Beijing 2018 | A Bad Marriage

For most of her life, Li Yan has been self-conscious about her nose. “It’s too big,” she said once, and pointed to my beak. “It’s as big as yours.”

Yan is one of my wife Lily’s oldest friends; they attended grade school together in Beijing. Recently, the three of us took a weeklong trip to central China, where I was lucky to get to know her.

Already, I feel like we’ve been friends for years. My wife is our common denominator and translator. I know the two are close. And my affection for my wife has drawn Yan and I closer to one another.

Slowly, over our days together, Yan revealed her insecurities — about her looks, her life, her marriage, her future.

I soon felt a deep sense of regret that I could not do something to somehow give this lovely, down-to-earth woman more confidence, to help her see herself in a new way.

My wife knows Yan far better than I do. And she’s not worried.

“Yan is strong,” she said. “She can take care of herself.”

I first met Yan a year ago in Beijing. My wife and I had driven to a government office to meet Yan, and had gotten hopelessly lost. As we rushed into the lobby, Lily was still angry, torching me with her words and arched eyebrows.

Yan immediately sensed the tension; she knew my wife’s fiery temper and gave me a soulful, large-eyed, reassuring look.

I know, I know, she seemed to say. It’s not your fault.

Right then, I knew Li Yan was kind-hearted. She’s also a pragmatist; after all these years, she has accepted who she is. She’s nothing like the porcelain China dolls you see everywhere here. In a culture of wafer-thin, almost-girlish-looking women, Yan is sturdy. Her waist is like a barrel, she’ll tell you, her thighs elephantine.

Then there’s that nose. She’d show me photographs she’d taken of herself over the years and ask, “Does it look too big?”

One day, a female guide advised our tour group how to keep track of her in the crowds. “You can’t follow my beauty, because I’m not beautiful,” she said. “But you can follow my nose. See how big it is?”

“Oh yeah?” Yan called out. “Here’s a bigger one.”

Yan has learned to take life’s daily insults in stride. She paid for foot massages for my wife and I at her neighborhood parlor in Beijing and sat by as we received our treatment.

Yan’s regular masseuse looked up at my wife and said, “She can’t be your classmate. You look old enough to be her mother.”

I winced for Yan. While offhand and not intended to hurt, the comment still wounded.

It’s not just her looks: Yan doesn’t believe she’s smart. She often repeats how brilliant my wife is, but dismisses her own intelligence.

She described how a stranger had once mistaken her for a professor, truly mystified how that could happen. She worked for years as a supervisor and translator on a Chinese military missile project, yet still doubts her worth.

But sometimes, a ray of encouraging sunshine hits even Yan. One day, sitting at a table being served cups of tea, a teenage member of our tour group looked over at Yan.

“Are you a writer?” he asked. “Because you look like one.”

“Me?” Yan said. She blushed, and I could see both confusion and a flash of pride in her eyes.

One day, as Yan described her preparations for our trip, all those hints she offered about her damaged psyche suddenly made sense: For years, she has endured a troubled, harmful, even-sadistic marriage.

“I’m very, very, very, very unhappy with him,” Yan said of her husband, whose name is Zhao.

They rarely, if ever, talk. When she left their Beijing flat, he was working at home and only watched as she carried her heavy bags, without offering to help.

She had told him she needed a bit more cash for the trip, but he still said nothing. She walked out the door, without any extra money and without her pride intact.

In nearly a week apart, he did not call or email her.

Over time, Zhao has imposed his own insecurities onto his wife. He grew up in the countryside, where residents are considered culturally-inferior to those who live in the city, especially Beijing, the nation’s sophisticated capital.

Zhao married Yan for her “hukou,” a government-issued resident card that allows one to live and raise their children in the city. He still lords over her the fact that he attended four years of college while she lasted only three. He calls her stupid to her face.

Each evening, he returns from his engineering job with a “long face,” pained at having to spend time and space with her.

The litany of insults seems endless. Zhao insists that his wife’s looks are so “building-jumping” bad, no one would want her. I first saw Zhao as an unhappy man who felt trapped in what he considered a bad marriage. Now I know he is also cruel.

Yan puts it this way: Her husband, she says, has an “ugly soul.”

He has never introduced her to any of his friends. Not long ago, she met one of his longtime co-workers, who said Zhao had never even once mentioned that he was married.

