. . . “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.
Puzzled, Hung-chien asked quickly, “Aren’t you feeling well, Mr. Chang?”
Mr. Chang looked at Hung-chien in astonishment and said, “Who’s not feeling well? You? Me? Why, I feel fine!”
“Didn’t you say you had a headache?” asked Hung-chien.
Mr. Chang roared with laughter. . . . Turning to Hung-chien, he said with a laugh, “‘Headache’ is an American expression for ‘wife,’ not ‘pain in the head!’ I guess you haven’t been to the States!” (pp. 43–44)
What brings this little scene so splendidly to life is the way the author captures the pidgin English around him, so that Jimmy Chang becomes not a dim personification, not a stock figure of allegory, but a genuine flesh-and-blood comprador living in the great metropolis—Shanghai. It is a subtle passage not because Jimmy is a subtle character or his shallowness hard to see through, but because the precise nature of that shallowness is revealed to us with a remarkable economy of words and without much extraneous comment.
Ch’ien Chung-shu is also thoroughly familiar with Western literary techniques. In his investigation of the linguistic and stylistic points of view in Fortress Besieged, Dennis Hu details Ch’ien’s efficient use of imagery and symbolism and cites numerous examples of his linguistic manipulation (e.g., personification, symbolic prefiguration, plurisignation) and of his semantic manipulation (verbal paradoxes, narrator intrusion). The application of the above-mentioned techniques, in Hu’s view, has contributed significantly to the sarcasm, satire, irony, and wit found in the novel.12
It should also be stressed that Ch’ien Chung-shu’s early reading of Western fiction has significantly helped his writing of Fortress Besieged. Most notably his familiarity with Western points of view has allowed him to integrate successfully the omniscient narrator’s point of view with that of Fang Hung-chien;13 Ch’ien’s reading of Dickens and other English novelists has perhaps sharpened his skills of caricature and made him aware of the picaresque tradition. What we have, then, in Ch’ien Chung-shu is a modern Chinese scholar-novelist who has the benefit of both Chinese and Western learning; consequently, his Fortress Besieged appeals to readers of both China and the West.
A comedy of manners and a scholar’s novel Fortress Besieged may be, yet Ch’ien Chung-shu’s ultimate aim is to make a statement about life by revealing the flaws of the people who live it. Ch’ien, however, does not write sermons to expose society’s faults as he sees them; instead, he uses satire.
One primary target of his satire is the fad of studying abroad, which had its roots in the old Chinese concept of “reflecting glory on one’s ancestors” (k’uan-tsung yao-tsu). In the imperial days, reflecting glory on one’s ancestors meant passing all sorts of local, provincial, and state examinations. After the abolition of the examination system in 1905, the substitute was to study abroad. Fang Hung-chien himself makes that comparison: “. . . studying abroad today is like passing examinations under the old Manchu system. . . . It’s not for the broadening of knowledge that one goes abroad but to get rid of that inferiority complex. It’s like having smallpox or measles, or in other words, it’s essential to have them. . . . Once we’ve studied abroad, we’ve gotten the inferiority complex out of the system, and our souls become strengthened, and when we do come across such germs as Ph.D.’s or M.A.’s we’ve built up a resistance against them” (p. 77). And this craze of studying abroad continued until the Communist takeover of the Mainland in 1949, by which time it had pervaded all levels of society.14 The sardonic narrator observes further that not only science students want to go abroad, but also students majoring in Chinese literature: “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. . . .” (p. 11).
Thus it is quite easy to understand Fang Hung-chien’s desperation in seeking to acquire a foreign diploma. Pressured by his parents and his “inlaws,” he muses, “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” (p. 12). Soon, he purchases a bogus Ph.D. from an Irishman in New York. Later, we learn one of his colleagues at San Lü University has also bought a bogus degree from the same place.
The importance of such a foreign degree, either real or false, is fully satirized by the author. First, Fang Hung-chien’s “acquisition” of his degree prompts his “father-in-law” to place a blurb about Fang in a Shanghai newspaper which reads: “Fang Hung-chien, the gifted son-in-law of Chou Hou-ch’ing, a prominent local businessman and general manager of the Golden Touch Bank, recently received his doctorate of philosophy from Carleton University in Germany after pursuing advanced study abroad under Mr. Chou’s sponsorship at the Universities of London, Paris, and Berlin in political science, economics, history, and sociology, in which he made excellent grades and ranked at the top of his class. He will be touring several countries before returning home in the fall. It is said that many major organizations are vying for him with job offers” (p. 31). Second, Fang becomes an instant hometown celebrity. Upon arrival at the hometown railway station, he is met by his father, his uncles, and two newspaper reporters who take his picture and prepare to interview him on world issues. Third, the local high school principal invites him to give a lecture to the summer school students. Though Fang is unwilling, his father, afflicted by the “reflecting glory on one’s ancestors” syndrome, accepts the invitation for him.
