Tales from Old Shanghai 01

The tea-room that my American built and furnished for me so many decades ago.

He had this tearoom built for me almost the moment we arrived here from Shanghai and I have barely changed it since. The mother-of-pearl embossed rosewood couch with the matching chairs, the corner tables and the long rectangular rosewood coffee-table on which my precious guqin sits, my guqin that I paid for in shame and humiliation but which I treasure all the same. The eight foot tall dragon tree in its terracotta pot, the floors of polished wood, the windows opening out onto the garden with its beds of flowers and shrubs.

It was my refuge long ago, back when my American had it built for me, back when America was a strange and foreign land, back when a beautiful young Chinese sing-song girl married to a wealthy and far older American was a strange and exotic creature in this land of Texas.

It is my refuge now, a small taste of the tranquillity of my childhood home in Nanking, a soothing escape from the bustle and noise of my oldest son's family, a place where I can come and sip my jasmine tea and gaze on my younger self and on the love I have never forgotten. The love for whom I would have abandoned even my American.

My American.

He was so much older than I. Thirty years older than I when we married, when he carried a young Shanghai sing-song girl, a Shanghai whore, for let us be honest, that is what I was when my American met me, when he carried me across the Pacific from Shanghai to this foreign land, this Texas which has been my home now for almost eighty years. My American has long passed away, forty years gone now, and I still miss him. His loudness, his brashness, his confidence, his Midas touch, for whatever he touched turned to gold.

I miss his unquestioning love for me, for while I never loved him, he loved me and he cared for me with a passion and a tenderness that warmed and soothed my shattered heart and my jaded soul. I returned that love, not with love, for I could never love another, but with caring and gratitude, as best I could and I do believe he never knew that always, always I have loved another.

Never would I have betrayed my American with that knowledge in his lifetime, but now, long afterwards, I can reveal the truth, if only to myself and thus I hung my painting on the wall of my tearoom, where I can sit and look at my younger self and my love from long ago. My only love. I sit, and I look and I remember.

"Grandmother, where are you?... Oh! I knew you'd be in here." It's Tien-chien.

My oldest great-granddaughter. She's twenty three now, her English name is Terri and to all appearances she's Chinese. Her father was my oldest grandson, the grandson of my American. His American-Chinese wife, she's a banana through and through but she chose to give her daughter, my great-granddaughter, a Chinese name as well as an English name and I cherish my Americanized grand-daughter-in-law for that small gesture, for there is nothing else Chinese about my grand-daughter-in-law beyond her appearance.

Terri. Tien-chien, my great-granddaughter, she is tall, slender, long-legged, slim-hipped, small-breasted, black-haired, almost a mirror-image of that girl in the painting and I'm not the only one to see that resemblance. Even her face could be mine, so close is the resemblance and when I look at her, it is as if I look at my younger self.

"You were so beautiful when you were young, grandmother," she says, standing beside me, reaching down, taking my hand in hers, looking at my painting with me.

"You'll have to tell me about him one day. One day soon. Who he was, where you grew up, your family. You've never told anyone, you know. We know you were from Nanking, we know great-grandfather met you in Shanghai, we know that girl is you, Grandmother, but who was he? Where were you? What's the story behind that painting? You should tell someone. Your story, its family history, Grandmother. It's not something that should be forgotten, it's not something that should be forever mysterious."

Her hand squeezes mine, very gently, her shoulder brushes mine as I stand, for she is the same height as me, except that she stands tall and straight and despite myself, I stoop a little. Age creeps up on us, and I am old now. Old enough that no-one I knew in those long-ago days is left.

Only me.

"It's a long story, Tien-chien," I say, very slowly. "Long and very very painful. Do you really want to hear it all?"

"Yes, Grandmother," she says, very simply, and I hear that truth in her voice. She does, she wants to know and she is looking at my younger self and I glance at her and I see myself there as she sees herself in my painting. That girl in the painting, yes, that girl could be Tien-chien as much as it could be I. The resemblance is striking.

