When Mr. Chou received the letter, he felt that the young man knew etiquette, and so he instructed the bank’s chief-secretary Mr. Wang to send a reply. When Chief-secretary Wang read Fang Hung-chien’s letter, he had high praise for his boss’s would-be son-in-law, remarking that the young man’s calligraphy and literary style were both excellent, and that the expression of his feelings for the deceased was deep and genuine, indicative of a very kind heart and talent that would take him far. Delighted with all this, Chou instructed Wang to reply in the following manner: “Although my daughter was never wed, our in-law relationship will remain unchanged. I had but one daughter and had originally planned to give her a grand wedding. Now I am going to give the entire amount, which I had set aside for the wedding and the dowry, along with the earnings from investments made with your family’s betrothal present—altogether a sum of over twenty thousand dollars or one thousand three hundred British pounds—to finance your education abroad after your graduation from college next year.”
Even in his dreams Fang Hung-chien had never conceived of such a stroke of good fortune and felt profound gratitude toward his deceased fiancée. He was a worthless sort, who could never learn civil engineering, and while at the university he had switched his major from sociology to philosophy before finally settling down as a Chinese literature major.
It may sound a bit absurd for someone majoring in Chinese to go abroad for advanced study. In fact, however, it is only for those studying Chinese literature that it is absolutely necessary to study abroad, since all other subjects such as mathematics, physics, philosophy, psychology, economics, and law, which have been imported from abroad, have already been Westernized. Chinese literature, the only native product, is still in need of a foreign trademark before it can hold its own, just as Chinese officials and merchants have to convert the money they have fleeced at home into foreign exchange to maintain the original value of the national currency.
During his stay in Europe, Fang Hung-chien did not spend his time transcribing the Tun-huang manuscripts13 or visiting the Yung-lo collections14 or looking for relevant documents on the T’ai-p’ing Heavenly Kingdom.15 Within four years he had gone the rounds of three universities: London, Paris, and Berlin. He took a few courses here and there, and though his interests were fairly broad, he gained nothing at all in the way of knowledge, mostly dissipating his life away in idleness. In the spring of the fourth year, with only three hundred pounds left in the bank, he decided to return home in the summer.
His father had written asking him if he had received his Ph.D. and when he would be coming home. He replied with a long letter denouncing the Ph.D. title as having absolutely no practical value. His father did not see it that way at all, but now that his son had grown up, he hesitated to threaten him again with paternal authority, and merely said that he knew perfectly well titles were useless and that he would never force his son to get one, but his son had a duty toward Mr. Chou, who had invested a large sum of money on his education. A few days later, Fang Hung-chien also received a letter from his father-in-law, which said in effect: “A worthy son-in-law like you with talent and learning and a reputation extending far and wide does not need to flaunt a Ph.D. But your father passed the Manchu second-degree examination and therefore it seems only fitting that you become the foreign equivalent of the third-degree holder, following in your father’s footsteps and even surpassing him. Then I too would share in your glory.”
Finding himself pressured on both sides, Fang Hung-chien finally realized the importance of a foreign diploma. This diploma, it seemed, would function the same as Adam and Eve’s figleaf. It could hide a person’s shame and wrap up his disgrace. This tiny square of paper could cover his shallowness, ignorance, and stupidity. Without it, it was as if he were spiritually stark naked and had nothing to bundle up in. But as for getting a degree at that point, whether by studying toward it himself or hiring a ghost writer to write a dissertation, there was neither time nor money. A Ph.D. from the nearby University of Hamburg was considered the easiest to muddle through, but even it required six months. He could just go ahead and deceive his family by saying he’d received a Ph.D., but then he was afraid that he couldn’t fool his father and father-in-law. As one who had passed the old second-degree examination, his father would want to see the official “announcement.” His father-in-law, a businessman, would want to see the “title deed.” Unable to think of a solution, he was prepared to return home brazen-faced and tell them that he had not obtained a degree.
