When the applause had died down, Fang Hung-chien forced a smile and began, “Principal Lü, members of the faculty, and students: Though your applause was well-meaning, it is actually quite unjustified. Applause indicates satisfaction with the speech. Now before I have even begun, you have already applauded with satisfaction. Why should I have to go on? You should all listen to the lecture first, then clap a few times as you wish, letting me leave the stage with dignity. Now that you’ve clapped at the start, if my lecture can’t live up to such enthusiastic applause, it’ll put me in the embarrassing position of having been paid without being able to deliver the goods.”
The audience roared with laughter. The recording secretary was also smiling as her pen flew across the paper. Fang Hung-chien hesitated. What should he say next? He still remembered a few of the points and views put forth in the string-bound texts, but as for the history textbooks he had skimmed through after dinner, there wasn’t even a trace left. Those confounded textbooks! It’s amazing that I could have learned all that stuff for examinations when I was a student! Ah, now I have it! At least it’s better than nothing. “As for the influence of Western civilization on Chinese history, you can find that in any history textbook. There’s no need for me to repeat it. You all know that the first time China officially came in contact with European thought was in the middle of the Ming dynasty [1368—1644]. For this reason Catholics always refer to this period as the Chinese Renaissance. Actually, the science brought by the Catholic priests of the Ming dynasty is now out of date, while the religion they brought has never been up to date. In the last several hundred years of overseas communication, there are only two items from the West which have been lasting in Chinese society as a whole. One is opium, and the other is syphilis. These are what the Ming dynasty assimilated of Western civilization.”
Most of the audience laughed, a small number gasped in astonishment, and a few of the teachers scowled. The recording-secretary’s face flushed crimson, and her pen stopped, as if by hearing Fang Hung-chien’s last remark her virgin ears had lost their chastity in front of the audience. Principal Lü uttered a warning cough behind Hung-chien. By this time Fang Hung-chien was just like a man getting out of bed on a cold winter morning. Having managed after the greatest of efforts to hop from the covers, he just has to bear the cold long enough to dress. There was no backing out now.
“Opium was originally called ‘foreign tobacco’—” Hung-chien noticed one of the teachers, who seemed to be an old instructor of Chinese, fanning himself and shaking his head, and he quickly added, “‘Foreign’ refers, of course, to the ‘Western Ocean’ of ‘Cheng Ho’s Voyages to the Western Ocean,’13 for according to the Ta-Ming hui-tien,14 opium was an article of tribute from Siam and Java. But in the earliest literary work in Europe, Homer’s Odyssey”—the old man’s bald pate seemed to be overwhelmed by that last foreign word—“there appears what is said to be this very thing. As for syphilis”—Principal Lü coughed several times in succession—“it is without doubt an imported commodity from the West. Schopenhauer has said that syphilitic sores were the most distinctive feature of modern European civilization. If you have not had the opportunity to read the original, you can very easily read Hsü Chih-mo’s15 translation of the French novel Candide to learn something about the origins of syphilis. The disease was brought by Westerners after the Cheng-te period of the Ming dynasty.16 The ill effects of these two things were of course unlimited, but, nonetheless, one cannot dismiss them out of hand. Opium inspired many works of literature. Whereas ancient poets sought inspiration from wine, modern European and American poets all find inspiration in opium. Syphilis transmits idiocy, insanity, and deformity by heredity, but it is also said that it is capable of stimulating genius. For example—”
At this point Principal Lü coughed himself hoarse. When Hung-chien had finished speaking, and while the clapping in the audience was still going strong, Principal Lü, with a long face and a hoarse voice, said a few words of thanks: “Today we have had the honor of hearing Dr. Fang tell us several novel views. We have found it highly interesting. Dr. Fang is the son of an old friend of mine. I watched him grow up and I know how much he enjoys telling jokes. It is very hot today, so he has intentionally made his lecture humorous. I hope in the future we will have the opportunity to hear his earnest and solemn discourse. But I’d like to tell Dr. Fang that our school library is filled with the spirit of the New Life Movement.17 It certainly has no French novels—” With this he struck the air with his hand.
