China to Me

by Emily Hahn

  “No, I’d much rather swim in the ocean. Anyway, when it’s that far along I’ll be hiding out somewhere, won’t I?”

  “Oh, we’ll manage,” he said, cheerful now that the problem was off his chest. “We’ll take a small house on the Peak or somewhere. By the way, you’ll be wanting a flat soon, won’t you? This hotel is all very well for a bit, but it would be more convenient if you took a place. Now I just heard that there’s a furnished flat going in the building near Abermor Court” — he lived in Abermor Court — “and I think you’d better have a look at it.”

  I picked up my handbag and we started out for the dinner party. “And another thing, about the baby,” I said, “remember, I still think I won’t be able to have it. The doctors have always said so.”

  “Pooh, pooh,” said Charles. “Nonsense.”

  Corin and Jacques came to town. My days had been taken up pretty well, ever since my arrival, with other transient friends from Chungking: Gidley had already passed through, and so had a few tenants of the Press Hostel. But these other people heralded their arrival with loud squawks of joy, wasting no time getting in touch with me. Corin and Jacques avoided me for a day or so. After that I wouldn’t be avoided, and they couldn’t keep it up, because like everyone else they had to come and live at the Gloucester. Corin and I went shopping and she bought some dresses and cheered up under that unfailing tonic. She also borrowed money from me for Jacques. The strangeness that I had felt when they got there melted away after a day of activity, when Jacques had gone on ahead to Shanghai, and I felt that we were back on the old footing.

  Charles and I went out for a week end at J. J. Paterson’s place at Fanling which is a long way in on the mainland road, the last Chinese village before the border is reached. J.J. is a famous taipan who had been in China all his life, and who preferred to live miles from town, in a bungalow from which he could go out shooting or walking in his garden, or playing golf at the Fanling Country Club. He is a large red-faced man with a sense of humor well above the average, and a style of exhibiting it all his own. Once in a while, when his chosen mode of living all alone palled on him, he sent out invitations to everyone he liked, and had a real bang-up party.

  Sunday was a fine hot day. As Charles said afterward, it felt like the last gasp of capitalism, and well worth it. We all met at a swimming beach at Castle Peak in the morning; that is on the mainland. We had sandwiches, and drinks in thermos flasks. Then we drove to the Fanling bungalow and drank some more, and did gymnastic tricks on the lawn. It was brilliantly sunny: there is no weather like that of Hong Kong in autumn. It was perfect. We ate again, and drank again, and played on the lawn or slept in the shade if we wanted to, and the day dragged on with pleasant idiocy until dark.

  After supper I found myself mixed up with a captain, name unknown, who had been following me about for a few hours and who was now firmly determined to take me out walking in the garden. J.J.’s bungalow fronts a broad expanse of turf, and a double terrace drops down just below his house-wide veranda. I was unfamiliar with that irregularity in the ground. We must have halted just above the first dip, looking for the moon, when Captain Unknown grabbed me and became violently amorous.

  I was startled, and instead of talking him out of it, or calling indoors so that others would join us and scare him off, I just started to push him away. He wouldn’t be pushed, and I backed up and fell straight down the terrace, my left foot doubling up under me. I have always been an awkward cow of a woman. The wedge heels of my cork-soled shoes were as much to be blamed as the captain. I thought it was only a turned ankle, and though the pain made me dizzy I put that down to its being a joint injury, and made light of it. The captain made less of it than that. He paid no attention whatever to my foot. He was feeling amorous, not helpful. Under pretense of giving me his arm and helping me to a chair, he led me swiftly further and further away from the house and at last put me down somewhere, I rather think in the vegetable garden, and there resumed his suit. As Charles had said, it was all exactly like a Roman orgy — too much so at the moment to suit me. When all else failed I used force and hurried back to the house, hobbling on my injured foot, with the wicked captain in hot pursuit. It was definitely irritating to find Charles cozily chatting away to some people in a corner, not at all interested in my injury. Nobody was. I stood there in the middle of J.J.’s admirable drawing room wailing, “It hu-u-u-urts!” and nobody evinced the slightest reaction until some man happened to glance at my ankle.

