China to Me

by Emily Hahn

  He was comparatively new to Hong Kong and to Charles Boxer, but Charles was delighted with his absurd appearance and his capacity for liquor. “Isn’t he good?” he kept demanding of me, as in the course of the evening Alf became more and more an ultracivilized buffoon. We all drank heavily: cocktails, wine with the elaborate dinner, and what we wanted afterward.

  Well, so there I was launched all over again in Hong Kong, and now I had things to do of an evening. One afternoon Charles decided that I must go to a cocktail party to which “the office” had been invited. An ex-civilian flier who had joined the RAF and given up his job as Moss’s assistant was the host, and when I suggested tentatively that he might like to know I was coming Charles scoffed at me.

  “Old Max won’t care. He invited everybody in town, anyway, and Alf’s boss; Max won’t dare object even if he wants to,” he said. “Alf will bring you. So long, Emily Hahn.”

  Max Oxford had a precise drawl that sounded just like his name. His house in Kowloon was one of the new Spanish-style white stucco cottages that were growing up near the Kai Tak airfield; the Japs loved them later on, and squabbled bitterly over their shining newness, for each officer wanted a cute cottage all to himself. But this was back in 1940 when nobody dreamed of such a situation. The Empire stood solid and firm at Max’s cocktail party. There were naval officers there, and willowy young girls, and Moss with his wife, and Ursula, smart and expensive in black, and the two Canavals, doctors, man and wife, that everyone was swearing by. There was Alf getting drunk in one corner, and Charles getting drunk in another. I looked at young Major Boxer, whose graying hair was even more disorderly than usual as he chattered and drank gin. He drank earnestly these days, and whenever he was a little drunk he talked of the end of the Empire.

  “Don’t you agree, Emily Hahn, that the day of the white man is done out here? Russia or no Russia, we’re finished and we don’t know it. All this is exactly like the merriment of Rome before the great fall. We are assisting in the death throes of capitalism. It’s a very nice party too. Have another, Emily Hahn. Nonsense, you don’t have to go yet.”

  But he had to go, Ursula insisted; there was a dinner party across the bay and they were late. Alf and I suddenly found ourselves the last of the party. We adjourned to the Peninsula for dinner, drunk and giggling, and in the stately dining room of that dismally expensive hotel we drank sparkling burgundy and waltzed wildly, round and round and round, under the crystal chandeliers.

  At last the silence of the Soongs was broken. Mme. Kung sent for me one afternoon to give me a hot tip.

  “My sisters have persuaded me to come out to dinner,” she said excitedly. “We are going to dine at the Hongkong Hotel tonight, and I thought that it would be worth seeing us all together. It would be interesting, don’t you think? Would you consider it interesting enough for the book? Then get somebody to bring you to the main dining room at eight o’clock, or earlier than that if you want a good table.”

  I asked Alf to escort me to the Hongkong Hotel for my scoop. We took the little table next to the pillar just in the middle of the inside room, well in view of the Soongs. They were there, sure enough, with Moss and his wife, Donald, and one of the younger brothers who are always fated to be compared, disparagingly, with T.V.

  “So now you have seen them,” said Alf. “Is this all there is to it? We may now feel ourselves free to pollute ourselves and enjoy it, if so.”

  Once again we waltzed, round and round and round. Alf was a good dancer. I kicked up my heels: my long skirt flew out in a bell as I whirled.

  Over at the Soong table Mme. Sun, sober in black, looked at us appraisingly and said to Mme. Kung, “There’s Mickey Hahn. I suppose that’s Mickey Mouse she’s with?”

  The ladies were so tremendously busy with their shopping and their family affairs that I suddenly gave up the whole thing. I didn’t fancy the position. I felt increasingly self-conscious, hanging around in a British colony when there didn’t seem to be any more material forthcoming from my models. I didn’t blame them; they had been admirably patient all along. It must have been irritating to have a person trotting after them everywhere, snapping up crumbs of information, studying their characters as well as their histories. And I wasn’t too happy, myself, in Hong Kong; I felt out of things. My place was in Chungking; failing that, in my beloved Shanghai. I would go back there. There wouldn’t be much more to be gleaned from the ladies, and we could do it by mail.

