Where the Past Begins

by Amy Tan

  As a fiction writer, I immediately envisioned possibilities for adding a character to the novel I was already writing, one that concerned a young woman whose family had become outcasts in a small village after an accidental fire. It was a bildungsroman in the tradition of Oliver Twist. Just as Oliver unwittingly winds up in the underworld with Fagin the thief, my character might meet up with an aging courtesan in the world of flowers. At the museum gift shop, I found a research-laden book on courtesans, titled Shanghai Love, written by a scholar of fin de siècle courtesan culture in Shanghai. I later found several other academic books on the same subject. Over the next week, I read about the early beginnings of courtesan culture, one quite specific to Shanghai. The early courtesans embraced the arts and were talented musicians respectfully called Maestro. Their profession evolved into small salons that provided musical entertainment where men brought gifts to the musicians they admired. These salons became courtesan houses, where a lengthy courtship of weeks to months could lead to sex, which then required further gifts of appreciation. I was astonished to learn that it was the women who decided who would receive their sexual favors. Their ability to choose anything in life was in striking contrast to women who were expected to submit to arranged marriages and the dictates of husbands, mothers-in-law, first wives, and the social order.

  In turn-of-the-century Shanghai, the courtesan houses operated in many ways like a men’s club, where a customer could meet up with his friends and spend the night eating, gambling, and listening to entertainment in the company of friendly, beautiful women who feigned reticence as a prelude to seduction. If a man could not afford to visit the luxurious first-class houses, he might go to a second-class house, where the furnishings were of lesser quality but where the courtesans were more accommodating after a brief period of courtship. At the lower rungs, a man could find quick pleasure in opium flower houses, where sex followed a few intoxicating pipefuls. At the far end of the sex trade one could find the chopping sheds where young kidnapped girls lay drugged on the ground and were forced to take on twenty to thirty men a day until they died of exhaustion, disease, or suicide. The sex trade was so rampant in Shanghai that by the early 1900s, one out of every hundred women worked as a prostitute, at least part time. Those were the demographics of misfortune in a big city to where girls kidnapped from the countryside were brought, to where abused concubines fled, and to where newly impoverished widows and daughters went to survive in anonymity. Some were women whose husbands had squandered the family fortune through their addictions to opium or gambling, or who had fallen prey to any number of get-rich-quick schemes in Shanghai. I read about cases of schoolteachers who had lost their jobs and resorted to doing business in rented rooms. What else could they do? Suicide was an option. One out of every four concubines took it. I don’t know the figures for courtesans.

  Surprisingly, there were almost no written records of sex techniques, only allusions to courtesans who were popular because of their special tricks of the trade. The wives of rich men paid courtesans to teach them those techniques to encourage their husbands to stay home rather than spend their time in courtesan houses. Rumor has it that Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, received tutelage in the “Shanghai Squeeze.” I had some idea of the activities men might have paid for—they can be found in the pornographic scenes of classic literary novels, most notoriously, The Flower in the Golden Vase, whose literary greatness was excised to provide a faster-paced narrative romp.

  During the brief period of a courtesan’s career, usually between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, the smarter ones built up their savings, paid their debts to the madams, and started their own brothels. Some courtesans married clients and became concubines. For most, a grimmer future awaited—a slide into a lower-class house, a cheap brothel, or even a gutter, which was the fate of one of Shanghai’s most popular courtesans during the early part of the twentieth century. I read heartbreaking letters of courtesans who had been charmed by men who promised love and marriage, but absconded with their savings.

  I have always had distaste for the stereotypical descriptions of Old Shanghai as “Sin City” or a “City of Pleasures.” It conveyed the notion that the pleasures were a mutual exchange between lusting men and licentious women. On the surface, if you looked only at the numbers of brothels, it would seem that Shanghai deserved the sobriquet. But its sex trade, like the worldwide one that exists today, was supplied by women and girls who had been kidnapped, sold, enslaved, and abused to keep them from running away. In Shanghai, prostitution was illegal in the Old Chinese City. But in the International Settlement, where foreigners lived and conducted business, brothels were allowed to exist. That was where the first-class houses were found. The common reality beneath the surface of “Sin City” was tragedy and an early death for most women trapped in the sex trade. I looked at many photographs of young courtesans, most of them girls with vacant eyes, which made them appear either emotionless or hardened to abuse.

  One day, while leafing through the pages of Shanghai Love, I came across a photo taken in 1911, titled The Ten Beauties of Shanghai. They were courtesans who had won a popularity contest based on the votes of their clients. Five of the courtesans wore identical clothes: a cap with a tight headband of intricate embroidery that came to a V in the middle of their forehead. Their hair was tucked under the headband, which pulled their eyes slightly upward into the much-admired almond-eyed “phoenix” shape. They appeared to be wearing winter garb: a form-fitting, padded silk jacket with a tall fur-lined collar that went up to their earlobes, sleeves that ended just below the elbows, with a white lining that extended to the wrists. Their matching trousers were also snug. The style of clothes looked vaguely familiar, and then I realized why. In my favorite photo of my grandmother, she is wearing similar clothes. It was, in fact, the photo sitting at the other end of my desk.