The irony of all the hoopla about Fang’s acquisition of a degree is that it becomes the butt of much satiric humor. The blurb about him in the Shanghai newspaper only makes Fang feel like a counterfeit before Miss Su, a genuine Ph.D. from Lyons; the picture published of him in the hometown paper makes him look like a thief caught in the act of stealing rather than an expert on world issues; and his lecture to the high school audience effectively transforms him into the town’s laughing stock, for he misplaces his notes and ad-libs that the Western influences on China amounted to no more than the importation of opium and syphilis. The consequence of his mis-lecture is that all those families with eligible daughters immediately suspend their interest in him as a prospective son-in-law.
Perhaps the fiercest satire is directed at the intelligentsia. Ch’ien Chung-shu’s satire is broad and sweeping. It begins with a humorous description of the Chinese students returning home aboard the Vicomte de Bragelonne:
Meeting at a far corner of the earth, they became good friends at once, discussing the foreign threats and internal turmoil of their motherland, wishing they could return immediately to serve her. The ship moved ever so slowly, while homesickness welled up in everyone’s heart and yearned for release. Then suddenly from heaven knows where appeared two sets of mahjong, the Chinese national pastime, said to be popular in America as well. Thus, playing mahjong not only had a down-home flavor to it but was also in tune with world trends. As luck would have it, there were more than enough people to set up two tables of mahjong. So, except for eating and sleeping, they spent their entire time gambling. Breakfast was no sooner over than down in the dining room the first round of mahjong was to begin, (p. 4)
No less b
iting is the author’s description of the pseudo-intellectuals in Miss Su Wen-wan’s circle. First on the list is Miss Su herself, with a doctorate from Lyons, who is found to have plagiarized a German folk song verbatim; the American-educated pipe-smoking Chao Hsin-mei is an impertinent young man who makes speeches whenever possible; the French-educated Mrs. Shen, besides smelling like a goat, studs her speech with “Tiens” and “O la la,” as she squirms her body into various seductive poses; the Cambridge-educated Ts’ao Yüan-lang is a new-style poet who writes unreadable poetry mixed with Chinese and Western allusions; Ch’u Sheng-ming (literally, careful and clear), a European-educated philosopher, writes complimentary letters to world-renowned philosophers such as Henri Bergson and Bertrand Russell and uses their courtesy replies as recognition of his eminence as a philosopher; and lastly, there is the Chinese old-style poet Tung Hsieh-ch’üan, who presumptuously dismisses the famous Chinese poet Su Tung-p’o as overrated and Su’s poetry as inferior. In their ludicrous discussions and exchanges on every topic imaginable (e.g., women in politics, the Sino-Japanese War, feminism, “the third sex,” ultramodern poetry, Chinese and Western poetics, traditional and modern Chinese and Western cuisine), they fully reveal their ignorance and bigotry.
Worse than the above group is the small coterie of professors and administrators at San Lü University. Heading the list of academic charlatans is the president himself, closely followed by his deans and star professors. In Section III, Ch’ien Chung-shu holds these pseudo-intellectuals up to the fluoroscope of his critical intelligence and finds them sterile and absurd, mean and pretentious, deceitful and corrupt, and worse. In this section, he treats with satiric humor the many machinations at work in the intellectual subculture. For instance, the interview between Fang Hung-chien and the president is highly effective in its characterization of the latter. The politician-president is perfidious as he claims he has sent a letter to Fang Hung-chien demoting him from professor to associate professor:
“Ai! How could you not have gotten it?” Kao sat up straight, his look of feigned surprise carried to perfection and far more natural than Fang’s genuine dismay. That Kao hadn’t become an actor was a misfortune for the stage and a blessing for the actors. “That letter was very important. Ai! Wartime postal service is simply abominable. But now that you’re here, splendid. I can tell you everything directly.” . . .
Kao Sung-nien made a gesture of not attaching any importance to the letter, grandly forgiving the letter which he had never written and which Fang Hung-chien had never received. “No use talking about the letter. I’m very much afraid that if you had read the letter, you would not have condescended to accept the appointment. . . .” (p. 199)
President Kao’s deans are organization men of the worst kind, men who should know better, men educated in the humanities. The university is a hodgepodge where the emphasis is on compliance with the rules and regulations set forth by the Ministry of Education, and the teachers are all small-minded people armed with phony credentials and ears for gossip and eyes for personal advancement, and this wasteland of insensitivity is found in the middle of a lush, inspiring land of beauty. It is an academic exposé and much of it is humorous and fun to read.
