Of course, these foreign women do not say these things in words, but their looks are most expressive, and I understand. I serve them tea and cake, of which they take most sparingly, and when the proper time has come they rise, trying not to look relieved that their martyrdom is over. I conduct them to the doorway, or, if the woman is the wife of a great official, to the outer entrance. Then I return to my own rooms amidst the things I understand; and I fear, I fear, Mother of mine, that I gossip with my household upon the ways and dress and manners of these queer people from distant lands.
I have been asked to join a society of European and Chinese ladies for the purpose of becoming acquainted with one another, but I do not think that I will do so. I believe it impossible for the woman of the West to form an alliance with the woman of the East that will be deep rooted. The thoughts within our hearts are different, as are our points of view. We do not see the world through the same eyes. The foreign woman has children like myself, but their ambitions and ideals for them are different. She has a home and a husband, but my training and my instincts give my home and my husband a different place in life than that which she gives to those of her household. To me the words marriage, friendship, home have deeper meanings than are attached to them by a people who live in hotels and public eating places, and who are continually in the homes of others. They have no sanctity of the life within; there are no shrines set apart for the family union, and the worship of the spirits of their ancestors. I cannot well explain to you the something intangible, the thick gray mist that is always there to put its bar across the open door of friendship between the woman of the Occident and those of Oriental blood.
I would ask of you a favor. I wish that you would search my rooms and find the clothing not needed by your women. My house is full and overflowing. I had no idea we had so many poor relations. The poor relation and the cousin of our cousin’s cousin have come to claim their kinship. Your son will give no one official position nor allow them money from the public funds; but they must have clothing and rice, and I provide it. I sometimes feel, when looking into the empty rice bin, that I sympathize with His Excellency Li Hung-chang who built a great house here, far from his home province. When asked why, unlike the Chinese custom, he built so far from kith and kin, he answered, “You have placed the finger upon the pulse beat the first instant. I built it far away, hoping that all the relatives of my relatives who find themselves in need might not find the money wherewith to buy a ticket in order to come and live beneath my rooftree.” (With us, they do not wait for tickets; they have strong, willing feet.) I am afraid that His Excellency, although of the old China that I love, was touched with this new spirit of “each member for himself” that has come upon this country.
It is the good of the one instead of the whole, as in the former times, and there is much that can be said upon both sides. The family should always stand for the members of the clan in the great crises of their lives, and help to care for them in days of poverty and old age. It is not just that one should prosper while others of the same blood starve; yet it is not just that one should provide for those unwilling to help themselves. I can look back with eyes of greater knowledge to our home, and I fear that there are many eating from the bowl of charity who might be working and self-respecting if they were not members of the great family Liu, and so entitled to your help.
It is the hour for driving with the children. We all are yours and think of you each day.
Kwei-li
3
My Mother,
I have such great news to tell you that I hardly know where to begin. But, first, I will astonish you—Ting-fang is home! Yes, I can hear you say, “Hi yah!” and I said it many times when, the evening before last, after your son and the men of the household had finished the evening meal, and I and the women were preparing to eat our rice, we saw a darkness in the archway, and standing there was my son. Not one of us spoke a word; we were as if turned to stone as we thought of him as in far-off America, studying at the college of Yale. But here he stood in real life, smiling at our astonishment. He slowly looked at us all, then went to his father and saluted him respectfully, came and bowed before me, then took me in his arms in a most disrespectful manner and squeezed me together so hard he nearly broke my bones. I was so frightened and so pleased that of course I could only cry and cling to this great boy of mine whom I had not seen for six long years. I held him away from me and looked long into his face. He is a man now, twenty-one years old, a big, strong man, taller than his father. I can hardly reach his shoulder. He is straight and slender, and looks alien in his foreign dress, yet when I looked into his eyes I knew it was mine own come to me again.
No one knows how all my dreams followed this bird that left the nest. No one knows how long the nights seemed when sleep would not come to my eyes and I wondered what would happen to my boy in that far-off land, a strange land with strange, unloving people who would not care to put him on the pathway when he strayed. You remember how I battled with his father in regard to sending him to England to commence his foreign education. I said, “Is not four years of college in America enough? Why four years’ separation to go to that college? He will go from me a boy and return a man. I will lose my son.” But his father firmly said that the English public schools gave the groundwork for a useful life. He must form his code of honor and his character upon the rules laid down for centuries by the English, and then go to America for the education of the intellect, to learn to apply the lessons learned in England. He did not want his son to be all for present success, as the American, or to be all for tradition, as is the Englishman, but he thought the two might find a happy meeting place in a mind not yet well formed.
