Oh no! We've become The Man!!

That's right, we sold out and became neocolonialists last week. It was bound to happen. We live in a country where the irony of communism reveals itself: modern communist states don't do a particularly good job of prizing laborers. Invariably, communist states become bureaucratic disasters plagued with Gordian red tape, much like every other modern system of government. Unlike free market economies, however, the modern communist state is one in which innovation and hard work have not historically been rewarded or encouraged, and the end result is that the economy, generally speaking, is impoverished.

Ah, yes, we can hear your incredulity from way over here in Asia. Relax. Yeah, we know China's economy has been going gangbusters since 1980 and shows no signs of slowing down. That the average urban siheyuan (courtyard home) in Beijing doesn't come equipped with a toilet should tell you just how unbelievably poor this country was back in 1980 before 26 years of explosive economic growth.

But we digress. Our point is that labor here is cheap. Disturbingly cheap. We pay our aiyi (Chinese for Auntie, now also used to label a hired nurse or hired houseworker) less than 2 U.S. dollars per hour to do fairly skilled work. And - here's the shocker - we are paying her significantly more than the market requires. The average aiyi in Beijing only makes about $1.25 per hour. What does our aiyi do for this not-so-generous sum? She commutes 2 hours (each way) to cook our weekday dinners (she does the whole week on Monday morning and sticks it in the refrigerator for reheating at our convenience), and then makes that trip all over again on Friday to clean our house before the weekend comes.

For the past year, we've gotten by without an aiyi of our own. This means that our home isn't as clean as it probably ought to be and we definitely spend more time cooking and cleaning than we need to here in China. So a few weeks ago, when we were chatting with our good friend (and local fixer) Maya, she mentioned that her aiyi is skilled at cooking Indian cuisine. After noticing the drool beginning to form, Maya offered to set up a dinner party with Maya's aiyi as the caterer.

A handful of friends came by last Friday, and Li Aiyi deep-fried up a whole lot of samosas to kick-start our appetites (these were followed by a chickpea dhal, palak, and curried chicken with rice). We'd show you a photograph, but they didn't survive long enough for mere mechanical optics to capture. One bite into her first samosa, a guest turned to us and asked if Li Aiyi was interested in getting more work. That's right, Li Aiyi came by to cook a single meal and walked away with two jobs. The good news for Li Aiyi is that her new employers live in the same building (our friends Kim and Josh live a few floors above us), so we've made sure to overlap the schedule: on Mondays, she comes by our kitchen to cook up the week's food for us, then spends the afternoon up at Kim and Josh's pad to whip up a week's culinary delights for them before heading home.

And that, dear readers, is how Michael and Cara became The Man. In our defense, we resisted as long as we humanly could. But we are weak, and samosas are really tasty, so we caved.