by Aimee E. Liu
Mr. Harrison Wofford
Literary Editor
The Independent
Dear Mr. Wofford:
I realize that months have passed since your kind invitation for me to submit a series of articles based on my conversations with a Chinese revolutionist. I apologize for the delay in composing these, but I have worked hard to pull the material together and bring it to what I feel is its rightful form. I enclose two works herewith and have several others in progress, which I shall send, if you wish, after you have had a chance to respond to these.
With my most sincere thanks for offering me this opportunity.
Hope Newfield
A Literary Prank
“Americans often say,” The Revolutionist recently said to me, “that Chinese have no humor. But the keys to humor lie in language and heart, and it is only because few Americans can understand Chinese language or see into our hearts that they think we have no humor.”
“Can you give me an example of something you find funny,” I goaded him.
“I can tell you a true story,” he replied. “A prank involving the language and hearts of young men, who are often the most amusing when they try to be the most serious.”
“Please,” I said.
And this is the story he told …
In China under the Manchu reign, the publication of revolutionary materials is punishable by death. For this reason, Chinese students have taken full advantage of the press freedoms in Japan to experiment with a wide variety of journals, including literary, scientific, and political articles. However, the zeal of young editors to publish these journals sometimes outpaces the ability of writers to fill their pages. Competition for talent can be fierce and occasionally devious.
Early in my own student days, I learned of a brilliant scholar named Ma Chun-wu. He had several times contributed revolutionary writings to the New Citizen Journal published by some Chinese friends of mine in Yokohama. Ma’s writing was much admired, but he was a reluctant contributor, for fear his articles would lead to his arrest. There came a time, however, when the New Citizen Journal lacked quality submissions, and the editors devised a scheme to lure Ma into their net. I was their unwitting pawn.
Editor Lo Hsiao-kao published one of my poems under a woman’s pseudonym, then wrote to Ma exclaiming over this woman’s great talent and beauty.
“Is it possible to meet her,” Ma wrote back.
“I will be the go-between,” Lo promised, “if you come to Japan to study. But first, you must write to her.”
Ma delivered eight verse poems, which he entrusted Lo to send to the woman. The opening couplet read:
Melancholy flower stem and willow branch
For whom do you knit your far mountain brow?
All the poems were published in the journal, and before long Ma received a poem from the woman. Lo told Ma he would have to write more articles. Otherwise Lo would not introduce them. So Ma continued to write day and night until finally he could wait no longer. Arrangements were made, and he arrived in Japan, where Lo showed him a photograph of the woman and a letter in which she wrote that she was soon to travel by boat from the West. Fully aroused now, Ma gave to Lo a photograph of himself, along with many boxes of fine Japanese delicacies, to be sent to the woman to hasten her arrival.
Lo tweaked his chain again. “You have not been writing much. I will not introduce you unless you get back to work.” Whereupon Ma went back to his room and threw himself into another spate of poems.
Several days later I arrived in Yokohama with a group of students from Hong Kong, and Lo met us with armloads of delicacies. To Ma he reported, “She is here.”
Ma came to Lo in the middle of the night, demanding to meet the woman and threatening blows if Lo put him off any longer. As I was in the next room, I heard them and came to see why they were arguing.
“There is your woman!” Lo pointed at me.
Realizing that he had been duped, Ma threw him back and turned on me, waving the woman’s photograph in front of my nose. “I have written to the point of spitting blood! I have spent a fortune! Where is she!”
“She is only a Cantonese singsong girl.” Lo dared smile. “Nothing to smooth a melancholy brow.”
Ma ransacked Lo’s room, destroying his manuscripts, and left Japan the following day. I am happy to say that he continued to oppose the Manchus, but he never did write for New Citizen again, and some months later the journal ceased publication.
Girl at the Teahouse
“I understand that you admire democracy,” I said to The Revolutionist one day. “But China has been under Imperial rule for hundreds of centuries. Why do you believe that now is the time to change?”
“Because the throne and all who answer to it have fallen into decay. The rulers see the Chinese people only as slaves, to be used and discarded at their pleasure.”
“Can you give me an example?” I asked.
And so he did.
