Four Sisters of Hofei : A History (9781439125878)

by Chin, Annping

  After the war ended in 1945, Chao-ho and her children stayed in the southwest for nearly another year. After the Americans pulled out, she was able to buy the butter and canned fruits they left behind. “I baked cakes in coffee tins,” she recalls, “and the children were ecstatic. Life wasn’t easy, but I loved it, especially when I could make the children happy.”

  Shen Ts’ung-wen returned to Peking first, half a year ahead of his family. Peking University hired him as a professor of Chinese literature, and this entitled him to faculty housing in a large yard on Chung-lao Lane, with twenty-some other families. Shen began building his collection again, “not only lacquer boxes and old books, but blue-and-white porcelain, and large amounts of antique papers from the Sung and Ming.” He did a lot of buying before his wife came home.

  Chao-ho and her two boys slowly made their journey back to Peking, first by rail from K’un-ming to Shanghai, and then by boat from Shanghai to Tientsin through Tsingtao. The last part of the trip from Tientsin was again on a train. “The train was filthy, crowded, and slow,” her younger son recalls. “A grayish-yellow hue dominated the landscape. Only the large and small military pillboxes stationed along the way made an impression on me.” Chao-ho sewed little pockets on her children’s undergarments and placed in each two silver dollars and a slip of paper with their father’s address in Peking. She had heard that Communist troops were cutting railroad lines and capturing trains, and so she was preparing her children in case they got separated in the confusion.

  No crisis visited them on their journey. Soon the family was together again and settled to a new rhythm in the city. Their son writes:

  Although we were reunited, we no longer sat around a table, laughing and chatting to our hearts’ content, like the way we were on Dragon Lane [in Ch’eng-kung]. Dad was very busy. He did not have time to play with us. I didn’t mind. I was older, and Dad was a little different. . . .

  After a while, I realized that he would study an old tree, a peony petal, or stare at a pottery, an old building, and quietly murmur to himself, “Now, that’s beautiful.” It was just like him in Yunnan, lying on a slope behind our rented house, watching the clouds. Only now he sighed more. He loved beautiful things but would always worry about their loss, their destruction.

  Hu-hu often went with his father to antique stores and antique stalls, looking around. Shen Ts’ung-wen preferred browsing to making a purchase, and when he bought something, he did not mind if the bowl or jar had a crack or a chip. His son said: “I had no interest in these things but would never give up a chance to be with him. We would walk the streets of Peking, from the south side to the north, covering several shops on a trip. There was a lot to say to each other.” On these outings, Shen Ts’ung-wen told his son about his life with a young writer in Peking in the 1920s, pointing out to him the apartment he once shared with her and her lover, Hu Yeh-p’ing. Hu was executed in 1931 as a Communist agitator, and the friend, Ting Ling, “had gone to the other side, meaning the Eighth Army, the Communist side.” Shen wrote three books about the couple and never wavered in his affection for them. His son said:

  My dad would never deny his association with someone who had been a friend, and he would never conceal his affection for a friend even after the world had ostracized and trampled on him. His friends could have beliefs completely different from his and they could have chosen paths different from his. But there must be some good in them, in their lives or in their characters, which Dad saw and admired. So he would never forget them.

  During the first two years after their return, their home in Peking was often full of guests. Many young people came to ask advice about writing. Shen Ts’ung-wen did not worry if they were university students or not—he treated them all equally. But even as he persisted in this way of regarding his friends, the world around him was changing, and people he knew well were formulating positions and taking sides. In the summer of 1948, he had a brief reprieve from the political storm in Peking when he was offered the use of the northeast corner of the imperial summer palace. Peking’s mayor had originally planned to use this “garden within the garden” as his summer home, but the civil war put such plans on hold, so the rooms in the corner building stood empty. Yang Chen-sheng, who knew the mayor, got permission to move into these rooms that summer, and he took along several friends and their families—among them Shen Ts’ung-wen and Chang Chao-ho. Chao-ho could not stay very long; her sister-in-law took ill and needed care, so she returned to Peking. In this short span of no more than two weeks, with one in the city and other in the suburb, twenty-five miles away, Shen Ts’ung-wen wrote Chao-ho several letters. He says in the first:

  At this moment, as I am writing to you, I feel that I am composing a love letter to you again. It’s that sort of happiness—full of affection and small things I have been saving up to tell you. Maybe it’s hard for you to understand, but I have to be alone in order to digest you completely, and to let you become a belief and a part of my character and strength. When we are together, your commands keep me dazed and addled. Recently there seem to be a tad more of them than before. A truly holy mother is taciturn.18 I know that your orders are a form of love, but it seems that you are giving me more than my share. So my mind has become duller and more stupefied.

  In this letter, Shen Ts’ung-wen seems more assured about his marriage and less afraid of his wife’s judgment. He knows how to handle her now. He humors her, calls her “the holy mother” and “my little mom,” and even tries remonstrance, but always gently and playfully. He also loves her more strongly now. He writes:

  Once I am apart from you, you seem to be moving nearer to me. It is a slow getting closer, so what I perceive must be the pure beauty of your character, mixed with impressions and memory. . . .

  My little mom, life itself is a kind of miracle, and you are the miracle within it. I am so pleased that in my lifetime, I possess so many lovely portraits. What I find even more moving is those eight years in the Yunnan countryside. You accepted life’s circumstances with such courage and strength. How can there be a novel or a movie more compelling than this? Every scene is dazzling and gorgeous, yet the background is plain. My little mom, recently I feel even more blessed than before because I can see, on your face, truly joyful smiles. Your empathy for me is also complete. This must be a new beginning for us. Let’s pursue it, and let’s rearrange our life. We must try to apply this love to our work. I want to write another chapter of “Housewife” to celebrate our new beginning. . . .

  Don’t worry about my “weariness.” I will try to resolve it with humor. Why don’t you and Lung-lung go to Hsi-tan and do some shopping? Buy beef. We can afford to put beef on the table. I want to use this time of being apart from you to become youthful again. I want to write to you every day. . . .

  The tone of this letter suggests a Shen Ts’ung-wen fourteen years earlier, when he was writing to his bride of three months with the fresh eagerness of a smitten youth. His words are still lyrical, but they mean more now because he and Chao-ho have lived through a war together and raised two children, and he has come to accept her smile as a smile, not something else. He calls her “a kind of miracle”; he says she creates a “dazzling” scene against a “plain” background.

  By the end of the war, Chao-ho had come back to him as his muse. Shen Ts’ung-wen was impatient to start again, to write as he used to in the early thirties. He could feel the rush. In the next letter, he tells her about a conversation he had with their younger son that day:

  Young Hu-hu said, “Dad, some people claim that you are the Chinese Tolstoy. One reader in ten in this world knows Tolstoy’s name but not yours. I think you are not as good as he.”

  I said, “You are right. I am not as good. This is because I married and had a good wife. Then the two of you arrived, one after the other. Then there was the war. In these ten years or so, I didn’t do much, just trying to get by. My accomplishments are shabby. I can’t be compared to Tolstoy.”

  “So you h
ave to try harder.”

  “Right. I must. In fact, I’ve been telling this to your mom. I want to have a good writing spurt. I want to write ten, twenty books.”

  “What? You can write that many, just like that?” (Hu-hu was being polite. If it were you, you would say I was boasting.)

  “As long as I want to write, it shouldn’t be hard to write that many. But to write well is difficult.”

  Shen Ts’ung-wen did not finish even one of those “ten, twenty books.” And he did not attempt another chapter of “Housewife.” He had the desire to write, but forces beyond his control took it away from him.

  By the autumn of 1948, the Nationalists had lost Manchuria and most of the northern provinces. By December, the Communists had surrounded Peking, and for two months the city was under siege. The pressure was, on the whole, psychological. Chao-ho’s sons recall that the artillery fire often missed its targets, hitting residential areas instead of arsenals. But children like them were euphoric, as children often are about any disruption of routine. They helped with digging ditches and storing food and fuel: “We were so excited about the final confrontation in Peking.”

