China to Me

by Emily Hahn

  It was a nasty period altogether. On the part of the public there was an eager rush to make friends with the conquerors. I discovered that many women have a sort of Sabine complex; they can’t wait to get into bed with the triumphant Romans, even when the Romans happen to be duck-bottomed, odorous Japanese. In a way it was understandable. “After all,” they must have felt, “we are desperate; there is security only with the Japanese. Never mind what they look like; they whipped the proud British in record time. The British may have been better-looking and bigger, but the Japanese are the bosses, just now. If I can capture a Japanese protector my family will eat.” Maybe the original Sabines felt the same way. I can well understand it, though I don’t like it.

  The first local Chinese whose name appeared in the paper as definitely working for the Japanese was Peter Sin. Peter was an acquaintance of mine, a lawyer who had been very successful in his work. When I spoke to him about his actions a few months after this he was worried and defensive.

  “They tell me I’m in bad with Chungking,” he said, fidgeting with the pencils on his desk. He was thin and pale. “I can’t see that, frankly. Somebody had to offer to take charge, or the people would have starved even worse than they do. Sure, I said I’d take charge of the rice control; why not? Someone had to do it — someone who knows the ropes of this town. But it’s no sinecure. Anybody else who wants my job can have it.”

  We all joined in execrating Sir Robert Kotewall. Sir Robert before Pearl Harbor had been just about the most British-loving Asiatic you could find. A mixed-blood himself, Parsee and Chinese and English, he went in for being violently Chinese, and often published translations allegedly done by himself of Chinese poetry into English. Whether he did them or didn’t, they were pretty bad. He was prominent in all civic politics, and an indefatigable and fluent speechmaker. I heard him once at a Sino-British Cultural Association banquet, and he went on for hours and hours. I think he started out as a clerk in the government, and worked his way up, speech by speech, to his knighthood and a glorious position among the British-tamed cats on the municipal council, before the war. The Hong Kong government were proud of Kotewall and did him honor. It was quite a nice textbook example of how not to run a colony, judging by the results. Sir Robert Kotewall was the very first of the great men to welcome the Japanese. It was Sir Robert Kotewall who made speeches at Jap-inspired mass meetings. It was Sir Robert Kotewall who led the meeting when the new Governor of Hong Kong was welcomed into office; he shouted, “Banzai,” three times, and urged the crowd to do likewise, at the end of his speech. By that time, however, he wasn’t Sir Robert Kotewall any more. The Japs made him give up his British knighthood. They didn’t let anybody keep British titles, even Britons at home in England; they wouldn’t call people “Lord This” or “Sir That” in the public prints. They were all, severely, Mr. This and Mr. That. And poor Sir Robert Kotewall became Mr. Lo Kuk-wo. Sir Shouson Chow was Mr. Chow Shouson. It wasn’t his fault, I’m sure; Sir Shouson was eighty years old and probably couldn’t help himself. He didn’t throw himself into the New Order, at any rate, with the glad passion of Mr. Lo Kuk-wo. No one else did.

  I don’t particularly blame Kotewall, because I don’t quite believe he exists. I mean, I’ve seen him in the flesh often enough, and heard his voice droning away, but I’m not convinced that there was ever anything to Sir Robert Kotewall but sawdust. The British manufactured him and deliberately used cheap material, so they shouldn’t be surprised or hurt because he has gone on fulfilling his destiny as a genuine talking doll, now that the Japanese instead of the British are winding him up. How should he know the difference? The Japs let him make speeches too, don’t they?

  We read about these things in the morning newspaper, and we read the news about the war, as written up by jubilant Jap journalists whose English was faulty, but whose facts, in general, were dishearteningly correct. It looked very much like a long war. We had to face that. But we couldn’t and wouldn’t face just how long it would be. The North African situation looked awful too. Everything looked awful. Charles seemed to think Britain was about finished. “We’ll have to get over laughing at the Italians,” he said to Tony. “It isn’t seemly. They’re a third-rate power, but so are we.”

