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??Presentation?about?Wang,?Anyi’s?’Granny’?in?’The?Columbia?Anthology?of?Modern?Chinese?Literature.’?2nd
Edition.?Ed.?Joseph?S.?M.?Lau?&?Howard?Goldblatt.?New?York:?Columbia?University?Press,?2007.?pp?462?469
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??5?pages?presentation?speech:
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??A?thesis?argument?[please?highlight?the?thesis?in?the?paper]

462
Wang Anyi (1954- )
GRANNY
Translated by Howard Goldblatt
Fu Ping showed up that afternoon at the house where Granny worked as a maid. Little girls were
playing jump rope in the lane, creating a slight echo off the walls as their shoes scraped the
concrete. Yellow rays of afternoon sun?it was three or four o?clock?shone brightly. The girls?
skirts were beautiful in the gate at the end of the lane. Since it was open, she stood in the gateway,
blocking the sun?s rays. Some women were sitting by the compound footpath. She couldn?t see
their faces, but rays of light at their backs painted their silhouettes.
Granny was Li Tianhua?s granny, but not by blood; she?d adopted him as a grandson. Back
when the matchmaker had come to Fu Ping with proposal, she?d stressed two points: first, Li
Tianhua had attended middle school, and second, his granny was a housemaid in Shanghai. So
even though Tianhua was the eldest in a large family, which kept them at the poverty level, it
wasn?t a hopeless case. Granny had been widowed early on and had no sons; her daughter was
about to be married and become a member of someone else?s family. That left an adopted
grandson as her sole heir, and it was she who?d made it possible for him to attend middle school.
Granny had come to Shanghai as a housemaid at the age of sixteen, thirty years before, long
enough for her to be considered Shanghainese. She?d become an established nanny. Fu Ping,
orphaned in childhood, and taken in by an uncle and aunt, placed great importance on her marriage
prospects. Since it wouldn?t have been right to speak
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directly to the subject, she had to be extremely vigilant. Whenever the matchmaker came to her
door, she kept her head lowered; she wouldn?t say yes and she wouldn?t say no. If a suitor came
to the house, she wouldn?t show her face, spending the day at her girlfriend?s house instead, and
not coming home until whoever it was had left. Actually being taken to a suitor?s houses was out
of the question, so her aunt was forced to go alone. I can?t delay the girl?s marriage, she?d be
thinking, or people might accuse her uncle and me of not caring enough about our niece?s future.
So when she returned home, she reported everything to Fu Ping how the man had kind parents
and well-behaved brothers and sisters, how the eldest of his younger sisters was already engaged,
that the house was to be renovated the next year, and so on and so on. Still she wouldn?t say yes
and she wouldn?t say no. But then, when Li Tianhua?s name came up, that all changed. On the
day he showed up, instead of hiding, she stayed to cook a meal and prepare tea. Looking out from
under lowered eyelids, she saw a pair of black cloth slippers, held close together, not especially
large, slightly narrow; the open fronts revealed white gauzy socks; the backs of the feet were on
the high side. Those were not the feet of a man who tilled the fields, wide, archless feet made for
standing in mud and water. She could tell he was not a man who made living by the sweat of his
brow. Before long, the matchmaker brought the betrothal gifts. In addition to the usual knitting
wool, cotton fabrics, and colored threads, there was also some traveling money, which Granny
had included so the girl could see the sights of Shanghai. And that was how Fu Ping arrived at the
house where Granny worked.
Granny she may have been, but she looked younger that Fu Ping?s aunt. Her hair was still
black, and what appeared at first glance to be a receding hairline was actually a result of the way
she tucked her bangs behind her ears. She wore a blue cotton jacket with long, looping buttons
down the front and a stand-up collar. Granny lacked the fair complexion of most Shanghai
residents, but didn?t have the swarthy complexion of most country folk either; rather, her skin had
a slight yellow cast. Since her face was full and round, the skin was taut, but not fine, no longer
young, but not old?durable was more like it. Her hands, too, were like that, she had large
knuckles, covered by skin that was starting to show its age. By this time, Granny had pretty much
shed her hometown accent, but did not speak like a native Shanghainese. A hometown dialect
with Shanghai lilt. She maintained a healthy, erect posture, walking and sitting down, at the dinner
table or at work; but when she bent at the waist, she rested on her haunches, legs apart, betraying
signs of a country woman. Granny?s features, too, were like that: sparse brows and pale eyes that
weren?t particularly noticeable on a woman from a privileged background, and she no longer
looked like a country woman. But when she spoke, her lower lip protruded slightly, her upper lip
hung back, exposing her teeth, and that look had a slight resemblance to one of those shrewish
village women. A youthful injury in the corner of one eye had not left a scar, but did form a barely
noticeable dimple at the tip. When she looked in a certain way, the dimple made her
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seem to be looking at something out of the corner of her eye, which invested her with a slightly
shrewish charm. All in all, though she had lived in Shanghai for thirty years, Granny had not been
transformed into true urbanite, and yet she was no longer a rustic either; she was, instead, a
hybrid?half urban, half rural. This half-and-half hybridity made her a special type. When she
and women like her were out on the street, one look was all anyone needed to spot them for what
they were: nannies.
