China to Me

by Emily Hahn

  Then there was soap. Or rather, there wasn’t. Charles needed a cake of soap every fortnight. We ran out of soap in Hong Kong, until local factories started making it, and they produced inferior stuff without fatty materials which spoiled and crumbled to dust unless you used it up right away. And jam: the supply was dwindling in the market, yet the men needed it. A prisoner could eat lots of jam.

  All of these petty troubles shrank to their true proportions after Christmas had come and gone and January had dragged by. In February 1943 the Reign of Terror opened with a bang. It coincided with Wang Ching-wei’s belated declaration of war on the Allies.

  By this time I was alone in the Kennedy Road house. Phyllis had gone into Free China with the old Gittins parents; Reeny sent for them via the Underground, even sending money with an enthusiastic account of her new job in Kweilin. They got out just before the route was closed by the Japanese take-over of Kwangchowwan. Auntie, frightened away by the fact that we now had to pay rent to the government for tenancy of the house, had moved over to Robinson Road and was living with another old lady, a crony of hers. Losing Auntie’s dither was not hardship exactly, but I didn’t like living alone. I had become accustomed to vast crowds in the house, and these empty, echoing rooms scared me.

  Maria de Roza, the masseuse, turned up at the right moment and gladly accepted my invitation to share the house. She was living with her mother in Kowloon, but she had other sisters and brothers to take her place, and my house was near town, and if Maria was ever to find work again it would be necessary to live near town. That worked out all right. Maria was a nice girl and we left each other alone in a satisfactory way.

  Life was getting complicated for the local young girls. Some of them were already expert little tarts, partly because their schools were closed, they couldn’t find jobs, and they were bored. They would haunt the cafés, coming in in pairs or alone. They would sit at tables until parties of soldiers or sailors or gendarmes picked them up, but competition with the regular hostesses was keen, and these restaurant girls resented amateurs. In the end most of them, like the others, took jobs as hostesses; it was simpler and it avoided this professional difficulty. A few of them were cleverer, and if they did practice the oldest trade in the world it was in private. They went only to parties, not public cafés. I have seen girls I knew well slipping into geisha houses where presumably they met their hosts in private rooms. I would sigh and shake my head for all the world like one of my own old aunts, or like any respectable old cat. I felt old and respectable.

  The Reign of Terror had been in force some months before I was aware of it. Among my best friends was a Chinese dentist well known to all the “foreigners” in Hong Kong long before the war. After I came back to May Road I made the disturbing discovery that my teeth were going bad and my hair falling out. Johnny could do nothing about the hair condition, which was due to my bad diet, but he did work hard on my teeth, and he insisted on putting off the reckoning indefinitely. He was a darling. He did his best for all of us. It was one of the biggest shocks I received during the war when Johnny disappeared. It was horrible. His wife and children, his mother and friends were wild with worry before they found out that the gendarmes had spirited him away, and then the worry was even more intense.

  Johnny was held for a month. It was the first time we had run into this manifestation of Japanese justice and we learned a lot from it. The gendarmes never admitted officially that they had taken him prisoner. Inside, they never told him why he had been thus kidnaped, either. They starved, beat, and tortured him, and on the day he was released they cautioned him never to tell anybody where he had been, but to announce to the world that he had been ill and in hospital. He still doesn’t know why they did it. I heard from him all the details of his torture, from the “water treatment” to the thumb-hanging.

  We thought that the arrest might have had something to do with gendarme suspicions of Selwyn and the vast net of espionage which they obviously thought Selwyn was managing. But it was all so vague, and Johnny’s family had been so terrified, that we couldn’t make it out. Following this arrest, others came on us thick and fast. One by one almost anybody might disappear, Chinese, Indians, Eurasians, and especially Europeans. The gendarmes did not always maintain much secrecy in their methods; in the case of one young Chinese friend of mine they simply marched into his bedroom at four in the morning, robbed the room of all the money and jewels they could find, insulted his wife with foul words, and dragged him out in handcuffs.

  There were around town quite a few British and one or two Americans who had been, as we called it, “guaranteed out” of Stanley by neutral friends. At one time Oda had seemed quite eager to get as many people out of camp as possible, and if a Swiss or Portuguese or French citizen would sign a paper promising that his friend would not work against the Japanese and that his expenses would be met, these enemy nationals were permitted to come into town and live comparatively freely, as I did. The Foreign Affairs officials lived to regret this kindness, for the gendarmes found excuses to arrest one after another of the free enemy nationals. Some were released after weeks of bad treatment and questioning; others were not, and are still there, unless they are dead. I was not overly worried for myself. Officially I was Chinese, not an enemy, and though all Chinese didn’t escape, I hoped for the best.

  It seemed obvious that sooner or later they would get around to arresting Selwyn. He expected it, I am sure. Hilda didn’t, quite. Colonel Nguchi still adored his protégé, and Hilda thought that the colonel’s protection would continue to serve. However, like all the others of his household, she held herself ready for the crisis. He warned her time after time: “If ever I am taken up, do not attempt to do anything for me. Don’t try to communicate with me; don’t try to send food. You will only implicate yourself. Just take care of Mary and wait for the end.”