As much as Ch’ien Chung-shu hates the intelligentsia, he is much more scornful of the “talented scholar and beautiful woman” (ts’ai-tzu chia-jen) theme pervading much of traditional and modern Chinese literature.15 What he hopes to achieve in Fortress Besieged is to present a sober and realistic view of courtship and marriage and to counteract many of the evil influences perpetuated by that theme. Instead of a larger-than-life hero, he gives us Fang Hung-chien, neither handsome nor talented, who went abroad on the generosity of his “in-laws,” and who encounters all sorts of difficulties in life. Further, instead of the faithful and beautiful maiden, Ch’ien presents a gallery of women, none of whom is desirable and some of whom occupy only a minor role in the story, ranging from the crafty Miss Fan to the testy Miss Liu in Section III. Even his heroines, those women who directly affect Fang, are de-idealized. First, he introduces Miss Pao, a woman primarily of the flesh; second, he describes Miss Su as a coquette who uses her coquetry as an instrument of power not only to attract men to herself but to control or disturb the other human relationships around her. In a sense she flirts outrageously, even though she gives lip service to a charming unconventionality. She cannot be content merely to attract one or two suitors; she must measure the degree of her success through the suspicions, jealousy, and anger she can create between Fang Hung-chien and Chao Hsin-mei and others. If Miss Pao and Miss Su are flesh and coquetry, Miss T’ang Hsiao-fu would seem to be apathy personified, despite her willingness to toy with Fang Hung-chien as long as he serves her purpose. Complementing flesh, coquetry, and apathy is the bitchiness of Miss Sun Jou-chia. The four of them form a composite picture of the liberated modern Chinese woman. There is no doubt that Ch’ien’s picture of the four women is less than flattering, but this is not to suggest that he hates women; rather, it is his honest way of presenting them as he sees them, without idealization but as human beings with genuine shortcomings.
Insofar as traditional romantic fiction usually ends in a happy marriage, Ch’ien’s Fortress Besieged ends on a discordant note. As suggested by the French proverb from which the title is taken, marriage is a “besiegement” and not to be confused with bliss. Even the “ideal” marriage between Squire Fang Tung-weng and his wife has its moments of discord, while Chou Hou-ch’ing minces no words describing his complete subjugation by his wife to keep his marriage afloat, and the marriage of Fang Hung-chien and Sun Jou-chia is honestly seen in its earthly limitations. The narrative element of Fang and Sun’s “courtship” and “marriage” consists of a rapid succession of small incidents and minor crises that by the principle of accumulation determine their fate.
The disaster of their marriage is the result of a process, not a cataclysm, a process which has its origin in their characters. Both Fang and Sun are well-intentioned but undisciplined and instinctive, and their instincts usually direct them toward self-gratification. From the moment Sun eavesdrops on the conversation between Fang Hung-chien and Chao Hsin-mei in chapter four to her maneuvering Fang to propose to her, from the moment Fang agrees to be engaged to his accepting his friend Chao Hsin-mei’s suggestion that he marry Miss Sun in Hong Kong instead of in Shanghai, the disintegrative pattern of their relationship is set.
The author is careful to make clear that neither Sun nor Fang is evil. They are, in fact, both relatively good when compared to the monsters we see elsewhere in the book. It is just that both are passive. Fang, in particular, is without the training, the discipline, and the strength of character necessary for initiating any positive action, which incidentally is also related to his lack of principles as seen in his easy switch from Miss Pao to Miss Su in chapter one, to Miss T’ang and Miss Sun in chapter two. In a real sense, without much thought of his own, he simply allows events to push and prod him along. Without the internal strength to withstand the strains of a shaky marriage and the added burdens of unstable times, the war, his unemployment, the lack of rapport between him and his parents and his inlaws, and the mutual animosity between him and his wife’s aunt and family, his marriage has little chance of success from the very beginning.
The account of the disintegration of the Fang marriage is so quietly told, the incidents which by accretion produce the final rupture are individually so small and so normal that it is easy to underestimate the self-destructive power in the relationship from the start. In the face of Fang Hung-chien’s lack of action or decisiveness and his verbal lacerations of his wife, it is easy, also, to underestimate Sun Jou-chia’s responsibility for the eventual breakup. Like Fang, she is undisciplined, instinctive, and erratic, but her strongest trait, which reveals itself between her sporadic fits of jealousy, is her halfhearted willingness to get along with her husband and his family. But that willingness is too little to counterbalance her immaturity: her convulsive
attempts to please her rich aunt and uncle, her compulsive disparagement of her husband, and her lack of interest in her husband’s friends or family. Such faults, however, do not necessarily mean irrevocable dissension and separation, and as a matter of fact, Fang makes the necessary adjustments. Except for occasional doubts as to whether he should have married at all, he becomes reasonably content in domesticity. What is most fatal in Sun’s character is her inability to accept the conditions of real life and real marriage. She tries to perpetuate the conditions of her courtship and ideal love, even when she no longer believes in them. Having perceived that Fang was not the romantic dream necessary to her marriage, she decides to force that dream upon him through her constant nitpicking. Her unwillingness or inability to see him as he is confronts his incapacity to change the makeup of his character. Consequently, the only logical conclusion possible is the breakup of their marriage.
The author is aware that given a different set of events the marriage of Fang and Sun need not have ended in disaster. Had Fang not been dismissed from San Lü University, had he held a responsible and respectable job in Shanghai or even continued in the position he had, had he lived some distance away from his posturing parents and obnoxious sisters-in-law, had he had more money, had his wife not had to deal with her snobbish relatives, had he not overheard what her aunt said about him, had any of the circumstances been slightly changed, the ending might have been different. Whether the novel could have ended differently, given the facts of the characters of Fang and Sun, we will not speculate, but what is important to the author is that marriage is not to be confused with bliss, that marriage brings lesions and grief. Despite all those who wish to enter into marriage and those who wish to get out of it, little truth about marriage has been told. Fortress Besieged, especially in its last section, addresses itself to the complexities of the institution of marriage.
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