  I made arrangements speedily, all unaware that Fate, with her eye balefully fixed on me, was lying in wait just around the corner. The ticket was bought for a ship sailing next day. The bags were packed. I didn’t wire Sinmay, on purpose. I said good-by to Wen Yuan-ning and the office. I should have called up Mme. Kung to say good-by; it was the natural thing to do, but I was just a mite peeved with Mme. Kung. I was probably a little jealous too. She had deserted me for her sisters. I wrote her a good-by letter and gave it to Alice Chow.

  Probably in the back of my mind was the thought that Wen Yuan-ning would report my departure to her anyway. I failed to take note of his manner when I went in to pay my respects to the staff: Wen was sulky with me, resenting my growing friendship with Mme. Kung, with Charles, and “the office.” He felt that the British as well as the Kungs were his own property, and he also had a very conservative, ultra-British feeling against the crude Yankee. He tried to express it one day to the Alexanders, soon after it became evident that Charles preferred my company to his: “Mickey’s so pushing,” he complained. So he said good-by to me with secret relief and pleasure, and did not go out of his way to mention my name to the Boxers or to Madame.

  Billie and Mavis saw me off. We weren’t told just when the ship was sailing, because this was war and such things were better kept secret. That accounts for my error in timing. I had expected to be out on the high seas by three at the latest; Alice, with my letter in her purse, would not arrive at Madame’s house for her afternoon work until the same hour. But Madame read the letter and flew to the telephone in an attempt to call me back, for reasons which were evident later on. Nobody answered, and she bundled Alice into a car and sent her direct to the dock. The ship was still there and looked likely to be there for some hours to come. Alice ran up the gangplank, discovered my cabin easily, for there were only two or three other passengers aboard, and landed in my presence all breathless and panting. Mavis and Billie were still there, saying good-by. We all turned around and stared at her in amazement.

  “Mme. Kung — says — come immediately,” panted Alice. “Never mind your things. Come right away, to her house.”

  Wonderingly, I dropped a dress half draped on its hanger and obediently started out. “What is it?” I asked meekly as we climbed into the car.

  “I don’t know.” Alice had caught her breath and now began to put her hair in order. “I don’t know a thing. The house out there is a lunatic asylum; they’re having their pictures taken this afternoon and the place is full of reporters. But Madame didn’t mean for you to meet the reporters. We’re to go in the back way.”

  “I can’t help worrying,” I said thoughtfully, “about my boat. And my clothes. I’m not used to this sort of thing.”

  “The captain said you won’t sail before dark. Don’t worry.”

  Mme. Kung didn’t keep me waiting very long, though it seemed long to me, anxiously huddled in the small dining room. Through the closed double doors came familiar voices: Spencer Moosa of the AP, George Giffen of the Telegraph, and then the sputtering of a Russian photographer I had met. That bubbly voice was Mme. Chiang; the slower, deliberate accents of Mme. Sun were for a moment unfamiliar to me because she was actually giggling as someone made a joke. I didn’t hear my own Madame. After a while she came in and joined me, looking reproachful.

  “You were going,” she said immediately, “without saying good-by?”

  “But you were so busy. I didn’t want to be a bother.”

  “I spent the morning,” she said, “with Mr. Zau’s au
nt. She has just come back from Shanghai.”

  “How are they all?” I asked eagerly.

  “Quite well.” I thought she hesitated, and I was right. “Have you notified them that you are coming?” she asked.

  “As a matter of fact I haven’t. It isn’t much use these days; you can’t put the name of the boat or the sailing date or anything, so why bother? I thought I’d just arrive, and then telephone.”

