White Rabbit

For my first thirty years, I craved White Rabbit candies, a quest filled with inferiority, pain, and torment.

This year, when I went shopping with my husband and daughter in an underground mall connected by the subway, among the various shops on either side and the mass of walking crowd, I immediately spotted the distinctive White Rabbit—the peaceful hare on a blue and white candy wrapper against a black and red background.

I walked in with my daughter and said, “When I was little, my favorite food was White Rabbit. I remember eating it only once as a child, and its taste stayed with me through adolescence.”

My husband said, “You like it? Shall we buy some?”

I smiled and said, “White Rabbit is not as good as it used to be. It’s now too hard and doesn’t have the same strong milky flavor, but we can buy some for our daughter to try my favorite candy.”

I still remember the taste of my first White Rabbit almost 30 years ago. At that time, my uncle had already been smuggled into Hong Kong. Shortly after, he won the lottery and set up a shop there. One year, he returned for the Chinese Spring Festival and brought us White Rabbits.

In my early childhood, I must’ve eaten candies before, but the first candy I remember having was a White Rabbit. After peeling the wrapper, I licked the white cylindrical candy a few times and then carefully wrapped it with the wrapper. For several days I licked the candy until, at last, I put it in my mouth, its sweet taste refreshing the heart and spleen; after that, the air seemed to flow with the fragrance of milk candy. I kneaded the wrapper into a dancing little girl and kept it for a long time. I thought White Rabbit was the most delicious food in the world, symbolizing wealth and status.

The day my parents buried my elder brother, my father spent all the money he had on White Rabbits and sprinkled them in the coffin. After that, White Rabbit was no longer just candy. All my life, I longed for White Rabbit for the love it symbolized.

~

I thought White Rabbit was precious because my family was poor, hiding in the mountains to avoid the one-child policy. We only ate meat during festivals. After recently looking up the history of the White Rabbit, I realized it was indeed a status symbol in those times.

British milk candy entered China in 1943. Although it was costly, Shanghai people loved the newfound sweetness. A man named Feng Boyong watched Shanghai’s craze for British milk candies and, after thoroughly studying the candy, produced the first milk candy in China. It had a red Mickey Mouse on the wrapper and was called ABC Mickey Mouse Sweets.

In that era of material scarcity, the two main ingredients were imported—milk powder and lactose milk sugar. A pack of Mickey Mouse candies was a rare treat for most people.

After the founding of new China in 1949, the sugar factory was nationalized. On the 10th anniversary of PRC, Mickey Mouse evolved into White Rabbit.

The production lines were semi-automated—White Rabbit was hand-wrapped by workers. With low efficiency, the output was small. You could only buy White Rabbit in a few state-owned stores in Shanghai. The salesperson would recommend buying less expensive candies mixed with a few White Rabbits. People could only afford sweets on holidays and saved White Rabbit for last.

In that time, only pregnant women, seriously ill patients, and infants with a doctor’s prescription could buy milk powder or milk, so White Rabbit was viewed as a nutritional product. A famous saying went like this: Seven White Rabbits make a glass of milk.

~

In college, I once visited a friend during the Spring Festival and saw White Rabbits. I picked one up and expected the melt-in-your-mouth sweetness, but White Rabbit was hard and with a barely milky flavor.

Was it because my living standard went up, and I had many delicious snacks and couldn’t appreciate White Rabbit anymore?

I searched the internet and found that many people felt the same. Some posted pictures of White Rabbit dislodging or even breaking their dental crowns.

The production line of White Rabbit is now more advanced and automatic. In such a high-speed production line, kneading, drawing, and cutting all require a certain hardness of the candy; if the sugar is soft, the mechanical action would be slowed.

It is no longer the White Rabbit I remembered and treasured. Instead, it has become a kind of feeling, a symbol, a memory.

