City of Tranquil Light

by Bo Caldwell

  The starving continued to come to us for help, and by autumn we were feeding more than four hundred people each day. We also traveled to outlying towns and villages to provide medical care and to distribute grain sent by the American Red Cross Relief Fund. These travels became more and more painful; the devastation seemed endless.

  On an early morning in December of that year, Chung Hao and I planned to travel to distribute grain to a few villages a day’s journey away. I did not want to go. The thermometer in our kitchen read 38 degrees, and the day was what Chung Hao called “five coats cold.” Underneath my padded Chinese jacket, I wore as many layers as I could manage, and I knew that even so the day would be miserable.

  After breakfast Chung Hao and I loaded the cart we had hired with bags of grain and set out. The earth was cracked and dry and the fields were bare save the few that had wells for irrigation; even those thin plants of winter wheat would give a meager harvest at best. Where the road ran near the railway lines, I saw flatcars carrying refugees headed in both directions; anywhere was better than where they were. We passed men and women pushing wheelbarrows that held their household goods and their children, leaving behind abandoned villages and empty homes.

  We traveled until late in the day and stayed at an inn that night, then spent the next morning distributing grain. As was the custom, the village elder took us to those in the greatest need, and we gave them rations of grain. This imperfect system of giving food to those who most needed it left a few people with a little something to eat and a great many other people angry. That afternoon as we were leaving the village, several women came running after our cart. Shouting and crying, they climbed up onto it, pushing against us and demanding grain. We had no more and I begged them to get off, but they refused. It was getting late and we needed to start home; we had many miles to travel. I said we would return as soon as we could, but still they would not get off the cart. The carter, anxious to be finished with his long day’s work, began to drive out of the village, and the women standing on the side of the road who had not managed to get on the cart began to curse us, something to which I was growing accustomed, for never in my life had so many people cursed me as during the famine. In desperation I offered to pay a Chinese silver dollar to each of the women on the cart if they would get off. They agreed, and we were able to continue on our way.

  December 20, 1921

  I am waiting for Will and Chung Hao to return, and they cannot arrive soon enough. It has been a harrowing two days.

  Yesterday morning, Yang, a peasant farmer who is known to be a good man, was walking with his two young sons from the city to our compound. Since his wife died at the start of the famine, Yang has done everything possible to feed his boys. First he sold his mule, then his tools—his plow, harness, sickle, and flail. Then he began dismantling his house; he sold the adobe bricks, roof tiles, doorframes, hinges, anything he could carry. Next he sold his small plot of land, and last week he sold all his clothes except those he wore, which gave him enough to feed his sons for another few days. When that ran out, he decided to bring his sons to us until he could support them again.

  Which is what he was doing when he met Pao Hsing on the road. Pao Hsing is the son of Hsiao Lao, the bandit who held Will captive. Hsiao Lao has become extremely powerful: he controls a large area in the southern part of the province, including Kuang P’ing Ch’eng, and he is said to be a man of great wealth, more of a bandit king than a bandit chief. It is also said that because he was born in Shantung he feels a strong loyalty to it, and he seems particularly protective of Kuang P’ing Ch’eng. While it’s true that shipments of supplies to our area still disappear and his men take what they want whenever they please, they rarely harm anyone. A bandit raid is more like locusts coming through than an attack. Thus we are considered fortunate.

  Pao Hsing, Hsiao Lao’s son, is a different man altogether. Though not eighteen he is arrogant, violent, and cruel. Whole villages have been destroyed at his order, usually because someone has not shown him the respect he expects. He is vain and prideful and he makes certain people know he is responsible for his acts of violence. Sometimes he leaves his calling card; other times he makes sure that those who survive see him clearly. He is easy to recognize and difficult to forget; there is a pronounced scar across his left cheek that is curved like a scythe, from a wound that my own husband bandaged for him four years ago. Because of the scar, Pao Hsing is also known as Kou Shan—Contemptible Scythe—a fitting name, since he cuts down whatever blocks the path of his desires.