But thoughts of learning did not assuage the pain in my mother-heart. I had heard of dreadful things happening to our Chinese boys who are sent abroad to get a Western knowledge. Often they marry strange women who have no place in our life if they return to China, and who are ostracized by their own race for marrying a Chinese. Neither side can be blamed—certainly not our boys. They go there alone, often with little money. They live in houses where they are offered food and lodging at the cheapest price. They are not in a position to meet women of their own class, and being boys they crave the society of girls. Perhaps the daughter of the woman who keeps the lodging house speaks to them kindly, talks to them in the evening when they have no place to go except a lonely, ugly room; or the girl in the shop where they buy their clothing smiles as she wraps their packages for them. Such attentions would be passed by without a thought at ordinary times, but now notice means much to a heart that is trying hard to stifle its loneliness and sorrow, struggling to learn the knowledge of the West in an unknown tongue; in lieu of mother, sister, or sweetheart of his own land, the boy is insensibly drawn into a net that tightens about him, until he takes the fatal step and brings back to his mother a woman of another race.
One sorrows for the girl, whatever may be her station, as she does not realize that there is no place for her in all the old land of China. She will be scorned by those of foreign birth, and she can never become one of us. Do you remember the wife of Wang, the secretary of the embassy at London? He was most successful and was given swift promotions until he married the English lady, whose father was a tutor at one of the great colleges. It angered Her Majesty and he was recalled and given the small post of secretary to the Taotai of our city. The poor foreign wife died alone within her Chinese home, into which no friend had entered to bid her welcome. Some say that after many moons of solitude and loneliness she drank the strong drink of her country to drown her sorrow. Perhaps it was a bridge on which she crossed to a land filled with the memories of the past that brought her solace in her time of desolation.
But I have wandered, Mother of mine; my mind has taken me to England, America, to Chinese men with foreign wives, and now I will return and tell you of your own again, and of my son who has returned to me. When at last the gods gave us our breath, we asked the many questions
that came to us like a river that has broken all its bounds. Your son, the father of Ting-fang, was more than angry—he was white with wrath, and demanded to know what Ting-fang was doing here when he should have been at school. My son said, and I admired the way he spoke up boldly to his father, “Father, I read each day of the progress of the revolution, of the new China that was being formed, and I could not stay on and study books while I might be helping here.” His father said, “Your duty was to stay where I, your father, put you!” Ting-fang answered, “You could not have sat still and studied of ancient Greece and Rome while your country was fighting for its life”; and then he added, most unfilially, “I notice you are not staying in Szechwan, but are here in Shanghai, in the center of things. I am your son; I do not like to sit quietly by the road and watch the world pass by; I want to help make that world, the same as you.”
His father talked long and bitterly, and the boy was saddened. I crept silently to him and placed my hand on his. It was all I could do for the moment, as it would not be seemly for me to take his part against his father, but—I talked to your son, my husband, when we were alone within our chamber.
The storm has passed. His father refused to make Ting-fang a secretary, as he says the time is past when officials fill their Yamens with their relatives and friends. I think that as the days go on, he will relent, as in these troubled times a high official cannot be sure of the loyalty of the men who eat his rice, and he can rely upon his son. A Liu was never known to be disloyal.
There is too much agitation here. The officials try to ignore it as much as possible, believing that muddy water is often made clear if allowed to stand still. Yet they must be ready to act quickly, as speedily as one springs up when a serpent is creeping into the lap, because now the serpent of treachery and ingratitude is in every household. These secret plottings, like the weeds that thrust their roots deep into the rice fields, cannot be taken out without bringing with them some grain, and many an innocent family is now suffering for the hotheadedness of its youth.
I sometimes think that I agree with the wise governor of the olden time whose motto was to empty the minds of the people and fill their stomachs, weaken their wills, and strengthen their bones. When times were troubled he opened the government granaries and the crowds were satisfied.
But the people are different now; they have too much knowledge. New ambitions have been stirred; new wants created; a new spirit is abroad and, with mighty power, it is overturning and recasting the old forms and deeply rooted customs. China is moving, and—we of the old school think—too quickly. She is going at a bound from the dim light of the bean-oil brazier to the dazzling brilliance of the electric light; from the leisured slowness of the wheelbarrow pushed by the patient coolie to the speed of the modern motor car; from the practice of the seller of herbs to the science of the modern doctor. We all feel that new China is at a great turning point because she is just starting out on her journey, which may last many centuries, or which may see its final struggle tomorrow. It is of great importance that the right direction be taken at first. A wrong turn at the beginning, and the true pathway may never be found. So much depends upon her leaders, on men like Yuan, Wu, and your son, my husband: the men who point out the road to those who will follow as wild foul follow their leader. The Chinese people are keen to note disinterestedness, and if these men who have risen up show that they have the good of the people at heart much may be done. If they have the corrupt heart of many of the old-time officials, China will remain as before, so far as the great mass of her men are concerned.
I hear the children coming from their school, so I will say good-bye for a time. Ting-fang sends his most respectful love, and all my household join in sending you good wishes.