  “Gosh, it is swelling,” he admitted. “I’d better tie it up for you.” He found ice cubes and a big handkerchief, and until the party broke up I rubbed the swelling with these. Charles first noticed that I was in trouble when I climbed carefully into his ramshackle car, though we had all shouted at him for about an hour. When he enjoys himself he concentrates. “It looks bad,” he said in surprise. “What have you been doing out there in the moonlight? If it goes on being painful in the morning you’d better ring up Tony Dawson-Grove. He’s a good doctor, I think, and a nice chap. You’ll like him.”

  I did like Tony, who was struggling into the front rank of medicos in the Colony despite his really remarkable childish good looks. I didn’t realize that morning when he came into the hotel room that I was going to know him as well as I knew anyone in the ensuing months, but I did like him straight off. He arrived while I was being entertained by one Lieutenant Jones of the Royal Scots, who at the age of thirty was getting a reputation as a Character. Jones twisted his handsome military mustache when Tony entered, and said, “Ha! Dawson-Grove, I believe?”

  The doctor nodded. “How are you, Pansy?” The lieutenant drained his whisky glass, for which I had paid — he hated treating people unless it was absolutely necessary — and left, making one more careful quip at the door. We heard his voice down the corridor: “Haw, haw, haw!”

  “So you know Pansy Jones,” said the doctor, opening his bag. “We were up at Oxford at the same time. You were there too around that time, I believe? … Now then, let’s have a look at it. Good God!”

  The foot and ankle had turned a choice plum color with brown trimmings.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I complained.

  “I should think not. How did it happen?” I explained. “Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded, “that nobody gave you first aid? Nobody even attempted to bandage it? Who was at the party?” I gave a hasty list of as many names as I had known. … “At least two of those women,” said Tony impressively, “have completed their V.A.D. courses in the past two months. This looks like a first-rate sprain. It should be all right in ten days.”

  That was why I didn’t even look at the flat in Tregunter Mansions before I moved in. Billie Lee went up instead and inspected it, and reported satisfactorily, and I took it. The rent was high, I thought, but I didn’t know anything about general expenses in that part of town. It wasn’t. May Road, where Charles had lived since his marriage and where my new flat was located in a building next door to his, was the highest street of the “mid-level” district. Hong Kong’s arrangement physically is simply allegorical. The island is mostly a high mountain rising slightly off center. The first settlers probably were satisfied with sea-level dwellings, but when later traders began to make money they built themselves mansions at the top, from where they could look all around at the isle-dotted sea on one side and utilitarian, flat Kowloon, on the mainland, on the other. The difficulty of getting up and down was enormous, but the prestige made it worth while, evidently, for everybody who could afford it in the ensuing years lived on the Peak. The Peak became symbolic of social eminence. Before the funicular Peak tram was constructed Peak dwellers used sedan chairs to get up and down, or horses, or even, during one colorful period, camels. Automobiles made it much easier to be socially proper. For at least four months of the year the Peak is covered with clouds. You can’t see the view for the fog. The Hong Kong taipans have always paid heavily for their glory. But the summer, after the spring fogs are driven off, makes everythi
ng worth it, for Peak air is delightfully clear and fresh.

  Lots of people like Charles, who worked hard and with long hours, compromised on their social standing by moving in at mid-level. May Road, Conduit Road, Robinson Road — they were built up with houses from one end to the other. Here was where you found the young men and women, the rising vice-presidents and officers, the sons of company presidents, and newlyweds from the Peak. Whereas Jack MacGregor of the liquor firm of Caldbeck MacGregor lived on the Peak as he had done since the days of the camel, in a house full of Victorian comfort and bric-a-brac, his son Robin occupied a smart little modern flat in St. Joan’s Court at mid-level.

  If you were less than forty and had no children, that was what you wanted: a modern flat not too far out. If you were middle-aged or old or had offspring you moved up the hill to the fogs and old houses and glory. It was the ambition of all right-minded young wives, though, to get up there just as soon as it could be done, along with government servants and millionaires. May Road may have been good enough, but it wasn’t quite Quite.