  When Pao Hsing met Yang and his sons, he demanded that Yang pay for the use of the road. When Yang explained that he had neither money nor food nor goods, the bandit accused him of lying and threatened him. When Yang still said he had nothing, the bandit slashed the faces of Yang’s sons, just as his own cheek had been cut when he was a boy, and left the three of them in the road.

  Yang somehow managed to bring his sons to us, and I fear I was unable to hide my reaction to what had been done to them. The boys are five and seven and their cheeks were almost slashed through; the cruelty of the act left me first shaken then furious. They were both in shock, trembling and bleeding so profusely that I was amazed they were still conscious. Yang was weeping and extremely distraught, and in the hope of calming him I forced myself to act as though these were minor, even common injuries that would most certainly heal. While Chung Hao took Yang to another part of the house to give him food and drink—he did not remember when he had last eaten—Mo Yun and I got to work. We gave the boys saffron tea, the same tea Mo Yun has given me many times to calm my distress, and we were able to suture and bandage the boys’ wounds.

  Two hours later I went into the city for saffron and cong —green onion, whose value Mo Yun has taught me. The leaves help to heal traumatic injuries and cong bai, the bulb, helps restore vital body functions following trauma. I had nearly reached the apothecary when I stopped at a teahouse on Cheng Chieh, for the conversation that spilled into the street immediately caught my attention. The men sitting inside—only a few of whom were actual patrons, as no one has money to buy tea anymore—were arguing loudly about a suitable punishment for Pao Hsing, for word had spread about his brutality to Yang’s sons. Those in the teahouse were outraged; it has been assumed that in return for the constant taxes Hsiao Lao demands of the people here, they are safe from harm.

  I stood at the doorway, listening. The more the men talked, the angrier they became. All of them, I noticed, except one. Sitting alone in the corner was a beggar, and his shoes caught my eye. It is unusual for a beggar to have shoes at all, much less the sort of shoes this man wore, a soldier’s worn but sturdy boots. I looked at the beggar’s face and saw his eager, fascinated expression, and then I saw the scar across his cheek, and I froze. It was Pao Hsing himself, enthralled and delighted by the telling of his offense.

  For a moment I was too surprised to speak, but I didn’t need to. One of the men in the place noticed my expression and followed my gaze, and he recognized the bandit instantly. He jumped up and shouted the bandit’s name and pointed to him, and he and the other men in the place moved toward the bandit as one.

  There was no escape; Pao Hsing was trapped, and the men caught him easily and began to beat him. I have never before seen a man beaten, and I watched in horror, unable to look away. First they hit him with their fists; then, as he slumped to the floor, they kicked every part of his body, the sound of their blows making a terrible dull thud. The proprietor of the teahouse saved him; a man dying in his establishment would bring disgrace and bad luck for many years, so he demanded that the bandit be taken to the magistrate.

  The blows stopped. Pao Hsing looked barely conscious and the two men closest to him bent down to lift him. As they did, the bandit turned toward me and I caught my breath. His face was bloody and raw, his body limp, and as the men stood him up between them, I cringed at my role in the beating; even the worst criminal deserves a trial. But then he glared at me hatefully and a chill
ran through me. I have never seen such evil in a man’s face.

  Forced out of the teashop by the proprietor, the mob followed the bandit and his assailants through the city. People along the way joined in, so that by the time the procession reached the yamen, there were perhaps one hundred people, many of them yelling and shouting, cursing the bandit and demanding justice. I followed; I cannot say why.

  When we reached the gate to the yamen and the hall of justice, the guards sent word to the magistrate. The group was allowed into the yamen’s principal courtyard and when the magistrate appeared, he listened intently to the story, all the while staring evenly at Pao Hsing. The magistrate then faced a difficult decision: if he ruled with the people and had the bandit beheaded, he would undoubtedly incur the wrath of Hsiao Lao. But releasing the bandit or doing anything less than killing him would probably incite a riot.