Hung-chien was too embarrassed even to look at the audience.
Before the day was over many people had learned that Fang’s son, just returned from study abroad, publicly advocated smoking opium and visiting brothels. When this came to Mr. Fang’s ears, he did not realize it was the result of his having instructed his son to look through the string-bound texts. Though he did not approve of what his son said, he could not very well get angry over it. The fighting at Wusung on August 13, 1937,18 occurred soon afterwards and Fang Hung-chien’s prank was mentioned no more. Those interested in making him their son-in-law, however, could not forget his lecture, and they assumed he had led a life of profligacy while abroad. If they went to the Matchmaker’s Temple at West Lake to draw lots before the idols, they would probably end up with tally number four, which read, “That this man should have this disease. . . .”19 Such a young man would never do as a son-in-law. One after another they deferred discussion of marriage on the grounds that the times were unstable and asked the Fangs for the return of their daughters’ pictures and horoscopes. Extremely disheartened by it all, Mrs. Fang could not get the Hsüs’ second daughter off her mind. Hung-chien, however, was quite unperturbed.
Now that fighting had broken out, Mr. Fang, a prominent squire in the village, was in charge of local security matters. Remembering the “January 28th Incident”20 when the district had not suffered enemy bombing, the inhabitants of the district assumed that this too was nothing important and were not particularly alarmed.
After he had been home for a week, Fang Hung-chien felt as if he had not left home at all; his four years abroad were like water running over a lotus leaf leaving no trace behind. The people he met after his return were the same ones of four years ago, still doing and saying what they had done and said four years ago. There was not even one person among all his acquaintances who had died off. Only his wet nurse, who always used to say she would wait till he got married and had a son, then come look after him, was now ill and bedridden. As far as he was concerned, he had not missed the village during those four years at all. Not a single tear or sigh could the village fetch from the wandering son upon his return.
On the sixth day after the outbreak of the war, when Japanese planes bombed for the first time and destroyed the train station, everyone at last realized that the war had really reached them and many fled with their families to the countryside. Later, the planes kept coming in much the same manner as the peerless beauty whose “one glance could conquer a city and whose second glance could vanquish an empire.”21
Mr. Chou wired Hung-chien urging him to come to Shanghai as soon as possible before all communications were suspended and he himself was stranded at home. Feeling that under the circumstances his son should leave home and look for job possibilities, Mr. Fang let him go.
What happened during the next four months, from the retreat from Shanghai to the fall of Nanking, should be recorded in history, as Friedrich von Logau22 put it, with a bayonet dipped in the ink of fresh blood upon the paper made from the skin of the enemy. Despondently, Fang Hung-chien read dozens of newspapers and listened to just as many radio broadcasts daily. Exhausted hope, as though sifting sand for gold, tried to find some crack in the news in which to revive itself. His brother P’eng-t’u and he guessed that their house had already been destroyed and didn’t know what had happened to their family.
At the end of the lunar year, they finally heard some news of them. Mr. Fang’s friends and relatives in
Shanghai contributed money to help them get out and rented a house for them in the foreign concessions. The family reunited amidst much weeping. Mr. Fang and Feng-i were clamoring to buy shoes and socks. While en route in a small boat, they met two deserting soldiers. They took Mr. Fang’s wallet; and as they were about to make off, they forced both father and son to take off their wool socks and cotton shoes and exchange them for their own stinking cotton socks and tattered canvas shoes. The whole Fang family had traveled on empty-handed. Only a sum of two or three thousand dollars in paper currency sewn in Mrs. Fang’s padded cotton jacket had gone undetected by the two soldiers. The businessmen living in Shanghai who were from the same village, having long respected Mr. Fang’s reputation, gave him a considerable sum of money so that once again he was able to maintain a household.
