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China Elevator Stories
“Do You Have Brothers And Sisters?”
I chat with a young massage therapist in Shenzhen.
28/07/2013
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
One evening after work in May 2013, my fiancé decides to get a haircut. I accompany him to the hairdresser.
When we enter the shop, an employee turns to my fiancé and, unsure of which language to use, asks hesitantly: “Do you speak Chinese?”
He answers: “I am Chinese.”
She replies: “Oh, sorry, I thought you were Japanese.”
After the employees figure out that we both speak Chinese and we tell them what we want, he stays on the first floor to get a haircut, and I follow an employee upstairs to get a massage. As is common in China, the hair salon does not only offer haircuts but also massages and beauty treatments.
I chat with the massage therapist.
She asks me: “How old are you, sis*?”
“I’m 25, how about you?”
“I’m 17.”
“Wow, that’s really young.”
After talking for a while about this and that, she asks: “Are you alone here, or did your parents come to China with you?”
I tell her: “I came here on my own. My parents, my brothers, and sisters live in my home country.”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“We’re 8 kids.”
“Wow, that’s a lot!”
I say: “It is. Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“I have an older brother and a younger one.”
I reply: “That’s a lot for a Chinese person of your generation. Did your parents have to pay a fine for breaching the one-child policy?”
“They didn’t. Where I come from, having 3 kids is actually pretty common. Also, we didn’t grow up in the same place. My brother lived with my mother for the first 8 months and was then given to my grandmother. But my grandmother became ill, so after 2 years, my aunt took care of him. When my mother got me, she took care of me for 2 years, and later my grandmother took care of me for 1 year. After that, I was given back to my mother to look after me.”
Were you ever surprised when Chinese people told you they had siblings?
This is part of the series ‘Conversations with Locals in China,’ where I share conversations with Chinese people on my blog.