Cloud Mountain

by Aimee E. Liu

  Getting up here was another matter. First off, we took an English steamer for seven days up the Yangtze. This would have been all right except that Paul was not permitted to travel first-class, and he said it was too hot for us down below, with the baby in his condition. So for nearly a week we slept, ate, and journeyed apart, even though on the same boat. Yes, we were able to go down to the second-class deck to see Paul, but the gawking and stir we caused there was intolerable. In the end, Paul spent most of the trip working on his papers, and I spent what free moments I had during the children’s naps putting your little Kodak to full advantage, as you can see. What these poor fledgling photographs cannot show, alas, is the exuberant color along the Yangtze. The green fairly blazes off the fields, and the sky’s vivid blue is mirrored in the busy water. The Yangtze has been called the lifeline of China, flowing as it does all the way from Tibet past the inland’s Chungking and the three-city area known as Wuhan, where Paul’s mother lives. I certainly saw every conceivable cargo being hauled in every manner of vessel. The true river people, however, live on those round-hooded sampans you see in the foreground. They are said to give birth on these boats, make their living on the water trade, marry their children to each other, and die, in some cases, without ever having set foot on solid ground. For all of this, they seem amazingly cheerful, waving to us with big toothless smiles and offering for sale fat fish or baskets they’ve woven from river reeds. Meanwhile, in the background you can see the other denizens of the Yangtze, the considerably less picturesque European gunboats that patrol this vital trade route.

  We left the steamer at last in the treaty port of Kiukiang. The harbor area swarmed with vendors and drivers and sedan chair bearers, all shouting to outbid each other. Paul quickly hired a carriage, which got us back together and across the plains to the foothills of our mountain Lu Shan. That was where the real fun began. The journey up to Kuling, which hundreds if not thousands make every summer, can be accomplished only by foot, meaning one’s own feet or the feet of bearers. There is no road, no horse trail, and the stone steps up are centuries old. Everything, from visitors to provisions, construction materials and kitchen appliances, must be hand-carried up rocky paths full of hairpin zigzags and forty-degree inclines, all too often less than three feet wide with hundred-foot drops over the side. I made this ascent holding little Morris, with Pearl and Paul and our man Yen and our baggage each in their own separate chairs. I tried very hard to appreciate the spectacular view of that emerald valley and the gold-tinged clouds, but I confess my heart was in my mouth. I always feel such humiliation in a rickshaw or sedan chair, and the fact that no other mode of transportation was possible did not assuage my misgivings. What did was the ease and good humor of the bearers as they climbed, switching off at intervals without losing a step, so that one of the three assigned to each chair was always resting. They called to each other, laughed often, and though I could not decipher their dialect, I’m sure they were plenty interested in Paul’s and my relationship.

  After such a journey I was set to despise this place that was achieved at such a price, but I confess, the first sight of it won me. You can see from the picture what I mean. The valley stretches back in terraces overhung with pine-clad slopes and wispy clouds and, like a benevolent grandfather above it all, the snowy peak of Lu Shan. The main valley floor has served the Europeans for many years as a summer resort. They say it’s just like Switzerland, though I doubt many tourists in Switzerland arrive on the backs of men. Anyway, the road through Kuling’s main valley runs along a rushing stream and is flanked by blue-trimmed fieldstone cottages. We kept on about ten minutes to the next higher valley, a narrower, less developed place where a handful of wealthy Chinese keep summer homes. Here Paul brought us to a lovely little compound, all whitewashed with black tile roof and sliding screens, where we are now happily ensconced.

  Every day since we arrived we have made an outing to explore the surrounding sights. Yen engaged a local couple to cook and care for the baby, so I’ve been free to take Pearl on almost daily outings. She and Paul have become champion swimmers in the glacial pools, and today we walked across a bridge rumored to be more than a thousand years old! I think this place is very nearly paradise on earth, and we are together and happy as a family in a way we have never been before. God and the Republic willing, our life in China has finally taken root and will continue to grow and thrive.

