English Quiz 203

(English Quiz 203)

1. "Chili beef," says Big Lin, ticking off the English words he can say with ease after a decade in Britain. "Lemon chicken. Garlic chicken." After that, the 32-year-old's voice trails off. There's not much more he can rattle off fluently. Life as an illegal immigrant has deflated the dreams he once had. Still, he must keep up appearances for his family back home. His brother thinks Big Lin owns his own restaurant. In reality, he sweats over a wok at someone else's takeout joint, six days a week. Nor does he own a house, as Little Lin believes. Instead, Big Lin lives in a small room in a Cambridge boarding house along with other migrants from Indonesia, Malaysia and Poland. But he can't admit any of this. "I tell my little brother not to come," says Big Lin. "But I can't really tell him why." For every tale that burnishes the myth of immigrant success, there are many others that speak, if not of failure, then of drudgery, loneliness and a future in a land that will never quite be home. Back in Fujian, Big Lin had a decent job with a construction firm. He made enough to play games of pool with his friends and occasionally treat himself to a seafood feast. Still, Fujian is a place which young men leave, so Big Lin made preparations in 1997 to go abroad, too. More than anything, he recalls, he wanted to see more than the rice paddies, potato fields and squat factories of his hometown. "I wanted to make lots of money," he says, "but I also wanted to have fun and see the world."

Q: 試翻 "Chili beef. ... rattle off fluently."

Q: 試翻 "For every tale ... never quite be home."

2. Big Lin says his journey was easy. First, he took an economy-class flight to Prague — Big Lin's sister already lived in the Czech Republic, where she ran an import-export clothing company. She pulled the right strings and procured him a business visa. Then, all Big Lin had to do was invest $10,000 in a Prague business venture. It's not clear who pocketed that money, but less than six months later, Big Lin says he received a Czech residence permit. The Czech document enabled him to get a tourist visa to England, which he overstayed. Six years ago, Big Lin cut his final link to home by "losing" his passport. Many other Chinese do the same to ward off deportation — it's hard to send someone home if their nationality is not clear — despite a British law mandating up to two years' imprisonment for illegals who destroy their ID.

Q: 試翻 "Many other Chinese ... destroy their ID."

3. For the last decade, Big Lin's life has involved little more than the peanut oil, soy sauce and cornstarch that coagulates British Chinese food into indistinguishable glop. "The food I cook isn't really Chinese," he says in Mandarin. "It's English food with soy sauce." With his broken English and shy demeanor, Big Lin has never graduated beyond stirring the wok. In 2005, as his relationship with his common-law wife, another illegal Chinese, disintegrated, Big Lin moved from London to Cambridge. Wages, he had heard, were slightly better there, and for a man who slept during the day and worked at night, Cambridge or London or Liverpool — it was all interchangeable. His wife remained in London with their young daughter. "Because we're illegal, our lives don't feel real," she says. "[Big Lin] felt like he could start another life. But that life won't be real, either. Everything feels fake here."

Q: 試翻 "with his broken English, ... beyond stirring the wok."

4. If he had to do it all over again, Big Lin says he never would have left. "Most of my friends from Fujian want to go home," he says, "but they don't know how to do it." His routine — sleep, work, nightcap, perhaps a spot of gambling — isn't so different from that of thousands of people eking out quiet lives in Britain. But for a Chinese, for whom family is everything, the separation must feel like an amputation. "You get numb," he says. "You can't think about it too much or you will go crazy." Yet if the family bonds are what keep Big Lin tied to Fujian after a decade away, they are also what have stopped him returning. "If you go back to Fujian, people expect you to return in a glorious way," he says. "You have to have lots of money and success." Today, sitting in his cramped room, watching his goldfish, Big Lin wonders about all his classmates who went overseas and never returned. People at home said they must have been leading such wonderful lives abroad. But Big Lin knows better now. Early last year, Big Lin says he thought seriously about going back to Fujian. But the urge to return passed. Big Lin has heard that his hometown is now filled with lavish villas from all the overseas money. He shakes his head. How can he go back and see how magnificent his village is when it's not his money that has contributed to the development? "Maybe one more year," he says. "Then I can go home."