How Sweet the Bitter Soup Read online

  I read more than half of my book, a novel about Abraham’s wife, Sarah, and played thumb wrestling and “try to open my hand,” some silly games from my childhood, with William. Our total time on the train was about twenty hours.

  When we finally made it to Wuhan, the capital city of William’s home province, his best friend, Zhang Jin, picked us up. He had booked a very comfortable place for us to stay at William’s former college; the rooms actually had heat! He took us out to dinner, and then I went back and slept while William went to Zhang Jin’s room to chat.

  My first impression of Zhang Jin was that he was sort of shady. William had told me a lot about him, and I knew he was involved in some illegal, or at least less-than-honest, dealings. He drank, smoked, and just seemed so different from William. I didn’t get an especially good vibe from him that first night. However, the next day he joined us for lunch and my image of him softened a bit. He seemed like someone with really good intentions but who was sort of trapped in a certain lifestyle.

  On our first day in Wuhan, we made a list of what we needed to accomplish in the next twenty-four hours. We only had so much time before we needed to take a bus to Huang Mei to meet William’s family. There were a lot of sights we had planned to visit around Wuhan, but we decided they would have to wait. The first thing we would do the next morning was to visit the marriage certificate office to see what the application procedures and costs were. We had tried as best we could to prepare all the necessary documents beforehand, but all the government workers we’d spoken with had been so evasive, and nobody seemed to agree on exactly what it would take for an American woman to marry a Chinese man.

  We were about to find out that evasive replies and misinformation would be the least of our frustrations.

  First thing the next morning, we went to the government office to apply for our marriage certificate. Even though William had tried to prepare me that this process wouldn’t be easy, in my heart and mind, I really thought it would be. I didn’t fully understand that getting married in China is nothing like what we’re used to in the West, and that for a foreign woman to marry a Chinese man was highly complicated at best and nearly impossible at worst.

  When a couple is married in China, there is nobody to “pronounce” them husband and wife. Although we did eventually have a ceremony, this is not a necessary part of becoming legally bound in China. There is no ritual exchanging of rings and no walking down the aisle; rather, a couple is married once they have obtained a marriage certificate. That may sound simple, but every requirement in the process of getting this certificate seems to have at least one hundred sub-requirements, and, depending on the mood of the officials, these requirements can change at any given moment. We learned and relearned this a million times over the next couple of weeks, but it all began in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province.

  We arrived at the office about one minute after it opened. We walked into a fairly small, older room. It wasn’t what I had expected at all. I had pictured something bigger and more official looking. After all, this was the place that issued a most important document: a marriage certificate. The tattered appearance of the walls and furniture didn’t strike me as particularly odd, though; after all, this was China. Most things there were not as modern, new, or well-maintained as we’re used to in the West. What did strike me as odd, however, were the three workers sitting behind the counter. They looked like high school students, especially the man seated in the middle. There was a girl on either side of him and none of them looked a day over nineteen. These are the people who will decide whether or not we can get married? I thought. These are the government officials?

  It turned out that the man (or should I say “boy”?) was the official in charge of issuing marriage certificates. My first impression of him is hard to describe because it was neither positive nor negative. He did look young, but because I knew he was the one who could help us, I didn’t hold that against him.

  William and I walked up to the desk hand in hand, smiling confidently.

  “Ni hao,” William said politely.

  “Ni hao,” the man replied.

  William then began to ask a series of questions regarding this procedure. The man asked to take a look at my documents and I confidently took out my passport, work permit, birth certificate, other forms of identification, and the all-important non-marriage certificate, which I had gotten in Chicago a few weeks before. This is not a document we routinely use in the States, if ever at all, but my research had shown that I needed a notarized document saying I was single. Although it sounded strange, I’d had this document drawn up when I was home and brought it back.

  I laid all these documents in front of the official and waited for him to say “okay” or some Chinese equivalent. But “okay” was not what I heard.

  The official began to talk . . . a lot. He pointed to this document and that paper, but he pointed mostly at my non-marriage certificate. My Chinese is limited, clearly, but I heard a lot of “bu xin” (not okay) and “bu keyi” (cannot do). Basically, I heard a lot of “bu.” Even if I hadn’t understood a word, I would have been able tell just by looking at how William’s smile had disappeared and feeling how he was squeezing my hand that things weren’t going well. He looked at me with eyes that said, “This is going to hurt, and I don’t want to translate it.”

  Apparently, my non-marriage certificate was bu xin. The form they needed was one to be obtained from the American embassy. The one I had was not official enough.

  I asked William to explain to this man that my form was notarized, and that in the States this was considered highly official and should be completely valid. He gave me an “Okay, I’ll translate it, but it isn’t going to make a difference” look.

  To every one of William’s attempts, the man gave a rebuttal.

  “William, tell him that this stamp is official,” I said.

  “Sweetheart,” William said softly and gently, “I told him that.”

