China to Me

by Emily Hahn

  “When it was time to go home I shipped from Dar es Salaam, in Tanganyika. It was a bad year for shipping and I had to wait a long time there, and this used up my money, so that when a ship did come along I didn’t ask questions as to her ports of call, but jumped aboard, third-class, and sailed off for Genoa. She was an Italian boat and didn’t stop anywhere before Cairo. I did notice a mass of land on the left as we steamed north, and I asked some officer what it was, and he said, ‘Zanzibar.’ But that stirred only a faint memory in my mind. I had a lot of other things to worry about. I was broke as usual.

  “Well, I arrived in England, ultimately, and I had to scurry around to get money, and what with this and that I still didn’t think of my friends until one day the phone rang. ‘Is this Miss Hahn?’ a polite voice inquired. I said, ‘Yes?’ ‘Miss Emily Hahn?’ insisted the voice; ‘Miss Emily Hahn, the famous writer?’ And I said again, ‘Yes, yes, who is it?’ Then the voice said, ‘Well, you can bloody well go to hell, Miss Hahn,’ and I said, ‘Oh, hello, Desmond; what’s the matter with you?’ He said, ‘We went to Zanzibar. We sat there in Zanzibar, waiting for you, for two months. I lost my money in a gold mine, we both had malaria, Leona’s pregnant, and it’s all your fault.’ But I don’t think it was, do you?”

  “Certainly not,” said my audience stanchly.

  This time when I got ready to go away there was no doubt about it; I was going for good. I even bought my ticket to the States. I knew that this time I oughtn’t to put the U.S. off again. Not only was there the inducement of Pat and the car, and a sympathetic reception for the gibbons, but there was Mother. Of course for almost seven years she had been writing the same kind of letter, telling me that the family missed me and it was my duty to come home, but in Chungking I found myself agreeing with her, for the first time. It was indeed time to go home. I had fought off the conviction for months, even years. I had flown into passions of rage when my agent wrote me that I was Losing Touch with America.

  “As if anyone could lose touch nowadays!” I stormed. “Nowadays when the radio makes it impossible to cut yourself off from your own civilization, even if you wanted to! Nowadays when we have magazines and movies and long-distance telephones and air mail! The man’s talking nonsense.”

  But he wasn’t. It takes more than radio and television to bridge the gap between China and America. I had been away too long, and the fact that I talked that way was proof of it, if only I had known. But wait a minute. When I say “too long,” what do I mean? Had I been away too long for my own good? Or did I mean that I had been away so long that my individuality was being lost? If the latter is what I mean (and what my agent means too), then I think that, after all, my long stay in the Orient wasn’t a bad thing. I am not at all enamored of the individuality I lost. I was a crass young person, overeducated and underexperienced, like most Americans. I was a smart aleck. It wasn’t a bad thing at all, leaving that young woman at the bottom of the Whangpoo or wherever I had dropped her.

  There were few ships sailing direct to San Francisco or Los Angeles by the time I deigned to look them up. The ticklish political situation had played hob with shipping on the Pacific. All I could find was an extremely dubious chance of a berth on the Coolidge or passage in a cabin liner that traveled every month through Manila and Shanghai, and thence to Los Angeles.

  The whole colony on the South Bank was changing. Gidley’s “relief” had arrived, traveling overland from Indo-China and bringing because of this a beautiful lot of luggage for everybody: clothes and furniture and liquor that had been ordered months before by various diplomats. Everyone was eager to get as much in as he could as soon as possible; you never knew when that route too would be closed to neutrals. With the arrival of Mr. Powell, Gidley started to pack and get ready for his trip down to Hong Kong. He was going to join up, like most of the young Englishmen in China. Then Corin and Jacques came along with the news that they too were pulling out. The breakup of Jacques’s country, Belgium, and of France had changed his plans to stay up in Chungking at the Havas office for a full year. He wanted to get into something that would be more useful for the Allies.

  “So you’re getting out of here at last,” I said to Corin. “That’s grand.”

  “It might be,” she admitted cautiously. I looked at her, trying to sum up the situation, and I didn’t like what I saw. That first happy bloom she had possessed during the early months of the love affair had vanished. She was thinner than ever, jumpy, and a bad color. She should have been happier about her release from the Chungking backwater, where she had been forced by her oddly twisted conscience to crouch in abject miserable poverty all these past months. “I’m worried about money, as usual,” she said. “I’ll have enough to pay my plane fare, but it will just about clean me out.”

  “But Jacques? Or do you still feel feministic enough not to take his money? After all, Corin, it’s because of him you’re going away from your job —— ”

  “No, I don’t mind sharing with Jacques. That’s all right.” Corin shut up for a moment. “If we have to, can we borrow from you in Hong Kong?” she asked. When I said yes, she wandered away, leaving me worried.

  Allow me to pause and think China over, sitting on my hatbox, waiting for the boat that will take me to the plane on the emergency airfield. I have half an hour more of China. Then the plane will fly me down to Hong Kong and the beginning of a completely changed existence. Although I don’t know it, sitting there on that suitcase, I am saying good-by to what remains of myself. But I carry with me six years of China, uninterrupted China, and I have in my brain certain impressions which may be worth a little thought.

