The Dragon'S Tale

by Edi Holley

  PERSIMMONS and MAO-TZE-TUNG

  By the fall we moved to a new house which had a garden with persimmon trees that produced the most delicious succulent bright orange persimmons. I also had a cat, a persimmon- colored, orangey-yellow cat which I named, “Jin-Chew,” which means golden ball. The cook, Chiang, was always shooing it away and threatening to chop off her tail. But he cooked the most delicious food for us. He could do anything with beachie nuts, even made mashed potatoes. But he was preoccupied mostly with Mao-tse-Tung who was advancing from the west.

  Chiang told me he was going to run away and join Mao. “He will do anything for us. He will drive the foreigners away too.” My mother was worried he would actually go, and then what would we do for a cook?

  Chiang carried his “little red book” around with him and kept checking it. I found out it was a collection of all of Mao’s sayings about Communism, government and society. Once I asked Chiang if I could look at it.

  “Bu-yao, bu-yao” he answered.”…Definitely no. I think he was afraid I would contaminate it.

  CHINA NEW YEAR

  One day in January I saw Chiang smear a big glob of honey on a picture we had on the kitchen wall of the Chinese kitchen god.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “ZAO JUN!” he replied indignantly as though to say, “How can you be so stupid?”

  “He is kitchen god, stove god. He will tell Jade God everything we’ve done this past year. I put honey on his lips… then his lips will be stuck together so he doesn’t say nothing, or he will say only sweet words about us.”

  “Oh,” I replied.

  “We light Fire crackers to make sure he go fast, fast.” Said Chiang, pointing to a big box of bright red and gold firecrackers in the corner.

  As the second moon after the Winter Solstice approached, between January thirty-first and February sixteenth, both Chiang and Mai-Ling, our maid, scrubbed and cleaned the kitchen and every corner of the house to get rid of all bad luck. Then they hung red decorations, such as the characters for happiness and long life, on the walls. We invited the Shus over to make Jao-dzes with us to bring even more good luck.

  “Gung Hay Fat Choy,” said Mrs. Shu, as a New Year greeting. We celebrated China New Year with our Chinese family, the Shus. Mrs. Shu brought special noodles for us all to eat., as part of our Happy Family Reunion Dinner, part of the New Year celebration.

  “Don’t cut them!” she warned me, “so you will have long life.” Then Mrs. Shu directed us in making the Jao-Dzes together. This took all afternoon. We chopped pork and fresh vegetables. We steamed them in a round bamboo steamer over a pot of boiling water. Then we made a wonderful dipping sauce with rice vinegar and soy sauce and honey and cayenne pepper. They were unbelievably delicious. We all sat around our round table eating them, including Mrs. Shu’s niece Mai-Mai and her baby dressed in her bright red padded baby suit. Looking at her I decided Chinese babies are the cutest of all. Mai-Mai wore a Chinese dress too for the occasion, which made it more dress- up.

  As midnight approached fire crackers began to “sound in” the new year. It sounded like the whole world was being blown up. But it was fun and exciting and very Chinese. We went out into the street and watched the Dragon Dances whirling around and snapping long ropes of firecrackers which they swung around in the air. The dragon represents China is also the god of rain. He is the symbol of spring and new life and clouds were formed when he breathed out. About ten men made up the dragon by holding a stick to a section of it. They raced around, turning this way and that. One man in front helda golden sun on the end of a stick. The idea was to prevent the dragon from eating the sun which would have been bad luck as well as an eclipse.

  RICE RIOTS

  By February there was so much tension in the air. I knew already Mao was advancing toward Nanging and when he arrived we would have to leave. Then something awful happened. My mother went down to the main shopping area in Nanging and when she came back she was hysterical–crying and frantic.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “They had a rice riot. Everyone was shouting and pushing. I nearly got trampled on. There was a massive crowd, all shoving and grabbing bags of rice.”

  That night when my father came home they talked about it in a way that made me aware that something big was going on, and changes were on the horizon. I knew already Mao was advancing toward Nanging and when he arrived we would have to leave.Soon after that a notice came from the embassy. We were being evacuated to Shanghai.

  I was sent to Shanghai American School (S. A. S). in the French Quarter. We all had to live in the dormitory. I already knew many of the students, missionary kids who had come over on the Marine Lynx with us. But I didn’t know Gincy Souel, the daughter of General Souel. She had frizzy blond curls and was quite chubby. One afternoon a week she went down to the French Pastry shop for cream puffs…the most amazing cream puffs you ever ate. I had never eaten anything so rich. I could see how Ginsy got so chubby. She always took one of the other girls with her. I hoped it would be me.

  As spring came we began to have riots in Shanghai too—down by the Bund. Inflation was so high that if you wanted to buy anything you had to take a suitcase full of yen. There was tension. It was like sitting on a pot that was about to boil over, yet you didn’t know exactly what was happening to cause it.

  S.S. HOPE

  At last we got the call from the embassy on the morning of May fifth. My mother came up to my room and told me.

  “Pack one suitcase. That’s all we are allowed.”

