TAKE A VILLAGE

My apartment mate had a full day of dealing with her Cantonese relatives while I was at work today, and she told me so. Her sister-in-law's pathetic mewing as a response to questions, the chipper attitude of a nephew, the hospital where someone is staying, nutritious congee for an invalid, bags of oranges, and sundry other things. Frustration. irritation, a cat that throws up, litterboxes. Muni transit lines.

After she wound down, I thanked her for letting me live a Cantonese family life vicariously. She snarled in response. I appreciate the distance, she envies me that perspective.

Let me point out all of the people she dealt with today are speakers of English. She too is a speaker of English. I am probably the one person to whom she is close who speaks Cantonese relatively well. And I often think in Dutch.

If you've ever read any Chinese novels, you know that they involve hundreds of characters, and immense convoluted drama. They are epic. Dutch novels are usually about one person, existential crises, internalized minor emotional disquiet, and something nasty involving food.
Probably because our cuisine is rather unexciting.

Syl the Depressed Brabander stepped outside and gazed at his neighbor Wong's house in the hills a few miles away. His minor indigestion from eating the boiled rat with not so much Spam™ made him wonder if he should have a nap. The very faint sounds of two different operas being played on two different record players, so far off, plus the distant, distant racket issuing from Wong's family mansion's kitchen where the junior cook and the third fishboy were screaming at each other about who broke the Tang Dynasty basin, plus visiting widow Lee wailing about the boil on her ox's shoulder, suggested that sleep might be hard.
Glaring darkly he went back inside, closed the door, and put his clogs away.
Oh good. The cat had thrown up again. This cheered him.
He remembered how good it was to be alive.
One of his relatives missed an ear.


The part of the novel with Old Wong, the junior cook and the third fishboy, and Widow Lee is colourful, fascinating, filled with all the drama of a large household and an extended family. The part populated by Syl and his ailing cat is dull, rather depressing, has too many details about drafts, roof leaks, and peeling plaster, plus ghastly peasant food one hundred years ago. It is intensely meaningful.



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