Four Sisters of Hofei : A History (9781439125878)

by Chin, Annping

  It was Lu Ying who wanted to move to Soochow. She and Wu-ling lived in Shanghai for five years and had four more children there. During that period, they had two thefts, and they changed houses three times. She figured that it was safer to live in Soochow, and there they would be able to afford a larger house with a bigger garden for their growing family. Once Wu-ling went along with her decision, Lu Ying, who was the more resourceful and energetic of the two, took charge of finding the right home for them. The fact that she had just had a baby and was pregnant with another did not faze her. Two servants accompanied her to Soochow, and for several days Lu Ying went house hunting in a sedan chair.

  The house Lu Ying chose had many amenities: a room for each of her children and their nurse-nannies and plenty of space for guests, servants, and storage. But its most attractive feature was the gardens attached to the house. Lu Ying was entranced with the pretty pavilions and cool ponds on her plot, and the two yü-lan magnolias in shades of white and blue. She also liked the fact that she and her husband each could have a study. Lu Ying’s was the smaller of the two. She spent most of her early mornings there, practicing calligraphy and doing the accounts. On the wall of her study there was a horizontal board. Of the four characters inscribed on it, her daughters today remember only two, lan (orchid) and shih (room). In front of her desk was a row of glass windows, which faced a miniature mountain and two banana trees. Across the garden was her husband’s study. His study had French windows and a door that led into the garden. Lu Ying and Wu-ling could actually gaze at each other from their separate studies; sometimes Wu-ling would walk across the garden to his wife’s side, and the two would chat with the window between them.

  Wu-ling rarely demonstrated his affection, but his children knew that he loved their mother. They realized this even more deeply after their mother was gone and their father married again and became more anxious and less sure of himself with his second wife. Their stepmother was strong-willed and needed appeasement. Their mother had been strong-willed, too, but their father did not fret in her presence, and he never seemed weak by comparison.

  None of Lu Ying’s children could describe her features precisely—the size of her hands, the shape of her ears, or whether her arms were soft or bony. They believe that she must have unbound her feet long before, when she was a young lady in Yang-chou or right after she married, because she walked steadily, not in a swaying gait. Lu Ying preferred muted colors, light shades in spring and summer, and dark shades in fall and winter; she avoided black because it portended misfortune. She wore trousers at home, and skirts on top of trousers when she went out, and always with a silk or cotton jacket. Her clothes were all made by Shanghai seamstresses, so they followed Shanghai fashion—collars moving up or down, fabrics in floral or checker prints. The only photo her children have of her was taken in a studio; it shows her standing in front of a dramatic sea view, with crags looming in the distance and waves lashing against the rocks. They have reproduced this photo many times, but the details of her have not been lost: perfectly arched brows and witty eyes, averted from the camera; also a strong chin and a generous mouth with a full lower lip. Her dress was Edwardian, probably ten years behind the fashion in Europe. Her children say that this was the only time they saw their mother in Western clothes. Lu Ying probably rented the outfit from the studio to play up to the occasion of being photographed. An evening bag dangles from her left hand, while her right hand lifts her full skirt just slightly to reveal the tip of her shoe. Her hat has been the subject of much discussion in the family because it is elaborate and big, and the ornamental flowers are piled up high around the broad brim. (A grandson that Lu Ying could not have known asked his father years later whether his grandmother had sold steamed rice cakes. Her hat, he remarked, looked just like the ones the rice cake peddlers wore on the streets of Chungking.)

  Lu Ying was a woman of uncommonly good sense, and maybe this was the reason she believed in fox spirits. Many Chinese women in traditional society shared the belief. They did not see it as a reflection of ignorance or something at odds with their religious practices. Shih-hsiu had a fox spirit altar in her Buddhist chapel. Lu Ying had one in the house; twice a month she made offerings of eggs, cakes, and dried fruits to the fox spirits. An aunt in her mother’s family claimed fox spirits lived in the storage room above her, and Lu Ying learned from this woman that foxes could give protection to a house if the human dwellers respected their privacy. A daughter-in-law in the fox family was said to be the liaison between the two worlds, and if there had been a breach of propriety, she would appear in the aunt’s room in the form of a woman, asking her to tell her family to show more restraint. One New Year’s Eve, the fox-woman apparently brought cakes, dried fruits, jujubes, and gift money for the aunt’s newborn. Lu Ying’s aunt accepted the sweets but not the money, realizing that the fox must have stolen it from another family. On this occasion, the fox sat by this woman’s bedside, and the two chatted like old friends.