I glance at her again, look back at my painting. Gaze at my younger self and my never forgotten love and I know it's time, for I am old now and who knows how much longer I have left. Not long. One year? Perhaps two? Three at the most. I should tell someone, and who better than this great-granddaughter who looks so much like me. I look at myself there on the wall and I look at this likeness of my younger self standing beside me and I make up my mind.

It is Tien-chien. She shall have the story that no-one has been told, and she shall have the painting that is from near the start of that story. That long and painful story and I glance once more at my younger self, summoning all my courage, all my strength.

"We loved each other so much. This painting, it was his Valentine's Day gift to me," I say, my voice a whisper now, for I have never told this story to anyone and it is painful. So painful. "He gave it to me on Valentine's Day, 1938. Sit with me here, this afternoon, Tien-chien, after dim sum, and I will share this story with you."

And afterwards, at the family dinner this evening, I will tell my sons and my daughters and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren that are old enough to understand that Tien-chien is to have this painting and my precious guqin when my time has come to an end. There is more than enough of everything for everyone else to share, but the guqin and the painting, my painting; those are mine to give and they will be my gift to Tien-chien.

My story, the story of my love? That too will be my gift to Tien-chien, entrusted to her.

The red sheet with the golden flowers on which I lie in that painting?

That, I will lie on in death as I once lay on it in life.

"Sit here, Grandmother," Tien-chien says, helping me as I seat myself on my rosewood couch, facing my painting. Then, hesitantly. "Are you sure you want to?"

I smile, pat the couch beside me. "Pour some tea, Tien-chien," I said, for she has already carried a pot of steaming jasmine tea in and placed it on the coffee table, together with the cups. "This will be a long story," and I gather my thoughts and my memories as she pours gracefully.

"His name was Martin," I begin. "He was an Englishman and we met in 1937 at the beginning of my last year at Boarding School in Shanghai..."

Hua and I, we share a bedroom. At our Boarding School, the Shanghai American Girls Private School, we Seniors don't sleep in dormitories like the Junior girls. Senior girls have rooms. Two girls to a room. There's a dozen other Chinese boarding girls now but Hua's my good friend. We started school here, High School, at the same time, four years ago. She's from inland, from far away, from Chungking and she's beautiful in the way that so many girls from Chungking are.

My family was from Nanking and back then I was often called a typical Nanking beauty, delicate, gentle, well-educated, for my father was both educated and wealthy. My father and mother were early supporters of Sun Yat-Sen. Thus, I, the eldest daughter, born in the western year 1920, did not suffer the fate of so many Chinese girls in the 1920's and1930's. I was sent to a western-style missionary school near my family home in Nanking.

I learnt English, I met the occasional westerner, missionaries usually but sometimes businessmen for my father was a businessman in Nanking, although I have no memories of what business he was in other than that he was well off. Not rich, but wealthy at least. Wealthy enough that in 1933, when I was 13, my beloved parents send me off to Shanghai, to the Shanghai American Girls Private School, intending for me to study there and to then attend University, gain a University Degree and contribute in a small way to the recovery of China.

In this, I was fortunate, for in China, daughters were of no account. Daughters of poor families were often sold, even wealthy families did not exempt their daughters from such transactions and not just daughters. Families would sell widows. Husbands would sell wives and often the sale would be into a life of prostitution. Even at thirteen, I was aware of this and I was fortunate that my parents were westernized, educated, and willing to invest in my education where so many girls of my age and class were married off to men old enough to be their fathers.

I was privileged but I was not alone. There were other Chinese parents than mine who wanted more for their daughters than traditional Chinese society offered and life was changing. Our country was changing. Shanghai was the agent of that change in China. Shanghai was where Sun Yat-Sen had lived, in a house in the French Concession. Shanghai was where the modern world was introduced into China. Shanghai was where many Chinese students were exposed to a western European education.

Students such as myself.

I left home for Shanghai when I was thirteen, confident, ambitious, studious; eager to make my parents proud of me. Perhaps I was even beautiful in the way that thirteen year old Chinese girls can be, tall and slender, my long black hair hanging to my waist, delicate features, graceful, perhaps I was charming. I would never return to Nanking. I would never gain that University Degree. I would never realize those ambitions. I would never see my parents or my family again, my life would take an entirely unforeseen path, but that is in the future.