  One day I brought Charles his soup and a small carton of cottage cheese, which is about the only thing I can prepare by myself. We used our milk eagerly, that fresh milk Selwyn gave the babies, but we made cheese of it when there was anything sour left over. Emile, proprietor of the Parisian Grill, had opened his restaurant again, and presented me with a dozen cans of some sort of patent chocolate baby food which had milk in it. He said he had bought the stuff for nine cents a tin, to feed his chickens with, before Pearl Harbor, and he insisted on making me a present of it. The kids loved it and we gave it to them once a day. It was a bright spot in my life.

  I bounced into hospital feeling cheerful, but Charles looked rather low. “The gendarmes are after you, Mickey,” he said. “Some little squirt calling himself Cheng has been here this morning, asking questions about you. He tried to Draw Me Out on politics too. He said, ‘Just between you and me, Major Boxer, all this stuff Domei publishes in the paper is probably lies, don’t you think?’ And I said, ‘Probably, but so are the Allied news reports.’ That seemed to silence him.”

  “You think he’s from the gendarmes?”

  “Must be,” said Charles, shifting on his pillow. “He wouldn’t have dared come from anyone else. That’s their way.”

  “Well, if they question me, they question me. I haven’t broken any laws.”

  Charles didn’t reply. We both knew that had nothing to do with the case.

  Next morning I went over to Hilda’s, according to schedule, for breakfast — a cup of tea and a piece of bread.

  Somebody rang the doorbell, and when Ah King opened the door somebody asked for me. A slim Chinese youth, in gray flannels with a brightly striped necktie, came into the room. Hilda took Mary and went out.

  “Miss Hahn? So. I am Mr. Cheng. May I ask — why aren’t you interned?”

  “Sit down, Mr. Cheng,” I said. He sat opposite me at the breakfast table and smiled, his spectacles magnifying his eyes. “You want to see my papers?” I asked.

  “Please.” He studied them in silence.

  “May I see your papers?” I asked as sweetly as I could.

  “Oh — I have none. But I do have the right to come here,” he said, equally politely. “I work for the Japanese.”

  “I see.” There was a silence and I looked him over, and he began to be embarrassed.

  “I have come,” he said, “from the consulate. Mr. — uh — that gentleman you saw before — ”

  “Mr. Kimura?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kimura. He would like to see you this afternoon, if it is quite convenient. Shall we say three o’clock?”

  “That’s quite convenient, Mr. Cheng.”

  “Thank you.” He was gone.

  Of course, I told myself, it isn’t really Kimura. Perhaps they will arrest me just outside the consulate door. I called Hilda back and told her.

  “If I don’t come back,” I said, “please keep an eye on Carola.”

  “Oh, my dear!”

  We embraced and kissed. I went home then to tell Irene.

  “I’m coming with you if you want,” said Irene.

  “Would you? Then at least you’ll know. I mean, if I go in anywhere and don’t come out again — ”

  “Don’t worry. It’s probably just a matter of routine.”

  But the rest of the morning was pretty difficult to get through. I couldn’t go to see Charles in the morning; visiting hours were from two to five. I went next door to see Tui Berg, whose Norwegian husband had been wounded and was in Bowen Road Hospital.

  “Tell Charles the consulate has called me to come this afternoon, and I won’t be able to come to see him,” I said. “It may be the gendarmes behind it. I suppose you’ll have to tell him that; he’s no fool. Just so he won’t wait for me a
nd worry when I don’t turn up.”

  Then I ate something, kissed Carola good-by, called Irene, and off we went. My stomach seemed to want to sink lower than the laws of nature usually permit. My stomach, however, was the only part of me that allowed any thought on the subject. I wouldn’t let my mind touch on it. We trotted down the hill at a good pace, chattering about everything in the world but gendarmes.

  At the consular offices I caused a lot of confusion. Mr. Kimura’s secretary said that I had no appointment with her boss, and I said that she was probably right, but anyway she had better ask him about it. At last, after searching unavailingly through her files for the name of Cheng, she did go in and ask Kimura. This kind of indirect summons is typical of the gendarmerie. Kimura, hearing I was there, hastily sent for me.