One day as he was going to the Chinese bibliography section of the Berlin library to see a German friend, he noticed on the floor a large stack of periodicals published in Shanghai during the first years of the Republic of China, including The Eastern Miscellany, Short Story Monthly, The Grand China, and the Women’s Magazine. Having stopped to leaf leisurely through one, he happened to see an advertisement with Chinese and English parallel texts placed by the “Correspondence Division of the Carleton Institute of Law and Commerce” in the city of New York. It stated that for those Chinese students who had the desire to study abroad but no opportunity to do so, the school had special correspondence courses, upon completion of which certificate equivalents of the B.A., M.A., or Ph.D. degrees would be granted. The brochures would be forwarded immediately upon request by writing to such and such a number and on such and such a street in New York City.
Fang’s heart skipped a beat. As a good twenty years had elapsed since the date of the advertisement, he had no way of knowing whether the school still existed or not. At any rate sending off a letter of inquiry won’t cost much, he thought.
The man who had placed the advertisement was actually a swindler. Since no Chinese was ever taken in, he had dropped it for another line of business and died some time ago. The apartment he had lived in was now rented to an Irishman, with all the Irish irresponsibility, quick wit, and poverty. It is said that an Irishman’s fortune consists of his two breasts and two buttocks, but this one, being a tall, thin Bernard Shaw-type of man, did not have much breast or buttocks. When he came upon Fang’s letter in his mailbox, he thought the mailman had made a mistake. But the address was clearly his; so full of curiosity, he opened the letter. Greatly puzzled, he mulled over it for a while, then leaped for joy.
He quickly borrowed a typewriter from a tabloid reporter next door and typed out the following reply: “Since you have been studying in a university in Europe, your level of achievement must be quite high, making it unnecessary for you to go through the correspondence procedures. You need only send a 10,000-word dissertation and enclose five hundred U.S. dollars. After evaluating your qualifications, we will immediately forward to you a Ph.D. degree diploma. Letters can be addressed to myself without having to write the name of the school. Signed, Patrick Mahoney.” Underneath his name he conferred upon himself four or five doctoral titles.
When Fang saw the letter was written on ordinary stationery without the name of the school engraved on it, and as the contents clearly showed the school to be fraudulent, he put it aside and forgot about it. The Irishman meanwhile grew impatient and sent off another letter stating that if Fang found the price too high, the price could be negotiated. He himself had always loved China, and as an educator, he was particularly averse to profit-seeking. Fang mulled it over for a while, suspecting that the Irishman was undoubtedly up to tricks. If he bought a bogus diploma and went back to dupe other people with it, wouldn’t he himself be a fraud? But, remember, Fang had once been a philosophy major, and to a philosophy major lying and cheating were not always immoral. In Plato’s Ideal State soldiers were justified in fooling the enemy, doctors in fooling their patients, and officials in fooling the people. A sage like Confucius had pretended to be ill in order to trick Ju Pei into leaving,16 and even Mencius had lied to King Hsüan of Ch’i and pretended that he was ill.17 Since both his father and his father-in-law hoped he would become a Ph.D., how could he, a son and son-in-law, dare disappoint them? Buying a degree to deceive
them was like purchasing an official rank in Man-chu times,18 or like the merchants of a British colony contributing a few ten thousand pound notes to the royal exchequer in exchange for a knighthood, he reasoned. Every dutiful son and worthy son-in-law should seek to please his elders by bringing glory to the family. In any case, when later it came time for him to look for a job, he would never include this degree in his resume. He might as well try slashing the price, and if the Irishman refused, he could then forget the whole thing and avoid turning into a fraud himself. So he replied that he would pay one hundred U.S. dollars, making a thirty-dollar down payment, and when the diploma was delivered, he would send the rest, and that thirty or more other Chinese students were also interested in dealing with “your honorable school” in the same manner.
