by Aimee E. Liu
He brought their hands together. “Listen. You remember I tell you about my teacher Jung Ch’un-fu?” She shrugged. “If not for Jung Ch’un-fu, I would not have dared to ask you to marry me, Hope.”
“I feel another of your tricks coming on.”
“No trick. I met Jung’s son last month in Peking. He is a parliamentary clerk there now, but he tells me his father has died this year. In Connecticut.”
“He was an old man.”
“Eighty-four years. Many of those devoted to modernizing China. And to forming a bridge between China and America.” He studied her. “This son is named Morris.”
Hope sighed, and shook her head. “Do you know you have a very sentimental nature?”
“No sentiment.” He smoothed the counterpane over her legs. “Jung Ch’un-fu is a godfather to our marriage in same way Sun Yat-sen is godfather to Chinese Republic. By honoring his family, we safeguard our own, just as those who honor Dr. Sun safeguard the future of China.”
“All right. Not sentimental. Superstitious.” She grinned and tweaked his ear. “I can hardly wait to hear what you have in mind for our boy’s Chinese name.”
“With your approval.” Paul cleared his throat, a grin tugging at his lips. “I think Ch’eng-yü is a good choice.”
“Which means …”
He was beaming now, unable to contain his glee. “Clear Language.”
“Clear Language.” She mentally twisted and scrutinized the phrase. She considered Paul, her own past lives, how they’d met, the divisions between them. And always the one sustaining force that held them. She met his grin. “I take it all back. You’re neither sentimental nor superstitious. You’re devious, Paul. Devious and dear and perfectly brilliant. What would I do without you?”
He remained in Shanghai for two weeks, shuttling between the numerous political parties now vying to represent China’s gentry—the educated scholars, landowners, and merchant classes who were the financial base and the electorate for the new government. “The greatest threat to China is disintegration!” he warned them. “Yüan’s command of the military will hold the country together long enough for us to establish the Republic and get the government on its feet. He is the only hope we have.”
The very words sickened him. Yüan was a tyrant and a buffoon. When the Senate had opposed his demand to return the government to the north, Yüan had prompted “renegade” troops to loot and burn property throughout Peking, including the homes of foreigners. Within four days this “mutiny” had spread to the treaty port of Tientsin, and the foreign powers had called in more than two thousand British, American, French, German, and Japanese troops to help Yüan “restore order.” Clearly, the situation around Peking was too precarious (and foreign holdings there too precious) for Yüan and his “loyal” troops to leave. Western pressure was exerted on the Senate, and Peking was named the Republic’s new capital. Now Yüan was using equally devious tactics against anyone who publicly opposed him. But Paul’s democratic idealism had been so thoroughly punctured since his return to China that he saw pragmatism as the only alternative. Everything he said in these meetings was true.
On May 5 the rival parties merged to form the pro—Yüan Shih-k’ai Republican Party. The next morning Paul would leave for the north to report that he had secured the support Yüan needed to install his cabinet. As he packed his bags, Hope sat on the bed listening to him mutter under his breath. “You know you’re making a pact with the devil,” she said finally.
“In China we have many devils.” He snapped his valise shut.
“And many gods. Why not do your business with them instead?”
“Gods are scarce now, Hope. It’s the devils who are in charge.”
“That’s cold comfort as you walk out the door, back into their company.”
The amber lamplight flickered across his face. “Mei fatse.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No? What is to be done, then?”
“I don’t know, but you mustn’t give in. Everything has happened so fast, Paul, and all of it can change just as quickly.”
“Change.” He sat beside her. “Most of us in the new government have devoted our lives to bring change to China. Yet nothing has really changed.”
“All right, then, nothing has changed. You’re proving my point, you know.”
“What we need is more idealistic students,” he continued thoughtfully, “to give the revolution new life. It is the Western Learning that inspires them, of course. When I was young we had to go overseas to receive the Western Learning. But now that we have returned …” He sneaked a look at her.