  Other than strange stories like these, Lu Ying told her children very little about her own family. Her children remember having visited their mother’s home in Yang-chou. A photograph of them sitting in a row in front of their mother’s childhood house still exists. But none of them knew their maternal grandparents because both had died by the time they came along. The children give conflicting accounts of what kind of work their grandfather had done or how he had acquired his wealth. Some claim that he was a merchant, while others insist that he was an official working in the Salt Commission. Had her parents been alive while her own children were growing up, Lu Ying probably would have returned home more often, and we would have been able to learn more about them. Yun-ho recalls a Hofei song that describes the ambiguous relationship a married woman had with her own family in traditional Chinese society:

  Big moon, small moon,

  It’s best to meet our young lady when it’s shady and cool.

  Brother sees her,

  Holds a parasol to welcome her in.

  Mother sees her,

  Two rows of tears come tumbling down.

  Sister-in-law sees her,

  Hides in her room

  And refuses to come out.

  “Sister-in-law, sister-in-law,

  Please come out.

  I won’t eat your food or drink your wine.

  Just call me your little sister,

  And I will be on my way.”

  Sister-in-law walks her to the gate,

  Lifts her silk skirt,

  And bows three times.

  Mother walks her to the family graves,

  Lifts her silk skirt,

  And wipes her tears.

  Brother walks to the willow bank,

  Asks her when she will be coming home again.

  “Time and again,

  If Mom and Dad are alive,

  But if they are gone,

  Never again,

  Not until the iron trees are in bloom.”1

  We know that Lu Ying was strongly attached to her brothers. It was to them she would go for advice whenever she was put in charge of delicate matters that involved the well-being of the Chang clan. Lu Ying knew that any misstep on her part might lead to bad feelings among relatives, which could not be easily mended. When the descendents of Chang Shu-sheng decided to go their separate ways, the widows of Chang Shu-sheng’s three sons entrusted Lu Ying with the task of dividing their joint holdings. Lu Ying was barely thirty at the time and had only a daughter-in-law status.

  The Chang family holdings included tens of thousands of acres of land and many commercial ventures, plus paintings, antiques, books, and caches of gold ingots, gold leaves, and jewelry. To work out something that would satisfy all parties was extremely difficult. It was a daunting task just to divide the land, because to do it equitably the arbiter would have to balance the quantity of the land against its location and the quality of the soil. Lu Ying worked with her older brother on the technical questions, but the overall principles she followe
d reflected her judgment. She thought that since her husband was adopted into the first branch and the second branch was also without a direct heir, the best properties in their joint holdings should go to the youngest branch, the only branch that could claim to be Chang Shu-sheng’s true descendents. The three elderly widows applauded the fairness of her decision.

  On the same occasion, Lu Ying had to handle another question, which was just as touchy. The widows all wanted a large amount of cash as part of their settlement, to help them cover the expenses they would need to set up their separate households. The Changs did not have that kind of money in the bank; most of their assets were in land and urban real estate, and to liquidate some of them for cash would take time and could not be done easily. At the end, Lu Ying decided to sell a large portion of the gold ingots the Chang family had put in their bank safe-deposit box. Gold was highly speculative at the time because the world was at war, and it happened that gold was selling at a high price when Lu Ying was desperate for cash. But it was still a gamble. From all accounts, she acted without first asking for her mother-in-law’s consent. In fact, most of the family did not know how she was able to produce so much cash on such short notice. A few months later, gold prices tumbled, and Lu Ying bought back most of the gold she had sold. She and Chao-ho’s nurse-nanny, Chu Kan-kan, quietly returned the bags of ingots to the bank. Lu Ying’s daughters, who later learned about this incident from Chu Kan-kan, liked the idea that their mother was decisive and willing to take risks. They also acknowledged that luck was on her side.