  “Well, tell him he should accept this. It’s just as valid as anything I’d get from the embassy.”

  “Sweetie, I told him, but he said they have to have that certain form.”

  “But we can’t possibly get that form now. We’re in Wuhan. The embassy is in Guangzhou.” My voice began to quiver and tears began to well up. Don’t cry, Lori, I told myself. This official is not going to be moved by tears and will probably be more amused than anything. Don’t cry.

  As I stood beside William in the marriage certificate office, I couldn’t help but feel sick at the amount of power this government official held in his hands. As I looked at him across the desk, I tried to look deeply enough into his eyes to reach his soul. I wanted him to look into my eyes and stop being the world’s biggest jerk. I wanted him to look in William’s eyes and feel his sincerity. And I wanted him to just give us our marriage certificate.

  I don’t know why I was so naïve going into that office. I actually thought we could just go in, give the official our documents, and become man and wife. After having lived in China for a year and half, I should have known that would not be the case.

  William could see I was about to lose it. He put a strong arm gently around my shoulders—partly to be sweet, partly to keep me from falling over. I was so sad. I didn’t understand all of the official’s rebuttals. In fact, I hardly understood a word. I only knew that as I stood there with the man I loved, knowing that what we both wanted more than anything was to become husband and wife, we were being told “no.” And that word has the same impact in any language.

  We turned away from the desk and walked to the elevator. It couldn’t have been more than ten feet away from the office door, but I felt like we walked for an hour. Every step was hard to take; I felt like I was going to pass out. We had come to Wuhan with all our documents in hand. We had a few precious days in Wuhan and a few precious weeks to get things accomplished. This was our window of opportunity to become husband and wife—and we weren’t going to be allowed to do it. With every
step I took away from that door, I was taking one step away from what I wanted most—my William.

  As we got in that elevator, went downstairs, and headed toward the exit, I realized that this truly was our chance. We cannot take no for an answer, I thought. So we stood in the lobby and talked for a long time, sorting out all the possibilities and trying desperately to think of a way to get the document we needed from the American embassy in Guangzhou without having to go to Guangzhou ourselves.

  “What if we fax the certificate to the embassy and ask them to confirm that it is valid?” I suggested. “Then they can pass on that confirmation to this office and maybe they’ll accept it.” The more I talked, the more excited I got. “Yeah, that’s it—this guy just needs proof that it’s valid, and I’m sure the embassy can confirm that!”

  William grabbed both my hands in his and smiled the biggest smile. “Yes,” he said in an excited whisper. “Let’s go.”

  We walked back toward the elevator with some hope.

  But when we got back upstairs and William explained our solution to the official, excitement evident in his voice even though I didn’t understand all of the language he was using, the official once again replied with his familiar “bu keyi” and “bu xin.” He didn’t think it was likely that the embassy would accept anything by fax, and even if they did confirm that the notarized signature we had was valid, it still wasn’t the correct form.

  When we returned to the hotel, we called the embassy on my mobile phone. They confirmed that they couldn’t do anything by fax and that we did indeed need to have the appropriate form.

  “Well, you’ll need to go to Guangzhou,” William said mat-ter-of-factly after I hung up the phone.

  My eyes widened. “Sweetie, what do you mean? Go to Guangzhou, get the form, and come back here? This is crazy. It’s totally expensive, and we’re so short on money now!”

  “What other choice do we have?” he asked. “This is our only chance to get that form.”

  I knew he was right. I couldn’t believe we were going to do this, but what choice did we have?

  Throughout the day we tried to focus on what we could do— which wasn’t much. However, we were required to get a medical exam, so we figured this was the best time to do it. We had gotten the form for the medical exam from the official and took that with us to the hospital.

  We had to pay almost five hundred kuai (yuan) right off the bat—another expense we hadn’t planned for. The irony is, money was not usually an issue for me in China. I made an American salary, and when we converted that to yuan, we multiplied by eight! This generally equaled me not having to worry too much about lack of money.

  These circumstances, however, were quite different. I had gone home just one month earlier, and the expense of that trip and my dad’s funeral costs had all but wiped me out financially. As we forked over the five hundred yuan to get our medical tests, we began to be conscious of how little money we really had— especially since we’d just learned that we needed to buy me a plane ticket to Guangzhou so I could get that precious piece of paper from the embassy.

  All the plans William and I had about giving his family lots of money and buying them a new washing machine and water heater went right out the window as these marriage certificate expenses continued to add up.

  chapter 27

  The medical exam was fairly routine. We each had to urinate in a cup, give some blood, and have a chest X-ray. Everything was going along fine until William stepped in front of the X-ray machine. He stepped off the platform and the doctor asked him to get back up. Confused, he complied, assuming they’d made some mistake and just needed to take the picture again. Next thing we knew, the doctor came out from the next room and asked him to come into her office.