Back home in the Yangzhou countryside, going into the cities as a nanny was a long-standing
tradition. For some it was a lifetime occupation; for others a temporary job. Like Granny, there
were women from various villages who?d lived in Shanghai for years and become full-fledged
residents of the city. Most had been widowed while still young, or were married to shiftless or
preposterous husbands, and had yet to bear a son. Such was the case with Granny. Bereft of family
support, they were forced to be self-reliant. And the longer they were away from home, the less
often they returned. And when they did, the visit was usually short-lived. They were no longer
accustomed to their hometown environment, which normally led to bouts of diarrhea or rashes,
and that sent them right back to Shanghai, often bringing along another woman or two, for whom
they found work in a household. Sometimes they wrote letters home, urging one of the village
women to come to Shanghai to find work. As time passed, a large number of country women were
living and working in Shanghai, most in the same general area. Some employers were related or
acquainted, and so they saw one anther frequently, which made living away from home easier to
get used to.
Granny had lived in Shanghai thirty years, virtually all that time on or near Huaihai Road in
the flourishing Western District. Like all residents in a busy section of town, she viewed the
quieter border sections as the wild countryside, when in fact those places, such as Zhabei and
Putuo, were where people from her hometown had congregated, mostly as a result of wars or
natural disasters, residents of Shanghai who had sailed down the Shuzhou River. They found a
spot of unclaimed land and threw up a rush tent, like the cabin of a boat, and moved in, then it
was off to the factories to find work. They constituted at least half of Shanghai?s industrial
workers. But Granny would not associate with those people. Sha had acquired the urbanite?s
prejudice of viewing Huaihai Road alone as the true Shanghai.
Working as a maid in Shanghai?s Western District for decades, Granny had seen every type of
person there was, and that made her a woman of broad experience. She once severed a woman
who played the old woman role in Shaoxing opera, and who was paid generous wages by the
theater, while her husband was a plastic surgeon in private practices. Childless, they owned a
large flat in a building reserved for foreigners, with an Indian doorman and an elevator operator
who spoke English. And so Granny learned a few phrases, like ?good morning,? ?thank you,?
?come,? ?go,? and the like. She wasn?t expected to cook or do the laundry; her sole duty was to
clean the carved mahogany
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Furniture, with its mother-of-pearl inlays, with a feather duster. She didn?t stay long, couldn?t
get used to the light work or the lack of human contact. Her next employer lived in a long lane at
the eastern end of Huaihai Road. It was a pretty typical family, lots of children, where the husband,
who worked in a bank on the Bund, was the sole breadwinner. She shared household duties with
the wife, including looking after the children. The wife had a gaunt, sallow face and didn?t dress
well, giving the impression that she was the maid. Not a day passed that they didn?t worry about
family finances, and they were often late with her wages. Granny hadn?t been there long when
the husband was diagnosed with TB and was confined to bed rest. Despite the woman?s tearful
pleas, she gave notice, not only giving up her last month?s wages but even spending some of her
own money to buy shirts and shorts for the children. Such a humiliating existence was not for her.
She?d also worked for a middle-class family in which husband and wife both worked and left
their four children in her care. They were a loving couple; if anything, the husband was a little
too cloying with his wife for Granny?s tastes. He ordered a daily delivery of milk, which he
warmed for her in the morning, and if she complained about the smell, he spoon-fed her. He was
attentive to his wife at the expense of his children, who were drawn to Granny on the day she
arrived. She liked them in turn, partly because they were so well behaved, yet she decided to give
notice. She simply could not abide their father?s nauseating behavior. Having lost her husband
when she was quite young, she lived a chaste, widowed life, and was sensitive almost to a fault.
But she hated to part with the children. Even after she went to work for another family, they often
came to see her, and she introduced them to the children of her new employer as playmates, as
friends.
