Big White Babies

As I write this, Mrs Niu is cleaning my apartment, as she will do once a week for the rest of the year. I was not expecting her, and so was a little out of sorts, but tried to help as I could, tidying up and generally trying to be active. When she saw what I was doing, she shooshed me away with a Chinese smile that radiated warmth but a glint in her eyes that brooked no objection. I don’t know if that was Chinese or just motherly… I think it might be a lot of both. So I retreated to my chair in the corner to read and inhabit as little as possible of the space that I was less and less considering mine.

It is a strange thing to sit down while another is doing your work for you. It chaffs my sense of propriety and seems to say unpleasant things about intrinsic human worth. To sit idly by is to acknowledge that you are being served, and imply that it is somehow right, that you – no, I – am somehow deserving of another’s subservience. Moreover, it makes me feel like a child. No wonder they see us waiguoren (foreigners) as children, incapable of civilized speech, whose writing tends to be large and sloppy, constantly asking ridiculous questions, and apparently, who can’t be trusted to clean their own apartments. Perhaps large, white, and oftentimes hairy, but children nonetheless.

Then a shift occurred in my thinking. As I lifted my feet so that she could mop under them, I started to wonder – really wonder – what she must think of me? What would it be like to live beneath (1st floor) such unequal and undeserved wealth? We each individually inhabit an apartment that she and her family consider themselves fortunate to live in (er… different apartment, same dimensions), our net salary (after housing) is roughly twice the average total salary of a local, and we are allotted enough electricity to make liberal use of the air conditioners that many similar apartments would not have. We are not rich because we are successful or have developed any unique skills (honestly, probably quite the opposite), we are rich because we are waiguoren, and that is the beginning and the end of it. Oh, and we have a maid service: Her. What must she think of us, the spoiled princes inhabiting the castle whose gates she guards and whose floors she cleans?

What am I to do? The question is suspended in the air like my feet over her mop, it is reflecting off of the newly mopped floors, it hums in the air conditioning. What am I to do about it? Were I to turn the AC off forever or lock the door the next time she comes to clean, who would it serve? Contrary to what mothers say, the babies in Africa don’t give a crap about whether or not we clean our plates, because our excess or lack thereof never touches them. It would be like rich man camping, spending thousands of dollars to abstain from any sense of comfort. To deny my wealth would not be an act of solidarity, but perhaps the worst insult possible. It would be to say that I have so much that I can afford to go without.

I fear that this train of thought can only lead me higher up onto a soapbox, and I wish to avoid that. Sometimes there aren’t any pat answers, no way to make sense of the world in comfortable terms. There is only the next conversation, the next fiscal decision, the next … whatever. And so as I finally lowered my feet to the glistening floor, I gave Mrs. Niu a quiet smile of heartfelt thanks, trying to convey as much gratitude as is possible without being creepy. Maybe I’ll try to find an excuse to leave her some thank-you cookies. I think she’d like that.