge that Chinese schools are great with discipline, and I reveled in the idea that someone other than I might toil away daily to imbue our son with self-control and a respect for learning, delivering him home at four p.m. every weekday, a model citizen with manners. Rob wanted to raise our son bilingually; he had studied, lived, and worked on four continents, and learning a second and a third language had served him well in his career.

  We’d heard stories of Chinese teachers who went overboard with authority and Communist Party propaganda seeping into the later school years, but we couldn’t imagine this would be an issue in kindergarten. While we didn’t know much about what Rainey’s day-to-day experience might be like inside a Chinese school, we liked the big picture.

  We weren’t alone in that thought. In major Western cities, Chinese nannies had become highly coveted and Mandarin-immersion schools were springing up throughout the suburbs. Friends in Minnesota wangled their way onto the board of one such school to boost their chance of securing entry for their daughter. “We got a spot!” they would rejoice after months of acrobatics and schmoozing. China was among the world’s largest economies and its mother tongue the most spoken language in the world, and to me it was clear: Being conversant in this culture and country would only become more important.

  In Shanghai, we would have a chance to ensconce our child in a real Chinese school—“in China no less,” we would harrumph to friends back home.

  Our first choice was two blocks from home.

  We’d often strolled past the gates of Soong Qing Ling Kindergarten during neighborhood walks. Few Chinese schools looked as stately as this one, with its black-and-gold wrought-iron gates enclosing a sparkling green lawn. A bold government plaque declared the school a “model” kindergarten of the type that all others should aspire to—and in this country, government plaques were a serious business. The school’s namesake was the wife of Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang, which ruled China until the Communist takeover in 1949. Soong Qing Ling the woman went on to devote much of her life to issues of education and children’s welfare, and in today’s China she is considered a saint.

  The school drew the children of ranking Communist Party officials and families with money and influence. A current Shanghai vice mayor sent his grandchild to Soong Qing Ling, as did a number of other top-ranking city officials. This was significant because the offices of the Shanghai mayor and Party secretary were famous for being rest stops on the highway to national office, producing current president Xi Jinping, former president Jiang Zemin, and former premier Zhu Rongji. Also at the school were the children of tech and security entrepreneurs, IT gurus, and investment magnates. These were families with power, money, and the luxury of choice in a country where, I implicitly understood, options are fewer for those without wealth and connections. Chinese parents who couldn’t secure a spot vented their frustrations online: “Many people knock their heads broken against the sky trying to get in,” wrote one, using a common Chinese saying. “My child didn’t get a seat . . . the world is full of unfair advantages . . . how will my son have a chance?” wrote another. (Clearly, we’d sought a respite from the American parenting rat race, only to land squarely in the Chinese equivalent.)

  When I peeked through the school’s gates, I imagined the future leaders of China sitting inside its classrooms, being drilled in Mandarin characters, eating noodles and rice, and napping on canvas cots. If China’s leadership trust their offspring to this school, I thought, it must certainly be the best early education experience the country has to offer.

  Rainey’s feelings about Soong Qing Ling were simpler: “I like the playground,” he said, tiny hands gripping the black bars of the school gates, peering at the two climbing structures that stretched twenty feet skyward with tiny notches in each post for little feet. The school’s classrooms encircled the play structures, and around four p.m. each day young Chinese children spilled out into the green courtyard, their chatter filling the air with merriment.

  “Fang xue le!” School’s out!

  “Mama dao le!” I see Mom!

  “Hui jia le!” Time to go home!

  There was an element of order as the children covered every part of the lawn, eventually filing through the school’s gates with a nod to the security guards.

  “Shu Shu zaijian!” Goodbye, Uncle, the kids would chirp, using a term reserved for addressing Chinese elders.

  Rainey glanced up at me, eyes wide. “Is this my school, Mommy?”

  “Not sure yet, sweetheart. We’ll see.” We’d been preparing him for the transition from days at home: Little boys go to school every day, just like mommies or daddies go to work, we told him.