The two families lived only a block apart, but the status of the new lane, with its apartment
buildings, was a couple of rungs above the old one. The head of the family was a doctor; it was,
by then, post-1949, so he?d closed his private clinic and now served as the head of a municipal
hospital, traveling to and from work in a chauffeured automobile. He was a stern man who never
once spoke to her nor ate at the same table with her. Yet he was actually the sort of man she held
in high esteem, a dignified gentleman. His wife was a good woman as well, genial, generous,
never cozying up to her husband in front of her or the children. If only the children hadn?t been
so insolent. The eldest, a girl, had barely started middle school and was already into modern
fads?perms, brassieres, wearing her mother?s nylon, and forever complaining that Granny ruined
her clothes by scrubbing?a real young mistress. Her two brothers were a little better, but still
haughty. They ignore the children of her former employer when they came to play, practicing the
piano instead, always a fast number, while their visitors cowered off to the side, a sight that hurt
Granny deeply. But they were, after all, children, who couldn?t put on airs for long, and before
long they were playing with their friends. One day, the husband came home early from work and
noticed that someone else?s children were
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playing in his house. He said nothing at the time, but later had his wife tell her to ask the children
not to come anymore. Stung by this rebuff, a few days later she found an excuse to give notice. It
wasn?t that status meant nothing to her, but she had her pride, and could not abide arrogance in
anymore.
She fit in quite nicely in Shanghai?s circle of nannies, and was so self assured that she chose
her families, they did not choose her. And she was firm in her insistence to work only on Huaihai
Road in the Western District, and only for native Shanghainese. She would never have considered
working for those speakers of the Shandong dialect who came south to work for the government.
Someone had once recommended her as a nanny to an army commander in a Honghou high, she
chose not to take the job. The family lived in a sparsely furnished flat, with polished hardwood
floors and a set of sofas against the wall, like a government office conference room. The large
kitchen had clean pots and pans, and a cold stove. Not even water was boiled there; soldiers
brought over boiled water from a communal vat. The family ate in not one but several dining halls,
the commander in one, his wife?also in the military?in another, and the children in yet a third.
Not what you?d call normal family life, and certainly not for her. So she walked out of the
compound under an expanse of open sky, onto an expanse of open road. Not another person in
sight, nor a single house?a bleak and dreary scene. Who can possibly live in a hellish place like
that? she fussed. Back in the countryside we have ponds with ducks and geese, and farmers and
their oxen in the field. She walked on until she neared a village, with chimney smoke and clucking
hens and swallows coming from up north to nest. She gazed into the distance, where she saw one
brick house after another. The coarse red bricks, fired only once, were porous and less solid than
the green ones; but the red created a bewitching contrast to the lush green of the surrounding
willows. Granny was reminded of all the colors in her home in the countryside. A passing army
truck threw up a cloud of dust that coated her body and her face.
Her homesickness had weakened by the time she was back in the vicinity of North Sichuan
and Haining Roads, where the streets narrowed again and shops, pedestrians, trolleys, and
automobiles began to appear. Gazing down the lane, she saw laundry drying and children playing
games, and she smelled a bit of cooking oil wafting in the air. Here was a life she understood
better. The high-rises in Hongkou had been so tall. Little balconies with black wrought-iron
railings hanging on red brick walls made those walls look especially large, broad, and steep. The
lanes, too, were broad and large, and quite grand. But the terraces had an oppressive quality, and
the residents were a jumbled lot, even in appearance, which led to a repellent feeling,
overshadowing the occasional attractive individual; that was something she couldn?t get used to.
As she walked across the Haining Road Bridge, at the widest stretch of the Suzhou River, she saw
a congested cluster of ships sailing toward her from far upstream. The
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stench rising from the river was unpleasant, that and the dampness carried on the wind, and she
did not feel totally at ease until she was back on Huaihai Road; when the new-style, relatively
squat, shallow houses came into view, she looked all the way to the end of the narrow lane, which
twisted and turned, its storefronts crowded up against each other on nicely proportioned byways.
There were high-rises, but not like those at Hongkou, which had the fortified look of the Central
Post Office; the lobbies of the high-rises here were only as wide as single shops. Inside, an
elevator rose and fell in view of people outside, and sunlight streamed in through a stained-glass
window above the landing of the marble staircase beside the elevator. The elevator operator and
the doorman were engaged in small talk, a word or two of their conversation reaching her ears as
she passed. The street bustled with pedestrians, but they were orderly, locals for the most part,
which is why it wasn?t all jumbled. Everything was on a smaller scale here, and the frequent
greetings could only occur in a residential who were sort of gruff. The locals knew how to dress
but were not slaves to fashion; precisely because they were familiar with the modern world, they
were more staid, somewhat conservative even.
Granny walked along, no longer homesick. As we saw earlier, she?d taken on the attitude of
city residents, including their prejudices. Could anyone say she wasn?t one of them? She was
more familiar with the city than some of the local youngsters. Listen to her relate all the strange
things she?d seen and heard, things you could not make up. Plenty from this street alone. Like the
child-slapping abductor, which is to say, someone slapped a child, who got all turned around,
until all he could see was the street in front of him, and he walked off with the person, right out
of sight. Then there was the story of the ghost that screamed in the middle of the night, and for
this there was a name attached, that of a certain old lady from one of the lanes, who heard it every
night for a full half year, and then died. And the man who ran off with his housemaid, and the
woman who murdered her husband, and so on. And she knew lines from lots of plays: ?The New
Year?s Sacrifice,? ?Wang Kui and Mu Guiying,? ?The Butterfly Lovers,? ?Third Sister Yang on
a Bed of Nails,? most of the lines coming from popular local plays or Shaoxing opera. She could
even sing a few of them! You can believe me or not, that?s up to you, but she had even seen
Hollywood movies Charlie Chaplin, for instance, she knew who he was. And she said his name
like an American: ?Chap-lin.? But she didn?t much like American movies, mainly because of the
happy endings; she preferred tragedies. The mere mention of one of those sad plays had her in
tears. Every child in ears. She saw no need to faithfully follow the story line, preferring to hop
from spot to spot, an episode here and an incident there, but always with powerful atmospheres.
She specialized in exaggerated tales of terror and misery. In re-telling ?The New Year?s Sacrifice,?
she focused on the scene where Xiang Lin?s wife buys a threshold at the temple to avoid having
her two husbands cleave
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her in half in the nether regions. In ?Wang Kui and Mu Guiying? it was the episode wher Mu
Guiying reclaims her spirit, and in ?The Butterfly Lovers? it was the final scene, where the graves
split open. The episode from ?Third Sister Yang on a Bed of Nails? was particularly horrific. The
children, their faces turned ashen from fright, would crowd around to listen and to tremble, and
to beg her over and over: One more, tell us one more.
Sometimes Granny would tell stories from her home in the country. They too were horror
stories, but another kind of horror, the rural kind. Filtered through Granny?s rural view of the
world, they incorporated bewitching elements, and were not always simple and straightforward,
which is why they sounded a bit like stage plays, full of color. One told of a beautiful bride in a
phoenix headdress and embroidered cape, riding to her new home in a sedan chair; when she
raises her head and looks behind her with a grimace, a demon?s face appears. And with that she
brings ill fortune into a farmer?s home. There was also the story of the little demon incarnate. All
the offspring of a certain couple died in infancy, never later than their first birthday, to the
desperate consternation of their parents. Then one day a soothsayer advised them to cut the toes
off the next child to be born so he could not walk to the door. They decided to take his advice.
With the scissors poised to cut off his toes, the latest infant abruptly opened his eyes?they were
the eyes of a grown-up! This was the story?s terrifying climax. Then there was the story of the
dying man who spotted generals sent by King Yama of Hell, carrying chains to lead him away.
Granny made the rattling of the chains and the clanking of the weapons horrifying yet impressive,
investing her tale with the vibrancy of a martial arts contest.
Those stories were all linked to Granny?s own past. Widowed at a young age, mother of two
sons who died one after other, she accepted her lot as a woman fated to suffer, someone with a
tough karma, destined to be self-reliant. After years of domestic work she had accumulated some
savings, but not enough for loans or handouts to a host of kin. Loans were no more than handouts
that sounded a little nicer; the money never found its way back. How many people she carried on
her back! Her daughter told her that her future husband wanted to attend high school, at her
expense; her nephew was studying acting with a county drama troupe, room and board supplied
for the first three years, and she had to help pay for his clothes; her younger sister?s husband was
stricken with cholera and had an operation?again, her money. Now her grandson was talking
about getting married, at her expense, of course.
When she?d decided to adopt a grandson, the old Shanghai women had tried to talk her out of
it. Now she was his meal ticket, but would the day come when he?d take care of her? He was just
one more person with his eyes on her savings. The family she worked for had also urged her not
to do it, saying she was better off holding on to her own money. They?d even taken her to a bank
to open a savings account; then when people came for a handout, she could tell them it was in the
bank and had to stay there until the account matured. But she went
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ahead with the adoption anyway. The so-called grandson was in really the son of her late
husband?s older brother. Her own daughter was to be married this year, and when that happened,
the family house would be claimed by her brother-in-law. But with a grandson, even though the
place would belong to her family, it?d also be her house. When she was too old to work, she?d
return to the countryside and move in, as reason dictated. To plan for that day, she cleverly
arranged for her daughter to marry a nephew in her, her elder brother would have to take her in.
Even after working in Shanghai for three decades and acquiring a Shanghai resident?s card, she
had no choice but to plan a return to the countryside, and that was why she was willing to lend
money, even give it away; the grateful recipients would never abandon her. For a while, rumors
of an affair between her future son-in-law and a classmate reached her ears from the countryside,
so she asked someone to write a letter to ask him if it was true. He wrote back: ?If you drink from
the well, don?t forget the well digger.? She knew this came from the mouth of her son-in-law, but
it struck a chord in her heart anyway. Wasn?t she herself a well-digger?