  Most people were unsure about what a Communist revolution might bring. The auguries were not good, yet they were reluctant to put themselves on the road again even when they had a chance to leave. “What could Chinese do to the Chinese?” they would reason to themselves, and hunker down. On December 7, Shen Ts’ung-wen wrote to a contributor to a literary supplement, the I-shih-pao, of which he was an editor:

  Mr. Chi-liu, We can’t publish your piece because our journal has closed. Everything must change. . . . Yet when a person approaches middle age, his temperament is set. Or maybe this person is, by nature, inward inclined and short on social skills. So for years when he writes, he always begins with thinking and contemplation. But now suddenly, he has to begin with a [political] belief. I think that it would be difficult for him to make this drastic change. So after a while, even if he is not forced to put down his pen, he will have to. Some people from our generation will end up like this. It is different for those who are at the peak of their youth. They are pliable and adaptable, and their characters and views have not yet taken definite shapes. They can learn to write from this new point of view. They can write for human progress and service. It is much easier for them to bring about a fairer and more reasonable society.

  Shen Ts’ung-wen was already anticipating the rest of his life even before the Communists marched into Peking. Still, he could not have known how the end would unfold for him and for many like him. Already in March 1948 he had some inkling as to how he might fare in the new society, should the Communist revolution succeed, and what the new commissars might want from him. In the first issue of a Communist journal published that month, he was castigated in two separate essays. One called him “a panderer to the landlord class” and “a slavish dependent on the wealthy.” Another called his works “peach pink” or “soft porn.” The second of his critics was the veteran revolutionary writer Kuo Mo-jo, whose plays Chao-ho and her sisters had performed when they were students in Le-i.

  These words must have stung Shen Ts’ung-wen, but as his letters to Chao-ho that summer attest, they could not have sent him into depression. His love for his wife and children and his desire to write were still much more powerful than criticisms that were empty of aesthetic content. In November, he was still strong enough to defend his position in a literary forum that literature should come from the person creating it, from “thinking and contemplation” and not from any outside beliefs. But something happened in December. First there was the siege. Shen must have known that by the end of it, he would have to terminate his literary career. In his December 7 letter, he says that even if he is “not forced to put down [his] pen, [he] will have to.” Then the students on the campus of Peking University began to denounce him in wall posters. This must have been a bigger blow than the earlier disparagements because Shen had taught some of these students and had grown fond of them.

  By January 1949, Shen Ts’ung-wen was clearly ill. His younger son writes:

  The sound of artillery fire was subsiding with each passing day. Finally there was silence.

  The repeated explosions in Dad’s head were just beginning. Gradually he sank into a hopeless and isolated state. “It’s time to settle scores,” he would say. He felt he was being watched, and he talked in a low voice, insisting that there was someone next door listening. He thought that a lot of people were having a hand in his life; that they were methodically tightening a big net around him, forcing him to destroy himself.

  His son says that no one could help his father unravel the tangle he was in because it was all in his head: “For a long time, he would sit and mutter to himself, ‘Life is frail. The life of a gentle person is frail.’ ” His family was “slow at” understanding what was haunting him, and this in itself worried him. “But tens of millions of people all over the country were in a mortal struggle,” his son explained. “A writer who belonged to neither side was ill. So why should anyone care?” Still, friends came by, bringing comforting words and food “that was difficult to come by in a city under siege.” Chao-ho was patient and constant. She would greet everyone and try to smile, but she was “clearly tired.”

  Five days before the commander of the Nationalist troops in Peking handed over the city to the Communists, friends who were teaching at Tsinghua University invited Shen to come and stay with them for a while. The campus was about twelve miles northwest of the city, in the suburbs. It was quieter. During his two-month convalescence, Chao-ho probably never went to see him. They still wrote to each other. His letters were close to being “ravings of a madman.” He writes to her: “How do I thank you? I am so tired. I need rest. It’s only because of you, I am struggling to survive.” She to him: “Because of your illness, I’ve been so anxious and nervous. If you can come home full of life, it would be a total relief to me.” She also tells him to rest his mind, to chat with his friends, and to play with their children. “There is absolutely no need to do any writing. Even letters, the less the better.”