Seeing how crowded it was in the small house, Hung-chien decided to stay on at the Chous, dropping in on his parents every second or third day to pay his respects. Every time he went home he heard them talk about all the frightening and amusing experiences they had had during their escape. Their narrative and descriptive skills seemed to improve with each retelling, while Hung-chien’s attention and sympathy decreased slightly after each hearing. Since Mr. Fang had rejected the offers of Japanese collaborators in his home district, he could no longer return home; yet the government had given him no recognition, making him feel that, while he loved his country, his country did not love him. He felt the same resentment as a young widow who, despite maintaining a chaste widowhood, finds no favor with her parents-in-law. Hung-chien was very bored at the Golden Touch Bank, and since there were few opportunities in Shanghai, he considered going into the unoccupied interior23 as soon as he had a chance.
The lunar New Year arrived. The well-to-do in the concessions of Shanghai felt that they had suffered enough alarm for their country. Since the country hadn’t fallen, they found no need to play the part of survivors, and once again started up the usual bustle and activities of the New Year.
One day Mrs. Chou told Hung-chien that someone was making a match for him with the daughter of a Mr. Chang with whom Hung-chien and Manager Chou had once sat at the same table at a social gathering. According to Mrs. Chou, the Changs had asked for Hung-chien’s horoscope and requested a fortuneteller to match it with Miss Chang’s. The forecast for the couple was “A union made in heaven, full of great fortune and prosperity.”
Hung-chien asked with a smile, “You mean in a cosmopolitan place like Shanghai, people still ask fortunetellers to determine a marriage?”
Mrs. Chou replied that one could not but believe in fate, and since Mr. Chang had invited him over for dinner, it wouldn’t hurt to meet his daughter. Hung-chien, who held to some of the principles typical of the prewar scholar class,24 remembering that this Mr. Chang was a comprador in an American firm, wanted nothing to do with such a vulgarian. But then he reflected, hadn’t he himself, from the time he went abroad until now, been using a philistine’s money?25 At any rate one visit could do no harm. Whether he decided to get married or not depended entirely on whether or not he took a liking to the girl. No one could force him. So he agreed to go for dinner.
Mr. Chang was from the coastal area of Chekiang. His given name was Chi-min, but he preferred people to call him Jimmy.26 For over twenty years he had worked for an American firm, the Stars and Stripes Company, rising from a clerk to become a comprador, and he had amassed a sizable fortune. He had but one daughter and had not spared any expense in her upbringing. She had acquired all the foreign skills and ways that the church schools could teach or instill, and all the foreign hairstyles and makeup that beauty salons and hairdressers could create. She was just eighteen and had not yet graduated from high school, but Mr. and Mrs. Chang, who held to the traditional view of their hometown, thought that a girl was old by the time she was twenty, and if she passed this age still unwed, she could only be put in a museum of old relics to be viewed with nostalgia.
Mrs. Chang was very strict in her choice of a son-in-law, and though many people had proposed matches, none of them had made it. One of these was the son of a well-to-do businessman and a returned student to boot. Mrs. Chang was favorably impressed with him and held high hopes for a marriage, but after one dinner, she never mentioned the matter again. During the meal they began talking about the fact that because of the war the concessions were under a blockade and vegetables were hard to get. Mrs. Chang turned to the son of the well-to-do businessman and said, “With so many people in your family, the daily cost for food must be quite high, I should think.”
He replied that he was not quite sure, but thought it was so much money per day.
Mrs. Chang exclaimed, “Then your cook must be both honest and resourceful. Our family isn’t half as large as yours, yet our cook spends the same amount every day!”
He was quite pleased at hearing this, but after dinner was over and he had left, Mrs. Chang said, “That family lives on peanuts! They spend so little on food a day! Since my daughter is used to comfort, she couldn’t take such hardship!” The question of marriage was dropped at this point.
After a few deliberations, the husband and wife decided that they could never rest easy about marrying their precious daughter into another family. It would be far better to adopt a son-in-law into their own.27 The day Mr. Chang met Hung-chien at the party he mentioned him later at home, saying he found him well qualified: the family background and qualifications were quite good. Furthermore, since he was now already living at the home of his nominal father-in-law without ever having actually become his son-in-law, taking him into the family would be as easy as turning the palm. What made it even better was that since the Fangs had lost so much in the war, they couldn’t put on any of the presumptuous airs of a country squire, and the son-in-law would live submissively at the Changs. In the end, Mrs. Chang wanted Hung-chien to dine with them, so she could take a look at him.