  I anxiously waited outside. When William walked out, there was a look in his eyes I’d never seen before. A million things went through my mind: What did she tell him? It must be bad. Is it about me? Maybe she told him the bad news because she can’t speak English and couldn’t tell me directly. Do I have some serious problem? Or does he? What could be wrong? What does a chest X-ray show?”

  As I was mentally going through the list of possibilities, William was leading me out into the hall. He took my hands in his and spoke slowly, seeming as though he were trying to sound much calmer than he felt.

  “Sweetheart,” he said. “There is some problem in my lungs.”

  In his lungs, I thought. What kind of problem? Cancer? Pneumonia? Yes, actually of course, that must be it! He’s had a cough for quite some time. I’ve been wondering if maybe he has a touch of bronchitis. Okay, that we can handle. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  But William was still talking. “She says I have . . . how do you say it? . . . tuberculosis.”

  I couldn’t talk. I didn’t even comprehend what he’d just said. That disease doesn’t exist anymore, I thought. I mean, hadn’t they found a cure for that a long time ago? Didn’t we vaccinate for that? People don’t actually get TB, I thought. William doesn’t have that! That’s a fatal disease. William doesn’t have that. William does not have TB. I’m sure the doctor didn’t say that—he’s probably translating it incorrectly, or maybe the doctor is just inept. This is impossible.

  He obviously saw the horror and mass of confusion on my face. All he did was hug me very tightly; he didn’t say anything. Because of the way the morning had gone, I was stuck in a practical rather than emotional frame of mind at this point. That’s why, rather than asking about the disease or treatment or his feelings or anything normal, I said, “What about the form? This means she won’t sign the form.”

  We needed that form in order to get married. Even if we managed to get the form from Guangzhou and every stamp and certificate we needed from William’s hometown, without this medical form, none of the rest of it was any good. This diagnosis was one more thing to stop us from getting married. I couldn’t even begin to think about the disease and what it meant because of the urgency I felt about getting the form signed. How sickening, actually, that having just learned that my husband had a deadly disease, my first question was about the stupid form.

  William looked at me as if my words had hurt him more than the news of having this awful disease had. He told me to wait a minute and went back in to talk to the doctor. I didn’t find out until several months later what actually took place behind that door—but when he came out, he had both our forms signed, indicating that we were both in good health and had passed the medical exam.

  “Well, if she signed it, she must not be sure it’s TB,” I said. “I mean, she wouldn’t sign it otherwise, right?”

  “Hmmm. Mmm,” he said, trying to smile.

  “So, I’m sure she’s just wrong, sweetie, I’m sure it’s not really that,” I said, hoping he would agree.

  “Well, I think she’s right,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “I think I do have it but she knows we can get treatment.”

  “And I guess she figured, what’s the point in denying us our marriage certificate, right?”

  “That’s right,” he said, still trying to smile.

  A month later, William and I were sitting on the couch in our living room, chatting about work, funny things students had said that day, and the gossip from the secondary school where he taught at the time. I talked about the frustrations I was having in the ELC and the ideas I had to fix it. His wallet was on the coffee table and for some reason, I picked it up and started playing with it as we talked. Maybe I was curious about it, or maybe it was a mindless action—it wasn’t something I normally did—but I started looking at his identification cards, and I noticed that his $20 US bill was gone. He’d enjoyed having this American money in his wallet, and obviously there hadn’t been a chance to spend it in China, so I asked him about it.

  William got a weird look on his face, and I didn’t know if he was going to cry or throw up—that’s how weird this look was.

  “I need to tell you this,” he said.

  I was curious a
bout what he was going to say, but I wasn’t really worried. I just figured he’d had to spend it on something and felt guilty for not telling me, and now he wanted to “confess.” If it hadn’t been for the strange look on his face, I would have thought it was cute. Looking at him, though, I didn’t know what was about to come out of his mouth.

  He sat for a long time, his face sort of twisted. There seemed to be a bit of fear in his eyes. Fear of me? Fear of something he’d done? I didn’t get it. Tell me already! I thought anxiously.

  “Do you remember when we went to that doctor in Wuhan?” he finally asked me.

  “Of course,” I said. “How could I forget?”

  As I waited for him to go on, it hit me. I didn’t need him to tell me. I knew what he was going to say. Suddenly, it was obvious. I’d known at the time it was strange that the doctor had signed the form. I mean, why would she give him a clean bill of health when she’d just told him he had TB? Why hadn’t he invited me back into that room with him? It was so clear now.

  “You gave the doctor the money,” I said as it all sank in.

  I didn’t care about the bribery so much. We were in China, and unfortunately that was how things worked there. What hurt was the realization that any hope I had of William not actually being so sick was gone. I had held out hope that she’d signed the form because his case was mild and he was going to be fine. Now I knew that she’d signed it for twenty dollars—a lot of money to her.