Beautiful Country: A Memoir

Qian’s earliest experiences with her family were filled with joy. She nuzzled into her maternal grandmother Lao Lao’s chest. Ma Ma and Ba Ba tossed her up in a blanket as she squealed with laughter.

The plane ride from China to the United States felt like an ascent into adulthood. Qian’s mother was so overtaken by motion sickness that she sat slumped in her seat, unable to communicate or move. When the flight attendant asked the seven-year-old to tell her unresponsive mother to put on her seat belt, Qian lied that her mother already had. This would be the first of many lies. Qian was not pleased to be on the plane; her uncles had given her a bike for her birthday a few days prior which she’d had to leave behind. 

Qian’s mother had tried many times to obtain a visitor’s visa for the United States or Mei Guo, directly translated as “Beautiful Country” (8), where Qian’s father had lived for the past two years. One day, Ma Ma took Qian to the embassy to try again. At the embassy, Qian’s mother reprimanded her several times for jumping and putting her fingers under the glass partition. When the bald man who worked for the embassy denied Qian’s mother’s request for a visa once more, Qian began to cry that she missed her Ba Ba. The man then relented and granted the visa.

On the plane, as Qian tried to poke her fingers through her ears to break the clogged feeling from the flight, her mother commanded that she stop—a common parental refrain.

Ba Ba had been an English professor who loved to dance and play with Qian. He would visit the dance hall every week, and he often took Qian with him. Ba Ba could make rooms of people laugh and had a way with words. Qian childhood was simple and joyful: She enjoyed her train set and playing in the sandbox, she did not behave in a way that aligned with gender expectations in late 20th century China, and, most of all, she shared her father’s love of dancing. Qian’s mother told her that she danced before she could walk, and Qian and her father made up their own special nonsense song and dance that they performed together.

Wang juxtaposes her childhood experiences with her parents’ childhood hardships. Qian’s father was haunted by his own childhood and held radical views that ultimately caused him to leave China for the United States. Ma Ma was a math professor who taught Qian about duty and hard work. She worked tirelessly to care for her family. While Ba Ba could engage Qian in fun activities, he often receded into himself. It was Ma Ma who was always there, always present. 

Her father’s parents, Ye Ye and Nai Nai, lived in the impoverished Chunchang village. Ye Ye and Nai Nai were poor and spoke only their local dialect. Ma Ma did not enjoy visiting them, but Qian loved it. Because of the patriarchal family structure, Ye Ye and Nai Nai viewed Qian as their full granddaughter, unlike with her mother’s parents, Lao Lao and Lao Ye, who referred to her as “wei,” or “outside” granddaughter (16). 

Like her father, Qian felt disconnected from China and the strict structure of her schooling. When all the students unquestioningly participated in a midday nap, Qian felt like an outlier. When she asked questions her teachers did not like and was assigned writing sentences as punishment, Qian was defiant. Similarly, Ba Ba felt too much pressure to watch what he said as a professor, especially criticizing the Cultural Revolution. After he went too far in one of his lectures, Qian’s parents decided that Ba Ba should go to America. Qian recalled stretching her arms out to him as he left to board the plane. Now, making the journey with her mother, Qian felt responsible for ensuring her sick mother made the journey to Mei Guo. 

In the time between her father’s departure and their own pilgrimage to the US, Qian and her mother moved in with Lao Lao and Lao Ye. Wang recalls trying to help her mother by carrying a glass bottle of vinegar and some eggs up the stairs. She tripped over her shoelaces and destroyed the groceries. After this incident, Qian grew increasingly clumsy and fell more often; she also became more anxious and nervous. Her mother also changed, becoming more irritable and distant. As Qian attempted to engage her mother in a game they had often played at the dinner table, Ma Ma yelled at her for seeking attention. At night, Qian heard her mother crying. 

On late Sunday evenings, Qian and her mother traveled to Lao Ye’s workplace to secretly call Ba Ba. Qian could hear the worry and strain in her mother’s voice. Over time, her mother lost faith in her husband’s assurances of his return, and his conversations with Qian grew shorter and more distracted. Just before her father left for the United States, Qian had gone with him to a doctor to be vaccinated. She had watched her father receive shots for his journey and had cried, worried that he had been hurt.

Two years later, Qian received her own shots for the journey. She grew anxious when she found out that she had Type B blood. Knowing that B came second in the English alphabet, Qian worried Type B blood meant she was somehow inferior. On the final part of the trip to the United States, Ma Ma told Qian to “Be silent. Say nothing” (30). When she finally saw Ba Ba, he was skinny and tired-looking.