If rain on your wedding day is bad fortune, then what about rain on your honeymoon?
The rainfall began after we checked into a hotel at the foot of Huangshan—Yellow Mountain—in China’s Anhui Province. By 9:00 pm, we could still hear the steady drip outside our window. And forecasts expected the rain to last for several more days, well after we had planned to climb the mountain.
Just as the wet weather dampened the landscape outside the window, so it dampened our prospects of actually seeing the mountain. My heart sank every time I imagined the foggy mist surrounding Huangshan, blocking panoramic views of its jagged granite peaks. This ethereal scenery, often captured in classical Chinese paintings, was the epitome of beauty among China’s mountains—so much so that according to a Chinese saying, after visiting Huangshan, you need not visit China’s Five Great Mountains (or any other mountain, for that matter). Thanks to the showers outside, chances were I would never get to experience Huangshan in all of its beauty.
But the rain was just one more symptom of something gone wrong. It was like my runny nose and headache that had started that evening, the first signs that I had caught the flu, and the odor of sweaty socks that invaded our three-person suite. I felt our bad fortune stemmed from the fact that we had asked Jun’s father—who only brought one pair of socks for the entire trip—to join us on our honeymoon.
As I lay in my twin bed that evening, not even my stuffy nose could shield me from the stench of clothing that desperately needed a good wash. I grimaced with every breath.
"This room smells.” I said it in English so that the man we both called Laoba, the Chinese term for father that Jun and his family preferred, couldn’t understand.
"You’re tired. You should sleep.” My husband Jun always saw beyond my crabby moods to the exhaustion, illness, or even PMS hidden behind my words.
"I can’t. I feel horrible… this room feels horrible.”
He picked up the box of Tylenol from the nightstand between our beds and handed it to me. "Here, take one.”
My husband, who usually cringed when I took painkillers for premenstrual cramps, wanted me to have the Tylenol? I popped a pill out of the package. As I reached for a glass of water, I glanced towards the far end of the room, where Laoba sat on the edge of his bed watching a Chinese news show, still wearing a cheap polyester polo shirt the color of dirty cement. The glare of the TV reflected off his face, still smeared with the sweat and oil that he hadn’t bothered to wash off yet. Salt-and-pepper stubble protruded from his upper lip and chin as if he hadn’t shaved for days. The very sight of this man in our room, a man who couldn’t be bothered to bring more than one pair of socks on a trip, made me burn with frustration. The pill might relieve my symptoms for the evening, but no pill could ever relieve me of a father-in-law who piggybacked on our honeymoon.
I still couldn’t believe I had agreed to this.
In China, the government allows every married couple a two-week honeymoon away from work. Jun and I had decided to take our official honeymoon just after he graduated from his master’s degree program in psychology in June 2005. But we had been living together since March 2003 in Shanghai, where I worked as a copywriter and we shared an apartment like a married couple. By the time the summer of 2005 arrived, we had already enjoyed our share of honeymoon-like excursions during China’s week-long national holidays—from lounging on islands in the azure waters of the Gulf of Thailand, to snorkeling in the ocean off Bali’s pristine white beaches. We had also already registered our marriage at the Shanghai Marriage Registry Bureau by then, the equivalent of an engagement to his friends and family, and expected to plan our official wedding ceremony in China in the next few years. So with all of the time we’d spent together, and all of the romantic getaways we already savored, I didn’t take our official two weeks of state-sanctioned honeymoon all that seriously. That’s why I proposed that we spend our honeymoon a little closer to home, in China. And I suggested Huangshan, a mountain I had been longing to visit from the moment I first moved to China in 1999 to live and work—years before I even met Jun.
But the moment I mentioned it, my husband said, "We should take Laoba with us.”
To Jun—and his father—Huangshan wasn’t just one of China’s ultimate mountain experiences or another big tourist destination to cross off your bucket list. Huangshan was something personal. Laoba could trace his ancestors back to Huizhou, the cultural region that includes Huangshan, and had even grown up in what you could arguably call the foothills of Huangshan. The importance of this was obvious to anyone who visited the family home. In the foyer, flanked by photographs of Laoba’s father and mother, hung a gaudy Graceland version of a Huangshan landscape with Day-Glo cranes and the wizened silhouette and windswept branches of the Welcoming Guests Pine. To Laoba and his son, visiting Huangshan would be like a personal genealogy tour, where part of the thrill came from rediscovering the very lands their predecessors once called home. So how could we possibly travel there without Jun’s father?