  With love from all of us,

  Hope

  P.S. You must be wondering how I could have gotten these photos developed in such an outpost. Our man Yen took the film all the way down to Kiukiang, where there is a photo shop, that you might have these prints with your letter. I was unsure of Yen at first—he’s that giant glaring out from under his black bowler—but he is utterly devoted to all of us, even yang taitai (Foreign Wife!).

  Sunset occurred suddenly in Kuling. One second the sun rode high overhead, bathing the valley in silvered heat. In the next, it dropped below the ridge, exploding the sky into color and pitching the earth into dusk. The display was so magnificent that each evening Hope and Paul would come out into the courtyard to watch it.

  “Promise me we’ll come back here every summer,” Hope said as twilight descended on evening number eight.

  “I do not like to make promises that I cannot control.”

  “But you love it here, too. I can see it in you, Paul. A load’s been lifted these past days. You’ve laughed and played with the children as you never do in Shanghai. And you can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy our swim yesterday…” Up in the next valley they had found a small lake fed by hot springs at one end and a waterfall at the other. They had taken both children in with them, and later returned by themselves.

  “I do enjoy,” he said. “But most I enjoy that you are contented here.”

  “How could I not be? You know what Pearl has christened this place? She calls it Cloud Mountain.”

  Paul studied her in the dwindling light, neither responding nor retreating from the hand she had laid on his arm. “When the poets write these words, ‘cloud mountain,’” he said, “they mean separation, longing. It is an image filled with beauty, yes, but also regret.”

  The sky had turned violet now, the air chilled. Yen crossed the nearest window, taper in hand. He was lighting the lanterns, but even when every one was lit, the center of the sloping yard, where Hope and Paul sat, remained in darkness.

  Hope drew the shawl from the back of her chair and pulled it around her shoulders. “I wish I’d never mentioned it.” When he did not answer she said, “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  She wondered how—when—he would have elected to tell her had she not thrown him this convenient metaphor. Tonight in bed, after making love? In the morning over breakfast? When the coolies trotted up, waggling the sedan chair, or, better yet, while she and Pearl stood idiotically in bathing costumes waiting for him to come swim? “Will you tell me, at least, where you are going?”

  His tone was measured. “I must first visit Wuhan, then return to Peking for elections.”

  The elections. Of course. Though she had forgotten all about them in the pleasure of these days, and though Paul’s general cynicism about Yüan’s Peking made the prospect of a ballot seem almost farcical, they had not magically faded away. She tugged at her shawl and finally contained her disappointment. “I’m sorry. I know you must go. There’s no chance you’ll lose your seat, though, is there?”

  “The vote is not in doubt. Question is whether Yüan will honor the results. He prefers to hand-pick his parliament.”

  “Surely the numbers are against him.”

  “Perhaps, but there is no unity. This is the reason I must stay in Peking until the end of the month. Dr. Sun and Senate leader Sung Chiao-jen have persuaded the United League to call for a Party Congress on the twenty-fifth. Our plan is to form a Kuomintang—Nationalist Party—to campaign in general elections opposite Yüan’s Republicans. Kuomintang candidates will stand for d
emocracy and constitution and a strong independent China. The people will understand this when they cast their votes. And when Yüan sees our numbers, he will think before he acts.”

  Hope shivered and pulled her knees up, tucking her skirts around her. If Paul were American, she thought treacherously, he would move now to hold me. Instead, he merely said, “I will return as soon as this Congress ends. I will accompany you back to Shanghai.”

  “You said you would go first to Wuhan. Is your mother back there, then?”

  “Yes.” He leaned forward—the sharpness of the movement visible to her even in the waning light—and dug his elbows into his knees. “Mulan is to be married.”

  “Married!”

  “She is already eighteen.” His voice rose defensively.

  “But you’ve never spoken of this. Who is the man?”

  “He is from Yunnan. His family manufactures firecrackers.”

  “Is that all you know about him?”

  “He is a Muhammedan. Forty years old.”