When I started at that school, the Shanghai American Girls Private School, I was one of only two Chinese girl-boarders. The white girls who boarded there did not want to share a dormitory with us, despite the egalitarian ways of the Americans. Egalitarianism only goes so far when it applies to oneself, despite the pious platitudes the families of the American and English girls uttered. Hua and I were allotted a bedroom of our own from the very first, with the Senior girls.

For that we were grateful, for the European girls smelt strongly of sweat and rotten milk and other nameless, and sometimes rank, odours and their cleanliness left much to be desired. The sight of their body hair, even on the girls our age, that was enough to turn our stomachs. So much hair. On their legs, their arms, some even had faint moustaches and Hua and I would giggle behind our hands and comment in Chinese on their hairiness.

Now, after so many years, I am used to Europeans but at that time, thrown into that sudden intimacy with so many European girls, I was shocked. Shocked by their solid dumpy bodies, with so much fat and softness, so much hair, such large feet. Shocked by the size of the breasts on the older girls, large and soft and white, like the udders of a cow. Shocked by their disgustingly thick and bushy pubic hair. Shocked that their pubic hair was not silky black but of all colors. Shocked by their awful diet.

Shocked not just by the odours and the hair and their bodies but by their behaviour. Their loudness, their lack of politeness, their lack of any common decency when using the changing rooms for sports, their physicality, their complete lack of understanding of China and their often expressed contempt for Chinese people.

"Not you, Chuntao, not you or Hua," they would hasten to add. "You're like us." Almost like us, that was ever the unspoken qualifier.

Hua and I would glance at each other, expressionless, and nod politely, not wanting to disagree openly, but we knew we weren't like them. We weren't like them at all. We were Chinese, we were civilized. We came from a culture that had been in continuous existence for thousands of years, a culture that long pre-dated their Rome, that pre-dated their Egyptians, a culture that existed at the same time as their ancient Sumer. Far-back in the mists of their history, in their distant past when the ancestors of these white girls lived in caves and wore skins or even nothing, China was civilized.

Of course Hua and I gravitated to each other.

We were two Chinese girls, boarders in a foreign school, alone in the midst of primarily English and American girls. The token Chinese girls, tolerated but not entirely welcome. Not welcome at all to some. We became friends. Closer even that friends. Sisters. Almost, we were twin sisters. We were inseparable. Chuntao and Hua. We did everything together.

We almost died together in our third year at that School.

Walking out in the afternoons where we were permitted, we roamed the streets surrounding the School, cautiously at first and then, as our familiarity with our little corner of Shanghai grew, further afield. Always cautious, for the Japanese had occupied much of Shanghai and even for the foreigners, it was better not to run afoul of the Japanese. For us, Chinese girls, the Japanese were terrifying. It was best to stay within the confines of the International Settlement, as we found out, for our first display of independence was almost our last.

Two fifteen year old girls, in our school uniforms because as juniors, those were the rules, venturing out unwitting, innocent, not quite heedless of danger but far too innocent, far too unwary. We knew there was danger, but that danger was not to us. We were students in a foreign school, a protected species. We were not from rich families, the Triads would not kidnap us for ransom. We were students in a foreign school, identified by our uniforms.

No gang would kidnap us to sell into a brothel. It would cause too much trouble, the school would call in the foreign police. The foreign police would act, we would bring trouble and girls were cheap. And so, secure in that knowledge that we at least were safe, we took a rickshaw from outside the school, down through the clean cobblestoned streets of the French Concession, through the ancient arched gateway and, for the first time since we had arrived in Shanghai, into Nantao. The old City.

The China of a hundred years past.

Few foreigners dared enter Nantao, but we were just two anonymous Chinese girls, no different from other Chinese girls, a little out of the ordinary in our western-style uniforms but not enough to draw more than a casual glance. After the clean shaded streets of the Settlement, the green trams, the cars, the European style departments stores and cafes, the wafting aroma of fresh coffee and even more freshly baked croissants, entering Nantao was like returning home.