  The magistrate is a wise man; he did neither. He said Pao Hsing was guilty of worse crimes than those he had committed in Kuang P’ing Ch’eng; in a village only a few li to the northeast he had burned parents alive in front of their children and set houses on fire with families locked inside. Accordingly, the magistrate said, the decision about the bandit’s fate belonged not to him but to the ti-pao, the principal elder of that village. The magistrate would send a messenger there to explain what had transpired and ask what should be done.

  As the magistrate spoke, people grumbled and shifted impatiently while Pao Hsing lay motionless on the ground. At a signal from the magistrate, two guards lifted him onto a chair in the middle of the courtyard and tied him to it. Men immediately began cursing him and spitting at him, and as I watched, it was as if I awoke from a trance. I turned and hurriedly made my way out of the yamen, then somehow remembered to go to the apothecary for the saffron and green onion before returning to the compound. I was ill for much of the night and slept little.

  Today Lao Chang brought news from the city. Eight emissaries from the wronged village came to Kuang P’ing Ch’eng with their elder’s reply: because Pao Hsing had burned people alive, he should suffer the same fate. The magistrate acquiesced, and as the bandit remained tied to the chair, slits were cut into his body and lighted candles were inserted into his skin. After enduring great pain for several hours he lost consciousness and was beheaded. His head was placed on a spike on the city wall, a common custom for criminals.

  These events torment me—the violence of the man, the violence of the crowd, the horrendous cruelty of the punishment. Nor is it over; now we await a father’s revenge, which terrifies me. Had someone been at fault for our daughter’s death, the rage I would have felt stops me short and makes me pray for Hsiao Lao as well as for us.

  At dawn six days later black smoke rose in the northeast, and we learned that the village raided by Pao Hsing was under attack. More than one hundred bandits had burned every house and shot or stabbed anyone who tried to escape. As the news spread through Kuang P’ing Ch’eng, people began leaving at once; the city’s only protection, the magistrate’s guards and the militia made up of local men, would be no match for the bandits. When Chung Hao and I went into the city, we found an exodus in progress. People were slamming storefronts closed and running toward West Gate, infants and young children in their arms and possessions strapped to their backs, taking with them whatever they could carry. Those who remained were frantically hiding whatever treasures they possessed—silver dollars, gold, pieces of jade—then locking their doors and piling whatever they could against them from the inside.

  By noon the streets were barricaded with furniture and carts and the city seemed deserted. Dozens of people had fled to the compound, seeking protection within our already crowded walls, and when Chung Hao and I returned we locked the gate and gathered everyone in the downstairs rooms of our home. We pushed tables and chests against the front and back doors, and everyone sat close together on the floor and passed an uneasy and uncomfortable night that way. Waiting seemed our only choice, for while there were some two hundred men in the compound, I had no doubt that we would all have been killed had we tried to fight.

  They came at dawn. We first heard distant gunfire and muffled shouts, then the sound of men running, a terrible sound like a fierce wind coming upon us. I went upstairs and from our bedroom window I saw the bandits charging toward us and the city, a dark mass of bodies moving steadily closer. I looked out at more than one hundred men, all running in a way that seemed both orderly and chaotic, like some great being barely contained. The sound of rifle fire drew nearer, and as the bandits approached our compound they seemed to slow, or perhaps I imagined it. For a moment I expected to see them crash through our gate, but they passed us by and moved wildly toward the city, and a few minutes later I saw them scaling the city wall near East Gate.

  For the rest of that day and throughout the night we heard them taking our city, and the sounds of destruction and people crying and screaming tore at my soul. The women’s voices haunted me; I could not get them out of my mind. We passed another night crammed together, and at dawn when I went again to the upstairs window, I looked out at black smoke rising from within the city wall. There was no more screaming, only some subdued shouts. I saw the bandits leaving through East Gate and heading northeast. They took with them a long line of prisoners, some carrying the bandits’ plunder. It seemed our compound had been spared, and when I went to unlock the compound gate, I learned the reason: Hsiao Lao’s red calling card was nailed to our gate.

