I sang Hallelujah yesterday because my new maid finally arrived. We already have a nanny who happens to be my aunt, but one nanny for a household our size in Beijing simply isn’t enough. Both Juju and Jojo are home these days and the house needs to be cleaned thoroughly everyday or everything will be covered in dust by the end of the day.
We’d been trying out a maid for the past month but she just wasn’t good enough. Xiao An is a 20-year old Tibetan who’s only had a grade school education. She came to Beijing as part of a program by one of the women’s organizations to help poor families from rural China. I was willing to hire her right out of nanny school even though she was very inexperienced, thinking that I would be able to train her. Through random conversations with her, my aunt and I found a few oddities about her.
First of all, one would expect a child from a normal family and especially a poor family to be capable of the basic household chores as she or he probably helps out at home. Xiao An, on the other hand, was always painstakingly slow and didn’t seem to know how to do anything. It was as if she’s had a personal maid while growing up! Truth turned out to be closer than we thought. Later she told us that she had never cooked, done laundry, wiped the floor, washed the dishes or watched young children in her life! How could that be? Well, we later found out that her family, though lives on a very modest income, isn’t quite destitute and her mother did everything for her.
Second, we often observed that she dressed rather trendily, which didn’t seem befitting her financial situation. Every day before she leaves for the night she spends about half an hour in the bathroom dressing up and doing her hair. She seems to favor a particular white dress which my aunt finds particularly distasteful, as she likes to wear flirty underwear underneath. My aunt admitted that she often did a double take of Xiao An’s backside, not that she was a lascivious old grandma but simply due to an irrepressible curiosity to see which cartoon character Xiao An happened to be sporting on her underwear that day. I could only imagine how many takes the men on the street did. Later Xiao An admitted that even if she had to starve she would still spend money on clothes. If there was a particular item of clothing she coveted she’d lose sleep and appetite until she finally acquired it. You can’t really blame her-she’s an attractive girl. Her Tibetan blood gave her quite a striking look with light hazel eyes and brown hair. Part of the reason she left town was to dodge all the suitors her parents had lined up for her as she didn’t want to settle easily.
About two weeks after Xiao An’s arrival we started having doubts about her ability to shoulder responsibilities in our household. She was difficult to train: Auntie and I had to handhold her on just about all chores and she didn’t seem to have good common sense when it came to household cleaning. Furthermore, whether due to laziness, carelessness, or inexperience, she often didn’t do an adequate job. Dirty streaks on the floor had become her trademark. Still, we decided to let her live with us as her commute was long and her living conditions less than desirable. It would have been an arrangement that would benefit both parties. That was until my dad caught her napping during the day when the house was left unclean.
I was caught in a quandary. Should I start over and find a new person? From what I’d heard, Xiao An was actually better than many of her classmates, some of whom kept switching clients in an effort to find a sinecure that paid a lot but required little effort. It is extremely difficult to find good domestic help here. One of my business school alumni said she tried out 15 maids in a short nine months in Beijing before landing two satisfactory ones. The majority of people in China view nannying as a job of last resort, and understandably often only those of worst character and abilities took the job. Good nannies are hard to find even if you are willing to pay, and pay through the nose (according to local salary standards) you will once you find one, though many expats are more than willing to part with their money once they find a good one with passable English skills.
I personally think that the country would be a much better place if more smart and hard-working individuals were willing to become domestic helpers. Unfortunately, Chinese people have a very different mentality compared with westerners regarding nannying. To Americans being nanny is a job like any other; sure, it doesn’t always pay well, but it’s an honorable job nonetheless. American families are very conscientious about providing a good work environment for their nannies and both parties act respectfully towards the other. In China, however, some families view nannies as second-class citizens and often ask them to do shameful and bizarre tasks (asking the maid to hand wash adults’ underwear or washing adult bums after bodily acts, to name two); in return, nannies harbor resentment towards their employers and retaliate in secret, such as physically or verbally abusing their young charges. Stories abound of nannies running off to sell their charges off to child-traffickers in China, which is why most of the Chinese families we know won’t leave the children alone with the nanny or let the nanny take the kids out for walks. Often the grandparents act as human surveillance system to keep an eye on the nanny. We’ve personally seen a nanny on the playground in our complex cursing a little Russian girl until the girl broke down and cried. Foreigners…tsk tsk tsk, when will they learn to be watchful of their nannies? I can almost hear the grandmas on the playground whisper to each other. There are so many families in need of a good nanny, but alas, nannies nannies everywhere, but not a single good one in sight.
I may have struck gold on the second try. Once we decided that Xiao An simply wouldn’t do, my mom started looking around amongst our relatives again. The benefit of hiring relatives is that you know for sure they won’t traffic your children or abuse them. Little Bell, my mom’s brother’s wife’s sister’s daughter-in-law, happened to be available for work. At a staggering $200 a month, We pay her twice as much as we pay Xiao An, and I later found out that that is the most she’s ever earned in a month in her 35 years of life. She’s held a number of odd jobs, some with inhumane conditions (cotton processing plants, sweatshops, etc), and is desperate for a stable income, but stable jobs are very difficult to find in her hometown, even for someone capable like her. She used to nanny for a pitiful $50 a month.
Today is her second day here and she’s magnitudes better than Xiao An. She’s quick, experienced, down to earth and willing to learn. She loves kids and kids like her, too. I know she has potential to do a great job and I can trust her alone with the kids, even Jojo, my 4-month old. Now the only thing left to do is to find a trustworthy driver-I’ll save that for another blog.
I am thankful that we let Xiao An go. It turned out that she had planned to return to her hometown soon to get married anyway and she actually admitted to Little Bell (they overlapped a day) that she didn’t like children. Phew, that was close!
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