The International Settlement was almost a foreign land but this, the old City, this was like back home in Nanking for me. Women cooking on the pavements over small charcoal stoves. Old men sitting on stools in the gutters being shaved, other old men sitting and writing letters home for illiterate coolies, open shop-houses selling anything and everything.

Families living on the street, sleeping, eating, washing, cooking. Butchers beheading chickens, the ash from the cigarette's they smoked drifting down into the meat they were selling. Stalls selling fish, chickens, pork, fruit, vegetables of all sorts and the noise, the constant noise. For the first time in over two years, I knew I was in my own country. China. Hua and I, we smiled at each other and I knew she was experiencing that same thought. This was not the foreigners' country. This was our country.

This was our China. Not theirs.

Passing through a large square, a young man in western clothes jumped up onto an empty market stall and I knew his face. I'd seen him somewhere and I remembered. Nanking. He was from Nanking and his father and my father would drink tea and talk politics together, quietly, in a corner of the teahouse they both frequented. He and I, we also had talked and he'd been adamant that China needed to modernize, to liberate itself from the foreigners and from the feudalism of the past.

"Zhang," I called out, loudly, waving my arms. "Zhang, it's me, Chuntao."

He saw me, he waved back, and then he was talking. A speech. Something about expelling the foreigners, fighting the Japanese, supporting the Zhongguo Gongchan Dang, the Communist Party of China and Hua tugged at my arm as I tried to push forward.

"Chuntao, don't, he's crazy, remember what happened here in 1927, we should leave. We need to leave right now." She'd seen what I in my excitement had not.

A wedge of Chinese policemen battering their way through the crowd. Zhang too saw them, he jumped off the table on which he stood and he was pushing his way through the crowd with a couple of friends but the crowd was thick, their escape too late, too slow. The police caught them easily, beat them mercilessly, tied their wrists with rope as I watched, horrified.

Someone in the crowd pointed at Hua and I.

"These two, they were with them," he called out.

Hua screamed once as hands pushed us forward. No-one wanted to be near us and then the police had us too. Our wrists tied painfully tight behind our backs, forced to kneel beside Zhang and his two friends. Hua wept quietly. Me, I was stunned, then terrified. Then, seeing another policeman walking towards us, tall, muscular, bare-chested with a shaven head and carrying a large sword, I trembled in sudden dread.

He pointed at Zhang.

Two of the policemen dragged him forward, Zhang looked at me as they bent him forward, his eyes met mine, he was afraid. His mouth opened, he was going to say something to me and then the sword swept down, his head leapt forward and fell to the cobblestones, rolling like a ball as blood spurted from his neck to pool beneath his now limp body and just like that, Zhang was no longer afraid.

He was dead.

His head was on the ground, staring at me, his eyes wide open, his mouth unmoving. The second student followed. The third, and this last boy wailed and struggled but it made no difference. His head rolled across the cobblestones before my eyes. The policeman with the sword looked at me and he smiled and I knew I was next, that in seconds I would be dead, my head rolling on the ground. Hua and I were both weeping in terror when an Englishman stepped out of the crowd, appearing as if from nowhere.

"These two girls are students at the Shanghai American Girls School," he said, in perfect Shanghainese. "They had nothing to do with these criminals." He gestured at the heads.

"Who are you?" the policeman holding the sword said, spitting, just missing the foreigner's feet.

"Inspector Fleming," the man said. "Shanghai Municipal Police." He flipped out a brown leather wallet, displayed whatever was inside. "I will return them to their School. They should not be here."

"Your badge means something in the Settlement," the policeman said. "Not here."

"Du Yuesheng plays poker with me on Wednesday evenings," the foreigner said. "Perhaps I should mention this inconsequential matter to him?"

"You are correct, these girls should be returned to their school," the policeman said. "They should not return to Nantao. They are your responsibility. Take good care lest anything unfortunate happens to them." He never looked back to Hua and I, on our knees, shaking with terror, quietly sobbing. He turned and stalked away. His men scooped up the heads of Zhang and his two friends and followed, leaving the bodies on the street surrounded by pools of blood coagulating in the summer heat, already black with flies.