  Chung Hao and I loaded food and medicine onto a cart and set off with Katherine and Mo Yun for the city. When we reached the gate we began making our way through the ransacked city to the well, where people gathered on market days. Doors were smashed in, homes looted and burned, and the air was thick with ash. A few parents and their children dug through the debris and still-warm cinders of their homes, searching for whatever could be salvaged—bricks, mud stoves, pieces of tile, tools. When we reached the city well, I was amazed to see a small table in the midst of the destruction, where a teahouse proprietor sold tea, though his home and shop had been destroyed. Next to him a vendor set up a table and mud stove and was soon selling hot noodles to standing customers, and nearby a woman fried cakes in a small cauldron over a charcoal fire.

  We set up a makeshift clinic with a few charred boards spread over rickety sawhorses for examining tables. Soon several dozen people were waiting to be seen. Most had burns; many had been shot or stabbed. I glanced at Katherine’s face as she looked at the growing number of people needing her help. She was rarely daunted, and she showed it even more rarely, but on that day, her pain and discouragement were evident. Still, she did not hesitate but began speaking to her first patient, an elderly woman whose left arm and leg were badly burned. As Katherine began cleaning the burns and treating them with tannic acid and silver nitrate, I heard her reassuring the woman, telling her she was safe now and that she would soon heal.

  By noon there were clusters of businesses throughout the city where people sold what they had: oranges, vegetables, steamed bread, baskets, brooms. Those who had lost their homes were building huts of old boards and straw matting to sleep in, and the city grew busy as those who had fled the city before the raid returned.

  Katherine and I continued to treat the injured throughout the afternoon. I had just bandaged a gash on a boy’s arm when I turned and found myself facing a man wearing the ordinary gray gown that shopkeepers wore. I was puzzled; he did not seem hurt. But when I looked at his face I could not speak, for it was Hsiao Lao himself.

  He was much changed. He seemed to have aged many years since I had last seen him, and when our eyes met, I saw his anguish and pain.

  “Mu shih,” he said quietly, “I have suffered a great loss.”

  I nodded, intensely aware of the dangerous position in which he had placed himself. But no one recognized him; few people had ever seen him. I said, “I understand your loss.”

  He said, “I have such rage,” and although he whispered the words, his voice
was fierce. “The madness in my heart demanded po sau. Do you know this feeling, mu shih?”

  “Yes.” Po was return, sau was hatred; together they meant revenge. In my mind I saw the medicine for our child in Hsiao Lao’s cabinet and I felt an old anger stirring in my heart.

  Those around us grew quiet, and I sensed their curiosity about this stranger; our conversation was gaining interest. I took Hsiao Lao’s hand in mine, pretending to examine a wound. He let me take his hand, then made a tight fist. “I had no choice but to avenge my son, dishonorable though he was. This I have done. Now I must receive the punishment for the disgrace he has brought me.”

  “Your son was a hard and cruel man. His character was not your doing.”

  Hsiao Lao shook his head. “ ‘The superior man blames himself; the inferior man blames others.’ ”

  I nodded; it was Confucius.

  He continued. “And a father is reflected in his son the way the sky above is reflected in the water below. My son’s failings are my failing, and for this I must pay.”

  I was about to disagree with him, but he did not give me the chance. Without warning he turned and faced those around him, and his life changed. “I am Hsiao Lao,” he said loudly, “the father of Pao Hsing.”

  A raw energy ran through the gathering, and what had been a quiet scene became instantly chaotic. Three men threw themselves on the bandit chief and began to beat him wildly. Those around them shouted and cried out, and it seemed that everyone there wanted to beat the bandit chief himself or at least get a good look at others doing so. With great effort, Chung Hao and I were able to pull the attackers from their victim, but not before his head was bloody, his body limp.