At first, the Irishman would not agree. Later, realizing that Fang’s decision was firm, and having ascertained from local sources that American doctoral titles were indeed fashionable in China, he gradually became convinced that there really were thirty-odd Chinese muddleheads in Europe wanting to buy a degree from him. He also learned that there were a number of organizations engaged in the same business, such as the University of the East, Eastern United States of America University, the Intercollegiate University, and the Truth University, where one could buy an M.A. diploma for as little as ten U.S. dollars, while the College of Divine Metaphysics offered a bargain package of three types of Ph.D. diplomas. All these were formally accredited and registered schools with which he could never hope to compete. Therefore, keeping his objective of low profits but wide markets in mind, he came to terms with Fang Hung-chien. When he received the thirty dollars, he printed up forty or fifty diplomas, filled one out, and sent it to Fang. In an accompanying letter he pressed Fang to send the balance and to inform the others to apply to him.
Fang replied that, after making a careful investigation, he had, found no such school in the United States and that the diploma amounted to waste paper. But he would be lenient toward a first offender and not press charges in hopes that the Irishman would repent and reform himself. Nonetheless, he did send the Irishman ten extra U.S. dollars to help tide the Irishman over while changing to another line of work.
The Irishman was so enraged that he cursed without stop, got drunk and red-eyed, and sought to pick a fight with any Chinese he could find. The incident may well mark China’s sole victory over the foreigners since she began to have foreign relations or signed her first treaty of commerce.
Afterwards, Fang went to a photo studio, donned the German doctoral robe and had a four-inch picture taken. He sent a copy each to his father and father-in-law. In a letter he reiterated how all his life he had hated the title of doctor and that while this time he could not avoid the convention, it was not worth mentioning his degree to others.
He returned to France where he enjoyed himself a few weeks, then bought a second-class steamship ticket for the return trip home. After boarding the ship at Marseilles, he discovered that he was the only Chinese traveling second class and was lonely and bored. The Chinese students in the third class felt that he, being a student, too, was just flaunting his wealth by traveling second class, and they eyed him with some hostility. Learning of an empty berth in the cabin of a Vietnamese, he made arrangements with the purser to give up his original cabin and go sleep in third class, while still taking his meals in the second class.
Among the Chinese on board, the only one he knew from China was Miss Su, who had studied French literature at Lyons. She had written her dissertation on eighteen Chinese poets of the colloquial style19 and had just received her doctorate. When Fang and she were classmates at college, she had never even noticed the existence of the little nobody Fang Hung-chien. In those days she valued her affection too highly to bestow it casually. Now, however, she was just like the person who has some fine clothes made and, saving them for good occasions, locks them in a chest. Then one or two years later she suddenly finds their style and design are out of fashion and is filled with disappointment and regret. Before, she had had her heart set on studying abroad and despised those suitors for their lack of prospects, since they were merely college graduates. But now that she was a woman Ph.D., she felt the loneliness of her lofty perch, which was higher than anyone dared climb. She knew a little about Fang’s family background; and observing that he was a nice person and didn’t seem to lack money, she thought she might use the trip to give him an opportunity to get near her. She never guessed that her cabinmate, Miss Pao, would beat her to him.
