The Sweaty Sprout

May 2009

Shanghai, China

Dear Sprout¹: 

The following is an email I recently wrote to our family, reporting on the trip you and I took from Nanjing to Shanghai, along with all of our household possessions. You were a main character in this meteorologically sultry drama, though you were asleep most of the time. I’m passing it along as a little memento from your childhood. 

Love, 

Mama

Today I traveled by train from Nanjing to Shanghai with the Sprout, a rolling suitcase, and a big black zippered bag I bought from a market stall owner, in the following manner: “I need a big bag with wheels. The cheapest you’ve got.” The bag was 60 kuai (“chunks”—a slang for renminbi, the Chinese currency) and it met all of these conditions. The “great deal” reminded me of our latest family maxim, developed over the past few months of delights and difficulties in our life overseas: “China giveth, and China taketh away.”

We filled the big bag with our cooking pots, our knife, some linens, and some toys to store at a friend’s house in Shanghai, so we don’t have to buy them again when we return to China for dissertation research in the fall. Together, everything in the bag would probably cost about 400 kuai to replace, which is a lot of popsicles. The rolling suitcase was nearly 23 kilos (50 pounds) and the big bag with wheels was huge, top-heavy, and generally poorly designed and manufactured. But hey! The price was right! China giveth!

At the Nanjing train station, I had the Sprout in the chest carrier, the rolling suitcase in one hand, and the big bag in the other. The big bag’s wheels were small and didn’t track well. The bag lurched and zoomed all over the place, banging my ankles or trying to flop over on its side. I dragged it down staircases and shoved it onto escalators and finally got onto the train. It was pretty tricky. And hot. 34 degrees Celsius (93.2 degrees Fahrenheit). 

We didn’t have a seat on the train because all the seats had been sold out. The Sprout and I plopped our luggage down in one of the doorway areas by the bathrooms and hung out there. The Sprout eventually fell asleep, flopping on me as I sat on the suitcase. An old man got on the train and kept on saying, “He sleeps so sweetly! He sleeps so sweetly! Look how sweet he looks, there on his mother’s chest.” This was all very nice of him, but the problem was that he kept on picking up the Sprout’s hand and jiggling it, nearly waking him a number of times. 

Finally we got to Shanghai. I strapped the Sprout up and began dragging the Stupid Bag by the left hand. The contents seemed to have shifted during the train ride and the balance of the bag was totally shot. I just started dragging it along the ground. The shoulder strap had already broken off. One of the top seams had already started to tear open. Of course, at this point I regretted buying such a cheap bag (a cheap bag even for China! Why couldn’t I have gotten something for 160 kuai [about $20] instead of 60 kuai [about $8]?!). Disgust for the worthless piece of junk raged within me as the Stupid Bag lurched this way and that, despite my considerable efforts to heave it upright with my left hand, all in sweltering heat, caught up in the surging sea of people, strapped to a sweaty Sprout. China taketh away!

At the top of a ramp leading off the platform, a lady offered to help me, and I gratefully gave her the rolling suitcase. Then a man walking behind me came up and took the Stupid Bag. These two strangers carried the bags all the way down the ramp, out of the station, over to the subway, through the subway station to Line 1, and through the interchange station to Line 2. They went down elevators and up escalators, down stairs and up stairs, waited for trains, pushed their way through thick crowds. Altogether they accompanied me, hauling the bags, for at least half an hour. The man carried the bags all the way to the train on Line 2, even though he was eventually going to take Line 8. He waited for the train to come and put the bags into the car. I thanked him profusely and he just smiled and said “Yinggai de,” which means something like “it’s what one ought to do,” or, less precisely, “I could do no less.”

China giveth. 

Melissa Inouye is a historian specializing in modern Chinese history, Christianity in China, women and religion, and the history of global Christianity.

This essay is an excerpt from Crossings: A Bald Asian American Latter-Day Saint Woman Scholar's Ventures Through Life, Death, Cancer, and Motherhood (not Necessarily in that Order), Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2019. Thanks to the Maxwell Institute for permission to reprint. 

1. Melissa nicknamed her four children Bean, Sprout, Leaf, and Shoot.