Bare Branch

孝顺一节

Mei Li had no shortage of suitors. This, of course, should be expected since she met, and even exceeded, all conceivable beauty standards in China.

Hers was an absolutely striking appearance. She looked just like a model in a makeup ad, with her sky-high cheekbones, almond-shaped face and super-slim figure, her tallish stature… Standing 168 centimeters she was an ideal height- leggy but not too tall to intimidate men…

Moreover, she had Asia’s most prized complexion: that smooth, glowing, naturally fair skin; skin the color of alabastrine jadestone. The type of effervescence so many Asian women attempt to attain through lightening lotions, skin bleaching, and even expensive surgeries.

In addition, to complement her picture-perfect complexion, she’d been blessed with big upcurved eyes, an hourglass figure, and perky breasts… All and all, as she entered her twenties, she’d grown into a knockout. A perfect 10. And men were taking notice…

After graduating from university, she took a job as a receptionist at a luxury car dealership. It was there that she was met with a long line of gentleman callers. Some came bearing gifts, while others made comical, bumbling efforts at courtship, stuttering out treacly words, and a few were downright creepy.

She wondered and worried if all men were like this. If they were all these slobbering, awkward buffoons. Lecherous sex pests. And she ruminated on why men in real life were so unlike the dashing, sensitive, handsome men she’d see in soap operas. Lamenting the current state of men in China had her feeling listless, and she dreaded that she’d never find Mr. Right.

Until he came along…

Ji Qiang. Just seeing him that sunny spring morning, how confidently he strolled into the dealership… He was confident but without any stirring of truculence. And there was an acuity in his eyes, an assertiveness in which he spoke that struck a chord in her as she watched him, furtively, from across the room…

Just seeing him that March morning felt like a scene from a romantic movie.

It was love at first sight.

What’s more, once he approached her, he’d stared straight into her eyes as they spoke. Unlike so many other men who’d talk directly to her legs or breasts.

Not only was he a gentleman, but they’d hit it off as they chatted, forming an instant chemistry. There was a warmth to his gaze, as if his eyes were two balls of sunshine tingling over her. So, of course, when he requested her WeChat she acceded, wasting no time swiping open her phone and handing it to him almost like a waiter in a fancy restaurant.

That afternoon and night they began chatting. And they never stopped.

Ji Qiang was her dream man. Her knight-in-shining-armor. He was kind, polite, handsome and tall, at 185 centimeters, and he had a high-paying job, drove an Audi, and owned a sprawling, sunny high-rise apartment overlooking the Pearl River.

Once they began dating he proved himself to be sensitive and romantic, too, surprising her with flowers, sweet text messages, and other little gifts.

Ji Qiang’s only drawback: his mother, Xuan Leng.

Upon first meeting his mother, for a late lunch at a dim sum restaurant, Mei Li’s knees buckled. There seemed to be a terrifying vacuity to the woman. She was there but not there, an uncertain coldness, an absence written in her eyes. Something like the thousand-yard-stare soldiers have after war.

But there was also an intangible, peculiarly sinister element to the lady’s mien. Hers was a face stiff with mistrust and was so haggardly that she reminded Mei Li of an evil witch in a fantasy movie… Especially disturbing was the woman’s narrow, jutting jawline that protruded unnaturally long… Her face practically all jaw…

What’s more, she was frighteningly small and emaciated, with deep wrinkles cutting into every fold of her sharp, horrible face.

Ji Qiang had said she was 64, but Mei Li thought she appeared to be around 80 years old.

The lady’s phantom-like appearance was simply chilling. And it matched her personality.

Ji Qiang’s mother was unmistakably gruff. As she spoke, her hideous jaw barely moved and her voice was sullen and flat, her feral eyes staying fixed to her small bowl of steamed rice. She asked Mei Li no questions, aside from querying her family’s occupations, heritage, if she was Han. That was it. The rest of their initial meeting, that lunch, as Ji Qiang and Mei Li chit-chatted and played on their phones, snapped pics of the steamed buns and spring rolls, Xuan Leng sat in a stacked silence, staring either at her plate or lifting her eyes to blankly gaze at walls.