After passing my examinations and before traveling to Japan, I spent several years in the service of then viceroy of Hupei, a man named Chang Chih-tung. Chang was a most powerful man, a politician in the true Chinese sense, with such personal cunning and practical sense that it was impossible to tell whether his instincts were noble or base. In matters of the heart, however, he was as weak as any man.
During the course of his duties, Chang, like all provincial officials, rode in a covered sedan chair. But Chang liked to look out on his subjects, as he thought of them, without their seeing him, so he arranged for his sedan to be outfitted with a window covered in dark mesh that appeared solid from the outside. One day after making a routine inspection of the textile mill near Hankow’s east gate, Chang happened to look through his window toward a nearby teahouse. There stood a young girl of exceptional beauty.
When they arrived back at the governor’s yamen Chang summoned a former Manchu cavalier who owed his current position as Middle Army official to Chang. “The girl who serves behind the counter of the teahouse at Wen Chang gate is a real beauty,” Chang said. The official made his own interpretation and approached the girl’s father next day.
“If you allow your daughter to serve the governor’s third concubine,” the envoy said, “your family will be promoted and get very rich.”
That night the girl was brought to the yamen. Chang kept her constant company for two months, not even pausing when she was inconvenient. It wasn’t long before she became ill with infection and died. Chang ordered her body removed out the back door, but everyone who served in the yamen, including myself, knew the truth. Moreover, we had predicted from the start that it would end exactly thus.
7
June 1, 1907
So quickly I have my reply. Serves me right for resisting Paul’s intuition, but I was seduced, plain and simple. An offer made, a promise tendered, and I accepted in good faith and was only a bit tardy in fulfilling my end, to be kicked in the teeth and humiliated in return …
“While your article about the Taipings offered a unique view into the history of the Orient, these new pieces concentrate on obscure, incidental, and wholly unbelievable details about insignificant characters with unpronounceable names who, to our readers, are indistinguishable one from another. I do not know if this revolutionary of yours is based on a real acquaintance or an imaginary figure, but in any case he fails to inspire my belief. It is with great regret that I must return these works to you. I had hoped for an intriguing series. My advice in light of this recent work, however, is that you follow the old adage and write what you know instead of reaching for the exotic.”
WHY? Is this, as Paul insists, proof that Americans must view Chinese as either chessboard figurines or yellow heathens? Or is Harrison Wofford right in skewering my ability? I am hardly a seasoned writer, and certainly no China scholar. I have trusted that Paul’s stories, by themselves, would infect others as they have me, but it seems I have failed to this end.
Oh, what hubris to think I could achieve in a few page
s the bridge between cultures that has eluded generations of the East’s most brilliant scholars and noblemen! Well, it’s over now. I will write no more except, as before, for my own education. Paul, I think, is relieved, and perhaps he is right. We could have used the money, but maybe, after all, raising our family should be my first and highest order of business.
July arrived in a storm worthy of March. Gale winds kicked up the Bay, slanted walkers, flogged treetops, and sent currents of cold, damp air through Paul’s office, finally chasing him home for fear the ferry would shut down. The rain was gusting sideways by the time he burst through the front door, peeling off his sopping jacket and calling for Hope. Their baby was due in a month, and she had now entered her confinement, but the sitting room was dark.
As he started down the hall he saw Mary Jane Lockyear’s broad figure turning in the bedroom doorway. Beyond, a yellowed light curled around a crooked, unreadable shadow. He heard a metallic splash, distinct from the rain on the roof. Mary Jane laid a weightless hand on his shoulder. Behind her, in the bedroom, a short, buxom woman with iron gray hair wrung a bloodied cloth in the basin.
“It’s all right, Paul,” Mary Jane said. “She’s all right.”
But Hope lay on the bed in a coil of blue and gray blankets. As he approached, her face remained colorless, her expression emptied of all emotion as it fixed on the oblong parcel in her arms. “A boy.” She stroked the still-damp shock of black hair, the forehead blue and small as a bruise. Suddenly her eyes brimmed with tears. “Paul, I’m so sorry.”
