by Amy Kwei
“Nurturing the young and dependent is also central to the teachings of Confucius, but you have an admirable tradition — allowing women into the community!” Purple Jade thought this might be their meaning of equality for women. The Chinese would not encourage a woman to be inquisitive, but she must be gracious. “I wish we could learn more of that from you,” she said in earnest. Both women smiled, surprised to discover how much they liked each other.
THE MORNING SUN shone on the terra-cotta roof tiles, and the flowering apricot tree formed lacy patterns outside the schoolroom. Golden Bell and Iris huddled around Miss Tyler. They stood behind a tripod, taking turns to peer into a viewfinder.
“The subject must face the light, and the camera must remain very still,” Miss Tyler said. “Iris, go and stand by the apricot tree. Now, Golden Bell, come and take a look.”
Golden Bell had to stand on tiptoes to look into the camera. She was almost half a head shorter than Miss Tyler.
“My! Iris looks as if she’s been caught in a pink net!”
“That’s the reflected light from the blossoms.” Miss Tyler waved her arm. “Iris, move in front of the tree.” After many adjustments, she motioned Golden Bell to come and look again. “We mustn’t get branch shadows on her face. There!” She clicked the shutter.
“Oh, Miss Tyler, if the picture doesn’t show your red hair and blue eyes, do you think you’ll look more Chinese?” Golden Bell asked.
“Maybe not. My big nose will give me away.” Miss Tyler twitched her nose, sending the girls into peals of laughter. “Now, Golden Bell, you go stand in Iris’s place, and I’ll take your picture.”
“How do I look?” Golden Bell’s long eyes sparkled. She straightened her blue brocade jacket and dark silk trousers.
Iris swung her pigtails behind her. “I’ve never seen myself in a photo before!” She giggled. “I can’t wait for the picture to develop and show it to Peony.”
Loud banging sounds came from Golden Bell’s room. Roof tiles and walls shook and rattled. Teacher and students looked at each other and ran to inspect.
They found the scrawny, pigtailed Little Six waving her hammer and smiling. “I found this faucet. Now the young mistress will have water in her own room!” She beamed, showing her crooked teeth. She had already nailed the faucet to the wall behind Golden Bell’s dressing table and placed a washbasin under the faucet.
Golden Bell and Miss Tyler looked confused, but Iris burst out laughing so hard she had to lean against a wall to steady herself. “Oh, ho, ho, Little Six, such a country bumpkin! What a dumb egg! Oh ho, ho, she thinks she can bring on the self-coming-water.”
“I didn’t ask permission first?” Little Six lowered her head. Immediately, she brightened and tried to turn on her faucet, “I wanted to surprise the elder-young-mistress.” She twisted the faucet this way and that, almost wrenching it loose from the wall. No water came, and she scratched her head.
Giggling, Golden Bell explained: “Little Six is the new scullery maid. Mother found her begging on the street. I gave her some of my old play clothes. She meant to repay the kindness!”
“How old are you?” Miss Tyler asked.
“No one told me. Maybe twelve?” Little Six wrinkled her nose.
“More like ten, I’d say.” Iris took the hammer from her.
“Come, come, Little Six.” Miss Tyler gently pried the child’s hands from the faucet. “You’ve done a gracious thing.” She led her into the schoolroom where she tried to wash both their hands together. Little Six felt the running water and ran back to her faucet in the bedroom. She turned it and muttered, “Strange, magic. Water there, but no water here!”
Golden Bell and Iris laughed and giggled some more, but Miss Tyler said, “There are no pipes inside this wall. The water is carried by pipes, which probably start from a stream up in the mountain.”
“No pipes? What pipes?” Little Six whined. “Pipes come into this wall? How did the mountain pipes come in here?”
“Perhaps we can all go out and trace the pipe route. You can help us carry my photography equipment, and we’ll take some pictures.”
“What is the foreign devil talking about?” Little Six shouted to Iris. “What pictures?”