  That was 1940. I am writing this book in 1944, in New York, four years down the line, looking back at a scene that grows clearer as the details disappear. Yesterday I had tea with a fellow refugee. “Do you know,” she said, “wherever I go, whoever I meet, I am asked the same questions. People ask me about three things in China: the guerrillas, the Communists, and the Co-operatives. It gives one a strange idea of what they think of China, over here. What is one to answer? You tell me, Miss Hahn. We should understand a little. You’ve been there nine years and I’ve been there fifteen. How is one to explain to these people that there are no more Communists in China than there are here in the United States? How can I convince them that in all my time there I never yet saw a Co-operative? We have as many Co-operatives here in America, but very few people see them. And the guerrillas —— ”

  “Well, I did see evidence of guerrillas,” I said. “We don’t have those over here, you must admit.”

  She had something there about the Communists and the Co-ops, though. Do you know where the trouble is? It’s in the books you have been given about China, the books and the articles. You can’t help it, but you have a distorted picture of the truth, and I’m not surprised at it when I look over the literature that they’ve been feeding you.

  I haven’t a word to say against Edgar Snow. But when you have read Red Star Over China you begin to expect much more of the Reds than you have got. I haven’t anything but praise for the Co-operatives — I mean Indusco. But it was overadvertised. The people who sponsor it wanted you to know what a good thing it was, and they wanted you to help, too, with money. So they wrote a lot of articles about it, and published a lot of glowing photographs in pamphlets, and as a result the idea of Indusco, over here in America, has been blown up to amazing and quite false proportions.

  Then the people who fought with the guerrillas. Well, they did fight with the guerrillas. They spent many months with those gallant bands, and it was a terrific experience, and they were burned up with admiration for the guerrillas. They wanted to tell you how gallant and brave and deserted these men and women are, so they, too, wrote books, and you bought them, and there again is something which can’t possibly live up to its reputation.

  The average American today, the one who takes a sympathetic interest in China, is full of hooey through no fault of his own. He thinks that the guerrillas a
re the only soldiers who do any fighting at all in China. He thinks the woods are full of them. Actually the regular soldiers of China can put up a pretty good fight too. Actually, though as a symbol the guerrillas are inspiring and invaluable, the great burden of resistance has rested on the regular Army. What else can you expect, considering the small handfuls of guerrillas and the material they haven’t got. Much of their effort is lost, anyway, because of interguerrilla arguments and jealousy and hijacking. I am not trying to run them down, Agnes Smedley and Ed Snow and General Carlson and the rest of you; I’m only trying to undo some of the harm you have unwittingly done your friends. You have worked people up into a state where they are going to be awfully mad pretty soon. They are heading for a big disappointment.

  Now the Communists. That situation is due to the peculiarity of most American newspapermen in China, who are nearly all of them inclined to be leftist, out of a frustrated sense of guilt, a superior viewpoint of things as they are, and a tendency to follow the crowd — of newspapermen. Most newspapermen don’t know any more about the Communists in China than you do. They hear rumors. They try to get permission to go and see these people, and once in a great while somebody does. But the chances of seeing what really goes on among the Chinese Communists are even less than those of seeing the inside of Russia. If you live in Chungking you can always interview Chou En-lai. That is what he is there for. But if you think China is going to give you all the answers you are as innocent as — as an American newspaperman.

  Me? No, I don’t know anything about the Communists. The difference between me and you, over there in the Press Hostel, is that I admit it. Long ago I grew tired of hanging around the people who were supposed to know. They put on too many airs for me. They acted so mysterious that I came to the conclusion, which has since been proved correct, that they didn’t know anything either.

  As for Indusco, I won’t meet with any argument. Indusco is a marvelous idea. It’s too good an idea to be killed even by the people who are trying to kill it just now. It can’t be killed even by the well-meaning people who tried to boost it, and who boosted it too much. The Chinese Co-operatives are languishing. They are nearly non-existent. There never were such a lot of them as you were told, to begin with. All the while I was in Chungking I tried to find some, and the Indusco authorities kept putting me off. “They’re not so good just around this district,” I was told. “You ought to go to Paochi.” Yes, but we in America were told that there were thousands of them, flourishing ones, all over Central China. I visited Chengtu, which was a center, supposedly, and even there I met with disappointment.

  That isn’t the fault of the Co-ops. It’s the fault of the advertisers, who were so eager to give them a hand that they told lies.

  The day of judgment is overtaking China just now, on all these points. Everywhere I go in New York I am running into dissatisfaction and an impatient feeling on the part of the public that they have been fooled. It frightens me. Is it too late to start telling the truth?

  If only they had realized it, China doesn’t have to depend on exaggeration. The truth would have been good enough.