  I was shocked at the difference in expenses between my new apartment and the place I had shared with Billie and Mavis down in Happy Valley. Whereas one amah had been quite enough to keep our house clean and to cook for three of us in the Valley, it now appeared that I alone couldn’t do with less than three servants: a cook-houseboy, a coolie to help him, and a wash amah to do my laundry. It seemed unnecessary and I protested. True, I had used that many servants in Shanghai, but there the dollar was only a quarter the value of the Hong Kong yuan, and I had had more for my money anyway.

  “I don’t need a wash amah all the week,” I said in surprise. “And why does a cook boy need a coolie when he’s cooking for one?”

  It was Charles’s turn to be surprised. “Why, everyone has that many servants,” he said.

  “No, they don’t,” I retorted, my mind on the Happy Valley flat. “What do I pay the cook?”

  “Thirty dollars.”

  “Thirty dollars? But in Billie’s house we gave the amah seventeen, and she did all the work.”

  “In May Road,” said Charles, as if that settled everything, “you pay thirty dollars. You won’t get a cook for less. I have a man if you want him. I meant to give my own boy the sack and take this fellow, who has good references from a man in our office, but I’ve relented and I’m going to give my people another chance. Want him?”

  Fortunately for my entire future, I said yes. That is how Ah King came into my life. It was the luckiest hiring I ever did, but at the time I didn’t appreciate it. I was grumbling to myself at the expense of life as a lady in Hong Kong. I was accustomed to scraping and saving; I had held myself on short rations for the past year of traveling in the interior, and old habits die hard. I had the money but it scared me to spend it on nonessentials. Charles seemed to take this style completely for granted; in his world people just did spend that much, and I didn’t like to go on pointing out to him the fact that most of the humans in Hong Kong, as a matter of fact, lived on much less. It was not the time to pinch. I had to live near Charles so that we could spend our rare free times together without delay. I didn’t like to protest. His own flat, with its magnificent, dramatic view over the harbor, cost much more than mine.

  Ah King came into the hotel to show me his credentials. I was stretched out on the bed, my bandaged foot on a pillow. It was getting on to the ten-day limit that Tony had set, but it wasn’t feeling any better; moving around was increasingly agonizing. I liked Ah King’s grave face and his dignified presence. Most Cantonese are small and wiry; Ah King impressed me favorably by looking like a northerner. Is all this boring? It wasn’t to me. I loved it. Ah King went to get the flat ready; I wanted to move in on December first.

  I called up Tony and complained with vigor about the foot, and he took me immediately to have it X-rayed. The anklebone was broken. A small piece was flopping about under the skin without making the slightest attempt to anchor itself.

  “Oh, damn,” said Tony in heartfelt tones, “oh, damn. It is all my fault. One should always X-ray a sprain. We’ll have to put you in a cast.”

  The cast would last at least four weeks more, he admitted. Charles cursed it and so did I, but at least when I was fitted out with a large white plaster boot my ankle didn’t hurt any more, and that relief was worth a good deal of inconvenience. My awkward self, stumping around the streets, became a familiar sight. I was carried by auto, cast and all, to the beach on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons to watch Charles swimming happily in the surf. Or we went to the club at Sheko and he dipped in the pool while I sat disconsolate on a chaise longue and made conversation with golfers. It was a long way from the rowdy existence of Shanghai. Viewed on the surface, I had made a bad bargain, but we don’t exist on the surface. I took surprisingly well to the stuffy routine of Hong Kong, and talked gently and patiently and contentedly with the wealthy bourgeoisie. I had an exciting secret, something they knew nothing about. When I thought of the adventure Charles and I were sharing I didn’t care what sort of people I had lunch and tea with. It didn’t matter at all.

  “But nothing’s happened,” I complained, on the eve of my removal to May Road. “All these preparations are all very well, and Horst writes me that the gibbons are coming soon, and that is nice. But I’m still not having a baby. I think I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” said Charles. “I’ll have you know that I always get girls into trouble.”