  Hope started at a muffled squall from inside the house, but it was only the amah giving Morris his bath. “Surely,” she persisted, “Mulan would not choose such a husband for herself?”

  Paul did not answer.

  “It’s Nai-li’s doing, isn’t it!” The thought sickened her, but she knew it was true. What was worse, Paul would not oppose her. “Last spring when Sun Yat-sen banned footbinding and opium and the buying and selling of human beings, you stood up and cheered, yet now you’ve let your mother sell your own daughter—”

  He stirred. “You and Mulan have no affection between you.”

  “What has that to do with anything? You allowed this. How can I trust you won’t let the same thing happen someday to Pearl!”

  Paul stood abruptly and walked to the courtyard gate. He faced away from her for a full, punishing minute. When he turned back his arms were crossed, the whiteness of his Western-style shirt and trousers ghostly. “Mulan has chosen this man herself. They met in Shanghai this spring. I do not approve, Hope. For many years this man Dalin has sold more than fireworks to the Manchu regiments, now he supplies any warlord who will meet his price. I do not trust him. I do not wish him to enter my family, but my mother has agreed and too much face will be lost if I intervene.”

  “Face! You’re saying this man could damage you politically! He’s more than twice Mulan’s age, and you, her father, were never even consulted! You’re the one who’s been dishonored!”

  “Maybe.” There was a long pause, then, to her astonishment, a smile crept into his voice. “You never did consult your father, Hope.”

  “That was different!”

  “‘He will understand,’ you said.”

  “I’m trying to argue with you.”

  “Yes.” He came behind her, stroked the fine wisps of hair at her neck.

  She twisted to look at him. “You’re not even concerned!”

  “I am very concerned. As was your father, I think.”

  “But she couldn’t possibly love him?”

  “Your friends said the same about you.” He moved his hands to her shoulders, gently signaling for her to come with him inside. But when she still did not respond, he said, “I cannot see into my daughter’s heart any more than I could see into her mother’s. You understand, Hope. This thing is not within my control.”

  3

  Balance is key,” said Sarah. “You must never forget—or let the servants forget—that you are in charge. And don’t make that fatal mistake of going Chinese. You’ll inevitably fail to live up to their standards, and you’ll look and feel a fool for the trying.”

  Hope looked doubtfully out the tram window. Sarah had insisted that rather than meeting for another stuffy tea or tiffin (lunch, in Shanghai parlance), they make an outing to the racecourse. It was opening day of the Autumn Race Meet, she said, and all Shanghai society would be on display.

  “But Paul is Chinese,” Hope reminded her.

  “So he is, and that must never be forgotten, either. Balance, as I said. Take food, for example. My personal advice is never to serve both Western and Eastern food at one meal. Choose one menu or the other, keeping Paul’s preferences and whereabouts in mind. Eugene can’t abide Western-style breakfasts but is quite enthusiastic about a full roast beef and Yorkshire pud dinner, so if and when we breakfast together I order up salted fish and congee and satisfy myself with a stuffed bun. Then dinner can be the reverse.”

  “I’m not sure I see the purpose.”

  “The purpose, dear Hope, is to maintain at least the illusion of respect and purity. Don’t mix things up too much. Don’t confuse. And don’t dilute.”

  “But we are mixed up. We’re married! There’s no point pretending otherwise.”

  “I repeat, Hope, you are not Chinese, whoever marries you. And Paul will never be American.”

  “He wears foreign clothing. And I’ve always served him the foods he likes in whatever combination strikes me. He’s never complained.” They had passed out of the crowded downtown with its square-cut department stores and leering billboards and were nearing the towers and angled rooftops of the Race Club. The street was packed with rickshaws and touring cars, Western women trailing furs and feathers, men in top hats and beaver coats, and upper-class Chinese gowned in padded silk and brocades, many of them offsetting their robes with tweed jackets, heavy leather brogues, and sharply creased Homburgs. Hope drew Sarah’s attention to this mixing of cultures, but to little avail.

