Su Xi, Ma Li, and Xi Xi in the House of Horus

TV USA channel has a great ad line to its trailers: Characters welcome! Here are three characters.

Ugly duckling Su Xi of Jiangsu province near Shanghai, renowned textile capital of China, came to work for a garment factory on Saipan. Like her colleagues, she paid three-years’ worth of earnings for the privilege of working here. After two years, her contract was not renewed. Though contracted for three years at source, the CNMI only recognizes yearly contracts. Su Xi had not earned enough to recoup her investment, let alone show anything for her two-year stint.

The Immanuel United Methodist Church of Saipan at the time ran a Marianas Resource Center in Oleai, which served inter alia as a “sanctuary” for those who sought assistance on labor and immigration matters. The Center initiated a community development project that operated on the principle that to be effective, one needed to deal with all the problems and all the people within the delimited geography at the same time. In the community grid were three Beach Road karaoke bars across from the popular Oleai Bar and Grill.

The MRC participated in the mayor’s food assistance program. On Thanksgiving Day, it distributed food items to the needy residents of the village, including bar workers. Su Xi begun work in one of the bars owned by an out-of-work alcoholic and his mama-san wife. They sought the Center’s assistance on his addiction and her immigrant papers. Su Xi participated in the Center’s Christmas and New Year festivities where the cultural diversity of the Church members and the surrounding community were lifted up, affirmed, prayed over and celebrated.

Shy, tall and lanky, Su Xi looked gaudy and anxious. In a six-month period, her low self-esteem and minimal English got a boost from her regular contact with the Center. The ugly duckling became an elegant woman. One day she announced that she was getting married. She came to me to say goodbye. A lingering embrace perturbed a Center volunteer who later publicly blurted out her discomfort, leaving an earned blemish on my reputation among my puritanical peers. We didn’t see her again before the group moved back to the Kobler Korean Methodist grounds.

About the same time, Ma Li of Liaoning’s Shenyang also came to work for the garment industry. Similarly, she maxed her credit to afford the trip but she lasted only a year as a sewer. She transferred to a restaurant, fell in love and lived with a flamboyant Guangzhou hua hua gong zi (playboy) businessman who had a gambling habit that drove them both to penury.

Ma Li married at 18 but was widowed early. A motorcycle accident killed her young, politically astute and independently well-off husband. A childless housewife who never needed to be gainfully employed, the husband’s parents had no reason to keep her from returning home.

Ma Li’s liaison with the playboy did produce a son, and when she went to Guangzhou to join him after his business was bankrupt, it turned out that a ta lao po (first wife) with two children already existed.

Ma Li took her shattered illusions home, left her son’s one-year expenses with her sister, and returned to Saipan to manage her niece’s newly opened karaoke bar. The niece, married to a local, was my barber. Two years after Ma Li returned, I became her English tutor. Ma Li was a determined immigrant, first, tying up with a Correction officer who promised marriage but had difficulty separating from his estranged wife, and later, consorting with a homeland security officer whose ways with other ladies belied the sweetness of his lips.

In a four-month period, we located a buyer for the karaoke club. Before we could close the deal, the FBI and Falun Gong interfaced and when I returned from my father’s Honolulu funeral, Ma Li was at the stockade awaiting trial for human trafficking. She is now serving a four-year sentence in the mainland. My professional and personal involvement with Ma Li painfully cost me a marriage.

Xi Xi of Hangzhou near Shanghai was a despondent pedestrian when I ran into her in front of a cosmetic store in Chalan Kanoa where I just conducted English lessons for Korean nationals. A couple of young thugs snatched her purse containing $900, a cell phone and personal effects. Penniless and unable to call friends, she was set to walk all the way to San Jose. I offered her a ride.

Battered by a violent father who favored his younger brother in son-centered one-child-per-family China, she was raised by grandma and farmed out at 18 to work on garments in Jiangsu to settle a family debt. The loaner who was more than a decade her senior consented to an arranged marriage. A son issued from what she termed a “lifeless marriage”; her husband has a physical disability. He tires easily. She came to Saipan on a friend’s assistance; the friend turned out to be exploitatively expensive. She expected a factory job. Instead, she was made to apprentice as a masseuse for three months before graduating to the back room.

A Saipan romantic Filipino was her first client. He has a son with a Japanuki. He took Xi Xi into his wings. Xi Xi cared for the son after school, and Romeo trained Xi Xi in the art of fluid exchange. “I have two more years with this body,” she said, “before I give in to the competition.” She is 29, known for repeat customers, including off-island professionals who book weeklong escort service months in advance. Paying exorbitant fees to stay as a commercial cleaner, she offered to be my helper but found and married a sailor, leaving the trade two years ahead of schedule.

Last summer, in a San Francisco streetcar, I saw a familiar face by the exit door. Attired in a simple black dress with a modest string of pearls on her neck and plain black pumps, she sat elegantly with folded hands on her lap, at first, with furrowed brows, and then a Mona Lisa almost-smile. I got off before she did and as I exited, her lips formed the unmistakable “thank you,” and when I acted bewildered, she clearly enunciated, “xie xie.” It was Su Xi eight years later in all her understated splendor!

Now, where are the TV scriptwriters when you need them? Isn’t this telling worth three episodes on the USA channel?