Since Mr. Chang had invited him to come early for a chat, Fang Hung-chien went over in the afternoon right after work at the bank. Along the way he passed a foreign fur goods store where he saw in the window a Western-style fur overcoat. It was on sale at only $400 during New Year’s. He had always wanted an overcoat like that but had never dared buy one when he was studying abroad. In London, for instance, a man who wore such an overcoat but did not own a private car, unless he looked like a Jewish usurer or a Negro boxer, would be suspected of being a circus performer, or else a pimp who ran a brothel. It was only in Vienna that fur coats were commonly worn, and ready-made fur linings were sold to travelers to line their coats. After returning to China, he had seen many people wearing fur, and now he was even more stirred by the display in the window. After some calculations, however, he could only heave a sigh. His $100 salary at the bank was already considered handsome and ample spending money, and since his father-in-law was providing both room and board and he didn’t have to pay a cent, how could he ask Mr. Chou for money to buy a luxury item? He had dutifully presented forty of the sixty-odd pounds left after his return home to his father to buy furniture. The rest had been converted into a little over $400. It would hardly do to sink all his money at once into that coat. In a time of national austerity, one had to economize in everything, and since the weather would be warming up soon, he might as well forget it.
When he arrived at the Changs, Mr. Chang gave him a hearty welcome, “Hello, Dr. Fang! Haven’t seen you for a long time!”
Mr. Chang was used to dealing with foreigners and his speech had a special characteristic—perhaps in a foreign firm, the YMCA, the Rotary Club, or other such places, this was nothing unusual—he liked to sprinkle his Chinese with meaningless English expressions. It wasn’t that he had new ideas, which were difficult to express in Chinese and required the use of English. The English words inlaid in his speech could not thus be compared with the gold teeth inlaid in one’s mouth, since gold teeth are not only decorative but functional as well. A better comparison would be with the bits of meat stuck between the t
eeth—they show that one has had a good meal but are otherwise useless. He imitated the American accent down to the slightest inflection, though maybe the nasal sound was a little overdone, sounding more like a Chinese with a cold and a stuffy nose, rather than an American speaking. The way he said “Very well” sounded just like a dog growling—“Vurry wul.” A pity the Romans never had a chance to hear it, for otherwise the Latin poet Persius would not have been the only one to say that “r” was a nasal in the dog’s alphabet (sonat hic de nare canina litera).
As Mr. Chang shook hands with Hung-chien, he asked him if he had to go downtown every day. When the pleasantries were over, Hung-chien noticed a glass cupboard filled with bowls, jars, and plates and asked, “Do you collect porcelain, Mr. Chang?”
“Sure! Have a look-see.” Mr. Chang opened the cupboard and invited Hung-chien to inspect them. Hung-chien picked up a few pieces and noticed they were all marked with such reign periods as “Ch’eng-hua,” “Hsüan-te,” or “K’ang-hsi.”28 Unable to tell whether they were genuine or fake, he merely said, “These must be quite valuable.”
“Sure! Worth quite a lot of money, plenty of dough. Besides, these things aren’t like calligraphy or paintings. If you buy calligraphy or paintings which turn out to be fakes, they aren’t worth a cent. They just amount to wastepaper. If the porcelain is fake, at least it can hold food. Sometimes I invite foreign friends over for dinner and use this big K’ang-hsi ‘underglaze-blue-and-col-ored ware’ plate for a salad dish. They all think the ancient colors and odor make the food taste a little old time.”
Fang Hung-chien said, “I’m sure you have a good eye. You wouldn’t ever buy a fake.”
Mr. Chang laughed heartily and said, “I don’t know anything about period designs. I’m too busy to have time to sit down and study it. But I have a hunch when I see something, and a sudden—what d’you call?—inspiration comes to me. Then I buy it and it turns out to be quite OK. Those antique dealers all respect me. I always say to them, ‘Don’t try to fool me with fakes. Oh yeah, Mr. Chang here is no sucker. Don’t think you can cheat me!’” He closed the cupboard and said, “Oh, headache,” then pressed an electric bell to summon the servant.
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