Ayi Jane

China can be a lonely and dark and inconvinient place. Without the language you cant order food, flag down a taxi or even go to the local fruit market. Without connections you can’t get illegal cable tv, open a bank account, navigate the visa system, get discounts at the hospital or gain access to drugs or any illicit services you might be in need of. It is possible to mimick and point your way out of things, but the whole experience may leave you feeling like an inexperienced mime in a small budget movie. Once you get the hang of it though, you will quickly begin to flourish from efficiency to efficiency. From figuring out online banking, taobao shopping, to getting your neighbourhood grocer, shoemaker, locksmith, tailor to make housecalls you will soon have the world at your doorstep. Armed with connections and language; a multitude of avenues will open up, a Pandora’s box of opportunities burst forth and lay at your feet.

This is where your Ayi comes in. Ayi is the general word we use for the maid who also doubles as the nanny, translator, consiglieri, broker (for countless services, chef, bargain hunter, business partner (more on that later) and all round maintanance supervisor. Ayi is usually in her late 40s, an empty nester who likes to keep busy with an amazing tolerance for children and adults who do not speak the same language as she does. She may speak a little English or non at all but that’s not really a deal breaker when it comes to her indespensability. Everyone needs an Ayi because they are lonely. Neither I nor any of my friends have physical deformities that prevent us from cleaning up after ourselves, but we all can’t live without our Ayis. To us; having an Ayi is a charity initiative, an economic booster, social advancement experiment(if you prefer) and if we are honest with ourselves, a hail Mary answered in the nic of time to save us from ourselves. Ayi will clean, cook, pay your bills, manage all the maintanance work around the house and all the while she is tending the baby, calling in your food order and transcribing for you the simplified pinyin for that chinese foot cream which does wonders for your bunions. She will also listen to your problems and secretly try to medicate you of any ailments she might pick up on during her cleaning investigations. A friend of mine practically ran a pharmacy dispensary out of his apartment from potions and tonics dutifully provided by his Ayi during SARS. She even had custom made embroidered masks one for each day to keep him sanitized and fashionable.

I inherited my Ayi from an internet stranger (shanghaimama2010) who wrote a long narrative on “how wonderful and hardworking” Ayi Jane had been to her sweet family. “It’s a shame we can’t take her with us…” Omit names and the advertisement would have worked just as well for an abandoned Rottweiler looking for its next good home. Nobody ever tells you it barks at the moon and is not house trained. Her negative attributes were strategically absent from the well written essay but alarm bells should have sounded when I came across the overuse of the word “great!” Ayi Jane turned put to be a no nonsense military sergeant, she never smiled and worked on the clock, if she arrived at 10:05 she was gone by 12:10. She didn’t like that I slept late, sometimes not alone and didn’t wear enough on cold days. On the day of her interview; she arrived with a folded well used list of what she “didn’t do” scrawled by pen neatly in English. (1. No handwash underwear; 2. No pay bills; 3. No dog shit, …)her prerequisites though reasonable were a bit intimidating. At the end of the interview I had handed Ayi Jane the keys to come to my place three times a week at double the price including transportation fee to and from her home and she had agreed to work much less than she had ever done previously. Something definitely got lost in translation but at USD$80 a month, I still had the better end of the bargain. Her real name was 吴小接 but she called herself Jane to make it easier for us stupid foreigners who are too lazy to learn Chinese. Three times a week, Ayi Jane would go from toilet to kitchen methodically touching every appliance and surface with a wet cloth leaving watermark tracks which to her were a sign of “cleaning.” She was averse to all the bleach and multipurpose cleaners I supplied. When I insisted she would simply pour a cap or 2 out in the sink to prove she was using the stuff. She would “organize” all my cds and dvds making sure all my “Friends” Dvds were in the box marked “MadMen Season3” and anything with signs of nudity hidden way beneath piles of books on the top book shelf where my innocent self couldn't reach. This is where I found all my “Nip Tuck” episodes. Dust was dutifully swept under my couch, my bed and any other crevice she could find. Anything indicating I was sexually active was thrown away or hidden in hard to reach places again to protect the innocent. When laundry became an issue, I took to leaving mounts of color coded laundry neatly lined up for her to throw in the machine since left to her own devices; Ayi Jane would simply mix my whites with a pair of red socks and blue dyed jeans. She would argue that washing 3 same colored shirts at a time was a waste of soap, water, electricity and most importantly her time. My Chinese not being good enough, I cried and pointed to my ruined silk shirt then showed her on my pocket calculator how much it had cost me to purchase the shirt. She got the point but not before she scolded me for spending too much money on a shirt. Ayi Jane loved to cook; along with some fruit and veggies she would pick up for me she would bring her own assortment of vegetables and unidentified dried meat that would boil away while she cleaned leaving a stench that took days to air out. This she would eat with a bowl of steaming rice while she squatted on the floor of the kitchen, left overs would be packed up in ziplock bags and stored in my freezer next to my vodka bottles. It was clearly understood this food was not for me. At one time I had a heated exchange with Ayi Jane after she had gifted me with a pair of sensible undies insisting my thong under wear hardly covered anything and looked suspiciously uncomfortable. She wanted to throw them away and I staunchly refused on the grounds of invasion of privacy. She thought I was being uptight and unreasonable, probably brought on by my choice of underwear.

I went on a trip to Thailand one year and left my apartment keys with a friend of mine who lived out of town. I neglected to tell Ayi Jane I had guests staying in my absence. Big mistake, she called the cops on my friends who had a lot of explaining to do, luckily they knew enough sign language to show the policemen my copy of the keys and a welcome note I had prepared for them, not sure what difference it made to ease their predicament though.

After 2 years with Ayi Jane I moved to Africa. She cried, I was confused. Was she crying because I had not given her a severance package or because she was going to miss me? Our relationship had not exactly been warm and convivial but never the less she cried and helped me pack. As she packed all my belongings she would ask if I absolutely needed this spoon, this shirt, these shoes? I mostly gave in so I guess we are even. I have a more tame Ayi now, who keeps her nose out of my business and I let her do her thing. It helps that I always make sure I am not at home when she cleans and she in turn makes sure I pay my bills.