  Chapter 31

  One of the irritating things about the British point of view which you noticed in the Hong Kong residents was their stubborn refusal to consider the Far East situation. The war meant to them the war in Europe. That they took very seriously. The women, as I said, learned how to do nursing so that they could stay in the Colony, the young men all joined up and wore uniforms, and there were bazaars and benefit balls one after another, to collect funds for airplanes. The airplanes, however, were all to be sent to Europe and used against Hitler; that was the theme of all the propaganda we were given. Hong Kong, unlike Shanghai, has always been a place where people planned to live permanently. Old people who had spent their twenty-five and thirty-five years in the Colony built houses on the Peak and sat down on their pensions, intending to end their days in a warmer and more comfortable climate than obtains at home. They lived at less expense than would have been possible in Europe, even in the cheaper Riviera towns, and they lived an ideally British sort of life. They had their golf and their races and even their hunts, when they wanted to make the effort. Charles was somewhat contemptuous of the people who went in so knowingly and enthusiastically for horses in Hong Kong when they had never done anything of the sort at home. But they loved it, and it was all harmless enough. There was sailing. There was tennis; that goes without saying.

  But nobody among those British ever gave China a thought. You could go through the day, from the eleven o’clock drink in the Grips through lunch at someone’s house and tea somewhere else down to dinner, stately on the Peak with plenty of cut glass and damask linen and heavy silver, and nobody would talk of the war in China except as a far-off exotic manifestation of the natives. In Charles’s office, it is true, there was a group of young men who made the natives their special consideration. One officer was good at Cantonese and so they nominated him to be a sort of liaison man with the local Chinese. His job, theoretically, was to be friendly with the people who made up most of the town’s population, to keep in touch with their trends and ideas, and to write reports on all this. The difficulty was that he was too British ever to be particularly friendly with anybody at all. His one close friend among the Chinese was the ultra-British Harold Lee, whose name was rapidly becoming famous for his quaint Oxonian mannerisms. Harold is a charming fellow, but you could search throughout China without finding anybody less typical of his native land. One of the Englishmen ran into him one day in an office building belonging to the Lees, who are wealthy landowners. “Hello, Harold,” said the Englishman. “Do you wo
rk here?”

  “Vaguely,” said Harold in languid tones.

  He lived in the family mansion and was embarked on a promising career in the law, besides keeping an eye on all his family affairs. He was a brilliant man and pretty well settled in Hong Kong, though it had been a shock when he first came back from Oxford, where he had done particularly well at soccer and had been popular all around. In Hong Kong stupid, vulgar merchants treated him like a native and Harold didn’t like it. He didn’t mind being Chinese, you understand. He liked that, and hated it when I told him he was English. But naturally he objected to being patronized by some fat beer merchant or other. Ultimately he settled down with a few good English friends like this officer, and a doctor in the government, and a very few Americans. But he must have been surprised at the general lack of interest the British showed in their own rather precarious situation. I know that I was.

  I found an entirely new (to me) kind of Chinese living in Hong Kong. The Cantonese who make up the bulk of the population have stubbornly resisted change, and in Hong Kong you will find many old customs and traditions flourishing in a lively manner which you can’t find anywhere else in China. Perhaps this is because the rest of China has been exposed to the progressive influence of the Chiangs and their sort; I don’t know. The streets of the city were always full of long funeral processions, gay with costumes and discordant with brass bands. There were still brides carried about in sedan chairs, their faces hidden. Now and then I even saw a naked baby with a little lock of hair braided into a queue on the top of his head.

  We went out a lot with the gayer young British people, or with French or Dutch residents. (Charles’s gift for languages made him an unofficial expert on all “foreigners.” Most of the other Army people were simply terrified of them.) The general hated entertaining, so he left all that to Charles. This let us in for a lot of big cocktail parties in the Hongkong Hotel. It was much the existence I would have been leading in London, save for the fact that with a few exceptions the people we saw were not as amusing as those I could have dug up elsewhere. I didn’t mind it as much as I would have under different circumstances. I enjoyed it. But after a few months I was homesick anyway, for China.