孝顺二节

After Ji Qiang sent his mother home, via private car and driver, he and Mei Li spoke as they promenaded, arm in arm, by the blue-gray river. The early evening scene was already bustling, awash in savory scents from a row of streetside hawkers clanking on fiery woks, and the whole walking street was slowly becoming abuzz in an eclectic orchestra of sounds — children laughing, buskers playing music, banter between friends…

Sipping sweet green bubble tea, Ji Qiang spoke of how his mother had been bereft since his father died. Ji Qiang saying that his father was the only person he’d ever seen make his mother smile.

A lot of his mother’s iciness was due to her upbringing, too, Ji Qiang confided. Her father, Ji Qiang’s grandfather, a well-respected academic and lecturer at a prominent university in Guangdong, had been purged during the Cultural Revolution, branded a Rightist.

Like many other teachers, professors, academics, Ji Qiang’s grandfather had been targeted for a denunciation rally, a struggle session, and was assailed by a contingent of Red Guards. They’d stormed into one of his lectures, riled up his students and then seized him, dragged him from his classroom.

Fists and kicks rained from all directions as he was led through the halls of the university. Garbage was thrown at him. He was spit on. He was then made to wear a dunce cap and stand in the school’s courtyard. An angry mob of youths, many merely schoolchildren, encircled him and proceeded to pelt him with various objects.

Worse yet, on that dreary day, Xuan Leng, as a five-year-old girl, was visited at her house by the Red Guards. They then brought the child to the university. There, she witnessed the crowds jeering her father, cursing him. Then she’d been forced to denounce him too.

She’d been made, by a wild-eyed leader of the Red Guard, to stand in front of the shouting mob, point at her own father and concur that he was a Rightist and a Counter-Revolutionary.

Her father, standing with his back bent, like a withered tree, kept his eyes pointed at the ground throughout the entirety of the ordeal. His face stretched into a sad, exhausted expression. And he’d kept that same defeated look, wore that same mask of anguish for the rest of his life.

Xuan Leng’s father was deracinated, removed from his position at the university, and was sent, along with Mei Li, her older sister, and their mother to a remote, impoverished village in the Gansu countryside.

While in the countryside, they were made to work in the tobacco fields, from sunup to sundown, and her father had to take part in various reeducation sessions.

Eventually, after 8 years of toiling, her father proved himself reformed and was later given another university post, at a lesser university, and moved the family (aside from Mei Li’s older sister, who’d married a man in Gansu) back to Guangdong.

Mei Li’s family had been unscathed during the Cultural Revolution, since they were simple peasants, farmers and faithful Maoists. But Mei Li knew of others who’d suffered in the same way as Ji Qiang’s grandfather, his family, and so she was able to empathize. She sighed, mournfully, gave Ji Qiang a long hug after he’d finished recounting this harrowing chapter of his family’s history. Then the young couple kissed and sat on a bench, by the river, cuddling in the gathering dusk, watching as a curtain of reddish sunset started to slant over the sky.

孝顺三节

A few months later, Ji Qiang proposed to Mei Li. He’d brought her to his apartment one foggy evening, and his face lit up with excitement as he opened the front door and surprised her with rose petals lining the way to the living room floor, where more flowers spelled out: “Marry me.”

孝顺四节

Not long after marrying, Mei Li fell pregnant. However, after nine months, when a baby girl arrived, Xuan Leng shared none of the excitement. Instead, she eyed the baby warily, a frown of frustration stamped on her face. Although she didn’t expressly say it, Mei Li could tell- Xuan Leng was bitterly disappointed the baby wasn’t a boy.

A year later, Mei Li fell pregnant once again. Then another nine months later and another baby girl arrived. However, it was a difficult birth, nearly taking Mei Li’s life and rendering her unable to conceive again.

Not only did her mother-in-law show a complete lack of empathy toward Mei Li’s health, she’d also castigated Mei Li for having another girl and for rendering Ji Qiang a “bare branch.”

Mei Li, still sore and groggy, returned from the hospital to hear the imperious Xuan Leng… That terrible jaw in motion… The tiny lady out in the hallway berating her son, demanding that he divorce Mei Li and marry a younger woman capable of providing the male heir necessary to maintain his father’s bloodline.