Kwei-li
4
My Dear Mother,
Do you remember Liang Tai-tai, the daughter of the Princess Tseng, your old friend of Pau-chau? You remember we used to laugh at the pride of Liang in regard to her mother’s clan, and her care in speaking of her father who was only a small official in the governor’s Yamen. You were wont to say that she reminded you of the mule that, when asked who was his father, answered, “The horse is my maternal uncle.” She comes to see me often, and she worries me with her piety; she is quite mad upon the subject of the gods. I often feel that I am wrong to be so lacking in sympathy with her religious longings; but I hate extremes. “Extreme straightness is as bad as crookedness, and extreme cleverness as bad as folly.” She is ever asking me if I do not desire, above all things, the life of the higher road—whatever that may mean. I tell her that I do not know. I would not be rare, like jade, or common, like stone; just medium. Anyway, my days are far too full to think about any other road than the one I must tread each day in the fulfillment of the duties the gods have given me.
Some people seem to be irreverently familiar with the gods, and to be forever praying. If they would only be a little more human and perform the daily work that lies before them (Liang’s son is the main support of the Golden Lotus Teahouse) they might let prayer alone awhile without ceasing to enjoy the protection of the gods. It is dangerous to overload oneself with piety, as the sword that is polished to excess is sometimes polished away. And there is another side that Liang should remember, her husband not having riches in abundance: that the rays of the gods love the rays of gold.
But today she came to me with her rice bowl overflowing with her sorrows. Her son has returned from the foreign lands with the new education from which she hoped so much, but it seems he has acquired knowledge of the vices of the foreigner to add to those of the Chinese. He did not stay long enough to lose touch with the people and the customs of his country. He forgets that he is not an American even with his foreign education; he is still an Oriental and he comes back to an Oriental land, a land tied down by tradition and custom, and he cannot adapt himself. He tries instead to adapt China to his half-Europeanized way of thought, and he has failed. He has become what my husband calls an agitator, a teahouse orator, and he sees nothing but wrong in his people. There is no place in life for him, and he sits at night in public places, stirring foolish boys to deeds of treason and violence. Another thing, he has learned to drink foreign wines, and the mixture is not good. They will not blend with Chinese wine, any more than the two civilizations will come together as one.
Why did the gods make the first draught of wine to curse the race of men, to make blind the reason, to make angels into devils, and to leave a lasting curse on all who touch it? “It is a cataract that carries havoc with it in a road of mire where he who falls may never rise again.” It seems to me that he who drinks the wine of both lands allows it to become a ring that leads him to the Land of Nothing, and ends as did my friend’s son, with the small round ball of sleep that grows within the poppy. One morning’s light when he looked into his own face and saw the marks that life was leaving, he saw no way except the Bridge of Death; but he was not successful.
His mother brought him to me, as he has always liked me, and is a friend (for which I sorrow) of my son. I talked to him alone within an inner chamber, and tried to show him the error of his way. I quoted to him the words spoken to another foolish youth who tried to force the gates of Heaven: “My son, you are enmeshed within this world’s ways, and have not cared to wonder where the stream would carry you in coming days. If you scorn mere human duties, as a worn sandal cast aside, you are no man but stock-stone born, lost in a selfish senseless pride. If you could mount Heaven’s high plain, then your own will might be your guide, but your needs must dwell here on earth. You can well see that you are not wanted in the Halls of Heaven; so turn to things near; turn to your earthly home and try to do your duty here. You must control yourself, there is no escape through the Eastern Gateway for the necessity of self-conquest.”
He wept and gave me many promises; and I showed him that I believed him, and saw his worth. But—we think it wiser to send him far away from his companions, who only seek to drag him down. Your son wi
ll give to him a letter and ask the Prefect of Canton to give him work at our expense.
I felt it better that Liang Tai-tai should not be alone with her son for several hours, as her tongue is bitter and reproaches come easily to angry lips. So I took her with me to the garden of a friend outside the city. It was the Dragon Boat Festival, when all the world goes riverward to send their lighted boats upon the waters searching for the soul of the great poet who drowned himself in the olden time, and whose body the jealous Water God took to himself and it was nevermore found. Do you remember how we told the story to the children when the family was all with you—oh, it seems many moons ago.
The garden of my friend was most beautiful, and we seemed within a world apart. The way was through high woods and over long green plots of grass and around queer rocks; there were flowers with stories in their hearts, and trees who held the spirits of the air close beneath their ragged covering. Pigeons called softly to their mates, and doves cooed and sobbed as they nestled one to the other. We showed the children the filial young crow who, when his parents are old and helpless, feeds them in return for their care when he was young; and we pointed out the young dove sitting three branches lower on the tree than do his parents, so deep is his respect.
When the western sky was like a golden curtain, we went to the canal, where the children set their tiny boats afloat, each with its lighted lantern. The wind cried softly through the bamboo trees and filled the sails of these small barks, whose lights flashed brightly from the waters as if the Spirits of the River laughed with joy.
We returned home, happy, tired, but with new heart to start the morrow’s work.
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