Four Sisters of Hofei : A History (9781439125878)

by Chin, Annping

  X X, I think of you as like the moon. And, yes, I am thankful for my fortune. Yet I feel smothered by anxiety and am often in despair. (I can’t say that writing to you right now gives me happiness.)

  Shen Ts’ung-wen was not exaggerating his unhappiness. The year before, not long after he had met Chao-ho, he blurted out his feelings to her one day, all at once, and she told him that she was concentrating on her studies and did not need a boyfriend. She was a second-year student at China College, and he was her teacher.

  In the late 1920s, Shen Ts’ung-wen had created quite a stir in the literary world, winning praises with his prose. He was raised in a small town in West Hunan called Feng-huang. He had been enrolled in school since he was four, but he spent most of his childhood playing by the Yuan River and watching the goings-on in the streets and temple grounds of Feng-huang: rope makers and basket weavers working side by side and next to men shadowboxing; an umbrella store “with its door flung wide open” so that one could see a row of apprentices assembling their wares; an old man “with big glasses” concentrating on needle grinding; butchers and barbers, starch makers and dye makers; bean curd shops and shops that rented sedan chairs for weddings, funerals, and miscellaneous occasions. At the age of fifteen, he entered a military school to become a soldier, because “it was a way out, the only way out” for a young man born in West Hunan. Then a serious illness, coinciding with the death of a friend, became a turning point in his life. He did not want to die before he “had seen many places and known many things,” so he decided to leave Hunan and come to Peking to study. He wrote: “If I can’t study, then I will become a policeman. If I can’t become a policeman, then I’ll give up and not make any more plans.” This was in 1922. By the late 1920s, Shen Ts’ung-wen was a well-known writer, someone who dazzled Chinese readers with stories that were created from his recollections of West Hunan. The eminent historian and cultural reformer Hu Shih, who was the president of China College in Wusung at the time, hired him as a professor of Chinese literature, knowing that Shen did not even have a high school diploma. “With a talent like Mr. Shen,” Hu Shih remarked, “one should make exceptions.”

  In spite of what others thought of him, Shen Ts’ung-wen did not have a high estimation of himself. He never presumed that his success would or should have any sway over a woman whose affection he could only hope to win. So when Chao-ho rejected his love, he was not angry. Her rebuff simply broke him. He told Chao-ho’s best friend: “Because I love her, I have destroyed my life in the last half year. I can’t do a thing. I want to go far away, which will let her pursue her studies peacefully and spare me my miseries. I have also considered getting myself killed in a war, to free myself from these entanglements. But this is a childish thought. It won’t get me very far.”

  When Shen approached Hu Shih for a leave of absence, Hu asked him to reconsider. He even offered to help, to talk to her family if they were the obstacle. Shen begged Hu not to intervene. Instead, he asked Chao-ho’s friend, Miss Wang, to find out from her whether it would ever be possible for Chao-ho to love him or to need his love. Miss Wang told him that Chao-ho was more rational than she was emotional: “She can never be persuaded by a friend’s argument or give up her views because of a friend.” Miss Wang also warned Shen that her friend had an irrepressible nature: “Just when you are most pleased with yourself, thinking that you have convinced her, she will say, ‘I won’t.’ She still has not slipped out of her childlike temperament. If you press her on a point, then she will say no, even when she wants to go along with you. She does not care what consequence her response might cause.”

  On the evening of July 4, 1930, Chao-ho copied into her diary the conversation Miss Wang had with Shen, which was related to her in a letter. She added her thoughts at the end:

  I have been living in this world for nearly twenty years. I am not without feelings, not a piece of wood or rock. In the last ten years, my mother’s death and having to part with the teachers I loved in school moved me to tears. Violent oppressions and wide inequity between rich and poor have incensed me and stirred me to compassion. Also moonlit nights, stars at dawn, windy mornings, and rain at dusk—all weathers affect me. I feel sorrow, desolation, frustration, all sorts of emotions in my heart. But it is no more than feeling them. All this has not inspired me to write a compelling poem or pointed me to attempt some astonishing feat. I am an ordinary girl. I don’t understand what love is, the sentimental love that poets and novelists glorify in their works. I have been looking for it in my own world, and sometimes I could feel its presence in a flash, with my parents, my sisters, my friends, but only in a flash. Love appears and disappears like lightning, and when it’s over, we return to the wind and rain, to the darkened sky, to this frail and frightful world. I have always suspected that love may not exist. But they have tried to prove me wrong, especially Yun-ho. So I am confused again.