“What are you going on about, Paul?”
“You know,” still he spoke as if the idea were just now coming to him, “my friend Wan in the Ministry of Education tells me that some universities right here in Shanghai have called for returned students to lecture.”
“Lecture.” She tugged him by the shoulders so he faced her. Only his eyes gave him away. “You’re talking about teaching! Getting out of politics?”
“You would like this?”
“Like it! You goose! I’d give anything to see you happy again, Paul. It’s perfect.”
“Lecturing is not full-time job,” he warned. “And I am not ready to retire from government just yet.”
“But you’ve already spoken to the schools, haven’t you? I can tell, you have. And they want you.”
“Few days each two months. Literature and political science. Hope, it is not much money.”
“Never mind that.” She flung her arms around his neck.
He let his hand drift down the curve of her breast and on to her uncorseted waist. At his touch her body pulled against him, her fingers roamed his collar and throat. “We’re a week short of a month,” she whispered. “But I won’t tell the doctor if you don’t.”
After all the separation, the discord and abstinence during the last months of pregnancy—they had not made love since the day of her arrival—their coupling this night was like the meeting of two friends who have changed in unexpected ways and are surprised to find these changes pleasing. This did not prevent Paul’s rising before dawn and kissing her goodbye, but Hope, half ashamed that she had allowed herself to fantasize it might, made no further move to hold him.
A few mornings later found her with Pearl in the parlor, all windows open to a clear May breeze overflowing with birdsong. Ah-nie had just taken the baby for his nap, and Hope was reading to Pearl from a tattered and much beloved Peter Rabbit when Yen appeared in the doorway bearing a large brown paper package. Bright stamps—American, Philippine, Indochinese—straggled like the shreddings of a tropical flower above Mary Jane’s bold script.
“A present!” cried Pearl.
“Probably something for the baby.” Hope wrenched the flap and plucked the letter from atop the excelsior before turning the box over to Pearl. “Go ahead and open it, but let Yen help you, so nothing gets broken.” It was one thing she could not fault in this tall, sober northerner. However inflexible his dealings with Hope, Yen was all grins the instant permission was granted for him to serve Pearl. His long thin frame would accordion down, flat hands flapping with an animation kept under strict lock and key at all other times, and Pearl would address him with absolute authority and trust. Now this meticulous child was stymied by the problem of unwrapping the gift without tearing the paper or cutting the bow. All must be preserved. This notion appealed to Yen’s native respect for paper, and so they proceeded slowly, with matched caution and care, while Hope opened Mary Jane’s letter.
It was dated nearly three months earlier, which explained the plethora of stamps acquired during the package’s roundabout passage. Such misroutings were common enough in trans-Pacific post, yet in the split second after this information registered, Hope felt a disappointment as keen as grief. She was separated from her friends and home not only by distance but, even more acutely, by time.
February 20, 1912
Dearest H
ope,
I enclose my suggestion to ease your soul. Already, you describe in picture terms, and so I expect you to accompany future letters with the pictures themselves! Your new home, your Paul, little Pearl, your servants—the baby, when your time comes.
Remember, even here in Berkeley, whenever Paul would get involved in his revolutionary business or go off on his cross-country trips, you’d be out of sorts, at cross purposes until you threw yourself into your own mission. We in the Movement were the happy beneficiaries of your frustration, but now you’re in another world, dear, and you must make your own mission. The more, with all those servants to take care of your children! Perhaps this little Kodak holds a key.