  After a long period when nobody was allowed to come out of Stanley for X ray or any other purposes (because an enemy-national patient had run away while he was in French Hospital) Selwyn did at last succeed in getting a Stanley man out again for treatment in town. This was Dr. Harry Talbot, the man who had operated on so many Soong sinuses up in Chungking. Harry was brought in for a serious kidney operation. That was when the worst of the trouble began. Nobody put in his way any strictures against seeing callers. He had come out under Selwyn’s faithful promise not to carry letters back and forth, and Selwyn saw to it that he kept this promise. But something else happened. The day before he went back Sir Vandeleur Grayburn, Far East manager of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, accompanied by Streatfield, one of his men, called on Harry and gave him the sum of four thousand yen, I think it was, to take back to camp with him.

  The stories differ as to what was to be done with this money. I think it was intended for some old rich taipan inside, some man who probably had lots of credit with the bank, though Sir Vandeleur later “confessed” falsely to the Japanese that it was to be distributed evenly among the government nurses. Unfortunately for everybody, Harry was too sick to conceal the money in a safe place. He left it lying loose in one of his bags, an incredible blunder, for of course on returning to camp he was searched thoroughly, the money was found, and he was thrown, sick as he was, into prison while the matter was investigated. He would not give Grayburn away.

  A lot of small people were arrested and questioned. Harry had had many Chinese patients and friends; they were all dragged into it. The gendarmes were sure that they had uncovered a plot to aid in some important person’s escape, and they were excited and zealous. They dug up somewhere a bit of phony information that the Chinese guerrillas were asking around four thousand yen to rescue people, and it seemed highly significant that Harry was bringing in just that sum to camp. After a few agonizing days of this sort of thing, with a surprise raid on the French Hospital made by a naval party, Sir Vandeleur went down to the Foreign Affairs office and confessed that he had given Harry that money.

  Oda was surprised and worried. He duly
handed the confession on, however, to the gendarmes, and we all sat back and waited to see what would happen next. Shortly afterward Sir Vandeleur and Streatfield were arrested.

  Even Japanese civilians were shocked. Sir Vandeleur was such an important man that they could not believe the gendarmes would treat him just as they did other victims. There must have been a lot of communication with Tokyo on the subject, but it was no use; the gendarmes were supreme. All the other bankers of all nationalities were told to hurry up with their work of cleaning up the banks; sooner or later they too would be put into Stanley, where they could do no more mischief. Lady Grayburn went out at once to Stanley, at her own request. From there she pelted the Foreign Affairs people with letters, her own and the Colonial Secretary’s.

  At this critical juncture Oda was transferred back to Tokyo. He had long since told me that he was going; he hated his job and was anxious to get into some other work, away from the sad, moribund little town. We were alarmed at the prospect, for we knew Oda and he knew us, and we dreaded a new man who might change all his policies without warning. Lots of people hated Oda, but he was pretty good to me, and I was sure we couldn’t have another man in that job who would be as sympathetic and helpful as he was.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be all right,” he said, but he looked worried too. “By the way, how much money have you?”

  This question was not asked in any kindly spirit, and I knew it. I had been waiting for it for a long time. Part of the investigation arising from the Grayburn case was applied to the incomes, if any, of all suspicious characters; the gendarmes were combing the town for evidence of funds coming in to us from enemy countries. I had my story ready. I had figured it all out, down to the exact sums that would look reasonable and would still serve, in Japanese minds, to carry me along.

  “Gibson left me four thousand yen,” I said promptly. This, as we know, was unfortunately not true. Oda looked angry, but he believed me.

  “Gibson seems to have given money to everyone,” he said. “He gave a lot to Selwyn-Clarke too. Well, how much of that have you left?”

  “Two thousand.”

  “Where do you keep it?”

  “On the ledge in my bedroom fireplace chimney.” I smiled.

  “That isn’t safe,” said Oda. “Better put it in the bank.”

  “But what bank?”

  “The Yokohama Specie Bank, of course.”

  “Can I? Will they accept my account?”

  “I’ll call them myself,” said Oda, and grabbed his phone. “The man in charge, Mr. Onuma, knows Boxer; he used to fence with Boxer. He’ll open a special account for you.” And to show he meant business, he telephoned the bank right away. He talked Japanese for a long time.

  Do you understand? If I had a bank account which the gendarmes could watch without undue trouble they would be less suspicious. We counted two hundred yen a month for my expenses, and so they could be sure that I was all right for ten months to come, at that rate. I duly went and opened the account as I had been ordered to do. It was a scramble to collect the money, but I did it. … Because of course I had lied to Oda. Gibson had left no money with me, and I didn’t want to go into details with Oda as to where I did get my money. I’m not going into details even now in this book, because the war isn’t over. I can say only that friends lent me money every now and then.