  Four days later, Chao-ho went to see Hu Shih. Lots of students and young scholars, writers and cosmopolites, had gone to see Hu Shih because he was a man who knew a wider world and had absorbed huge amounts of learning of many kinds. Some of his young visitors also believed that this man could advise them in matters of love. It was widely known at the time that when Hu was a student at Columbia University in New York, he had fallen in love with an American woman. Even though he never left his wife (their marriage had been arranged when he was twelve), Hu remained sympathetic to those who were made miserable by love, and to lovers who made other people miserable because of their love for each other.

  Chao-ho did not show up at Hu Shih’s home to seek his wisdom on this matter or any other matter. She was there to explain herself. She had learned from her friend that Shen Ts’ung-wen had let Hu Shih know about his feelings for her. She was not sure what he’d said, but since she found Shen tortuous and incoherent on the subject of love, she wanted to tell Hu herself where she stood. When she arrived, she could hear through the garden gate that a lively crowd was already in the living room. Chao-ho decided not to go in because she realized that she would probably recognize “half the people there.” Hu asked her to come back two hours later when they could talk alone. That night Chao-ho wrote in her diary:

  Thereupon, I mentioned Mr. Shen. [Mr. Hu] also told me what he’d learned from Mr. Shen about us. He praised Shen, calling him a genius and the most promising Chinese novelist right now. He went on and on about him until I made my point that I don’t love Mr. Shen. Then, he stopped. I believe he really wanted to help me with my problem. He asked me whether Mr. Shen and I could become friends. I said that in principle I didn’t see why we couldn’t but Mr. Shen was not like other people. I told him that even if we were just friends, the misunderstandings would persist, which would then be followed by quarrels and lots of them. At this point, Mr. Hu leaped to his friend’s defense again. He said, “Since the world has this genius, everyone else should help him and let him have a chance to develop his potential.” He added, “He certainly worships Miss Chang to an extreme.” In fact, he repeated this several times in our conversation. I said to him, “Too many people feel this way about me. If I have to deal with them one by one, then I won’t have time for my studies.” That kept him quiet for a while.

  Hu Shih was to explain in a letter to Shen Ts’ung-wen two days later why he was “quiet.” But before she closed her diary, Chao-ho had more thoughts about this man who was probably the most prominent public intellectual of his time and the most admired, and also a man whose work she had studied since she was a girl of nine or ten:

  Just as I was about to go, [Mr. Hu] said, “I am glad that you two have told me about this. I always feel that such things are sacred, so don’t worry, I won’t carelessly let it out.” “It’s sacred,” so “don’t worry,” “I won’t carelessly let it out.” What was he saying? When I left, I didn’t feel as if I had just talked to a famous scholar!

  It is difficult to imagine another person of Chao-ho’s age who could have responded to Hu Shih in this way. Hu Shih wa
s not a genius—he probably realized this when he called Shen Ts’ung-wen one—but most people, especially the young, looked up to him. They respected his views and his character, and the fact that he could handle problems in the Chinese exegetical tradition and issues in Western analytical philosophy with equal aplomb. Chao-ho, however, had her doubts, about his understanding of her and of human nature. She found his comments about her recent troubles banal and so saw no reason to come under his influence just because of his considerable reputation.

  Shortly after he learned about this meeting, Shen Ts’ung-wen wrote to Chao-ho. In his letter, he acknowledges his stubbornness and pays tribute to hers; he then congratulates them both for not yielding an inch. “I respect your stubbornness,” he begins. “From now on I am going to try not to put any more pressure on you. If each person can live in his stubbornness—‘I love you and you don’t love me’—then it is indeed a very good thing. When I realized this, I was not terribly crushed because it is what it has to be.” Thus, with sadness and irony, he praises the virtue of stubbornness: “I wish that your prejudice is followed by happiness—your stubbornness is your happiness.”