They wrapped the infant with their own hands. Hope did not hide her face or shut her eyes to the unbearable smallness of the casket. But as they were leaving the graveyard where they had placed their boy alongside the memorial to Thomas’s wife, Hope clung to Paul’s hand as to a lifeline.
“Do you think it was a curse, Paul? My mother’s death, and hers before her? Maybe I’m not meant to have children.”
“No, Hsin-hsin,” Paul murmured. “He came the wrong way.”
“I was afraid to die, afraid of our child. It was my fear that killed him.”
He stopped walking and held her firmly. “That midwife explained to us. The baby is sideways. The cord is around his neck. Nothing you can do.”
“But there is now, Paul.” Flushed and panting, she turned her face up to his with sudden urgency. “We must have another child, and I mustn’t be afraid. We must have a child and give it all the love our little boy was denied. Don’t you see, it’s the only way!”
“When you are well,” said Paul. “We will see.”
“No, we mustn’t wait,” she cried. “We mustn’t be afraid, Paul, please. Please.”
He led her to the victoria waiting outside the cemetery and held her quietly against his shoulder.
August 5, 1907
Nothing. That is what has happened. That is what I see, what I feel. I fear our child has left his death in me. Certainly he has marked my dreams. At night I am visited by my mother and grandmother shouting and pointing as if to show me a turn I have missed in the road. When I go back I meet my baby, grown to a man but still blue-skinned with those deathly accusing eyes. And I scream and Paul reaches to soothe me, but his hand passes through my flesh.
October 19, 1907
This lost boy will not leave us. Everyone tries to make him go. My father came last weekend, full of jokes and cures. Mary Jane drags me out to union halls, to rallies and work meetings and strategy sessions. The Mason sisters load me down with cookies and pies to sweeten my mood while my students fill our “lessons” with rote recitations from McGuffey’s reader and pretend not to notice my distraction. Paul feeds me, bathes me, puts me to bed, as if I were the baby I’ve killed. His patience and attentiveness crucify me.
“A son,” I want to scream at him. “Your precious son.”
I want to accuse and blame and come to blows, and instead he kisses my eyelids. I want to hate him until one night I reach out and discover that his pillow, too, is soaked with tears.
January 25, 1908
Our season of sorrow is finally ended. A new life has entered me, and I can feel its strength and comfort like a magical potion. Only Paul knows. We are taking no chances, but everyone has noticed the change in me. My boy still comes to me in my dreams, but now he stands between my mother and grandmother and they are all three holding hands and smiling. He has made his crossing at last.
Jennifer Pearl Leon, destined to be called by her middle name, sailed into her own at midnight one year to the day after her brother’s stillbirth. Hope labored for nine hours but with little pain until the end, and that was over quickly. The Swedish midwife gave the baby a lusty smack and beamed at her squalling reply, then washed away her milky coating, swaddled and placed her in Hope’s arms, and set to cleaning up the birth. When mother and child were sufficiently presentable, Mary Jane summoned Paul, and they all gathered to admire the thick, black mane of hair, pink cherub’s cheeks, and eyes so dark and alert they seemed to possess the wisdom of the ages.
“She’s your girl,” said Hope, lifting their daughter for Paul’s inspection.
He touched the newborn skin hesitantly, held his thumb for the tiny fingers to grasp. The child, all wrinkles and pink purple blotches, yawned broadly.
“Take her,” Hope urged.
He shied back as if she’d asked him to put his hand to a flame.
“She can’t bite you, Paul. She has no teeth.”
Mary Jane gave Hope an understanding nod and led the midwife out, but in the women’s absence the shadows across the dimly lit room seemed to lengthen, and Hope was suddenly aware of the wind outside. The baby studied her calmly, as if waiting for her to act.
“Come.” She shifted the child to release an arm, patted the bed beside her. Though Paul sat, his discomfort was palpable.
“She does not seem human,” he said.
“She’s your daughter, Paul. She’s miraculous, I know, but she has as much right to have you hold her as she does me.” Hope gave him a curious look. “Did you never hold your other son or daughter?”
“I was away.” He looked into the infant’s wide eyes.
“And you’re still away from them,” said Hope. “But you’re here for Pearl. She’s different. We are different, and so you must be. Take her, Paul. Hold her and love her. She’s a part of us—our greatest triumph. You must realize that.”
