When the ayi quit work, we started a new life

To ayi or not to ayi.

Every expat in such cities as Beijing and Shanghai has grappled with this question at least once during their stay.

For many expat women forced to play stay-at-home moms, having the luxury of making do with a single income and finding 9-5 domestic help at "affordable" rates is nothing short of heaven.

If at all there is anything that crops up to mar this idyllic picture every once in a while, it is the issue of ayi salaries. It is not uncommon to find ayi in gated compounds being paid the equivalent of what a Chinese college graduate earns. It leaves some with an uncomfortable feeling that something about this whole business is patently unfair.

But more often that not the ayi "seduction" usually works its magic, and everyone ends up being in the pro-, rather than anti-ayi, camp.

Over my nearly seven years in Beijing, I've often veered from one side to the other. Not anymore, though. My ayi of six years recently staged a walkout.

Blessed with a peculiar ability to negotiate only in multiples of 100, she demanded a 500-yuan raise. "Otherwise, you can look elsewhere," she said.

Stung by the suddenness of it all, I refused. And that was it.

And in the month since, I've suddenly discovered life's simple pleasures.

There is something about brushing clothes clean and loading them in the washing machine, watching the drum swirl, the soapsuds popping against the glass, that melts the day's stress. Seeing them emerge smelling fresh and crisp is a heady feeling. It's a ritual I look forward to.

Where once listless veggies would sit in the refrigerator for a week, I now shop for fresh produce every other day and enjoy whipping up a meal. And while I'm at it, my 13-year-old will frequently pop into the kitchen with encouraging sounds of how lovely everything smells, his bright eyes shining. My husband, when in town, will often step in with an offer to chop this or that.

We now eat together as a family around pots of freshly prepared, piping-hot food. I'm now discovering the true meaning of the old adage, "The way to a man's (and a boy's) heart is through his stomach."

A dishwasher sitting silent in my kitchen for the past two years is suddenly whirring to life, yielding cleaner dishes that I have ever seen.

Saddled with a user manual in Chinese, I never made the effort to figure out its workings. But ayi's departure had me on the Internet in a trice and with a printout of the manual in English. That's the new, proactive me.

Gardening, likewise, has become a family thing, and we are carefully tending our coriander, spinach and chilies, besides the flowers and crotons. It is now everyone's responsibility to make sure the plants are watered and the family dog is fed and walked. Not that these tasks were not taken care of by us in the past, but subconsciously we were all well aware there was a safety net, called ayi.

No coffee mug in the kitchen now means the ones sitting on study tables and in various corners of the house will have to be brought to the kitchen sink and rinsed. Missing socks in cupboards mean they will have to be dug out of the deep recesses of shoes and added to the wash pile. The list is endless.

Regaining control of our lives has been the best thing to have happened to us in our great "expat" experience.

None of this, of course, is meant to belittle the work our ayi put in. For her help, I'm eternally grateful and wish her well.

But what she has done for me now is priceless.