  Shen Ts’ung-wen’s insight into Chao-ho’s character was proof of his genius. No one else, not her best friend, her sister Yun-ho, or Hu Shih, understood this about her. And Chao-ho herself merely lived in her stubbornness—she was not self-analytical. Her diary tells us that around this time Yun-ho took her to task on a point she had made a few years earlier. Yun-ho believed that it was possible to have unconditional love, whereas Chao-ho insisted that all love is for an end, even when the person does not intend his love to be expedient. They argued all night on this question.

  Hu Shih, having formed an opinion of Chao-ho when they met, put his thoughts into a letter to Shen Ts’ung-wen and forwarded a copy to Chao-ho. It was an honest gesture. He wrote:

  Miss Chang was here two days ago. What she said on the whole agrees with what you already knew. I tried not to put any pressure on her.

  These are my observations. This woman does not understand you and, even less, your love for her. You have misplaced your affection. I said this to you the other day—love is not the only thing in life. (Those who say otherwise are mad.) We all have to withstand the test of success, and even more, that of failure. Don’t let a little girl boast that she has once broken the heart of Shen Ts’ung-wen. . . .

  That day, when I suggested that she should write to you, she said, “If I do the same to everyone, then when will I have time to study?” I was quite concerned when I heard this.

  This person is too young and too inexperienced. Therefore, she treats everyone who expressed love to her as “them.” And she takes pleasure in turning “them” away. You are just one “among many.”

  After Chao-ho read Hu Shih’s letter, she wrote a rebuttal. It was intended only for herself, so she put it in her diary.

  Mr. Hu only knows that love is precious, and he feels that as long as the love is sincere, then one should accept it. This is a very simplistic view of things. If the beloved loves the person who loves her, then there is no problem. But what if this is not the case? What if the beloved doesn’t care for the person who offers his love? If she accepts it purely because his love is sincere, then this will provide the leaven for greater trouble and suffering. Mr. Hu did not see this. (Perhaps his interests are different.) He considers Shen a genius. So there is no doubt in his mind that a woman who scorns the earnest love of genius must be too young and too inexperienced. If his advice could convince Shen to give up pursuing an ignorant and stubborn woman and thereby ease some of his pain and some of my troubles, then I would be terribly grateful. It would not matter if he did this on purpose or not.

  That night, Chao-ho thought about writing a letter to comfort Shen because “after all, he has a good heart.” Yet she was afraid to mislead him. She writes:

  This is a weakness we women have. We are full of compassion yet reticent about showing it. One shouldn’t blame us. We are meek and a little scared because our thought and action are repressed from being rigorously scrutinized. If we are incautious just once, then we are marked for life, unable to wash away the blemish left on us.

  The diary entry under July 14, 1930, is long, and it is almost as if two women had a hand in it. One exudes a childlike arrogance, unfazed by the opinions of famous men. The other is so tightly guarded and so fearful about making a misstep in her conduct that she seems years older than her age. This aspect of Chao-ho has always troubled her sister Yun-ho. We do not have the full account of their conversation about love two nights earlier. (Chao-ho wrote in her diary that Chu Kan-kan “had repeatedly urged us to go to bed,” and so she did not have time to jot down everything after Yun-ho left her room.) Probably some of their argument was about Chao-ho’s excessive vigilance. Yun-ho was a different kind of woman. She, too, was watchful of her conduct, but she had had her adventures. She believed in the possibility of love, so she was more willing to let it happen. Yun-ho also did not think that making a mistake, even in romantic love, could mar a woman’s character for life. She had more faith in a woman’s strength and resourcefulness and in the kindness of others should there be a mishap. Chao-ho was timid because she was cynical. She disliked repression and thought women had to endure more of it than men, but she would not take risks to change things.

