Dialogues with some passengers

The unique child and the old lady

I leave the compartment and I bump into a baby about 1 year-old. He is bald, with only a little tuft of hair sticking out of his forehead. I sit next to him and begin to play with him, imitate him, and help him climb onto a chair. At one point, he’s sitting on this chair and I on the one next to it. I see him about to fall over and I dash to catch him and since he didn’t fall over, I go to sit back down again. Since the chair is the same kind that we find in movie theaters (the kind where the bottom comes up when you stand up), well the bottom came up and I end up on the ground on my butt, the baby found that funny. Next to the baby, there is an old woman who watches us, tanned, wrinkled and full of wisdom, with a look that asks itself many things and reveals that’s she has known all sentiments. I wait for Liu Jia, to know a little more about this old woman. I learn that she’s 84 years-old and that she had 7 children. When we ask her name she says that she doesn’t know but that people called her Li Si, which means “fourth”, since she’s the fourth child of Mr. and Mrs. Li. That’s when I understand that the one-child law isn’t more than thirty-years-old. I ask Liu Jia about it and she tells me that depending on the provinces the law is 30 or 20 years old, or doesn’t exist at all. Depending on the government, as is the case in Xinjiang and Tibet, it’s to preserve the minority. But in reality, it’s to push the Chinese to live in the two regions that claim independence. That way, the Chinese can have more children and in a few years, the Chinese minority will become a majority among the Tibetans and Ouïghurs. After this discussion with Liu Jia, we listen to music and we sing. On her computer she has songs by Jay and also a French song that’s called “Hélène” which she sings without really understanding the words and with a very funny accent, knowing that it’s a big effort for her. I do the same in Chinese and she tells me that I have a good pronunciation.