  As I compared the two photos, I saw that her clothes were identical in nearly every detail. I guessed that this was a popular fashion of the time. Perhaps many young women wore the same style. But as I read further, I learned that these clothes were specific to courtesans. They had their photos taken in Western photo studios, which were distinguished by a backdrop of landscapes or mansions, and the presence of flowers, whether in pots or vases, painted onto the backdrop, or held in the courtesan’s hands. They were the obvious symbol of a courtesan’s profession in the Flower World, one where beauty, from bud to bloom to fallen petals, was fleeting. While reading, I felt a strange mix of both fear and excitement. I had stumbled into a forbidden place. It seemed impossible that this had been part of my grandmother’s life. To even consider that felt blasphemous to her memory. It went against family history, which cast her as old-fashioned, traditional, and quiet, a woman of few words, a woman who was widowed early, and who would have remained a chaste widow had she not been raped and forced to become a concubine. I examined her photo. There was no doubt that she had gone to a Western studio. The photo contains all the signature elements—a painted backdrop of mountains, the balustrade and stone steps of a mansion, a vase of flowers on the table, and five pots of flowers at her feet. Another woman is seated at the table, and her clothes are identical in style but of a more lustrous silk. She is not wearing a cap with headband. Instead, her hair is pulled back tightly, save for two curved locks in front of her ears.

  I brought out an old photo album. Some of the photos were the size of postage stamps. I took out a magnifying glass and saw with new eyes. In one, my grandmother appears to be only thirteen or fourteen. Her hairstyle would be considered radical even by today’s standards—parted asymmetrically with the two sides hanging like curtains that reveal only part of her face. Her pose is daring: one arm akimbo, hand on hip, the other resting on a fake rustic fence. She is staring directly at the camera but does not have the deadened gaze of a courtesan. In fact, she looks confident, amused, even mischievous. She has a meaty chin, a plump lower lip, and an uneven upper lip. Her hands are large. I have the same hands. T
he ensemble in that photo is identical to what two other courtesans wore in the ten beauties photo of 1911—a skirt and a dark-colored jacket made of what appears to be heavy brocade with a high fur-lined collar, short sleeves and white lining. There is another woman in this photo, different from the first photo. She is wearing an identical dress and is seated on a stone bench, leaning back on the rustic fence at an awkward angle. She looks quite a bit older, but perhaps that is the effect of her hairstyle—a turn-of-the-century Western bouffant, what would have been quite modern back then. Her hands are large, like my grandmother’s, and her chin is also large. They must be related. I recall my mother saying her mother’s stepsister was fond of her. Or was it a cousin?

  LEFT: Shanghai, circa 1910: My grandmother (right) and an unknown woman (left). RIGHT: Shanghai, circa 1912: My grandmother.

  I found a third photograph. The backdrop suggests a Victorian parlor with trompe l’oeil parted curtains. She is posed next to a Victorian chair, her elbow on the tall armrest, her other hand on her hip. She appears to be older. Her eyebrows are thick, as if she has darkened them. Her expression suggests insolence or defiance. There is no smirk or hint of mischief. Her hair is similar to that in the last photo, parted in the middle so that her two locks form a curtain that obscure the sides of her face. She wears a light-colored ensemble—what would have been suitable for warm weather—a jacket and pants with a high collar, shortened sleeves, and white lining. Her footwear is odd: Persian-style slippers with her heels slipped out of them. She is standing on tiptoes to give her the additional height needed to balance her elbow on the armrest.

  I found yet another photo taken when she was older and more traditionally dressed in a low-collared jacket, loose sleeves, and a plain skirt. She is beautiful but not glamorous. Her fringe of hair covers her eyebrows, and the rest of her hair is pulled back into a bun. Her white-stockinged legs are crossed at the knees. Was it inappropriate for a woman in the 1920s to sit like that?

  There is a younger woman, sitting in a hunched posture on a ledge with her feet dangling above the ground, which suggests she is short. Her clothes are plain, which made me think at first that she was a maid. But then I recalled my mother telling me about a cousin or half sister who had a hunched back. The backdrop looks torn, the upholstered chair is shabby, the flowers look fake, and the hay-strewn floor suggests better days have long departed. Why did she choose such a dilapidated studio?

  The last photo I found was taken when she was thirty-six. Part of a column can be seen on the right side of the backdrop. Leaves peek out of the trees—leaves and no flowers. As with the photos of her youth, one arm rests on a tall white stand and her dangling hand clasps the other. Her face looks fuller. Her bangs have a triangular wedge cut out at the center. She is wearing plain black shoes that show her deformed feet; they were crushed and bound until she was twelve. Her jacket is loose fitting and the sleeves are wide. It is the clothing of a traditional woman. By then, she had become the fourth wife to the wealthy man. As evident by her hands resting over her belly, she appears to be six or seven months pregnant. She was thirty-six years old, and it is the last known photo taken of her. I noticed one more thing and enlarged the photo so I could see what is on her wedding finger: the imperial jade ring that my mother gave me when I married. I still have it, just the setting. That rare piece of jade mysteriously fell out the first time all my siblings were gathered under one roof.