  Chapter 29

  I’m coming now to a difficult part of this egotistical history. How can I explain the sudden change that took place in my plans? I don’t want to write too much about Charles because it will sound sappy. Once in print, fond reminiscences have a way of changing horribly. That is why love letters sound the way they do in a courtroom. It would be especially unfair to Charles to take advantage of his absence. He is in a place where he can’t control my writing just now. And he is exceedingly British; he hates publicity about his own feelings or mine. He doesn’t even like me showing my poems around; he thinks that poems are personal, private things, nobody’s business but our own. It is obvious that I’m not like that at all. I print my poetry whenever I get the chance, because once a thing is written it ceases to mean anything personal to me. Anyway, if I have a deep conviction it is that a good story must be told. I can’t understand Charles’s attitude, and he can’t understand mine. When he writes, he writes safe, impersonal histories. I shall try to hit what I think is a fair compromise; I will talk about myself and make no attempt to explain him or his emotions. That’s a difficult thing to do and in places I will fall short of my intentions. But I’ll try.

  I went out to dinner with Charles and Max the evening after I arrived in Hong Kong. I was feeling on top of the world. The book was finished and sent off, I had bought two new dresses, I had a private bathroom at the Gloucester with really hot water, there would be no more air raids, and my hair was cut and permanented. Everything was perfect, if a trifle unsettled. Yes, that was still there, sticking like a burr in my head: I was unsettled. Now that I think back over my years, that feeling has always been responsible for my more outlandish decisions; it was as if I had to plunge into things, take steps which I couldn’t retrace, just to get myself settled. As an experienced observer of myself, I should have realized that evening that I was set for mischief. Perhaps I did. Perhaps that is why I chattered so happily, and ate and drank so earnestly, and looked at Charles with such pleasure.

  I did like him a lot. There was a good deal to tell him. I was surprised that I hadn’t written to him from Chungking, telling him all those things throughout the summer. We drifted about that evening, dining late and wandering further afield until we ended up where Charles always did fetch up after an evening’s drinking, in the Tokyo Hotel down on Connaught Road. It was not my idea of relaxation to sit on a Japanese mat and talk to geisha, but Charles liked it and there was no arguing with him. He called in the old woman who ran the restaurant and solemnly introduced us: “This okusan (lady) has come from Chungking.”

  “So des nei!” exclaimed the madame, opening her slit eyes wide.

  “Yes, so des,” I said, glowering at her.

  “And were there many Japanese airplanes coming?” asked Madame. “Many,” I said cheerily, “every day. Every day I hid in a cave.” Max heaved a deep sigh and lay down on the mat and went to sleep. “What I like about you, Mickey,” said Charles, who always gets earnest in his cups, “is that you have guts. Yes, you have guts.” He always gets repetitive too. The more he said it the more I liked it.

  I don’t know why I have always had so little conscience about married men. It can’t be Mother’s fault; she brought us up very carefully. Of course if I were put into a corner and forced to defend myself in debate I could do it. I am full of all those tag lines we learned when I was a girl, such as: Marriage should not mean possession. When a man wishes to be unfaithful to his wife the mischief is already done. A woman who can’t hold a man doesn’t deserve to keep him, et cetera, et cetera. There are other unarguable facts, however, which also have something to do with the case, and in my younger days I failed to take them into consideration. In general (of course all these generalizations aren’t of much practical value) it is unwise to go poaching among married people, because then society doesn’t like you. It doesn’t seem fair, either. Men are so easy that it’s not quite sporting to wade in and grab off a married one; what married woman wants to spend all her leisure watching her man? Oh, I’ve been careless and unsporting in my time, but I have one defense to offer: I didn’t know any better. Little by little I learned. There were faults in my philosophy and it took time and experience to show them up.

  And besides, there was one very good reason for me to spend my time with married men. It was a selfish reason, I grant you, but we savage youths of that generation were selfish, and from my point of view I couldn’t have done better. I didn’t at all want to be married. We won’t go into the why of it, but I didn’t. Therefore it was wise of me to avoid taking risks. I couldn’t marry a married man, and that was that.

  All of which doesn’t serve to explain why my conscience let me down in regard to Charles. To begin with, I didn’t feel particularly aware of his marriage. He said that it was over. He had decided that it was over months before, which was why his wife had gone
off to Australia. She hadn’t been willing to wind it up without a trial separation, but he decided for himself, just the same. They were arguing it out by letter. If Charles had been ordinarily married and contented, if he had only wanted to indulge in an extramarital affair because his wife wasn’t around, I would have run away. I wouldn’t have been satisfied. I was serious about Charles from the beginning, from before the beginning, and that was a completely new departure for me. I told him so. We never talked seriously, but I told him so just the same when I had fortified myself with whisky.

  None of this fitted in at all with my plans. We hadn’t yet come to a decision, and it was time for me to go off to Shanghai if I wanted to have a decent visit before my boat left for the States. Charles didn’t like to talk about my going away, but he stirred himself at last.

  “Why go to Shanghai at all?” he demanded. “Why not take the last month here?”

  “But the gibbons. I’ll have to arrange about the gibbons.”

  Then Charles astonished me for the first time, though not the last: “Bring them down here,” he said.

  “You mean — you don’t mind gibbons?” I was incredulous. “People always hate them,” I explained. “It’s only fair to warn you. Only a few crackpots like myself and Peter, that Russian girl, can bear them.”