Mama and the Little Monkey: A Beijing Love Story

They are a grandmother and her only grandson, relatives both, forging a special bond in a faraway land.  

During these homebound days of the virus, I can only tune in from afar, awaiting the weekly updates of how a cherished Chinese elder introduces a complex world to a growing boy, one lesson at a time.

Both my mother-in-law and my nephew live in Beijing. She’s in her 80s; he just turned nine. They are good for each other. He makes her smile and she teaches him about proper hygiene and the value of money. He is her trusted guide to the internet.

Every Friday night, Mama calls her two daughters in the U.S. with new reports of the boy’s most recent capers. 

As an infant, he looked so much like his father, my wife’s rascal of a younger brother, with his coal black eyes and quiet scheming ways, that I began calling him xiao houzi.

Little Monkey.

They live 30 minutes from one another but claim different worlds in China’s capital city. 

Mama inhabits an old-school neighborhood populated by shops pedestrian traffic. The boy lives in a suburban apartment outside Beijing’s fourth ring road— a distant planet compared to my mother-in-law’s urbanized inner solar system.

But they see each other regularly, because the boy’s mother got him enrolled in one of Beijing’s most respected elementary schools, which just happens to be within walking distance from Mama’s first-floor apartment, not far from where my wife attended school. 

In the end, they were drawn together by expediency. Traffic rules allow the boy’s mother to use her car only three days a week. Her son needed to get to school on those mornings when she was trapped at home.

At first they tried taxi rides to and from school, which proved both cumbersome and expensive. Finally, my wife made a suggestion: Why couldn’t the boy stay with Mama a few nights each week? That would solve the transportation problem.

Neither Mama nor the boy liked the idea. 

Mama was taking care of my finicky father-in-law, cooking his meals just so. She certainly didn’t need another demanding mouth to feed.

And while the boy loved his grandmother, he liked to sleep in his own bed at night.

But even from their respective corners, separated by age, distance and world view, a poignant new relationship was about to emerge. 

The very first night he stayed over after school, the boy wanted to go home.

He cried, and Mama asked what was wrong.

None of his classmates stayed at their grandparents’ house, he said.

Mama said that was because those grandparents didn't have space for any boy like him.

He paused.

"Grandma," he said. "Could you leave the room? I need to think about this for a moment."

Later, he called his mother and father but his tears evoked no sympathy.

The boy was stuck.

Mama tried to make things better. She told him that if he stayed, they could walk over to a nearby market and he could pick out some treats desirable to young boys in Beijing: soybean ice cream, gum, biscuits, candy, chips and other junk food.

They wandered the aisles, my mother-in-law doing her own shopping, as the boy dropped his selections into the basket. 

That first night, as the boy displayed his prizes at the checkout, Mama noticed that he had snuck in unapproved items, or too many of those things she did OK.

She eyed both him and his stash.

“Why do you need two soy bean ice cream cones — red and green?” she asked.

That’s when Mama learned that her grandson was not just a top-flight student who studied hard and cried if he didn’t receive top grades.

She discovered that he was a slick little diplomat with his own personal agenda.

“But nai nai (grandmother), both are very nutritious,” he said, like a dietician, explaining in detail the health benefits of each.

The red bean paste nourishes the blood, he said, while the green helps detox the body.

Therefore, he needed both.

I knew full well what a little operator he was. 

On one visit to Beijing years before, while his mother and my wife visited inside a Starbucks, he led me outside by the hand, supposedly for a closeup look at some mall holiday display.

Instead, we went directly into a toy store, where he pointed to a replica machine gun. Moments later, as we walked back into the cafe, the boy with his new toy, his mother shook her head.

She knew I’d been had, that I was the latest sucker to be taken in by this bright Beijing-born boy, who had sprung his version of a three-card monte scam on his latest unsuspecting relative.

But Mama is nobody’s fool. 

She’d quickly sussed out the candy ruse at the store. She let him buy the whole haul that night, but eventually steered the boy away from the worst sugar offenders, the coconut cones and stuff laden with artificial ingredients.

Their routine was set: The boy would never raise his voice, never throw a tantrum. He was reasoned and polite, while still angling to get his way, like a used car salesman trying to sell you a vehicle that won’t even start.