  “They’re posing. Playing costumes. When they go home they won’t wear those things. C’mon, we’re here. Now stay close, Hope. I’ve a pal who’ll get us into the grandstand.”

  Hope clutched the Kodak under her arm and swung down into the throng. The air was cold and mossy damp, the horsy smell from the stables wafting in equal measures with the spectators’ colognes and brilliantine. On the far side of the yard huddled scores of less affluent Chinese in worn blue cotton—most, like their better heeled countrymen, sporting Western-style haberdashery.

  Sarahs pal, an usher, was short and squat with quick darting eyes and a nose like a rat’s. He greeted Sarah with an unctuous grin and led them up a rear stairway to prize seats in the second tier. “How’d you know him?” Hope whispered when he was gone.

  “Friend of Donald’s,” Sarah answered with an offhandedness that reminded Hope of the secret behind her friend’s first marriage—and shocked her all over again.

  “I never thought I led a particularly sheltered life,” she said. “But I’m beginning to wonder.”

  “I think there are no more sheltered people in the world than Americans,” said Sarah. “The British, too, are easily shocked, but at least they understand why. Americans haven’t a clue.”

  “That’s a rather harsh pronouncement, isn’t it?”

  The two women turned toward the voice behind them. Its owner cupped his pipe in one hand and lit it with the other. He glanced at them over the starting smoke with amused eyes. Hope had the feeling she’d seen him before—a lean, handsome man with sandy hair combed straight back—but she could not place him.

  Sarah had no such difficulty. She boldly extended her hand. “I’m sorry if you disagree, Doctor, but I’m very pleased to see you again anyway.”

  The man flicked his match expertly, tucked the pipe into his left hand and greeted Sarah with his right. “Pleasure’s mine. And how’s that baby of yours, Mrs. Leon?” He paused. “Stephen Mann. We met at Ste. Marie’s.”

  Only at that instant did her mental pathways unjam and Hope recognize those strange swirling eyes. “I’m sorry, Doctor! I guess I didn’t recognize you without your white jacket. They’re quite well. Thank you for asking. For remembering, my goodness!” She gave him her hand, blushing, and glanced away… only to lock eyes with Renata Hwang. The Frenchwoman was studying her from the far end of the stand, where she sat beside a stuffed, monocled Chinese man who must be her husband. She wagged her fan, gave Hope a slow, measured nod, and raised her binocul
ars toward the track.

  “I have a good memory,” Dr. Mann was saying, “but I would have remembered the two of you, even if I hadn’t.”

  “You’re a gallant one, you are,” Sarah said.

  At that, a horn blew. The ponies and their mafoos had lined up at the starting gate. Now they were off, pounding up dust and sending a tremor like an earthquake through the stands. With relief at the diversion, Hope lifted the Kodak to her eyes, focused as best she could on the biscuit-colored oval of the course with its flashing spots of color and mane, and snapped the shutter.

  “That must be very fast film,” said the doctor.

  Hope kept the camera to her eye. “Fast enough.”

  A bell rang as the first ponies crossed the finish line, and at the other side of the course, a line of boys held up the winning numbers.

  “You know about photography, Doctor?” Sarah asked.

  “A bit. I’ve found it a helpful tool—to document unusual cases. And, of course, China invites the camera. I’m afraid I don’t have a very artistic eye, though.”

  “Why don’t you practice on us,” said Sarah. “Hope and I haven’t had our picture taken together in years.”

  “You’re old friends, then?” Dr. Mann drew on his pipe. “Even before Shanghai?”

  “Oh, long before. Look, there’s a balcony on the other side where you can pose us.”

  “Mrs. Leon?” said the doctor. “I’m more than willing, but it is your camera.”

  “Please,” she said, surprised all over again at his recollection not only of her circumstances but her name. “To tell the truth, I’m just muddling through. Maybe you can show me the proper settings.”

  The trio made their way out just as the starting bell sounded for the second race. They drew some curious glances for leaving at such a critical moment, which prompted Mann to say in a loud voice, “I’ve never been the betting kind, but I do find the scenery entertaining.”