  “Ah yes, Miss Hahn,” he said, looking down at his own hands instead of at me. “It is a very small matter. Colonel Noma, you know, the chief of the gendarmerie — well, yesterday at the club he called me over and made inquiries about your case. He said he would like a little talk with you, just a little talk. There is no cause for alarm. You are to go over now to the gendarmerie — you know, the former Supreme Court Building. Wait; I will give you a card of introduction.”

  So we trotted further, until we reached the pseudo-classic façade of the Supreme Court. There I timidly produced my new card and showed it to the sentries stationed at all the doors. Each one beckoned with his bayonet and waved us on to the next, until we reached a sort of arbitrary main entrance, and there we found a lot of sentries lolling about at a kitchen table, out under the veranda roof. That kitchen table is a regular thing among the Japs; they put one up at all important guard posts. Near by, leaning against one of the huge pillars, was a young Chinese, sallow and elegant in navy blue. He approached us and asked us what we wanted.

  Irene replied in Chinese that I had been sent for. He stared at her and asked her if she wasn’t Irene Gittins, who had formerly worked for a certain engineering firm in Canton. “Yes,” admitted Irene, “so what?”

  “Don’t you remember me, Miss Gittins? I was a clerk there.”

  After a bit Reeny did recall him. His name was Kung. He said that he could speak Japanese, and so he was now working as interpreter here at the gendarmerie, and he offered to help us out. Reeny chattered with him eagerly, and he led us over to the sentry in charge and explained to this man in fluent Japanese why we had come. After the introduction the soldiers were friendly and offered us chairs while one of their number took my card of introduction inside, disappearing down the corridor. In the meantime Mr. Kung gave us costly gold-tipped Turkish cigarettes and listened sympathetically as Irene told him her troubles. Obviously he was a comparatively big shot here, at the holy of holies.

  We waited about an hour on those kitchen chairs, smoking and wondering what was going to happen. I got a bad headache, a sure sign that I am scared. At last something did take place: there was a loud roar from indoors, and all the shambling, dirty little soldiers jumped to attention and saluted. Then there bounced from the doorway a stocky, hairy, thick little fellow, tough as redwood and about the same color. He shouted from a throat that needed clearing:

  “What is this? Who you? Who tell you come here?”

  We turned pale and jumped to our feet, and once again I made my explanation, as Reeny gestured helplessly toward me: “I didn’t come here; I was sent for. A Mr. Cheng came to my house this morning and told me to go to Mr. Kimura.”

  “Kimura? Don’t know him.”

  “Kimura of the Japanese consulate. And Mr. Kimura said that Mr-Noma wanted to see me.”

  “Who you?” he growled at Irene.

  “My friend,” I said. “She — uh — she came with me.”

  “Pass!”

  I gave him my passport. He grabbed Reeny’s too, and studied them both as if he intended to eat them for breakfast. Then, with a sudden and bewildering moderation of his voice, he said:

  “Okay, you come. You wait.”

  Together he and I walked into die dread gendarmerie. We marched down the shining corridor, where so lately Charles and I had come to register Carola at the government office. We climbed a stair and came to halt at last outside a closed door. The little lion now talked quite gently.

  “You American?”

  “Yes, married to a Chinese.”

  He looked at me piercingly. “You marry Chinese?” Then he chuckled, like thunder, and said warmly, “No! That’s not good. Why marry a Chinese?” His voice was unbelievably contemptuous as he said, “Chinese.” But he was acting like a human being, and in a rush of relief I answered with assurance.

  “Because he’s good-looking. He’s very nice. See?” I gave him Sinmay’s photograph, and he studied it carefully.

  “You like China?” he demanded.

  “Very much,” I said firmly.

  He looked at me curiously, half pleased, half not. Then a bell buzzed and he straightened up. “Mr. Noma see you now.”