~

If we craved something when we were young, when we grew up and became parents, we would buy lots of that thing for our children, to satisfy ourselves. For my husband, his White Rabbit was Lego. In the years when a set of Legos cost a month’s salary, his mother saved enough to buy him one set that he had played with for years. He knew that his mother worked hard, that Legos were expensive, that she had already bought him a set, and he should be content, but he couldn’t help wanting more. As a well-behaved child, he didn’t tell his parents about his need but hid it in his heart.

Now he is an adult with a stable job, but he needs to support his family as a father and husband. He cannot be so selfish as to buy toys for himself. So he buys lots of Legos for our daughter and plays with her. In a psychology article I once read, I learned that if you longed for a toy as a child, you would buy it to compensate for that longing when you grew up. Through this psychological compensation, our subconscious sense of scarcity can be satisfied, and we can move forward. Even though my husband is an adult, he still plays with kids’ stuff with my daughter.

I am not better than him. I buy snacks for my daughter and fill her drawers with candies. Of course, I made it a rule that she should not have snacks before bed and meals. She once asked me, “Mom, why do you buy me so many candies?” She found that her kindergarten friends didn’t have as many snacks as she did. I told her, “When I was young, my family was very poor, and we only had snacks occasionally. Whenever my siblings fought for snacks, I stood by silently, without arguing.” My mother still thinks I am a fussy eater who doesn’t like snacks. But my five-year-old daughter asked, “Didn’t you want it?” I said, “Very much, but I thought if I behaved myself, my mother would begin to like me.” Perhaps she detected the edge to my voice, my daughter hugged me and said, “Mom, you can have all my snacks. You can eat them whenever you want. I’ll give you lots and lots of candies.”

Raising a child is a healing process.

~

Eating is an essential part of Chinese culture. In the family, we express our love in the form of food.

I have three siblings, one being my younger brother, and in my family, all the delicious food was always for my brother. My parents never know what I like to eat. I am lucky to have a husband and daughter who love me. My husband often buys me my favorite food, and my daughter shares her snacks with me. Finally, I have the family I wanted for so long, one that loves and sees me. But my sister is not so lucky.

She married an unreliable man at 22, against the wishes of my family. They lived in an apartment my father gave them. She ran a clothing store from dawn to dusk, and her husband idled. She supported her husband, three children, and mother-in-law all by herself, with no complaints. She longed for their recognition through her contribution but couldn’t get it. After the divorce, she went into business with her boyfriend, but they lost money. After they broke up, she took on all the debts and had to sell her apartment to pay them off.

I can understand her sacrifice—we both feel we can only prove our worth by continuing to give. Our mother believed all the misfortunes she had to experience were because she gave birth to too many daughters. We felt unloved and resented ourselves.

Whenever I saw my sister, I used to lament her misfortune. I always told her to love herself instead of wanting others to love her, but she never listened. I thought she would never change, and I should give up. Then it struck me that all she wanted was White Rabbit, but all we gave her was reproach.

Whenever I wanted to lecture her, I thought of White Rabbit and stopped myself. I told myself to see positive things in her and tell her about it. The journey is arduous and long, but I hope she can find her White Rabbit one day.

~

Before I turned thirty, I told a friend who studied psychology that I felt like garbage. To make it worse, it was unrecyclable. Every time this emotion possessed me, I had to fight it until I was covered in bruises.

“The next time it visits you, try to open the door. Don’t fight or respond to it; just treat it as a guest, observe it, and figure out what it wants,” she said.

When it came again, I did what my friend said. It turned into a black beast, full of thorns, and opened its fanged mouth at me. I watched it in silence. Slowly, the beast changed into a little girl—a tearful, prickly, heartbroken girl.

I went close to her and took her in my arms. Her thorns penetrated my flesh, and I felt a sharp pain, but slowly the pain subsided, and I felt her body heat. I held her and told her repeatedly, “It’s okay. You will have the thing you want the most. You will have it. I promise. It’s always in your hand.”

She held out her hand, opened it, and in the palm of her hand was a White Rabbit.