She sat up with effort and showed her husband how to open his arms, to support the wobbling head and cradle the narrow back. She had never seen him so terrified, and he jumped with panic when the baby opened her mouth and let out a stream of pleased, gurgling sounds, but gradually he relaxed and began to rock shyly side to side. A sweetness came over him as the small eyes closed to sleep.
“She is both of us,” he said.
“Why, what did you expect?” Hope would have laughed if it hadn’t hurt so.
He looked genuinely bemused. “American. I think, we will have an American child.”
“And so we have.”
“But in China—”
Hope cut him off. “I know, and in America, too, she will be mistaken. That’s why she needs us both, Paul, to protect her and teach her who she really is.”
He delivered the sleeping child back to Hope’s arms and kissed her doubtfully.
8
November 17, 1908
Dearest Dad,
Bizarre, wonderful, scary news from China this week. The cables have been flooding in from Paul’s friends in Hankow and Peking (several of whom serve the revolution by spying inside the Forbidden City!). The wording of these cables is too priceless for me to paraphrase, so here’s how Paul read them to me.
FIRST: Emperor suffering from constipation. Empress diarrhea due to cream and crab apples with Dalai Lama. Imperial seesaw in balance.
THEN: Kuang Hsü has drunk Yang’s special “wine” and wins the race. Empress finish hours later. Baby P’u Yi playing Emperor. China poised and ready.
FINALLY: Eunuchs
and regents in command, promise constitution, parliament. Provincial assemblies organize.
Need a translation? So did I, and even Paul isn’t entirely sure of the truth, since the odd language is a form of cipher, but he believes that the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi and the Emperor Kuang-hsü, whom she has kept a palace prisoner for years, finally succeeded in poisoning each other (by playing favorites with the court eunuchs, you see!). The Empress Dowager managed to outlive the Emperor by just enough hours to appoint her three-year-old grand-nephew as the new Emperor. Theoretically the boy’s father rules in his place, as Regent, until the child comes of age, but in reality no one has enough authority or vision to buck the mounting demand for change. Now the court is trying to pacify the revolutionaries by promising some of the most basic reforms, but Paul doubts they’ll follow through. A true constitution and parliament would strip the Manchus of too much power, and many of the people now running the court care even less for the country than the Empress Dowager did.
What does this mean for us, I hear you asking. I ask the same of Paul and he just bunches up his nose, looking eager and worried. He says it means the revolution will succeed, but whether in months or years is still impossible to predict. I am relieved that he is not talking about hurrying back yet. It is still too dangerous for him at home, I gather, and Dr. Sun still depends too heavily on the funds and goodwill that Paul rallies in this country.
I confess to having very mixed feelings about this development. Our life has settled at last into such a peaceful pattern. Thanks to Thomas and Mary Jane, we have a dear home here, and Paul and I both have our work and studies. Pearl is a delight, an easy baby made that much easier by the addition to our household of a young “amah” named Li-li. She’s one of Donaldina Cameron’s girls whom I first met two years ago when her childish sweetness and harrowing tale of rescue from the slavers made her a powerful fund-raising accomplice for Donaldina’s Mission. Now she’s sixteen, too bright and beautiful to be kept in Chinatown (now more enticing than ever to the traders) and too independent yet to be married. You might say we’re offering her a “halfway house.” She cares for Pearl in exchange for room and board (in the nursery), and this enables me to return to tutoring for the Mason sisters—essential since Pearl’s birth has done nothing to loosen Paul’s mother’s purse strings. It is not always easy, but we have achieved, I think, a good balance of the elements required for a sane, happy married life. Though it would be a great adventure to bundle ourselves up and off to China, there would be so many unknowns, and even in the best of circumstances, there would be dangers. Yes, Dad, you who have ridden bareback across the wilderness and traded recipes for headache medicines with hostile tribes and worked yourself numb on the frozen mountaintops must be having a good laugh at your spoiled, selfish daughter. Where has my pioneer spirit gone? I suppose it’s fallen sound asleep in the warmth of this sweet nest. I finally feel as though I know what’s good for me. It’s everything we have here.