Well, I could go on, but am chomping at the bit to tell you the news from this side of the sea. Since it’s not fully mine to tell, however, I’ll turn the pen over to one better qualified—on condition he let me add my final dime’s worth …
Hope, it’s Dad. Yes, here with Mary Jane. Sharing her letterhead and her pen and desk. And her future. Guess impulse runs thick through this brood, but if you can up and off to China without so much as a say-so, then your best friend and old dad can tie the knot just as quick. I love her. Seeing as you do, too, I can’t see you’d have much to say against us. That is, if you can figure how she could love a codger like me, but she claims she does, and I’m so far under her spell that I believe any damn thing she tells me. Besides, since I have neither youth nor money, why else would she marry me? Honey, you should see us. Never met a woman who enjoys a good spat as much as your Mary Jane, or who’s as quick to make up afterward. The only other woman who ever lit up my life the way Mary Jane does was your mother, Hope. Please give us your blessing.
I’m up here with her now, helping her pack. Those friends of hers the Laws sisters are buying the place so she can move down with me to Hill Street. Says it’s high time the lady Angelenos joined the suffrage bandwagon. If anyone can make ’em, Mary Jane can, and I’ll be right behind her pushing.
I thank you for bringing us together, honey. If only you and Pearl were here my life would be as perfect as could be. But know that I love you all, and if we have a good year, maybe we’ll take a late honeymoon to Shanghai so you can show us the sights. I’m sure Paul will settle back down once the government finds its course. He’s a brave soul and a patriot, and it’s possible that combination is even harder in a husband than if he were a ne’er-do-well like yours truly. But I know he loves you and that little girl of yours. He’ll do anything for you, and he’ll always come home. If you trust that, it’ll help.
I send you all my love and joy. Now here, as promised, my bride again …
[It’s Mary Jane] Surprised? It was your leaving that did it, you know. He came banging on my door after midnight demanding what had happened to you, and I stumbled downstairs in my nightgown and when I saw the expression on the poor man’s face we both started bawling for you, and we had no choice from that moment but to spend the rest of our lives together. How he can make me laugh—but also feel like such a lady—imagine me liking that sort of thing! What he failed to mention was that we truly did get married, legal and proper, last Thursday at four o’clock at Justice Donnel’s house down on Adeline, with Dorothea Marr and the Laws sisters as witnesses, and we missed having you there almost as much as we enjoyed the cake and champers at the Shattuck Hotel afterward.
Well, my darling. That’s a bundle to travel such a long distance. The camera is really from both your dad and me. Consider it a large hint, and let your wedding gift to us be photographs of your new life to keep us company in ours.
With love to spare,
Mary Jane and Dad
“Look, Mama!” Triumphant, Pearl held the Kodak aloft. Its chrome fittings glittered. The black morocco gave off a pungent smell of new leather. The bellows crackled as Hope haltingly pulled on the lens, but by the time she lifted the viewfinder to her eye, her vision had dissolved in the first tears she’d allowed herself since arriving in China.
VI
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
SHANGHAI
(1912–1913)
1
Political events that first summer played out as Paul predicted. Sporadic mutinies against the central government erupted, but Yüan Shih-kai’s loyal warlords quickly put them down. In Peking, several leaders of the original government, including the Premier and four cabinet ministers—all old friends of Paul’s—resigned, and Yüan replaced them with his yes-men. Meanwhile, the British pressured the new government to reverse the few fundamental policies on which the sparring Chinese factions agreed—notably the new ban on the opium trade. Britain had originally introduced opium into China, had fought the Opium Wars to protect its right to sell the drug to the Chinese, and had no intention of giving up this lucrative business now. The implied threat of British warships patrolling the coast and Yangtze gorges didn’t need to be spelled out.
“But that’s immoral!” Hope cried when Paul, back for a surprise visit in July, reached this point in his account. “Opium’s as bad as slavery.”
“You begin to understand our feelings toward Westerners.”
“The British, yes.”
