What the Chinese Don't Eat Read Free Page B

According to our culture, which is very closed and hidden, we don’t kiss each other. The only exceptions are for little children and married couples in bed. Two years ago, while I was teaching Chinese culture at London University, I told my students: ‘Don’t kiss me, please. I am Chinese and not used to being kissed.’ But my traditional Chinese reserve was overturned by my students in the space of an hour.
    It was my birthday and I was giving a summer course. I was running late, which is unusual as I always liked to be the first person in the classroom so that I could say hello to my students one by one when they came to their lesson. When I rushed in, everybody was there already, all 22 of them, standing by the door instead of sitting. Suddenly they came to me and kissed me on my face one by one. ‘Happy birthday, Xinran!’ they said. I knew I shouldn’t complain when they gave me a kiss as a birthday present, but we had to start our lesson at once because I had so much to teach them in their short course.
    During the lesson I felt that something was up with my students, but I could not find out what it was while I devoted myself to teaching. Forty-five minutes later, at the end of the period, one student stood up and said, ‘Xinran, would you like to go to the toilet?’
    ‘What? Why? Oh, come on, this is my own business, I don’t need you to make suggestions about the toilet, do I?’
    More and more voices spoke out. ‘Come on, Xinran, you should go and relax on your birthday!’
    ‘What’s wrong with you all?’ I was totally lost.
    They started laughing and had strange looks on their faces.
    ‘OK, I am going! I can’t believe all of you force your teacher to go to the toilet on her birthday!’ I thought they wouldn’t calm down unless I went.
    As I passed through a long hall full of other students, more laughter followed my steps.
    ‘Oh my God!’ I saw myself in the mirror. My face was covered with colourful kiss marks. They had been there throughout the 45 minutes I was teaching my colourful-lipped students.
    I went back to the classroom in tears. My students were waiting for me quietly. I stood there and faced them without a sound, and they looked at me with their watchful eyes. After a long time in silence I said, ‘Come here, let me kiss you, now it’s my turn.’ I kissed them one by one with many thanks and love from my deep heart.
    Since then, I have enjoyed this beautiful western bodylanguage with people – but only in the west, not in China.
    My neighbour, after hearing this story, asked me, ‘But what’s wrong with kissing?’
    In the west no one can believe that kissing has cost the lives of many Chinese women. When I was working as a radio presenter in Shanghai, I once received a suicide note from a 19-year-old girl. She wrote:
    Dear Xinran,
    Why didn’t you reply to my letter? Didn’t you realise that I had to decide between life and death?
    I love him, but I have never done anything bad. He has never touched my body, but a neighbour saw him kiss me on the forehead, and told everyone I was a bad woman. My mother and father are so ashamed.
    I love my parents very much. Ever since I was small, I have hoped that they would be proud of me, happy that they had a clever, beautiful daughter rather than feeling inferior to others because they did not have a son.
    Now I have made them lose hope and lose face. But I don’t understand what I have done wrong. Surely love is not immoral or an offence against public decency?
    I wrote to you to ask what to do. I thought you would help me explain things to my parents. But even you turn away.
    Nobody cares. There is no reason to go on living. Farewell, Xinran. I love you and hate you.
    A loyal listener in life, Xiao Yu.
    Three weeks later, after she died, Xiao Yu’s first letter begging for help finally arrived.

8th August 2003
    Is there any female on earth who could meet the five male requirements of a good woman?
    When I was doing my radio