  Mme. Kung asked a few idle questions about the boat and my cabin, while I wondered why she had brought me so far. A farewell note would have been easier for both of us, much easier for me. …

  “Do you think they can do without you?” she asked me suddenly. It was so near to my own recent cogitations that I was very much startled. “I know,” she said. “I know you’ve been wondering the same thing. I’m not a mind reader, but from a few things you have said lately I knew what was in your mind. I talked it over today with his aunt, who is fond of you. This is what I thought: you are alone here in China, with no family to take care of you.” That was characteristically Chinese, I reflected: I could never have explained to her that I was alone in China because I had run away from my family.

  “I don’t want you to be exploited by China,” continued the amazing Mme. Kung. “If this happens, if Mr. Zau takes advantage of you — oh, it would be unconscious on his part, but I know that Chinese tendency — you will end by hating us all. Yes, I think you will. I know China and I know America. You will go away from China without complaining, but you will feel bitter. Isn’t it true?”

  I sat there without answering.

  “I don’t want this to happen,” said Mme. Kung. “It’s not too late. Forgive me for interfering, but I’m sure it’s for the best. Don’t go back to Shanghai yet. Think it over first.” She smiled at me. “You have already been thinking it over,” she reminded me.

  “Yes, I have,” I said when I began to catch my breath. “I have.”

  She sat there, looking kindly on me. I sat there staring at her as if she had stepped out of The Arabian Nights. I was certainly for once in my life knocked off my feet. In the next room was a dead hush, then there came a flash of light through the cracks of the door and a sudden babble of voices as the photographer told his subjects to relax.

  “Well then,” I said, suddenly lightheaded, “that is that. I won’t go back to Shanghai. Oh dear.”

  “It’s for the best,” repeated Madame. “I know how you feel. I love that city. It’s my home. But we have to wait until the end of the war, and if you’re allied with us you shouldn’t really be going back anyway. Should you?”

  I sat there gloomily contemplating life in the Crown Colony. “I don’t want to live in Hong Kong,” I said. “It might be better to go home to America, but I’d get stuck there.”

  “Really? Why?” There spoke a lady accustomed to traveling easily, without fretting over passports or bank accounts. “Nowadays it is so easy to travel,” she said innocently. “But it wasn’t my idea that you go home so soon — although no doubt your mother is getting anxious about you. No. You can write her a reassuring letter and explain to her that I too have many children traveling over all the world in these sad times. It can’t be helped. I had thought you might go back to Chungking.”

  I had thought so too.

  “There’s a secret I’m going to tell you,” she said, looking excited. “You mustn’t tell anyone yet, but we’re all going to Chungking!”

  It was a day of surprises. “Mme. Sun too?” I asked.

  “Mme. Sun too. My youngest sister has been begging us to come back for a visit. We’ve been talking about it ever since she arrived, and now she says that I made a definite promise to go and must keep it. You see, she can’t stay any longer. There is always so much work for her up in Szechuan. But it seems a pity to cut our reunion short, and besides, I do owe it to my husband to go and see him, since he can’t come here. Mme. Sun has consented to make it a real family party.”

  “That’s the part I don’t understand,” I admitted. “Is that to show that the Reds are really reconciled at last?”

  “It’s a personal visit,” she said, “as far as I know. She’s going to stay with us rather than at the Chiangs’ house because we have more room.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now about you. I thought that this trip would be a good way to end your book.”

  “Good? It’s the perfect ending. You couldn’t have arranged things better, madame, if you’d done it on purpose for me.”

  There is a quality possessed by few people in the circles frequented by Mme. Kung, and it is usually called “consideration” or “thoughtfulness.” Neither of those words is really descriptive, is it, when you come down to examine it? We mean “considerate of other people,” or “thoughtful of other people”: we really mean, to take it further, that the person with that quality is not too full of himself to be aware of the outside world. I have sometimes wondered about the mentality of professional philanthropists. I am told that many of them are dried-up recluses, people who rather dislike to be impinged upon by other egos. Rockefeller was like that. You wouldn’t call him “thoughtful.” Perhaps he was, but it wasn’t his reputation. Mme. Kung’s surprising quality was her warmth. When she did something for me like this, going out of her way to set me in what she considered the right path, I was aware of the personal effort that went into that action. She had expended genuine emotion on my case. There was sweetness in what she bad done. It was good. It was also more than that, because it was characteristic: I was no particular favorite. She would do as much for anyone she knew.