  Yun-ho felt that her sister had not always been like this. Years later she said:

  Since childhood, Chao-ho liked to dress in men’s clothes. So she volunteered to play the role of [the woman-warrior] Hua Mu-lan. . . . Later, in the school play The Three Knights-Errant, our oldest sister was Hung Fu while she [Chao-ho] played [Hung Fu’s lover] Li Ch’ing.2 When she sat in the “dragon chair,” her feet couldn’t even touch the ground. She looked so small and shy in that chair, swinging her legs back and forth. It was very funny. Still, these were not her favorite parts. What she loved best was comical skits. She would paint her face in a mess and act in plays she invented herself, with titles like “The Multipurpose Scholar” or “The Visitor from Outer Space.” She was lively in school and often made a spectacle of herself. She would be missing from her room in the middle of the night, and we would find her dancing under the moonlight all by herself. When she saw candies, sitting on the windowsill, covered with ants, she insisted that ants had noses. Comments like this made the girls in the dorm laugh so hard that they couldn’t go back to sleep. This never had any effect on Chao-ho. She would be snoring away, as if she had nothing to do with it. What she was like then and what she is like now are completely different.

  Yun-ho insisted that “life’s hardship” changed Chao-ho. But was she so different earlier on? Her diary from 1930 already showed her as taciturn and shut in, which seemed a contradiction to her other self—the pugnacious and plucky girl Shen Ts’ung-wen fell madly in love with. According to Yun-ho and Chao-ho herself, there were many other men, besides Shen Ts’ung-wen, writing love letters to her at the time. Chao-ho rarely responded to these letters and would not send them back. She put them all in her collection, assigning each a code and a number. Among these letters, was one from a former teacher in her middle school. This man waited until she was in college to write to her and to ask her whether she would at all consider marrying him, because another girl had expressed an interest in him and he wanted to know from Chao-ho first if there was any chance of the two of them being together, before responding to the other girl. Chao-ho was stunned. She liked the teacher but had never expected him to approach her with a question like this. She wrote back, saying, “Your letter made no sense.” Her answer was blunt and curt so that there was no misunderstanding.

  When Shen Ts’ung-wen first fell in love with Chao-ho, he found words like these—spoken without feeling—both heartbreaking and entrancing. He wanted Chao-ho to know about feelings she had never known before. At the same time, he wanted her to be spared if she was living in perfect happiness. In his letter of June 1931, he wrote:

  I am able to see the
moon countless times in a year, and it is the same moon wherever I go. This selfless moon not only illuminates every corner, but it has been glowing since I was a child. But you, who are my private moon, are not always in sight. Human conditions have been clouding my view. Days, not nights, have taken away some of my youth. They cannnot dull the radiance you have impressed on me, but they are slowly forcing me to change. “A woman in a poem can never age. Not so the poet who is creating her—he is already older.” Whenever I think of this, I am filled with sadness. Our lives are fragile. We are not any more able to endure a storm than flowers. Thus looking at human life with nature’s eyes, I would never regard lightly the randomly entwining tendrils of human relations. With any one person, it can happen only once. All my life I have seen only one perfect moon. . . . I have crossed many bridges. I have glanced at many clouds. I have tasted many kinds of wine. But I have loved only one woman, who is always at the perfect age. . . .

  X X, . . . I regard you as my goddess. I respect you. But for convenience I must explain some things about which even true goddesses might get a bit confused. . . . Many strange things happen in this world. . . . For instance, whenever I think of the person I love, my blood flows faster than usual and I become feverish. And when I hear someone mention this person’s name, I am both excited and alarmed. What is the reason? Books like to speak of such things, but none can give a clear explanation. Some call it an illness. . . .

  You have never been struck with this illness, so you don’t know how serious it can be. Some people, I believe, will never catch it. In the same way, some will never catch the measles or typhoid, so they will never believe that typhoid can cause a person to go mad. X X, I think you are unable to contract this illness, so you don’t understand the people who have it. It’s a blessing. Because this illness is the nemesis of a childlike heart, I hope you will always remain a child and will never have to understand these things.