  Lu Ying trusted all the nurse-nannies in her family. She relied on these women to take care of her children’s needs and to discipline them when they misbehaved. But she also depended on them for special tasks, especially those that required discretion. She knew all the nurse-nannies well. She understood their strengths and talents and how to put them to use. Chu Kan-kan, for instance, was a serious woman, strict with children and dogged in her principles; she kept things to herself. So Lu Ying gave her the responsibility of looking after her room and assisting her with her toilette every morning. Although these were menial jobs, they allowed Chu Kan-kan to be alone with her mistress at least an hour a day, and often Lu Ying would divulge what was on her mind.

  Yun-ho’s nurse-nanny, Tou Kan-kan, on the other hand, was someone who was fiercely loyal but partial to a fault. She was also a good cook. Lu Ying put her in charge of preparing her breakfast, which she had privately with her husband every morning, and of taking care of her during her month of confinement after childbirth. Since Lu Ying had a child nearly every year, Tou Kan-kan’s service was always in demand. Yun-ho claimed that her nurse-nanny was a wizard in the kitchen: “Her chicken soup was divine, and so were her potted chicken and fish, and her salted ducks and gizzards.” Lu Ying herself did not follow the traditional custom of “entering the kitchen three days after her wedding, and personally preparing soups and stews for her mother-in-law,” but she was skilled at making pastries and Hofei delicacies: tender pancakes, crispy rice cakes, chive pockets, and shepherd’s purse dumplings. Tou Kan-kan learned these dishes from her, and would supplement Lu Ying’s private meals with some of her own specialties.

  There was also Kao Kan-kan, who was born with unusual intelligence. She knew how to solve numerical problems even though she had never learned arithmetic. Lu Ying would read out a question printed in the local newspaper—How many chickens and how many rabbits are in a cage if there are altogether x number of heads and y number of legs?—and Kao Kan-kan would be the first to give the answer. She had her own way of conceptualizing the problem and seeing the solution, which always amazed Lu Ying’s children. Kao Kan-kan also had an extraordinary memory, which proved to be extremely useful to Lu Ying, who was in charge of sending gifts to relatives and family friends on their birthdays and on major holidays.

  Gift giving among the Chinese gentry was a refined art. There were rules and protocols, but in order for it to work—or in order for it to give pleasure—the gift had to reflect the sender’s taste and her awareness of the recipient’s age, status, and temperament. Gifts for an elderly person, for instance, would usually include a plate of steamed buns shaped like “peaches of immortality,” a bowl of longevity noodles, a string of firecrackers, a pouch of quality cut tobacco, a crock of rice wine, two tins of top-grade green tea, and a large joint of smoked ham. This part was easy. But the sender also had to enclose two extra presents intended only for the recipient, and this required thought and specialized knowledge. Lu Ying had both, but she also depended on Kao Kan-kan’s memory so that she did not leave anyone out or send the same present to someone twice in a row. Kao Kan-kan was illiterate, but even without keeping a written record she never muddled up one relative with another, and she never forgot anyone who was on her mental list; she simply did not make mistakes.

  All the nurse-nannies did their best for Lu Ying. They said that they were merely reciprocating her generosity to them. Lu Ying always welcomed relatives of her children’s nurse-nannies to her home, and she allowed all women servants to have their children stay with them if this was what they wanted. For a while, Chu Kan-kan, Tou Kan-kan, and Ch’en Kan-kan each had either a son or a grandson with her. Then there was Kao Kan-kan’s daughter and a maid’s daughter called Chü-chih, both of whom grew up with Lu Ying’s own daughters.