  Rob and I had strategized for months about how to get a spot for Rainey. Most public schools were required to admit students based on where they live, but the government allowed certain schools—particularly model and high-performing schools—to operate by special rules. The Chinese often gained admission to such schools through a complicated web of guanxi, but as foreigners we’d need to find an alternative way in. During the year before Rainey would enter xiaoban—the Small Class grade level that is officially the first year of kindergarten—we called the main office again and again. Rob and I took turns, carefully spacing out our calls by weeks, hoping they wouldn’t remember our voices from previous failed inquiries.

  Each call was met with the same detached voice, giving us some variation of the same answer: “Our classes are full. There’s no reason to call again. There’s no hope for a spot.” We asked to speak with the principal and were always told, “She’s away at a meeting.” One time, I managed to get her name: Zhang Yuanzhang, or Principal Zhang.

  We always had a backup in Shanghai’s international schools, but as we neared summertime, I figured I had nothing to lose. One more time I walked over to the school entrance. I peered into the guardhouse, enclosed in glass and set just behind the black iron entrance gates, in perfect position to detect intruders.

  In moments such as these, I’m always aware that I’m a special kind of foreigner. Mandarin was the language of my childhood home, as my parents had emigrated with their families from China to the United States via Taiwan decades before, but I was born and raised in America. Thus, I speak Mandarin with a hint of a Texas drawl and a vocabulary of California-speak I cultivated as a young adult. To most mainland Chinese, I appeared to be one of them until I opened my mouth, and they’d quickly identify me as someone deserving of unique disdain: an alien cousin who spoke oddly and had foreign mannerisms.

  I waved at the guardhouse glass. One of two men sitting inside ventured out.

  “What do you want?” he barked through the gates. He was a short man, coming up only to my shoulder, and he wore thick glasses.

  “Is Zhang Yuanzhang in?” I said.

  “What are you inquiring about?”

  “Just wondering about a spot for my son.” He looked me over and then shook his head.

  “It’s full, it’s always full,” he said. “There’s no use in asking.”

  “May I speak with her? I’d just like to introduce myself.”

  “She’s in a meeting,” the guard responded. He turned and stepped back into the glass-enclosed house.

  “When is a better time to come back?” I called after him, but he ignored me. Later, at home, Rob and I regrouped.

  “Should I go?” Rob asked.

  “I think you might have to,” I replied.

  “Yup,” Rob said, looking at me meaningfully. That was the reality in China: Sometimes you needed to send over the “foreigner.” I spent my first year in China bemoaning this reality, as a strong-headed woman who managed the finances in her marriage, but here was a culture with an ingrained hierarchy about who matters and who doesn’t. Caucasian Americans trump Chinese Americans, and on top of that, Ro
b was a fluent Mandarin speaker who’d spent time in rural China. He was a source of unusual fascination for the Chinese, and he typically managed to sneak in a request while they wallowed in wonderment at this blond, blue-eyed foreigner who spoke their language.

  Rob walked over to the school gates before work one day and triumphantly reported that evening that he’d managed to get the guard to call a teacher out to meet him.

  “She was friendly,” Rob reported. “She said, ‘You speak Chinese so well!’ Then she wrote Rainey’s name and passport number down on a piece of paper.”

  “Did she write it down in some kind of notebook?” I prodded. “Did it look like a waiting list?”

  “No . . . it was a scrap of paper. The size of a Post-it,” Rob said, with some hesitation.

  “She didn’t invite you inside?” I pressed, my pride assuaged by the fact that he, too, had failed to penetrate the gates.

  “Nope.” Rob raised his eyebrows—he knew exactly what was going on inside my head. Even so, we rejoiced. Somewhere inside that formidable institution, our son’s name was sitting on a slip of paper that might eventually find its way to Principal Zhang.

  Now we could only wait.

  A month later a call came to my mobile phone. The vice principal introduced herself as Xi. “You’re lucky,” she said brusquely. “We are allowed to add a few spots to the xiaoban grade level. Has Rainey found a school yet?”