  He knocked on the door, and, inside, somebody grunted. We went in.

  Chapter 48

  I felt exactly as if I had been summoned by the dean for a scolding. Japanese procedure, coupled with the fact that most of the Japanese I dealt with speak broken English, had that effect on me permanently; I became a child with them, and as they treated us all like children anyway it was fortunate that I had made this adjustment. We always got on pretty smoothly in our later official interviews; I would stammer and blush, and they liked that: they were used to it in their own women. At first I would be furious with myself. I wanted to be fearless and defiant with the enemy. But after a while, when I saw fearless and defiant women being slapped around, I didn’t regret my weakness. You may shake hands with me if you like; I am the woman who got through the occupation without being slapped. Except once, socially, and that scarcely counts. I’ll tell about it later.

  Noma, like the late lamented Mussolini, was sitting at a very big desk at the other end of a very long room. He looked like an extra-small goblin in khaki. My escort and I bowed from the waist and then stood there in military posture, our hands at our sides. Noma gabbled some words at the hairy guy — I shall call him by name hereafter; he was Yokayama — and indicated that we were to sit down at a Chinese arrangement of chairs around a table, down at our end of the room. We waited in stiff silence, while I swallowed and swallowed at a lump in my throat. Yet it wasn’t so terrible waiting, after all. So much had happened already that all of a sudden I didn’t give a damn.

  Finally he stalked over to us and sat opposite me. Throughout the whole interview he kept looking at his own clasped hands. He addressed all his words to Yokayama, but in a short time I knew somehow that he could speak English and understand it better than the interpreter did. It was not obvious, but I could tell; it was something in the way he cut in ahead of Yokayama sometimes in the middle of a long speech, and once when he was interested he snapped out another question without waiting for my previous reply to be handed over in Japanese. I found out later that I was right; Noma was educated abroad.

  The questions and answers are all between Yokayama and me.

  “Why you come here?”

  “A Mr. Cheng told me this morning, at Selwyn-Clarke’s house, to go to see Mr. Kimura the consul at three o’clock. Mr. Kimura told me,” et cetera, et cetera.

  “What time you come China?”

  “Nineteen thirty-five.”

  “You marry Chinese husband what year?”

  “Nineteen thirty-seven.”

  “You live Hong Kong?”

  “Shanghai. I lived in Shanghai for five years and then went to Chungking.” I paused here, but nobody looked surprised, so I continued. “I spent a year in Chungking and then came to Hong Kong.”

  Yokayama and Noma took me step by step, over and over, down to Hong Kong and then stopped. We went over this data about four or five times, checking and rechecking in a mechanical way. Both men looked bored. Then all of a sudden they shot at me:

 
; “You know Boxer?”

  This was silly, and I felt annoyed. “Certainly I know Boxer,” I said. “I’m his mistress. That’s his baby I’ve got.”

  Well, anyway, it stopped both of them for a minute; first blood to me. Noma rubbed his chin before he asked the next question.

  “You love Boxer?”

  “Look here,” I said to myself, “this isn’t fair. You’re supposed to grill me about my political affiliations. You may even, if you like, accuse me of living with Boxer for my own Mata Hari purposes. I expect that sort of thing in a third degree. I even expect a little modified torture, arm twisting and the like. But this? Sirs, this is a personal question. It isn’t done. I refuse to answer.”

  I refused to answer.

  “You love Boxer?” asked Yokayama again, grinning. I giggled nervously and hung my head like one of those peasant girls from Central Europe.

  “You love Boxer?”

  “Uh …”

  “You love Boxer?”

  I was sweating. Why, damn it, Charles himself had never asked me that.

  “You love Boxer?”

  “Yes.”

  Well, that was a relief. I sat back, trembling. At the same time I felt much better, as if I had had a glass of brandy. I don’t know why. There came to me a miracle. It was as if I had said to myself with conviction, “I can manage these people.” That conviction was never to leave me again, all the time I was in Hong Kong, and it never let me down either.