Ayi

Domestic help (or an ayi as they are called in China) is considered a luxury in the western world, but it is pretty standard in Asia. I never wanted to hire a nanny and always was uncomfortable with the idea of a stranger caring for my baby. When the high end of an ayi's salary is only a fifth of mine it just makes sense to hire an ayi and continue working. Less expensive ayis are available for a tenth of my salary.

Coming from the states where only the extravagantly wealthy have full time help I found it hard to get used to having an ayi. I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood where I knew some people who had full time help but I always felt uncomfortable witnessing a blatant class divide in people's homes. For me the reality of having a domestic servant in my home is that I feel awkward and uncomfortable. The ayi we hired turned out to be very warm and loving towards Jonah. I still find it tough to have private family moments while someone is waiting on us. At the end of the day when I got home from work and just wanted to relax I never knew what to do with myself while ayi was washing my dishes or tidying up before leaving. Even if ayi is being paid to do a job, I feel lazy if I'm not working when she is.

I also have to say, it is hard as a parent to see your child depend more on someone we hired than on me. I am glad he bonded with her but I can't help wanting him to come to me for comfort before the ayi. In the states even if I go back to work we are more likely to send Jonah to daycare where several people will care for him rather than one ayi. I feel a lot more comfortable with that setup. In a classroom or daycare kids don't tend to bond with caregivers as closely as to their parents. I feel more comfortable with that setup. Even though our ayi was great with Jonah I am very relieved I'll have some time home with him for a while.

Living in Shanghai the division of wealth is more obvious than in the states and most families we know hire an ayi. Migrant workers from the countryside come to the cities to earn money. The money goes far in the migrant workers' hometowns but while in Shanghai or other big Chinese cities they often live in awful conditions. They don't have a huko, a residency permit that gives them access to numerous government services like housing, and many of them live at their work, be it a construction site or a factory dormitory. Locals here more openly look down on migrant workers than Americas do; Chinese locals seem comfortable yelling at service people indiscriminately. Once when a cleaning ayi at my work tried to tell me something in an indecipherable Chinese dialect I asked one of my students what ayi said. My sixth grader at the very privileged private school where I taught said it didn't matter what an ayi said and made the somewhat disturbing comparison of the cleaning ayi to an insect buzzing around her ear. Americans prefer to tell ourselves that people are people and every man is created equal, that sort of thing. We mostly frown upon insect metaphors.

The word ayi is Mandarin for Auntie. It is a term used to respectfully address any female adult, sounds very communist and equalizing to me. Danny says it is just how Chinese etiquette works, you refer to everyone based on their familial relationship to you and all women are call Auntie. Danny thinks it has nothing to do with communist ideology that all cleaning women are called Aunties. Meanwhile Chinese higher ups seem to frequently be referred to as Madam, a French term which brings to mind associations quite different than that of an Auntie. For a "communist" country the class divide is pretty intense and with a very basic knowledge of China's history I can't imagine it any other way. There have been emperors for so many generations, as far as I can tell the communist party is just another empire. Chinese workers are culturally expected to very dogmatically do what the boss says and not question it, even if your boss says to do things that make no sense.

America somewhat comically seems to hide its huge class divide so that the wealthy don't spend much time exposed to people who aren't wealthy. Instead of hiring a staff to wash our clothing and dishes Americans buy machines. It is funny because it sort of tricks us into forgetting that we are more wealthy than the majority of people in the world. I didn't grow up with a houseful of servants, I grew up with a laundry machine and a dishwasher. Members of the wealthiest 10% in America often don't even realize they are wealthy. Visiting slums in India or even west Philly are a pretty stark reminder that poverty definitely does exist. In China, and many developing nations a lot of the work we use a machine for is done with backbreaking physical labor. I've never done it, but hand cleaning all my clothing with a washing board sounds pretty exhausting. I never gave much thought to how most tasks I use a machine for are done by hand most places around the world.

Having an ayi was an interesting experience but I'm pretty happy to be home with Jonah instead for a while.