  “No, we’d love for him to go to Soong Qing Ling,” I said quickly.

  “Bring him over next week.”

  On the day of our “interview,” I dressed Rainey in a plaid shirt and corduroy pants and served his favorite breakfast of oatmeal and apples. Rob was traveling for work, and my father happened to be in town for a visit, so I decided to bring him along as backup.

  I planned to present to Principal Zhang the portrait of an ideal Soong Qing Ling family: captivatingly cute toddler, engaging Mandarin-speaking foreigner parent, and one talkative grandfather with deep roots in the country. Rainey said “Nihao” when he was to supposed to say hello, I hit my Mandarin tones perfectly, and my father became fast friends with Vice Principal Xi, who marveled that here was a Shanghai-born Chinese man who raised a family in the United States, while decades later his American-born daughter was rearing a family in the motherland!

  Whether by chance or circumstance, a family had gone on a long journey and returned to the bosom of the motherland. Now its members were kowtowing to Vice Principal Xi. “And Rainey has the opportunity to attend Soong Qing Ling,” Xi said, perhaps pondering the smallness of the globe or the circular nature of life.

  “Yes, we hope so!” my father smiled.

  “Qian ren zhong shu, hou ren cheng liang,” Xi remarked, shaking her head. “One generation plants the trees, another gets the shade.” That was it: the moment I knew we were in. A Chinese proverb uttered in conversation indicated wonderment, camaraderie, and acceptance all rolled into one; it was always a splendid surprise, like a tissue-wrapped moon cake dropping suddenly out of the sky. Principal Zhang, who had hovered nearby during most of our meeting, delivered a short nod at Xi before stepping out of the room.

  “So Rainey’s in?” my father asked Xi.

  “Yes.” Xi gave a firm nod.

  At home, Rob and I marveled at our good fortune. Rainey had a spot in school and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

  * * *

  It was Rainey’s first day of school. Rob and I made our way through the crowds that thronged the streets of the French Concession on this lovely fall morning. Between us, like a tiny bud on a daisy chain, was Rainey, each hand clasping one of ours. As Rob and I took a step forward, Rainey pulled us backward, tugging with all his might.

  Suddenly, Rainey stopped. “I’m going to cry,” he announced.

  “It’s okay to cry,” I assured him, dragging him forward. Slowed by our hand-holding, our little ensemble weaved its way north up the crowded sidewalks of the street in front of our complex and waited out a red light as taxis, sedans, and scooters choked and gasped on the morning commute.

  “Let’s not cut through the hospital,” Rob called out. We passed a bustling hospital complex, whose outpatient department alone serves more than four million patients a year, and veered left onto the main road. As we approached the school, we stepped in front of a Ferrari and around the tail of a BMW with a driver inside, assisting with morning drop-offs. In the Soong Qing Ling crowd, Rob and I were distinctly middle class, but we were foreign and that was our mark. Indeed, Rainey was the perfect manifestation of West and East. He had my husband’s lanky figure and high-bridged Caucasian nose, and the dark hair and black-brown eyes of my Chinese heritage. His round eyes were so large, they overtook most of the real estate on his face; the effect was that he looked continually awestruck. Old Chinese men and young professional women alike would stare down at him, exclaiming, “Look at the little foreigner! He’s a handsome little guy!”

  We streamed through the wrought-iron gates along with other sets of parents and grandparents, as the elders issued missives in Chinese: “Behave. Listen to the teacher. Eat your vegetables.”

  Soong Qing Ling divided its classes into four grade levels—“Caring,” “Small,” “Middle,” and “Big”—and further divided each level into classroom numbers. That made twenty classes total, spanning the ages of two to six years old. Rainey’s home for the next year would be Small Class No. 4.

  Parents and grandparents crowded the classroom doorway, packed four or five deep. Over their heads I saw the face of Teacher Chen, master instructor of Small Class No. 4. She had yellowed teeth with black marks where they touched, and, despite her smile, my gaze always seemed to home in on those dark spots. I instinctively gathered there was nothing small about her temper.