The American side of me seemed skeptical about this bride’s nightmare—taking your father-in-law with you on your honeymoon. Who would actually allow this?
But certain traditional Confucian values weighed upon me. When you’re married to a Chinese man, you soon learn the importance of filial piety, perhaps the most pervasive of these values in modern China. Filial piety roughly translates into respect for your parents and ancestors. This value is why it’s almost unheard of for Chinese children to put their parents into nursing homes in their old age. It’s also why you might hear of sons in China who send money to their parents to support them. But supporting your parents depends on what they really need in life. While Laoba received a generous pension after his retirement from teaching, he rarely had the opportunity to travel—a favorite pastime of his not shared by his wife, a woman prone to motion sickness who preferred staying at home. Jun understood that offering a chance to travel, especially to a place so close to his heart, was perhaps the most filial thing we could do for Laoba.
Instead of protesting Jun’s suggestion, I tucked away my American doubts behind a smile. "Yes, what a great idea!”
The truth is, my past with Laoba weighed upon me as much as filial piety itself. I thirsted for an opportunity to prove to Laoba that I could be a filial daughter-in-law. The memories of three years before still haunted me—a time when this man had serious reservations about my relationship with his son.
I’ll never forget the way Jun bounded into our apartment in Hangzhou, China back in September 2002. He had just returned from a week-long stay with his family, who lived in a rural village in Zhejiang province only hours away from Hangzhou.
"I’m so glad you’re back,” I said as I hugged him. "So, how did it go?” I thought I didn’t even need to ask, certain I could read the answer in his grin.
"I told my parents that we’re dating,” he said.
His words startled me, and not without reason. My previous Chinese boyfriend never had the chance to tell his parents about us—he claimed they could never accept him dating a foreign woman. Their opposition to having foreigners in the family forced him to break off our relationship in June 2002, an experience still fresh in my mind when Jun returned on that September day.
"So, uh, what did they say?”
"Laoba said, ‘You can be friends with a foreign woman, but not date her.’” Jun smiled as he said it, as though he had actually returned home with his parents’ blessing.
My heart pounded as tears welled up in my eyes.
But Jun put his arm around me. "Don’t worry, it’s fine, I’m not leaving.”
"No, no, it’s not fine,” I said, shaking my head as I sobbed. I couldn’t get past the parental opposition with my previous boyfriend. How would Jun and I ever get past his father?
But in fact, we did. In the months that followed, Jun and I stayed together. And in February 2003, Jun brought me home with him to spend Chinese New Year with his family, a visit that put me face-to-face with the very man who opposed our relationship.
If you’ve ever been married, engaged, or in a serious relationship, then you know just how nerve-wracking it is to meet your potential in-laws for the first time. But just imagine doing that in a different culture and language, with people who already have rather unflattering preconceived notions about you (in China, people often think foreign women are as loose and licentious as the seductresses and hookers in Hollywood movies). So when I walked in the door and saw Laoba, who nodded at me with a guarded smile, my stomach churned, my chest tightened, and my heart even seemed to palpitate.
For the next few days, Laoba appeared as cold as the near-freezing temperatures in their unheated home. But then, on Jun’s suggestion, I showed his father an album of my family photos—from trips to Yosemite and Barcelona to my college graduation day. That photo album somehow magically flipped a switch within this man, and he lit up with all of the endearing wonder of a child. Soon, he started spinning tales of his childhood in Tanxia Village in the foothills of Huangshan, and shared with me his very own pencil sketches that immortalized the town he cherished as a boy. With every moment by his side, I could feel relief pouring over me like the afternoon sunshine on those winter days. How could this man, who now seemed to embrace this new relationship with me, be the very same person who had once threatened my own relationship with Jun?
As Jun and I rode back to Hangzhou in a rickety minibus that creaked and groaned with every bump, and had barely enough heat to thaw my numb toes, the thought of how much progress I made with Jun’s father warmed me—and left me smiling all the way back.