  I wanted to take Marguerite, my beautiful French doll. She had a sculpted and painted wooden face and delicate graceful hands. Edee had even made a lacy petticoat for her. My Aunt Margaret, my favorite aunt, next to Edee had brought her from France. But my mother said “no”. Instead we packed my mothers’ precious pink-beige Beiging rug. Later I imagined some Comunist child finding Marguerite and playing with her, if they didn’t burn her for fire wood.

  We had to be on the S.S.Hope, a hospital ship in the Shanghai harbor before noon the next day. My father came with us to see us off. When I said good-by I knew that would be the last time we would be together for some time.

  Lucky for me it was a hospital ship because I had blood poisoning. When I was at S.A.S., the doctor and nurse in the Infirmary were in love and so overlooked my symptoms. I had athlete’s foot, which I picked up in the shower. When I went to the infirmary the nurse hardly looked at it. She gave no medication for it, nor any instructions for how to take care of it. Left unchecked, it progressed to blood poisoning. When we arrived at Hongkong all my friends from S.A.S. went to the beach while I lay on immaculate white hospital bed in the sick bay with a blood transfusion dripping into my veins. Most of my friends stayed in Hong Kong. They either had family in the South China or they shipped back to the States. My mother and I sailed on to Japan and docked in Yokohama.

  JAPAN

  We travelled on to Kobe College. What a beautiful place, full of green Japanese gardens, beautiful trees and shrubbery, and tiny bridges over tiny streams. I will never forget the first morning. A sweet little giggly Japanese maid trotted in with a big bowl of strawberries for our breakfast! We hadn’t had any fresh strawberries forever, it seemed. We stayed at Kobe for several months.

  It was a time of transition for us. We looked back on our colorful and ever- shifting life in China, and w. We were glad to be in the safe care of Kobe College where we could collect our thoughts. Many of the faculty were American. There was also a very interesting young American teacher. She had some kind of illness which made her faint. Her boyfriend was an American Army officer, a very handsome man in his uniform. He brought her a trained German Police dog who stayed at her side and rescued her if she had a fainting episode. It was very exciting. We thought of my father who had decided to stay in China. But we had heard that the Communists persecuted Catholic Missionaries. He wasn’t C
atholic, but did the Communists know the difference? We didn’t know what the future would hold for any of us. My mother, who had always taught English decided to stay longer at Kobe College and teach English.

  We took a trip to Miyajima in the Japanese inland sea in the south with a Girl Scout group. I remember seeing a tall red Torii at Miyajima. It was the gate to a famous Shinto shrine, standing like a giant in the water, which symbolically marked the transition from profane to sacred. Retaining the purity of the shrine was so important that since the end of the 19th century no deaths or births were permitted near it.

  We visited Kyoto, the ancient southern capitol with its amazing rock gardens surrounded by combed gravel, temples with upturned roofs, a tiny lake reflecting a curved bridge and exquisite Japanese red Maples. We visited Hiroshima where the Atomic bomb was dropped. .I saw a shadow on a wall which was the outline of a person who stood in front of it when the bomb dropped. Horrifying. We travelled to northern Japan on the “bullet” train. That was fun and better than a roller-coaster. The north was a beautiful region full of lakes reflecting the sky.

  CROSSING THE PACIFIC AGAIN

  By the end of July, my mother and I had to decide whether I would stay in Japan and go to school there. This would mean I would have to take three trains a day to get to school all by myself, and three trains to get home. This was a wdaunting prospect, considering I didn’t speak a word of Japanese other than, “Oh Hi yo gessie masta,” which means “Hhello.” The alternative was that I would cross the Pacific alone, back to the United States, then travel by train from Seattle to Boston by myself. I would go to Westtown, a Quaker boarding school outside of Philadelphia where several of our family had been. I decided on Westtown.

  It was exciting to be going back to the States and seeing Edee and Charlsie again. It was also scary to be going alone and going to a new school where I knew not one soul.

  My mother arranged for me to share a cabin with an older missionary lady.

  “Be careful, Edaik,” she said, “and be a good girl.” That was what she always said to me.

  The ship I sailed on out of the port of Yokohama was a freighter with a hold full of goods being shipped to the U.S.. I was lucky to get passage on it because it was the only ship crossing the Pacific at that time. My chaperone was a sweet old lady who spent most of her time in the cabin reading. I quickly got to be friendly with the Phillipino waiter who brought me all kinds of special delicacies. The officers were friendly and I got to know the captain too.

  About the third night out we ran into stormy seas. It was a typhoon, and in the northern Pacific—that was no laughing matter. The ship was tilting from side to side so badly I really thought we would sink. I was so scared I ran up to the bridge to ask the captain. He was not in the slightest concerned and told me to go back to bed. We arrived into Seattle Harbor just as the sun was setting. As I prepared to disembark I could not find my passport!!!!! I looked everywhere in all of my pockets, in my purse, even under the mattress. They wouldn’t let me into the States without my passport… What was I going to do? I panicked: I decided to go through everything, even my trunk. Lo and behold…there it was at the very bottom of my trunk! Bingo!

  As I waited for the customs officer to arrive I began to ask myself if I really did want to step off the ship onto American soil. Did I really want to return to being an American, in America, without my parents?, Oor did I really want to stay overseas, in some exotic place: as somea wild teenage girl, moving in my pink sneakers moving through this vast unknowable world.