“You know, a likeness of yourself on a shiny piece of paper.”
“Oh no, no, people say your spirit is taken away with your likeness!” Little Six shrieked, shielding her face behind her palms. “My uncle went into the city — came back so sick, he almost died. Someone took his picture, and he only recovered after my mother burned his likeness!”
Miss Tyler did not know how to answer, but Iris shook her head in exasperation. She shouted: “That has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it at all! You dumb egg! Country bumpkin!”
“Well, we won’t take your picture, Little Six.” Miss Tyler herded the girls into the courtyard. “Look, here is the pipe from the schoolroom. Look how cunningly it is blended with the eaves of the roof tiles.”
Miss Tyler carried her own camera. Little Six tried to pick up the tripod, but Iris grabbed it away from her. “You’ll only drop it. What a dumb egg!”
The pipe led them to the kitchen then out into the large garden. “Oh I must go back. I must go in,” Little Six cried when they were only a few steps out of the kitchen courtyard. “Cook will be so mad at me for being away so long. Tai-tai asked him to teach me ten characters a day. Sorry, young mistress.” She curtsied to Golden Bell, wringing her hands. Golden Bell turned away, speechless with embarrassment.
“Sorry.” Little Six looked at Miss Tyler, not knowing how to address her. Miss Tyler was just going to reply when Little Sixth tugged on Iris’s sleeve. “Sorry, Iris-jei.” She ran.
Iris grimaced, grumbling, “A dumb egg, what a dumb egg!”
Miss Tyler and Golden Bell walked into the walled-in garden with Iris trailing behind. They passed a moon-gate framed by a circle of rosewood. The view of the glistening lake welcomed them.
“Isn’t this beautiful?” The teacher pointed out the calculated compositions of color and design. “You have a beautiful home.”
Little Six’s histrionics still bothered Golden Bell. She asked, “Miss Tyler, you told my mother that you came here to learn from China.” She took a deep breath. “There are so many stupid people like Little Six. What can you learn in China?”
“Little Six is ignorant, not stupid.” Miss Tyler smiled. “The whole world is full of people like Little Six. It is only when we are allowed to make mistakes and given time to correct them that we can learn how things work.” She put down her camera and stood under a willow tree, waiting for Iris to come with the tripod.
“But China is so . . . so . . .” Golden Bell meant to say “backward,” but she could not utter the word. She had always heard her parents prate about China being the most civilized nation, and that all foreigners ever wanted was to steal from her riches. “Cruel,” she whispered instead. “Look what happened to Snow Song. I heard she didn’t want to marry the man her mother picked for her.”
Miss Tyler remained quiet for a long time. She finally said, “It pains me to think of Snow Song. I wonder why she did it.” She cleared her throat. “Such desperation, throwing herself into the river.”
“Suicide seems to be the only way out for a Chinese girl!” Golden Bell stamped her foot and spat out her outrage. “Mother never wants to learn anything from the outside world. The Chinese always want to do things the Chinese way.” She swallowed but could not control her anger. “They want to make the women weak — they used to bind our feet. Now they bind our spirit — they won’t educate us or make us equal heirs!”
“I wish the missionary school had given Snow Song more strength and the means to be independent.” Miss Tyler sat down on a rock. “Changes always bring turmoil. I wonder if Snow Song’s schooling confused her instead.”
“Did you know her?”
“I knew her as a scholarship student.” She frowned. “But I cannot possibly know the personal life of ev
ery student in our school. I wish I had known her better.”
Golden Bell saw Iris put down the tripod and stop to catch her breath. “The Chinese do not allow servants and especially girls to learn the free thinking in your world!” Golden Bell groaned, shaking her upturned hands in frustration.
“That is more or less the same in the West,” Miss Tyler said. “The servants never have time to study, and the women are supposed to be wives, mothers, and objects of pleasure or service. Men are encouraged toward personal accomplishments — to become thinkers, dreamers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, or soldiers.” She enumerated them on her fingers. She sounded almost angry. “They do things, but a woman is suspect when she makes her work her life.”