  Today, Chen was friendly, patting children’s heads and fluidly greeting parents in either Mandarin or Shanghainese: “Welcome to school! Did you have a nice summer?” She intuitively knew which language to use. The children seemed calm and compliant, issuing a nod or chirping a hello.

  In China, you don’t so much push your way forward as let the crowd carry you. As we were slowly transported to the door frame, Rainey gripped my hand tighter and tighter. Parents peeled away and we finally found ourselves at the door, facing Teacher Chen. I nodded at her, adjusted Rainey’s shirt, and gave him a reassuring pat on his head. “We love you, Rainey. We’ll see you after school.”

  “No! Don’t leave me,” Rainey said in English, glancing up at me frantically as Rob and I pushed back toward the stairwell. “Don’t leave me here.” Tears began flowing. I sidestepped over to the exit, and in a flash Rainey went horizontal, throwing himself at my ankles.

  “We’ll see you later today,” I said, looking down at the back of Rainey’s head, trying to stay calm. “You’ll have fun at school—see all the toys!” I looked around. Pale green streamers hung from the ceiling at evenly spaced intervals, and a row of paper plates with flower petal cutouts greeted us along the back wall. Color drawings from the previous year’s class were still up; I noticed that all the apple trees were colored in the same way, with scribbles in shades of green, brown, and red.

  “Go have a snack. Be a good boy. Tinghua,” said Teacher Chen. “Listen to what I say.” It was the listen-and-obey command that would become a theme of Rainey’s time here.

  “Noooo!!!” Rainey sobbed, speaking to my ankles as Chinese parents looked on with great interest. It seemed their children were silent, standing tall and filing into the classroom, spines erect.

  “Don’t go. Don’t leave me!” Rainey screamed. Rob leaned over, detached Rainey from my ankles, and carried him into the classroom. He deposited our thirty-pound boy near the play kitchen, turned, and sprinted toward the doorway, next to which several children sat at tables, quietly drinking milk and chomping sugar cookies—cookies at eight a.m.?—and glancing our way with interest.

  Rob and I pushed through the crowd of parents and children and ran down the stairs; we stopped once we
were safely out of sight. I turned my ears in the direction of the classroom door, hoping to hear silence: the stealth listening familiar to any parent doing a daycare or school drop-off.

  Rainey was still wailing. We listened for about thirty seconds, and I suddenly noticed I was grinding my teeth. Rob turned to me.

  “Welcome to Soong Qing Ling,” he said, with an uncertain smile. He grabbed my hand and we made our way toward the school’s gates.

  The second day of school, Rainey came home with a story. Four times, he found egg in his mouth. He hadn’t placed it there himself; instead, his most hated food made its way past his teeth by the hand of the fearsome Teacher Chen.

  “She put it there,” Rainey told me, mouth wide, finger pointing inside. Then what happened? I asked.

  “I cried and spit it out.”

  Then what?

  “She did it again,” Rainey said. We were making our way home along a crowded sidewalk jammed with people and lined with fruit and vegetable vendors. Rainey jabbed an elbow into the bottom of an elderly Chinese woman walking before us, pushed firmly, and stepped into the void he’d created. Our little boy could throw elbows like the natives.

  And? I prodded.

  “I cried and spit it out again,” he said. I coaxed more of the story out of him; Teacher Chen had put egg in his mouth four times, and the last time, he swallowed. I absorbed the news of my child being force-fed in school, the clamor of China surrounding us: the bleats of a vendor hawking tomatoes on a three-wheeled cart, the creak of a turnstile halfway down a neighborhood lane, the sounds of taxi horns. At home, battles over food ended in screaming and flailing. Rainey would rather go hungry than try something new. The last time I’d presented him with steamed kale (which I arranged in dinosaur shape on his plate), he thrashed so violently that he chipped a tooth against the floor.