  Chongming Island, 1925: Last photograph of my grandmother.

  For days I studied the photos and reread the research on courtesans. Wearing a courtesan’s costume did not mean she had been a courtesan any more than my wearing a nurse’s cap meant I had been a Dutch girl. I reminded myself that there were also many photographs of me dressed in a dominatrix’s outfit—a short strappy leather dress, fishnet stockings, studded necklace, wrist cuffs, ankle cuffs, fingerless gloves, and wide belt, along with high-heeled thigh-high boots, a patent leather police cap and a cat-o’-nine-tails in one hand and a fake glowing cigarette in the other. That was the costume I had worn annually for over twenty years of performances with an all-author literary garage band whose poor musicianship and humorous antics helped raise money for kids’ literacy programs. Perhaps I had inherited a fondness for costumes from her. Maybe she, too, had worn the daring costume as a joke. We both wanted our costumes to look authentic, down to the last studded detail. But why had she worn hers?

  The very act of questioning who my grandmother was was dangerous. If she were alive, would she have taken my questions as an insult? I have to guard against willingness to pry open a locked box simply because its secret contents are intriguing to me as a fiction writer; I may be prone to mistaking inconsequential junk as fictional treasure that intrigues me as a fiction writer. I am a woman living in the twenty-first century. I cannot view the world of courtesans through a sociological viewpoint. I have to see her as she would have wished to be seen in 1911. I have to consider how she would have wanted to be remembered. But then I think: How would I want to be remembered? Would I want to be entombed in memory as having the traits of a stranger? Perhaps my grandmother wanted to eject the passive old-fashioned woman who replaced her. Maybe she wanted me to stumble upon the photo of the ten beauties.

  The story of my grandmother is like a torn map glued together with so many bits and pieces that there is now more glue than map. The pieces haven’t led to verifiable truth. I have imagined what the truth might have been, based on my own emotional and moral character. Others have done the same. We see what we want to believe. We are all unreliable narrators when it comes to speaking for the dead.

  Yesterday, in Beijing, Lou and I took a walk. It was a rare spring day, sunny and absolutely clear of smog. To avoid the lines of people trying to get through the main gates of the Imperial Palace Museum, we took a detour through the grounds by the Hall of Ancestry Worship. The large courtyards and corridors were nearly deserted. We saw only photographers here and there with their clients, young wedding couples. The photographers directed them to look straight at the camera, then to the left, upward, as if seeing a bright future together. They were told to gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes. The brides were all dressed in bright red wedding dresses of a similar style—sleeveless bodices, large flouncy skirts, layers of mesh, filmy veils stitched with seed pearls, and ten-foot-long trains of red satin, which the new husbands dutifully carried as they followed behind their brides, moving from one location to another. Had they all gone to the same store with a fire sale on red wedding dresses? And then I realized something obvious: the wedding photographers provided those dresses as part of a package deal. You could probably get the wedding dresses in white as well. Fresh flowers were extra.

  I had another thought: Could it be that the photographers at Western photo studios provided the fancy courtesan clothes, down to the last detail? I then remembered that teenage admirers of courtesans fainted at the sight of their idols. In the 1920s, girls from wealthy families surreptitiously had clothes made to imitate the fashions of their favorite courtesans. They walked to school wearing those outfits, and their teachers admonished them and sent them home. What would girls earlier in the century have dared to do? I imagined it—the exact moment my grandmother decided to wear the costume.

  She is at the cloth shop that her cousin’s parents own. She is fourteen and her cousin is older, nineteen. She has always treated my grandmother like a sister. They even look alike; they have the same plump chin, uneven upper lip, and large hands. It’s a cold winter day and they are bored. But then they hear a commotion on the street and run out. Two courtesans riding by in separate carriages are having a shouting match, exchanging shocking insults. My grandmother and her cousin are mesmerized. They hear other girls nearby praising the beautiful clothes the courtesans are wearing. One girl says that the photo studios two streets over have the same clothes, which you can wear to get a picture taken. The other girls say they wouldn’t dare. My grandmother and her cousin look at each other and a seco
nd later they are walking to the street with the photo studios. They choose one that offers the complete package for the cheapest price. They pick out the costumes each will wear and giggle while putting on the illicit getup, every last detail. They decide the mansion backdrop is not as shabby looking as the others and take their places by a fake fence. The photographer tells them how to pose. Put your hand on your hip, rest your elbow there, stand straight, don’t move, don’t laugh. The next day they pick up two copies, one apiece. They laugh at how authentic they look, and then they agree they should do it every year.

  I want to believe that is the reason the photos exist. She was not old-fashioned. She was a daring girl. I want to believe I am like her, that the past is connected to the present, a continuous evolution of who we become, which can even manifest as a penchant for outrageous costumes. My mother saw her mother in me, and no wonder. We are alike in so many ways. We have strong opinions. We can’t tolerate insults. And look at what we did for love. We did not give up because of disapproval. We became more determined. After Lou and I married, I remained angry at his parents for their continued slights. I was angry at Lou for not standing up for me.