  Three years before she died, Lu Ying began teaching all the nurse-nannies to read. Whether she was repaying their devotion to her and her children or acting on some higher principle we cannot be sure, but by the next year she had enlisted her daughters’ help, and her private literacy campaign was well on its way. Yun-ho writes:

  The smartest and the most conscientious student was Chu Kan-kan, my younger sister Chao-ho’s nurse-nanny. Every morning as she combed my mother’s hair, my mother would teach her to recognize anywhere from ten to twenty characters. My nurse-nanny, Tou Kan-kan, was my student, but she was an underachiever. Whenever someone asked her, “How many words do you recognize?” she would reply, “Of words big as watermelons, I could read a bushel.” This, of course, brought great shame to me, who was her instructor.

  Lu Ying also taught her own daughters to read before they were five. Yun-ho faintly remembers having stubbornly resisted her mother’s initial efforts “to enlighten” her. Then one day after she tried to steal out of the nursery during a lesson, her mother spanked her. Humiliated and sad, she cried herself to sleep, and that night she wet her bed. By the next morning, she was ready to learn her characters. She claimed that within weeks she was able to catch up with her younger sister. Everyone in the family said that when she peed on her bed that night, she got rid of her muddle-headedness.

  With the exception of this episode, Lu Ying and her husband never physically punished their daughters. When a child misbehaved, they would tell her to stand in a small back room alone, to reflect on what she had done. And when she felt regret and was ready to apologize, she was let out. From the children’s point of view years later, this form of discipline was, on the whole, inconsequential. First of all, it did not apply to the oldest, Yuan-ho, who, being the grandmother’s favorite child, was exempt from any type of punishment while the grandmother was alive. Chao-ho was also exempt because she was too young to stand in a dark room alone. Finally there was Yun-ho, who simply could not be disciplined because she, at that age, never felt any remorse and so would never apologize for her action even when it meant that she might have to spend a long time in the back room. Meanwhile, her nurse-nanny, Tou Kan-kan, would be on her knees, howling and pleading with her mistress to let her little Yun-ho out. Yun-ho said, “Tou Kan-kan was so sad and so relentless in her sadness when I was in trouble that I believe she suffered more on these occasions than when she lost her own husband.”

  When the Changs were still living in Shanghai, their daughters were not allowed outside their garden walls. The heavy gate was always chained when the children were playing in the courtyard; a gatekeeper was never more than a few steps away. It was
Wu-ling’s mother’s idea to have her granddaughters confined at home. For at least a thousand years, gentry girls and women had spent most of their lives in their family compounds. In the early twentieth century, this practice was beginning to change. When Wu-ling proposed that he send his daughters to a modern-style grammar school, he pointed out that several of their girl cousins were already attending schools in Shanghai. His mother was not impressed. She said: “ How could you let your daughters suffer! At school they only have cold food to eat. Cold food is bad for their health.” Wu-ling did not argue any further, and Lu Ying also went along with her mother-in-law’s decision. They did this in order not to upset her, not because her argument had persuaded them. Yet even after the grandmother died, the girls continued to study with tutors at home. This was at Lu Ying’s insistence; she did not want to disobey her mother-in-law’s wish even after the old woman was dead.

  The Chang sisters’ paternal grandmother was quite different from the grandaunt who adopted Ch’ung-ho. She had very little education, and even though she was a Buddhist, she only chanted the Buddha’s name. Unlike her sister-in-law Shih-hsiu, she could not read sutras. Yuan-ho said: “Grandaunt had learning and cultivation, and her world reached far beyond her courtyard and her family. But Grandmother was bound to her home, and so was the extent of her empathy.” Nonetheless, this grandmother, in the eyes of her immediate family, was an amiable woman—gentle, devout, and very loving. Her family never interfered with how she did things; they never questioned whether her ways made sense or whether they brought any benefits. She was the grandmother, the old matriarch. And it never occurred to her that she should be answerable to anyone other than the Buddha and her ancestors. Her family accepted this. They also complied with her demands because these were so few and her intentions were always good.

  This grandmother loved her daughter-in-law. Every time Lu Ying was in labor, she would also be busy at work, paying obeisance to the four directions on her prayer mat until the baby was born. This was an act of empathy, and also the only way she knew how to beseech the Buddha and all the benevolent spirits to grant the mother and her child a safe passage. A bad leg made the effort strenuous, so by the time the baby was born, the grandmother was usually exhausted.