  On one occasion, Shen writes his letter as a paragraph-by-paragraph gloss to her letter from the day before:

  Is it nice staying on the Tsinghua campus? Yu-t’ang, Meng Chia, and Kuang-t’ien, I believe, must have all arrived. Try to listen to their conversations. Otherwise you will be daydreaming again.

  [My head is useless. How could I be daydreaming?] . . .

  Only your own willpower can help you to recover. No one else could do it for you. It shouldn’t be too hard. Just give it a try.

  [What is my willpower? Everything I have written is improper. That’s what other people say. Now I don’t even know what I’ve written.] . . .

  The weather is pleasant. I am sure it is nice where you are. The mood in the city is a bit heavy.19 I didn’t let the kids go out.

  [Let me have a not-so-painful rest. Let me not ever wake up again. No one understands what I say. Not one friend is willing or dares to acknowledge that I am not mad.]

  You should get a haircut and take a shower. Get Jui-chih to help you.

  [What’s the point?]

  If you have a letter for me, Jui-chih or someone else can bring it into town. I hope so much to know how you are feeling and what you’ve been thinking. I do hope that you are optimistic.

  [My little mom, why should I be pessimistic? I have finished everything. I can rest now. But if I force myself to be agreeable and submissive so that I can have some temporary peace, what good will this kind of optimism do? Let other people be optimistic. I am not pessimistic.]

  The cotton underwear is yours. When Chong-ho20 returns to school in two or three days, you can give your laundry to him, and he can bring it back for me.

  [What difference does it make if my clothes are washed or not? Do you suppose that I will be better if I am cleaner? I should get a divorce. Otherwise this will drag her and the kids down.

  My little mom, no
need for you to write to me anymore. It doesn’t matter if I exist or not. All is the same because I know life is no more than this. Everything has lost its connection to me. People around me are trying to serve me and to entertain me. It’s like a ritual sacrifice, only I am still alive.]

  Chao-ho’s letter was returned to her the next day with her husband’s comments. It must have been painful for her to read them through. Some things in it were not kind, and he talked about a divorce. She wrote him another letter the same day. It was an emotional letter, but not about what he had written the day before. She mainly wanted to tell him how moved she was by what their friends had done for them. She said that they had galvanized her, making her feel even more determined to see herself and her husband through this crisis. But she added:

  Wang Sun mentioned another person—the one you have considered your friend, but who does not feel the same way about you—and things that were truly upsetting. When he said you were too honest and naïve, I couldn’t hold back my tears. This was the first time I cried in front of a guest. Later I felt quite embarrassed about the whole thing. After Wang Sun left, I wept and wept and felt much better.

  The “other person” was probably Ting Ling (Ding Ling), the writer friend who, with her lover Hu Yeh-p’ing, in 1924 and 1925 shared their lodging with Shen Ts’ung-wen in Peking. In those days, the three were inseparable. They read and wrote in the same space, pooled what little resources they had, and helped each other to get their bits and pieces published. After the Nationalists executed Hu in 1931, Ting Ling threw herself into left-wing activities. She joined the Communist Party, wrote revolutionary stories, edited communist publications, and helped the party to indoctrinate young recruits. She was kidnapped by the Kuomintang in 1933, lived under house arrest for three years, escaped to the Communist area in 1936, and made her way to Yenan during the war. In 1949, Ting Ling was riding high in the victors’ camp—one of few writers who could claim to have lived through the Yenan experience and to have sat down and discussed land reform with the peasants. She had just published a novel on the contradictions of peasants and landlords and was given her own literary magazine to run. And now she stood with other Communist writers in their judgment of Shen Ts’ung-wen—this despite the fact that in the 1930s, it was Shen who had seen her through her loneliest and most desperate period, right after Hu was killed, and it was Shen who had persisted in writing about her, after she disappeared in 1933, so that others would not forget her.