  It wasn’t much of a hardship, keeping an account where the gendarmes could watch it. I used much more than two hundred yen a month, but I didn’t want them to know that. I just had to be sure that I drew money out at reasonable intervals, in reasonable sums, and everything would be all right — for the time being. That wasn’t what scared me.

  There was something else to worry about, something much more serious than my bank account, if they were going to examine Sir Vandeleur’s papers and of course they would, without the shadow of a doubt. He held my note for two thousand yen, and I knew that this loan was not likely to be approved by the gendarmes. I waited, sure that I would be called in for investigation. Something did come of it, but not exactly what I had expected; somebody tried to blackmail me.

  Chapter 56

  I can’t think that I offered promising material for blackmail, but I dare say the enterprising man who tried it on must have figured that I had secret resources, and since he was a romantic type he decided that these resources were rich and vast. You couldn’t tell who was well off and who wasn’t, in that sad city. To be sure, I was very shabby, in poor physical condition, with thinning hair and a constantly worried look on my face, but still, there I was, indubitably alive and with my own house, my own servants, and a baby who looked healthy and happy. Other men as clever as he were puzzled by this state of affairs.

  I met him first in Needa’s office just after the surrender, in those days when Irene and I used Needa’s room to sit in, to rest our swollen feet. The office was a central place and attracted other people beside ourselves, and one of them was this plump little Chinese fellow with a pleasant soft voice and fluent English. Needa often joined queer business pacts for this or that project and I think he was in one with Tse. Before the war Tse was known as Howard Tore, or Choa, and had been proprietor of a few dance halls in the red-light district of Hong Kong, “West Point.” I paid little or no attention to him at first, except to agree with Needa that he was an amusing liar whose imagination could scale incredible heights.

  During the Reign of Terror Needa told me that Tse had been arrested by the gendarmes and decapitated for petty graft. Needa believed the story, and wasted no tears over Tse. We were all surprised when he turned up again, fat and sassy, with a tremendous story of his own importance in Japanese circles. He again spent a lot of time in Needa’s office; a new office now, a big set of offices, in fact. Needa had realized his ambition; he was now a flourishing merchant with a lot of men working under him, scouring the town for iron and bronze and aluminum and things like that, all of which the Navy eagerly grabbed and paid for. Needa was a coming man, and he showed more cleverness than I had expected in him by staying out of politics with anxious modesty.

  Needa told me impressively that Tse had “pull” with the gendarmes and that he was a good guy to be polite to. “But I don’t like him,” I protested. Needa squeezed my arm with impatient urgency.

  “You don’t have to like him; use your head. He’s a big fellow now. I don’t like him around myself, but am I saying so? Not much. Use your head, old girl. Where’s that baby of mine? When you going to give her to me? I love that kid, Jesus, I do.”

  When Grayburn was arrested I began to think, furiously, as I said before. Here are the details. It had become known among us that Sir Vandeleur was collecting money from friendly natives in town and distributing it for relief work. Naturally he kept quiet about this, knowing that the Japanese would not approve of anyone but themselves picking up any extra cash that was lying around. But as my purse grew thin, and after the girls left me, I cast around for help and I thought of that fund. “Bankers,” I said to myself, “always have money even when they are imprisoned. Bankers know the real value of money, which is nil; they can make it and throw it away in this knowledge. I will ask Sir Vandeleur to help me out with a loan. He must be aware that I’ll be good for it, after the war.”

  So I put in my bid for two thousand yen, which seemed a tremendous sum according to Japanese standards. The unofficial relief committee picked up my request and studied it. Sir Vandeleur was in favor of honoring it, in a mechanical way, but his assistant Edmonston, my old adversary of the bank doorway and air raid, the man who had refused to take in Carola — Edmonston was violently opposed to letting me have any money.

  “But why?” asked Grayburn, mildly puzzled. “I admit she is not British, but she is certainly an ally of ours; she has worked hard for our men; she is entitled to aid — ”

  “Because,” said Edmonston passionately, “Boxer treated his wife disgracefully, and I for one do not intend to overlook it.”

  Sir Vandeleur grew more puzzl
ed. “Is that any reason,” he asked, “why an American woman and her child should starve now, in the streets of occupied Hong Kong?”

  “Yes,” snapped Edmonston. Grayburn did not argue. He simply sent me the money on his own private account instead of from the bank, and I made out a receipt to him and signed it duly. … So that was the story, and somewhere, I knew, that receipt lay among his papers, ready to be pounced on by the Japanese. What would they do to me? It depended, I knew, on luck. If they found a lot of similar papers, and if they were pressed for time, they might possibly ignore it. But if by bad fortune they noticed it in a special way, my goose was cooked. I would be thrown into prison and “investigated.” Ladies were not tortured in gendarme prisons to the extent men were, but it would not be nice to have Carola in there with me; it would not be nice to be flogged and starved and frightened and threatened. I slept badly again, and thought a good deal about the gendarmes.