Miss Pao was born and raised in Macao and was said to have Portuguese blood. To say she had “Portugese blood” was the same as for the Japanese to claim they have native culture,20 or for an author who has plagiarized a foreign play to declare in his revised version, “copyright reserved, translations forbidden,” since the Portuguese blood had Chinese ingredients mixed in it from the start. But to judge from Miss Pao’s figure, her Portuguese mother may also have had Arab blood inherited indirectly from Spain. Miss Pao had a very slender waist, which fit exactly the standard of feminine beauty the Arab poet praised and described at length in Arabian Nights: “Her waist was slender, her hips were heavy and did weight her down whene’er she would rise.” Under her long eyelashes was a pair of sleepy, seemingly drunken, dreamy, big smiling eyes; her full, round upper lip seemed to be angrily pouting at a lover. Her fiancé Dr. Li, without any sense of prudence, had given her the money to study obstetrics in London by herself. The Portuguese have a saying that for a lucky man the firstborn is always a girl (A homen ventureiro a filha lhe nasce primeiro), because when the girl grows up, she will be handy around the house and look after her younger brothers and sisters; thus before her marriage she saves her parents the expense of hiring a maid. Miss Pao was used to being at her parents’ beck and call. Being clever, she realized that she would have to find her own opportunity and seek her own happiness by herself. She therefore chose to become engaged to a man twelve years older, so she could have the chance to go abroad. The British are accustomed to seeing fair skin, so when they saw her dark, though not black, color with its rich, spicy attractiveness, they thought she was a true Oriental beauty. She believed herself to be very seductive, so she was very quickly and easily seduced. Fortunately, being a medical student, she did not take these affairs seriously or get into any trouble. After two years in England she was now returning to get married and set up a joint practice with her husband. Once aboard the ship, the Chinese students found out she carried a British passport issued by the Hong Kong government, which meant she was not a Chinese citizen, so they did not quite warm up to her. Since she couldn’t speak French and didn’t care to talk about home with the third-class Cantonese waiters, she felt terribly bored. She saw Fang was a second-class passenger and thought he might make a good companion to while away the time during the trip.
Miss Su, who pictured herself in the words of the familiar saying, “as delectable as peach and plum and as cold as frost and ice,”21 decided she would allow Fang to humbly gaze at her in admiration and then prostrate himself to beg for her love. Who would have thought that while the temperature hovered around 100 degrees every day, this sweet, cool ice cream manner of hers was completely ineffective. By merely letting drop one lighthearted remark, Miss Pao had Fang hooked. The day after Fang had moved to the third class, he went up on deck for a stroll and happened to run into Miss Pao, who was leaning against the ship’s railing by herself and taking in a breath of air. He greeted her and struck up a conversation. Before he had said more than a sentence or two, Miss Pao remarked with a smile, “Mr. Fang, you remind me of my fiancé. You look so much like him!”
She made him feel both embarrassed and pleased. When an attractive woman says you look like her fiancé, it is tantamount to saying that if she were not engaged, you would be qualified to win her love. A real cynic might interpret this as meaning: she already has a fiancé, so you can enjoy a fiancé’s privileges without having to fulfill the obligation of marrying her. Be that
as it may, from that point on their friendship grew with the speed of a tropical plant. All the other Chinese men students teased Fang and made him treat everyone to iced coffee and beer.
Although Fang was inwardly critical of Miss Pao for her immodest behavior, he was also feeling excited. When he turned his head and saw Miss Su and Mrs. Sun’s empty chairs, he was thankful the cigarette incident had passed without their notice.
That evening it became windy, and the ship began pitching slightly. After ten o’clock only four or five couples were on deck, hiding in the shadows from the gleam of lights, murmuring sweet words to each other. Fang and Miss Pao strolled along side by side in silence. A big wave violently shook the ship, she nearly losing her balance. He then hooked his arm around her waist, and staying close to the railing, he kissed her hungrily. Her lips were ready, her body submissive. This stolen kiss, hurried and rough, gradually settled into a full and comfortable one. She deftly pushed aside his arm, and breathing heavily said, “You’re suffocating me. I have a cold and can’t breathe. You got away with it cheap. You haven’t even begged for my love!”
“I’ll make it up by begging for it now, all right?” Like all men without love experience, he considered the word “love” much too noble and solemn to be used casually on women. He only felt he wanted her, not that he loved her, thus this evasiveness in his reply.
“Anyway, you haven’t anything nice to say. You can’t get away with that same old line.”
“When you put your mouth against mine and I say something to you, those words pass right into your heart without having to take the long way around, making a turn, and going in through your ear.”
“I’m not going to be fooled by you! If you have something to say, say it like a gentleman. That’s enough for today. If you behave yourself, tomorrow I-”
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