“All the Western powers have benefited. Even the Americans with their Open Door Policy. Let the vultures have equal rights to descend on China’s bleeding remains.” The bitterness of his words belied his deep ambivalence toward the Western powers—his abiding admiration for the inner workings and principles of their governments coupled with his almost visceral loathing for the men in these same governments who had imposed their predatory policies on China. The underlying historical attitude of the West—and Britain, in particular—was that what works for the white man is beyond the ken of the yellow, the black, or the brown. For centuries the corresponding attitude in China had been that what the white man—and particularly the Englishman—thought good and noble was, in fact, contemptible. Paul’s was the first generation of educated Chinese to try to reach across the breach, to borrow from the West as equals rather than surrendering as slaves or compradors. But just as there was a certain duplicity in living under the protection of the foreign concessions while at the same time protesting the rule of Western, rather than Chinese justice in these territories, so he could not champion Western ideals of democracy without admitting that he and his fellow governors and literati would be the first to benefit from them—perhaps at the expense of his poorer, illiterate countrymen. As if to prove the point, there was Hope standing by the drawing room window in a sheer white dress with Belgian lace, while outside Ah-nie hovered protectively above Morris’s white wicker perambulator and Pearl and Joy played badminton, as immune to the sweltering heat and political chaos as two sparrows.
“I thought one reason for getting rid of the Manchus was to finally put the foreign powers in their place,” Hope said.
“You thought. I thought. But in order to achieve our revolution of the heart we have joined hands with some whose motives differ.”
Her fingernails made a rasping noise as she trailed them down the window screen. “Do I hear another change of allegiance?”
“China cannot be governed without a strong united army. That is Yüan’s strength. By whatever means—bribery, blackmail—he has gained the support of provincial warlords throughout the north. But if he cannot be persuaded to reform, then we must beat him at his own game—by attracting the warlords of the south to a different leader.”
“Sun Yat-sen again.” Her voice tightened. “And you’re the messenger.”
“Only one of many.”
“So you’ll continue running from one end of the country to the other, but now dealing with butchers and thugs.”
“With power. Those who wield power are rarely noble, Hope, except in fairy stories.”
He pushed himself up off the sofa and approached her warily. She stood with her hands on her hips, as slender and headstrong and delicately formed as the day he first saw her. Yet these years with him had left their mark in the tension that
tugged at her mouth, the uncertain shadows around her blue eyes. Though he now returned to Shanghai every other month, his visits were crowded with banquets and government business, preparation for his lectures and discussions with students and, increasingly, secret meetings with members of the opposition. His teaching was failing to bring the relief Hope had expected, and his prompting for today’s unplanned return was even less likely to please her than the news of his changing politics.
“You must not worry about these things,” he said.
“How can I help it?”
He met her eyes. “My family is here. In Shanghai.” He paused. “My mother has requested that we visit her tomorrow, Hope.”
Her lips parted briefly, then closed. Her only other response was to lift her left hand, curled, and tap her ring against her chin. She did not speak, and he could not read her expression.
At last she said, “Your children will be there.”
“Yes.” He swallowed. Her voice was calm. Best put it all out. “In fact, Mulan was here all spring.”
He felt the blue of her eyes like a slap.
“I think it was better you do not know,” he continued. “Mulan attends Aurora University. She is busy with her studies. In any case, my mother has forbidden her to visit us.”
Hope folded her arms and walked away from him, saying nothing. When she reached the opposite side of the room she stopped, still holding herself. “Sometimes I wonder if you would prefer me to know nothing at all.”
“Hope—”
“No, Paul. No, it is not better, don’t you see? It’s just easier for you. It’s more comfortable, simpler, requires less of your attention.” She flung her arms violently down by her sides. “Can’t you see that it makes me feel you’re ashamed of us?”
“You know that is not true.”
“Do I? Even now, looking into your face, I can see I’m embarrassing you. You think I’m acting like a hysterical foreigner. You wish I would simply nod and smile and tell you everything is fine. You can’t bear it when I tell you what I’m really feeling, except when—” She broke off, covering her face with her hands. He was afraid she was crying, that she really would become hysterical, but he could not move either to relieve her distress or to chastise her. She was right, such behavior did embarrass, even sicken him.