"I still can’t believe that was the same man who said I couldn’t date you,” I said to Jun while sitting on the bus.
"He probably just thought, you know, all foreigners are a little luan,” or promiscuous. "But my father realized you were different, that you weren’t what he thought.”
I had come to a similar realization when I first arrived in China and suddenly noticed all the handsome Chinese men on the streets. As a college student, I had never entertained the thought of dating any of the Asian men I met. Was it simply because I studied at an overwhelmingly white university in West Virginia with few Asians? Or did I have some subconscious bias against dating Asian men, somehow believing they weren’t attractive? All I know is I just shared cafeteria tables or cups of tea with them, and never gave them a chance to transcend the boundaries of friendship. Only when I came to China did things really change, just as only when I came to Jun’s home did his father really change his mind.
But there in that hotel at the foot of Huangshan, the tight, uncomfortable feeling that spread through my body was more than just my growing illness and exhaustion, or some reaction to the lingering stench of dirty socks. Before when I visited with Laoba, we interacted with each other in predictable and brief moments—a talk over lunch or dinner, a short discussion in his study as he unveiled a new painting or drawing, a rooftop conversation as we watched the stars come out. I could always get him to flash a youthful grin, or break into a story about life growing up in Tanxia Village. It felt so easy to be the good, filial daughter-in-law—the antithesis of what he considered foreign women to be—when I only spent a few minutes with him here and there.
Yet as I lay in bed with tissues strewn all around me, only moments away from denouncing Laoba’s personal hygiene, I realized just how worried I was. Would I lose my temper and suddenly yell at him, shattering the fragile image of the good, filial daughter-in-law I had worked so hard to cultivate? Would I regret that we brought Laoba along with us after all? These questions weighed upon me like my headache, and made sleep even more elusive that evening.
*
When we arrived at the foot of Huangshan the following morning, the mist of rain that clouded the forest canopy somehow echoed the exhaustion that seemed to cloud my body. I shivered even though I wore a raincoat with a fleece jacket and long-sleeved shirt underneath it. My symptoms now included a sore throat and clogged sinuses—worsened, no doubt, by a restless night of tossing and turning.
"I don’t think I can climb it. I feel too sick,” I said.
I felt a pang of regret and let a tear go. In the past, I had ruined many a family vacation when I balked at climbing to the top, including on New England’s White Mountain and at the granite cliffs of Yosemite Valley. Before, I had always claimed I felt too tired and lacked the strength to move on. Yet a part of me knew that, deep down, I probably could have climbed anything if I believed I could. Still, as we stood at the foot of Huangshan, I had to admit that my illness sapped me of something—strength or will, I couldn’t tell.
"Don’t worry, we’ll take the cable car.” Jun soothed me by rubbing my shoulder and smiling, more concerned for my health than our vacation plans gone awry.
But Laoba said nothing in response, and my nerves remained unsettled. Had I ruined his journey to Huangshan? What did he think of me now, a daughter-in-law who was robbing him of the opportunity to finally climb his beloved mountain?
Those worries followed me as we waited for nearly an hour in the serpentine queue for the cable car, which most tourists rode up the mountain. I stood nearly catatonic in that line as I listened to Jun and his father chatting away in their local language, a Chinese dialect I still struggled to understand. The mist clung to Huangshan with tenacity, translating into a visibility of only a few yards at best. Our one day to summit the mountain and the heavens responded with the worst-possible viewing conditions. Was this a sort of punishment for all my unfilial moments, when I had privately chastised my father-in-law over those socks?
The three of us, along with a handful of other tourists, finally squeezed into the cable car, which quickly glided up into the air. Fifty feet up, a hundred feet up, and beyond: it soared into the sky, dangling from the cable. Below us sat the mountain fringed in clouds like a cotton-candy trim. Here and there, jagged spires—which looked like pale yellow sandstone—poked through the clouds, dotted with trees whose trunks seemed no larger than toothpicks from our vantage point.