Yan is certain she would have had a more rewarding life if only she’d escaped China. Often, when she’s alone, she dreams of what could have been. In the end, though, it all just makes her sad.

I insisted that Yan isn’t to blame for what occurred in her life and her marriage; that she simply followed her fate.

Armed with these insights, I made a point to pay more attention to Yan and to compliment her whenever I could.

I joked with strangers that I was traveling with two women.

“She’s my wife,” I explained, pointing to Yan. Then I’d gesture toward Lily. “And this is my wife’s mother.”

Lily’s been married to me for long enough to ignore such perceived slights. Besides, she saw what I was doing.

Once, however, I slipped. One evening at dinner, l leaned over and put my arm around Yan’s shoulders as she piled food on her plate, using a line my father-in-law had once said about his youngest daughter.

“My wife,” I said, “has a good appetite.”

Our tour group laughed, and I regretted those words as soon as they left my large, loud, reckless mouth.

For me, Yan is like a sister. In Chinese culture, friends and family often hold hands and take one another’s arm in public. I often reached out instinctively and took her arm. Or gave her a spontaneous hug.

For me, it felt as natural as taking a child’s extended hand.

As we walked, Yan often linked her arm in mine, or rested her hand on my knee at the dinner table. The longer we were together, the more I sensed how she craved male attention.

And I was more than prepared to give it to her.

One morning, on a misty mountaintop hike, Yan insisted on carrying a rather heavy bag containing our water and extra clothing.

I told her that I’d carry it.

“I am a man,” she said. “Like you.”

"No,” I said. “You are a woman. You are beautiful, both inside and out.”

Yan loves cats. One day, she crouched to pet a stray in the street as it rubbed its back against her leg. Others in our tour group scoffed; no self-respecting Chinese would ever touch such a dirty animal.

But Yan didn’t care. She has three cats in Beijing and she missed them. Sadly, it was the only thing she missed from back home.

Every morning, Yan knocked on our hotel door so we didn’t oversleep our wakeup call. She was an early-riser, always on time and handled the travel logistics, consulting each day with the tour guide.

One day, we’d forgotten to collect our $75 hotel deposit and returned to find that the clerk wasn’t happy about giving us our refund.

Both Yan and Lily softly carped at one another. Later, my wife said she’d scolded Yan for forgetting about the deposit. “You’re up early!” she’d said. “Why didn’t you remember to get the money?”

Yan turned to me.

“Oh!” she said about her childhood friend. “She makes me so crazy!”

I returned the knowing, supportive look Yan had given me Beijing that day, because I understood: We both knew my wife so well.

As we lounged over coffee one day, Yan asked what I loved most about my wife. I told her that I appreciated her intelligence, her spunk and her beauty, and that I found everything she did unapologetically adorable.

I asked why she wanted to know.

“I’m just curious,” she said. “Is that enough for you?”

It was. She wanted to know what makes a successful marriage work. Her old friend has a husband who adores her, so why Yan can’t have that same thing for herself?

I asked Yan about her daily habits. Retired at 42, she reads ancient Chinese poetry and assists elderly neighbors who don’t get around as well as they used to.

When she inquired about my own routine, I joked that I call my wife a dozen times a day. She didn’t say anything. Yan has no idea what that must be like, and she deserves to know.

Yan often takes my wife’s mother to their neighborhood park, where she listens to the women complain about their husbands. She insists that 90% of Chinese women are unhappy with their spouses.

She almost left Zhao a while back; her father had encouraged her to file for divorce. But he died soon afterwards and she lost her nerve.

So, she stays with Zhao. Her marriage has become a battle of wills to see who will break first. And Yan refuses to give in.

What kind of marriage is that?

I wanted to somehow encourage this gentle, loving and terribly-wronged woman. Instead of concentrating on the daily pain of her prison sentence, I suggested she focus on a future freedom.

When we arrived back in Beijing, Yan returned to the husband she no longer loves, to the man who steals her self-respect.

He had discouraged Yan from taking the trip with us, dismissing her as a “garish spotlight” that would invade a couple’s privacy.

Well, she came and we reveled in the light.

Now that I know her friend better, I see that my wife is right:

Li Yan is strong. She can take care of herself.