She also had to break down the boy’s other eating habits.

When the Little Monkey liked a dish, he coveted the entire plate for himself. One night, he rolled up his sleeves to devour nearly an entire dinner of jumbo shrimp, then asked for another the following night.

After they brought home two yogurts from the store, one for each, the boy soon devoured his own, and then his grandmother’s. But, of course, he makes up for such slights by telling Mama that she is the greatest beauty of the family — compliments offered, no doubt, on the way to another candy run.

Mama’s lessons go far beyond the dinner table.

Even at age nine, the boy has drawn a bevy of female followers. Inside a Beijing restaurant, I once watched as a female classmate could not keep her eyes off the Little Monkey from across the eatery.

But the boy gives no quarter to his admirers, especially the ones who hug him in the schoolyard and say they want to marry him.

One day he told Mama he had just ignored a pestering girl who had called out to him on the way home from school.

She shook her head.

“Don’t be rude, be humble,” his grandmother said. “Be a gentleman. Wave to her.”

The boy has made progress with his nai nai. At first she walked him to and from school. Now he makes the trip on his own.

My father-in-law is also delighted by the Little Monkey’s presence. He has tried to each him poetry, including a short two-line verse in which a Han Dynasty ruler talks of his lofty ambitions to keep his society unified.

In English, the poem goes something like this.

“The wind is blowing, the clouds are flying, I have unified the world and have now returned home. How can we get warriors to guard the country?”

Yet try as he might, the boy can never recollect the words.

Meanwhile, Mama keeps a close eye on her young ward, requiring him to recite his lessons aloud before he play games on his smartphone each evening. 

Sometimes, after he insists his work is done, Mama catches him in fibs. She turns out the lights at 9 p.m., only to soon find him still on his phone, under the covers. 

He’s a boy, after all, a smart, polite, conniving little salesman.

One day after school, the Little Monkey announced, sadly, that he had to go home. 

He had worked up a sweat at recess and needed to take a bath which, to his thinking, he could only do at his own apartment, in his own bathtub. 

Mama called his parents, who said he could indeed take a bath right there.

He resisted, until Mama drew his water.

After he slid in, luxuriating for the longest time, he didn’t want to get out.

One evening, when the boy had been sent to wash his face, my mother-in-law caught him splashing a few drops of water and reaching for a towel.

The Little Monkey had his own explanation: If he splashed too much water on his face, he said, he would be unable to fall asleep.

Mama also makes sure he brushes for at least two minutes before spitting his toothpaste into the bathroom sink. And after watching his grandmother soak her tired feet each evening, the boy has now joined the practice.

Still, there was a lingering problem: His candy runs were getting expensive.

That’s when my wife suggested that Mama give the boy a set allowance to spend in any way he wanted. Her daughters suggested a 50 Yuan limit, or about $9. 

But Mama is a wily one.

She bargained with the boy.

“How about 30 Yuan?” she asked him. 

“Oh, no, nai nai,” he said. “That wouldn’t be enough.”

How about 35?

He wouldn’t bite.

They agreed on 40.

Now the Little Monkey has become the most cautious candy shopper in Beijing, or all of China, or even the world, for that matter.

He compares quality and prices, often buying in bulk to get a better deal. As Mama waits, he reads the fine print on products.

And when he gets back to the apartment, he doesn’t gobble down everything at once.

He puts aside his favorites for later, often saving some of his money for the next trip.

The relationship benefits both.

The Little Monkey now carries home the groceries his grandmother once lugged in her personal cart. One night, he insisted on shouldering a large container of milk, as Mama watched him struggle, shifting the weight after every few steps.

But he would not be denied.

And when my mother-in-law struggles with her smartphone, the boy will take the device and not return it until he has solved the problem. He earns extra candy money for that. 

For my part, I cannot wait to get back to Beijing to see how this December-February relationship plays out.

For now, I’ll have to wait for the next status report, the next Friday night phone call.

When I hear my wife laughing, I’ll know the Little Monkey is still up to his old tricks.

Trying to sell my wise and patient mother-in-law a used car that will not start.