Ji Qiang, for the first time Mei Li could remember, countered his mother and refused to divorce Mei Li. He proposed they adopt a boy, perhaps one from the countryside in Gansu, where they still had family and business associates.

But his mother refused. To which, again, completely to Mei Li’s surprise, Ji Qiang finally put his foot down and ended the debate by telling his mother that they’d adopt a baby boy, and if she didn’t like it, she “could move back to Gansu to live with her jie jie! (older sister).”

Following that confrontation, Xuan Leng sat mute. For the next week. Speaking not a single word.

孝顺五节

Late into a Friday morning, the summer sun had ascended and hung like a fireball over Guangzhou’s downtown skyline. Even for the monsoon season, it was scorching hot. Nearly 37 degrees Celsius…

Mei Li padded into the kitchen after putting the babies into their cribs for their morning nap. She set a pot on the stovetop. Boiled a half-a-bag of potatoes. With the bubbling pot clattering in the background, she sat down to the kitchen table, swiped on her phone and started scrolling through her WeChat moments.

When Xuan Leng entered the kitchen, Mei Li didn’t even notice. Xuan Leng had a habit of walking silently, on the balls of her feet, and was so small and thin that she’d often simply appear in a room, rather than enter it.

As Mei Li sat cradling her phone, she didn’t see her mother-in-law lift the boiling pot off the stovetop. Then she didn’t notice her mother-in-law approaching… Not until there was a blur in the corner of her eye, a growing shadow in her periphery, a darkening, like a wayward cloud covering the sun…

Mei Li lifted her gaze to see her mother-in-law a mere meter away, that horrible jawline of hers pointing like a gun… Her mother-in-law’s eyes popped wide… The lady’s sharp face twisted into the maniacal expression of a soldier making a last stand… Worse yet, she was lifting the boiling pot of potatoes into the air like a battleax!

Instinctively, Mei Li threw up her arms, making a shield, a protective X, and she gasped and crouched and buried her face into the folds of her arms.

Seconds later came the blast. The scorching splash of boiling water. The heavy potatoes hitting her, like hot rocks. Fortunately, though, most of the molten mass soaked into the silk sleeves of her morning bathrobe, with only a fleck or two hitting her neck.

Still, Mei Li wailed in unimaginable pain. Her arms had been seared, almost as if she’d pressed them directly onto a hot stove.

Then she tumbled to the kitchen floor, wallowing in agony. Tears welled up in her eyes as she began curling herself up into a protective, fetal ball, feeling as helpless as a swimmer thrashing and sinking into a fast-moving sea.

Her mother-in-law then proceeded to stand over her, curse at her. Blamed her for being a useless whore. For “killing their family.” Then she flung the pot at Mei Li, the hot pot clanking off the curve of her spine, the blow knocking the breath out of Mei Li’s lungs before the empty pot went rattling and rolling several footsteps along the tiled floor.

孝顺六节

An hour later the police showed up to talk Xuan Leng down from her bedroom’s balcony. She’d been sitting on the edge of the railing and had been noticed by neighbors, passersby. Her head hung low, she appeared ready to plunge into the Pearl River.

The police, after arriving, had discovered a distraught Mei Li trying to tend to her own wounds, her arms red as cut strawberries, and it was Mei Li who’d phoned Ji Qiang and Ji Qiang who’d rushed over and eventually talked his mother down from off the balcony’s railing.

孝顺七节

Xuan Leng was arrested for assault. Ji Qiang had connections with the local police and sought to finance a generous donation to make the problem vanish. But due to the brazen, sensational manner of the assault, as well as the suicide attempt being filmed by cell phones and news of the incident spreading widely on social media, fixing this problem wouldn’t be as easy as usual.

His mother had to complete more than 28 days in administrative detention. But once the news cycle moved on, Ji Qiang was eventually able to bestow a very charitable contribution to the police department and had his mother released. Then he made another generous donation to a cleaning lady, who’d agreed to stand in for his mother in court.

Then he sent his mother to live with her sister in Gansu.

Soon after, he and Mei Li adopted a baby boy.