“But you went to a university, Miss Tyler!”
“Yes, things may change. Some years ago, American women marched and even went to prison to demand an equal vote. My university is one of the very first to have coeducation.”
“Oh, I wish someday I’ll go there also! Someday I hope to bring equality to women in this country!”
“Perhaps you will. I’ll certainly recommend it.”
“Oh, I wish my parents will let me go. I can’t understand my parents, especially Mother! She suffered under the old system. She has bound feet. I can’t understand why she still follows those old traditions!”
“Yes, I have noticed how the Chinese gentry are extremely proud of their cultural heritage. Your mother may feel they are betraying their ancestors and selling out their cultural identity when they accept Western values.”
Golden Bell knew that values like democracy and women’s equality arrived in China along with colonialism, so they had become identified with competition and aggression. Since the turn of the century, the Chinese had been humiliated and traumatized by Western invasions. Her own father had protested against the division of important port cities into foreign concessions.
“I suppose there is progress. Nowadays young girls do not have bound feet,” Golden Bell mumbled.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure things are changing. However, democratic ideas are very new and unproved theories here. I’m surprised that your parents did not object when I started teaching Iris.”
“Yes, I was surprised too.”
“Educating the servants is obviously important to your mother. Did you notice how all the women in your household are friendly and can read a little?”
“Oh yes, I never thought of it. Mother sets an example. She has taught Orchid how to read and write.”
“America is a land of immigrants. We are naturally more open to influences from other cultures. I imagine the Chinese, steeped in Confucianism like your parents, are resisting the chaos that may come with new ideas.”
“Oh.” Golden Bell hesitated. She wasn’t sure she understood her teacher, but she knew her parents’ cultural pride was not something she could change, no matter how hard she tried.
“And you?” Golden Bell was dying to ask whether Miss Tyler’s parents considered her an heir, wanted her to marry, or objected to her choice of work. Her Chinese training prevented her from prying. Her mother would admonish her for the impropriety. Quickly, she changed her focus. “What do the women do after university? Are there many great women artists and scholars in America?”
“Most women marry and become enlightened mothers. But there are still very few women artists, novelists, or professionals working outside the home.” Miss Tyler sighed. “Social values change very slowly.”
“That’s just what my parents always say.” Golden Bell brightened. “Did your parents approve of your work?” She just had to ask.
“Missionary work is supposed to be a calling from God,” Miss Tyler answered matter-of-factly. “I’ve always wanted to travel, take pictures and have the adventure of teaching young women. Missionary work spared me the fight against people who might object to my life choices.”
“What people?”
“Well, people in power — those who influence popular opinion, and who can tell you what to do and what not to do.”
“Like parents?”
“Sometimes.”
Iris arrived with the tripod, and Miss Tyler hastened to place her camera onto it.
“Did you hear a calling from God?”
“No, I did not. Look at that moon pavilion reflected in the mirror lake!” Miss Tyler pointed. She moved her tripod to an appropriate vantage point. “It is scenes like these that called me. Of course, working with young women and getting to know your culture have been a constant challenge and delight.” She peered into the viewfinder and clicked the shutter.
“Perfect!” She grinned.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON Purple Jade sat with Orchid in the front courtyard, embroidering under the cypress tree by the small pond. She ruminated on Miss Tyler’s gentle, confident ways and began to appreciate Golden Bell’s fascination with the self-reliant woman. She knew Silver Bell also wanted to follow this path of freedom and independence, which only deepened her concern for her family’s need of an heir.
Purple Jade wondered how Righteous Virtue truly felt about concubines and other Chinese traditions. Clearly, he had never shared Golden Bell’s contempt of her bound feet. His attention to her every comfort was complete. She was his precious Jade who needed shelter and protection, not only from the coarse realities of daily life, but also from the “brutal repression of the old system,” as he had said with fire in his voice. In spite of his immersion in the Chinese classics, his total identification with his cultural heritage and his respect for tradition, he not only understood the horror of foot binding, but also wanted to educate his daughters like boys.