  The argument her enemies advance is that she does these things only for the people she knows. A person in public life, they tell me, should deal in large numbers and think of his people in terms of thousands. Mme. Kung is nothing, officially speaking: she has no official position in the government. But as Mme. Chiang’s sister, the head of the house of Soong, the wife of Dr. Kung, she is a force. If she fails to use her power for the best, say her hostile critics, she has failed in her duty.

  I am not going to argue by saying that you can’t hold her responsible for her position. China is called a democracy, but it is a far cry from that structure of society to the government we have set up in Washington. In many ways there is no basis for comparison. Nobody knows that better than I do. Mme. Kung is a power in China. But she does think in large numbers; she does try to work for the people, and I think that her interest in her friends is an asset rather than a liability. The impersonal approach to reform leads to all the evils of social service as we see it working out in our own organizations. We could use a few more brains with the feudal point of view when it comes to rearranging our world. In our high places we are a little short on human sympathy and understanding, and on the courage to admit human responsibility. Mme. Kung is not. She has greatness.

  In case you ever have occasion to cancel a seagoing passage at the last minute, remember that the forfeit on your ticket is one third its value. I dragged my half-unpacked bags down the gangplank just in time and returned to Happy Valley to surprise the little girls and send the amah scuttling into the kitchen in dismay to cook more rice.

  Next day I set about winding up things in Shanghai, and the job was made easy because I met an old friend from there in the lobby of the Hongkong Hotel.

  “I’ll take your house,” he said eagerly. “They’re terribly hard to get, I hear, what with the town filling up with German refugees. I’ll break the news to the refugee that he must find another place. I’ll give the gibbons to Horst Reihmer for the summer; he can keep them out in Hung-jao Road in his new house and it will be grand for them. Later on when you decide what you want done with them, just let me know. Don’t worry, I’ll fix it all.” And he did.

  The refugee, incidentally, was plunged into despair, and a lot of letters went back and forth between us. I could never figure out just why I felt so guilty toward him. After all, what had I done but take care of him for a year or so, and then withdraw
my help? I’ll admit that there is a sort of debt which attaches to that kind of relationship: you might say that I had pauperized him because I took him in in the first place; so now he was my responsibility. That’s the way he seemed to figure, anyway. In the end he found a job through the Alexanders, broadcasting for the Allies in German, but I doubt if he has yet forgiven me for the wrong I did him, though he did come and stay with me for a bit, later on in Hong Kong. Old habit, I suppose.

  Sinmay never wrote to me at all. Or perhaps he did, and forgot to mail the letter. He sent an indirect message one time, though, through a girl we both knew; he said that he wasn’t angry with me, that he hoped I was happy, and that I possessed many of the qualities of a good Chinese woman. I think it was a compliment. I even think he meant it to be.

  There were five or six days to get through before I went back to Chungking. I was fidgety and, following my usual pattern, I rushed about and saw people so that I wouldn’t think too much. There was an amazing afternoon when everything happened by accident but nevertheless we made history of a sort. I don’t know just how it all began. I was having a drink with Alf in the lobby of the Grips. That is what the English called the Hongkong Hotel, because they give nicknames to everything. Well, there we were, and we met someone else, and we drank a lot of “ox’s blood,” which you make by mixing champagne with sparkling burgundy, and there is brandy in it, too, I believe, though I’m not sure. I was supposed to go to Mayor Wu Teh-chen’s house for dinner and poker that evening, under the wing of General Cohen. The general was playing his role of Picturesque Old China Hand those days. He would sit in the lobby of the Grips day after day, slightly drunk, cheerfully ready to fasten on anyone who came by. He didn’t have many troubles: Mme. Sun paid him a pension and he played a lot of poker, usually with Wu Teh-chen, and dabbled in various real-estate deals and so on just for the fun of it. It was a sort of hazard, getting through the Grips lobby around noon. If you didn’t run into General Cohen you were apt to fall in with One-Arm Sutton.