As I gazed down at the scenery and realized the actual height of our car, I felt a wave of nausea, and my heart started to pound. My fear of heights, something that hadn’t kept me from ascending Shanghai’s Jinmao Tower a little over a year before, suddenly paralyzed me in that cable car. Worries flooded my mind: What if the car snapped off the cable? What if we tumbled onto those sharp ridges below us? What if this was the last thing I ever saw? My breaths became more shallow and hurried, and my palms started to sweat.
"Oh god, this is too high up!”
"Don’t worry, it’s okay, you’re safe,” said Jun. But Laoba stood between him and me, and so many other tourists packed the cable car that Jun couldn’t put his arm around me or hold my hand.
Suddenly, two hands reached out for mine. "No problem, you’re fine!”
Laoba. When I looked up at him, he flashed me an avuncular smile, one that reminded me of my father when he wanted to soothe my fears. And he even stroked my hands in an attempt to comfort me.
Whenever I saw Laoba at the family home, he never touched his wife, children, or any other relatives in public—not to kiss, not to hold hands, not even to suggest the affection that he held for them in his heart. Yet he held my hands without concern for what anyone else in the cable car thought about it.
I could feel my heart hammering against my chest. I had no idea if it was the height or the shock that Laoba held my hands.
"Duibuqi,” I said to him—sorry in Mandarin—as I felt a tear fall down my cheeks. Sorry for making a spectacle of myself in the cable car. Sorry that I forced us to take this cable car in the first place. Sorry for ruining the vacation—a vacation that, in some of my worst moments, I actually believed he had ruined for us. Sorry for not being the daughter-in-law he had hoped for.
But Laoba smiled as if I had never needed to apologize for anything—as if he couldn’t have been happier than to be sitting right next to me, holding my hands. "Ai, don’t be polite.”
Jun once told me that no one ever said "thank you,” "you’re welcome,” or even "I love you” in his home. These things were implied and understood, because you were part of a family and that’s what you did for one another. And somehow, the way Laoba took my hands in his, the way he smiled at me—despite everything I had done—said everything I needed to know.
So I leaned on Laoba’s shoulder, closed my eyes, and rested for the remainder of the ride up to the summit.
*
"Laoba, did you leave your socks in the bathroom?”
We had just checked into a guesthouse at the foot of Huangshan. It was one day after our cable car ride to the summit, where we spent the night before walking down by foot and catching a bus to this guesthouse. It offered one of the most comfortable rooms of our trip—soft maroon comforters and clean beige carpeting in the bedroom, and glistening marble countertops and white tiles in the bathroom. But I felt certain that a damp—and rank—pair of grey socks next to the bathroom sink didn’t come standard with the booking.
"Ai, I washed them.” Jun’s father called out from the bedroom, where he had been lounging on one of those soft comforters while watching the news channel on China Central Television.
"But did you use soap?”
"No need!”
I had lived long enough with his son—who had inherited the very same penchant for smelly feet—to know that I needed to dispense with the politeness in this moment. "If we don’t wash these with soap, I think the odor will make me faint.”
Laoba giggled with embarrassment—a giggle that sounded a lot like Jun whenever I teased him about his feet—as he wandered over to the bathroom. "I’ll wash again.”
But before he could pick up the pair of grey socks, I snatched them away. "No, I’ll wash them.”
"Aiya, no need. It’s trouble!”
I met his glance with a smile—the smile of a daughter-in-law who didn’t mind holding some of the most disgusting grey socks she ever encountered in her bare hands. "No trouble. Now, go, get out of here! Watch the news!”
I shooed him out of the bathroom with my free hand until he retreated to the bedroom. Maybe it was a little rude to throw him out like that. But as I looked at the grey socks in my hand—and the bar of soap on the counter that I would use to scrub them clean—I realized that, even if it was rude and the socks were crude, I had never felt closer to Laoba.
Jocelyn Eikenburg is the writer behind Speaking of China, a unique blog focused on love, family, and relationships in China which was inspired by her own marriage to a Chinese national. Her essay "Red Couplets” was published in the anthology Unsavory Elements and other true stories of foreigners on the loose in China. A Cleveland, Ohio native, Jocelyn discovered her passion for the written word while living and working in China, and has resided in the cities of Zhengzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai.