The Ayis Who Passed Through My Childhood

The village women who left their marks in a young city girl’s life

Ayi 阿姨, or auntie, has several meanings in Chinese. We call our mothers’ sisters Ayi; we call women who seem too old to be a sister but too young to be a grandma Ayi; and we call the maids working in our homes Ayi.

Growing up, my family had different Ayis helping with domestic duties, sometimes as live-in nannies/housekeepers, sometimes as hourly helpers.

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Fei was the first Ayi I can remember, a sturdy girl with two thick braids just at shoulder length and talked with a soft accent. Fei was from Zhuji 诸暨, a town about 250 km southwest of Shanghai, and with a tradition of its women working as maids in the cities. In fact, Fei’s mother was once my cousin’s wet nurse before becoming my grandma A-Puo’s housekeeper.

Accentuated by her prominent cheek bones, Fei’s full face might not have made her a beauty—by Chinese aesthetics standards, anyway—but her nimble and skillful hands had more than made up for her lack of resemblance to Xishi 西施, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, said to be from Fei’s hometown, Zhuji. She could weave straws into bands, stitch them into a round mesh with an embroiled cloth patch (with flowers, kitties, or butterflies) layered in the center, and attach a bamboo handle to finish—ordinary straws transformed into a beautiful handheld fan in Fei’s hands right before my eyes.

For my sister and me, the folktales and fables recited with Zhuji accents were what attracted us to Fei. We followed her around, clambered up and down the chair—her crafting station —begging for stories.

“One more, please!” I’d lead the pleading.

“Yes, just one more!” my younger sister would follow suit.

“Okay, okay, just one more,” Laughing, she’d always give in to the two of us. And her hands were never idle; a straw fan, or a crochet tablecloth, or a stitched shoe sole was always in progress as the tales unfolded.

The plots of the folktales have faded with time, but Fei’s Zhuji-accented voice and the creamy yellow straw fans sprang to mind, vivid as yesterday, as I wrote these words.

I started school a year later, and Fei went back home to an arranged marriage. The last I heard, she is now a grandmother.

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The next Ayi we had was from Anhui, a province many of the Ayis working in Shanghai were from.

Mei was hired from a village in northern Anhui to help with housework when Dad felt ill.

With a slender build and fair looks, Mei didn’t have the physical appearance of someone who had been laboring in the fields in a farming village. Obviously, she had been accustomed to receiving praises from her fellow villagers about her good looks, not only because she spent more than a usual amount of time in front of the mirror, but she had once dared me—an unusually skinny pre-teen—to compare our waist size.

Mei was also a newlywed. She was still reveling in the luscious freshness of married life when she found out there was the opportunity to work for us. She had learned from the village ladies who worked in Shanghai—the ones not as good-looking and slender as she was—about the attractive city wages (better than a village man’s wage laboring in the fields) and the exciting city life (wilder than a village girl’s dream). She couldn’t resist the temptation, and left her new husband at home, to become our live-in maid.

It was the late 1970s. Girls in the poorer provinces—Anhui being one of them—were often sent to the farmland instead of schools and only their brothers could receive an education. Mei was one of those girls. She couldn’t read or write. When a letter from her husband arrived at our house, I was the one to read the letter to her, in the kitchen, with my sister also in the audience.

The first time I held a letter written in clumsy but earnest handwriting and read out loud awkward sentences about a man’s longing for his young and beautiful wife, I giggled so hard that I was not able to continue, and my sister’s joining in the laughing only made the outburst wilder. But Mei stood by the kitchen sink, hands ringing her lush long black braids, tears strung down her face. I looked at Mei’s tears dropped on her blue floral shirt making dark stains, the laughter subsided, and the kitchen became quiet.

Dad passed away less than a year after Mei arrived. Shortly after the memorial service, Mei came to Mom and said she was quitting the job. When pressed for a reason, Mei said something about seeing my dad still sitting in his armchair on the balcony. I don’t think anyone believed Mei at the time. Thinking back, I can now understand how the grief in our house might be too much to bear for someone who was young and in love like Mei. Mom accepted her resignation. I never saw or heard about Mei again.

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Then there was Hu-sao 胡嫂, or Mrs. Hu. (嫂sao, an overly familiar—if not faintly patronizing—way of addressing someone as “Mrs”.) She was an hourly helper and did our laundry two days a week. This was in the days of washboards and washtubs, years before washing machines entered Chinese homes.

A stout woman in her early 50s, Hu-sao was also from Anhui, the same province as Mei, had the same accent as Mei, but the opposite of Mei’s looks. Whatever she lacked, she made up for in energy and high spirits. I could hear her chatting up the neighbors from our second-floor bathroom, where the washing would take place, before she even entered the front garden. I could feel the wind she brought with her brisk steps when she stomped into the room. I could see the spittle flying when she recounted how my grandfather, A-Gong, was on her case about using too much soap. When she was excited, her narrow, wide-set eyes would light up in a way that made me overlook her flat nose. And I liked the laundry days with Hu-sao.

She washed clothes for as many families as she could cram into a day’s hours—all to send every possible penny home. Back in the village, her son was building a new family house, and her first grandchild had just been born. Like Mei, Hu-sao was illiterate. Every time a letter arrived from her son, she’d carry it to me, waiting to hear the latest happenings from home. The letters were usually about the progress of the house building, the baby’s milestones, and inevitably, more often than not ended with a list of expenses still needing more money. Hu-sao always listened with full attention and savored every word — every brick laid and every baby step taken.

It was another laundry day, and another letter to read. The letter started as usual with the routine family greetings, and the progress of the house building. Then, without warning, the letter veered from roof installation to catastrophe—the baby had fallen into the well and drowned.

I stopped reading after that fateful sentence.

Hu-sao’s hands suspended on the washboard. She stared at the letter, lips trembling, and sank onto the edge of the bathtub.

“Oh, my good heavens! Oh, my dear mother!” She murmured these words over and over, tears filled up her narrow eyes. I searched for words, but none came out.

Hu-sao continued to wash our clothes after that day, but her chats with the neighbors were less loud, her walk not as brisk, and the sparkles in her eyes disappeared. A year later, her son and daughter-in-law gave her another grand baby. This time, she quit all her maid jobs and headed home to take care of the new baby. On her last day at our house, she said she was getting old, and it was time to be with her family.

***

Ayi. A word for aunties, for strangers, and for women who passed through my childhood carrying more memories and meanings than any of us could realize. They left no photographs, but I’ve kept their voices and images. Have they kept mine, I wonder?

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