Their most cherished moments were their chess games together. Whenever they played, he was a relentless attacker, but she was a worthy adversary. She had been a careful student of Sun Tzu and his treatise on the art of warfare. Under a luminous circle of gaslight, she followed his movements from intersection to intersection, throwing up tiny interferences until Righteous Virtue became confused, distracted and soon fell into entrapment. He acted surprised each time he lost, blaming his lack of concentration and impatience, but she knew he marveled at his quiet, outwardly subservient wife.
In the delirium of their first days together, she could feel him challenged and fascinated by her talent for writing poetry and her thorough immersion in the classics. When finally they made love, he was tender but clumsy, full of fear and guilt at having hurt her. She accepted everything graciously, as a maiden of good breeding should.
With a wicked wink, her mother had given her a pillow book illustrated with many unusual positions of lovemaking. She had intimated that it would be delightful for any man to go through the book with his uninitiated wife. But Righteous Virtue had not found the book amusing. He flipped through its pages and turned crimson. “Such pornography is unworthy of your fine character!” he fumed. He threw the book into the charcoal brazier, scowling. But then, sensing her distress, he said, “You are an ideal wife for my family. My coarser passions have been spent on the turmoil in this country. I have no mind for women.”
Purple Jade wept. She apologized in confusion and fear. She had been taught that all men were sensualists. They loved good food, fine wines, and the gentle ministrations of women. For centuries, it was a challenge for a wife to keep her husband from dallying with the flowers in the willow world. Yet her husband never strayed. When he made love, he did it in haste as if from necessity.
While Purple Jade enjoyed their shared activities of the mind, her panic over their physical challenges drove her to confide in her mother.
“Be patient, my child,” her mother counseled. “He has only just returned from his modern education in Shanghai. I hear that in the West, their gods can only be conceived in virginity, so he must think the noblest of human acts unclean. He thinks of you as a goddess still.”
Purple Jade had been pacified then. Often, the sight of her husband sent her insides melting. At other times, she could not understand her feeling of emptiness. He
r breeding, those long years devoted to learning propriety and the refinement of manners, made her diffident in this matter. She often wondered if her husband’s Western education and its curious pronouncements on the sins of physical love had deprived her of a male progeny — a crucial Chinese blessing. Now the time for an heir was overdue.
Yes, a concubine for the family. She would ask her husband to take a concubine. Why haven’t I thought of this before? The Huangs must have an heir to preserve the dignity of the clan. The endless wars to establish the Republic had consumed his energies. And now a simple young woman could distract him from his troubles and let him enjoy the rights of his manhood again. With an heir, Righteous Virtue would be made whole. Just as Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists had solved the national problems by following ancient shadows, she too must solve her family needs in the traditional way. The virtuous wife must provide her family with an heir. Still, the need to share her husband made her heart ache as if stabbed by a thousand needles, but she focused on the pains in her feet instead. She had resolved to do what was necessary.
After all, she herself had been the child of a concubine. Her mother was the daughter of a minor silk tradesman, and was fortunate to have been chosen as a concubine for her father, a prosperous merchant and industrialist. When her father’s favorite concubine, Fragrant Wind, died giving birth to Glorious Dragon, her mother had helped the barren first wife select another concubine for their husband. They had been wise to curb their husband’s roving eyes and keep his interest within the family. Now it was her turn to do the right thing for her family.
She remembered another Tu fu quatrain that seemed to suit her mood:
I do not love the flowers that are about to expire.
I fear my dotage mirrors the fading flower.
Lush, blooming blossoms fall like a shower.
I say to the young buds: let your prime retire.
Silver Bell burst in on her mother’s thoughts. Peony followed.