Getting To Know The General

The first time I met the general was in 1995 on a trip to Beijing. I had been dating his daughter Lily for only three months and we had impetuously flown to China so I could ask him for her hand in marriage. A career officer in the People’s Liberation Army, he accepted me graciously into his spartan apartment a short bicycle ride from Tiananmen Square--flouting Chinese law to allow a Westerner, or “White Devil,” to remain under his roof for several days. During my stay he showed me a face of Beijing I could not have otherwise seen: hosting me at hideaway neighborhood eateries, pointing out sites, posing for snapshots in his stiffly starched uniform.

On my last night in China, I had nervously asked if I could marry Lily, who, with her younger sister, had been in the U.S. for several years since arriving as a student. The general’s face remained so stoic I thought he would refuse. After moments of uncomfortable silence, he finally consented with a caveat: As the products of vastly different cultures, we would have to continually compromise in order to succeed.

Now it is my turn to repay his hospitality. In a traditional Chinese gesture, my wife and I are hosting her parents at our Los Angeles home--where I play the role of dutiful Chinese son-in-law and Mandarin is the language of choice.

For the general and me, our awkward courtship on American soil began the day he arrived at LAX on his first trip outside China. Awaiting his plane with his two daughters, I watched the rail-thin 60-year-old march up the ramp to the visitor greeting area in the Tom Bradley International Terminal, pushing a cart laden with old Stalinesque suitcases. The daughters had decided to greet their father American-style, throwing their arms around his neck as I stood respectfully in the background. Yet as his younger daughter, YuYu, rushed to embrace him, the general threw her a shoulder block that would have made an NFL lineman proud; he pushed past, hand extended, to first greet me, the waiting male.

My crash course in Chinese culture had only begun. My in-laws speak no English; my Chinese is infantile. Still, we make do. On many nights the general and I linger as the dinner dishes are cleared away, and I ask questions--translated by Lily--about such matters as surviving Mao and the Cultural Revolution, the occupation of Tibet, government human rights violations, the nationalistic war of words with Taiwan and the military’s actions that hot summer night 11 years ago in Tiananmen Square. While his answers are always considered, the general often repeats the party line. He insists, for instance, that hooligans--not students--were shot at Tiananmen and that Tibet historically has been part of China.

Sometimes I go too far, pressing for an explanation only to be shut down--not by the general but by Lily, who refuses to translate my queries. She intervenes not only to protect her father from embarrassment but because of her own nationalistic sensitivity. “You need to ask better quality questions,” she’ll say.

But there have been breakthrough moments. At one point, my father-in-law acknowledges that life in America, with its free enterprise and democracy, is indeed true nirvana. And he admits that he has become reliant upon the reporting of a free press, reading the Chinese-American newspapers for an “unbiased” view of affairs back home.

The general has his own questions: How could the world’s premier military power bomb the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by mistake? How could our government herd an entire race of proud Native Americans onto tiny reservations?

One night, as we rehash the Elian Gonzalez saga, I expect him to echo my criticism of U.S. officials as jack-booted thugs. But the general calls the whole affair too complicated to judge so simply. He says President Clinton made his decisions as an overture to Castro. “This is not about children,” he says, “but about presidents.”

My father-in-law is a student of history and literature. When my wife left home in the late ‘80s, he wrote her a poem that hangs on our living room wall about the loss felt by a father who once held his infant firstborn under a night sky, asking her to choose a gift: the moon or the stars.

Years later, as he hikes in Yosemite with his hands held behind his back like an officer inspecting his troops, the general instructs my wife on the nuances of several ancient Chinese poems detailing nature’s beauty. He also knows of John Muir and Ernest Hemingway, and he’s read extensively about Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

In the days before the general’s arrival, a friend commiserated: “I could never endure my in-laws for a few days, let alone eight months.”

But the general and Mama are house guests from heaven. While Chinese culture dictates that children host visiting parents indefinitely, the parents also have a gnawing obsession to be useful. Mama, a shy, elegant woman who girlishly covers her mouth when she laughs, immediately began cooking five-course meals for every sitting, serving my favorite Beijing-style bread until I began to gain weight and begged her to stop. With a cheery, tune-whistling demeanor straight from Mao’s Great Leap Forward, my in-laws have hijacked our home renovation project. One night, while painting the kitchen, the general asks his wife to hand him a hammer, calling her tongzhi, or comrade. My house is no longer just a home. It has become a Communist work camp.

With the general’s help, I now see Los Angeles through the eyes of a foreigner. On drives around town, he has commented on L.A.’s clean air. In Beijing, he explains, the constant dust from Gobi Desert sandstorms and soot from coal plants blacken the sky. And compared to a country with more than a billion citizens, the streets here are empty. On a trip to the revolving sky bar at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, the general observes that such a tremendous--and free--city view would attract endless lines in China, with people pressed up against the inside glass.

The general sees Americans as extravagant consumers. He points to the many single drivers on the freeway who “all seem to be going to the same place,” to residents who leave the house lights on for a week even when they’re not home, to dishwashers used to clean five plates--all unacceptable practices in energy-starved China.

Just before Christmas, as we slump into the car after being jostled by the frenzied holiday crowds at Universal CityWalk, I inform the general that we have just emerged from the very heart of American capitalism.

He pauses, this once-bristling Communist revolutionary, and says: “Yes, in the early days, this was exactly the kind of place we wanted to topple.” But my father-in-law has demonstrated not only the mind of a general, but also the heart of a capitalist. One night, after I introduce him to Foosball, the general draws a game schematic in his diary to show his son, who runs several game arcades in Beijing. “Good for business,” he says.

Often I am reminded of my in-law’s difficult life in China. On a winter night, as we stoke the living room hearth, the general admits that this is the first fire he has witnessed inside a home, other than in Western movies.

“Ahh,” he says, rubbing his hands, transfixed by the flames, “this is the life of a gentleman.”

After spending so much time together, the general and I now make light of our political differences. Watching two seals wrestle over dock space at Pier 39 in San Francisco, I compare their epic battle to that of the United States and China. “No,” my father-in-law says, patting my back. “These two seals are equal opponents. The United States is much stronger than China.” In the midst of the recent China-Taiwan standoff, I broker a political deal with the general over a game of Ping-Pong: If he wins, China gets Taiwan back. If I prevail, Beijing drops the sovereignty matter forever.

He agrees and we fight a close battle, with his daughters cheering his every point.

In defeat, he extends his hand with a smile. “All military troubles,” he says, “should be settled over a game of Ping-Pong.”

Soon my in-laws will return to China. I will miss Mama’s sweet spirit but mostly I will miss the general, my learned instructor who has offered insight into the ways of the world’s oldest culture. He has shown me not only how not to use my chopsticks at the serving bowl, but how to think before I speak, never allowing my ill-considered words to cause others to lose face. In turn, I have shown the general that it’s inappropriate to compare his hard-working wife, who eats little, to a cow that “eats grass but gives milk.”

Still, I keep my standing joke with my in-laws: I feel sorry for them. Instead of marrying a nice Chinese boy, their daughter settled down with a barbarian “White Devil.”

Though short of words, their actions show that I am now accepted as an actual--and no longer merely honorary--Chinese son-in-law.

One night, as my wife works late, I sit at the dinner table with her parents. While we say little, we share another harmonious meal, knowing that we are indeed one family--two cultures joined despite a vast ocean of misunderstanding.