by R Yang
Aunty's mother had many skills, which were not the ones described in traditional Chinese fiction, such as playing the lute, painting, and making poetry. Her skills were practical, which she tried to teach her daughters. Yet as the Chinese saying puts it, "The five fingers are not of the same length." Over the years, the five daughters each became especially good at some of the mother's skills.
Aunty's older sister, for example, became an excellent cook. Aunty, who was the second, surpassed others in making clothes. The third sister died in her thirties, long before I was born, so I did not know much about her. The fourth sister excelled in embroidery, while the fifth specialized in making snacks.
Looking back on it, I felt that these skills were like invisible dowries Aunty's mother gave her daughters. If in the future, their husbands turned out to be decent as well as successful, the daughters would be traditional housewives, and the dowry would not be tapped. But in case something went wrong, as in Aunty's case, she would be able to survive on her own.
As for Aunty's brother, the only male child who was also the youngest, he was of course "the crane among chicks." At home he was pampered by his parents, waited on hand and foot by his five sisters. He was sent to school for a few years to learn to read and write. In the future he would carry on the family's surname as well as the hereditary handicraft. He would bear the ancestors many sons and grandsons. The daughters, on the other hand, would soon be married into other families.
When Aunty reached the age of seventeen, a marriage was arranged for her. She was to marry a man from the Tian family of pastry, another family in which the men had been the emperor's craftsmen for generations. Everybody thought this was a perfect match. The parents on both sides were happy and there was no dispute about the dowry. All was arranged through a matchmaker. Later the Tian family gave betrothal gifts to Aunty's family. When her parents accepted such gifts, Aunty's "lifelong big affair" was settled. The fact that Aunty had never set eyes on the man who was to become her husband did not bother anybody. Marriages in China had always been arranged this way. Aunty's duty was just to obey her parents. Meanwhile she still had a few months to pray to the gods in heaven that her husband be a decent man.
Then came "the day of her great happiness." According to an ancient custom, the bride must weep when she leaves her parents' home, so as to show that she is a filial daughter. Aunty had no difficulty com plying with this. In fact, she told me that she almost cried her eyes out, when the red sedan chair carried her away from her own home to that of a total stranger.
Maybe the gods heard Aunty's prayers. Her husband turned out to be a decent man. He had a few years' education, not enough to make him a scholar, yet it was sufficient to convince him that pastry-making was not for him. "Ten thousand trades are lowdown, only study is sublime." Nonetheless, he was a prudent and law-abiding man. He did not drink, gamble, or beat his wife.
By the time he and Aunty got married, the last emperor had abdicated. The emperor's craftsmen lost their hereditary jobs. Aunty's husband found a position in the new government. Although he was just a small clerk earning a small salary in a small office under the ministry of education, many people envied him. For in those years jobs in the civil service were extremely hard to come by. It was much easier for a young man to become a soldier. The warlords were fighting for power and territory all over China. But Aunty's husband did not have the right stuff to be a soldier. So he was grateful that he had his small job, which enabled his family to live in peace for a few years.
Aunty, in those years, was a traditional housewife. First she had a son. Three years later, she had a daughter. The husband's income could not support a family of four, but Aunty made ends meet through hard work. She took care of the babies herself. In the meantime she cooked, shopped around for the least expensive groceries, washed everybody's clothes, and kept the house clean. On top of that, the family never needed to buy shoes and clothes. Aunty made them at home.
Years later, she made shoes and clothes for us too. That, of course, was after my parents used up their savings. I remember how she did this: the silver thimble she wore on her middle finger shone like a diamond ring. The needle she used moved so fast through the fabric that it seemed alive, a tiny whitebait swimming vigorously upstream in a creek. From time to time, she scratched the needle against the side of her head, to oil it. After that the needle moved even faster.
All her life, Aunty had never touched a sewing machine. In Switzerland Mother offered to buy her one.
"No! I don't want it!"
"It'll save you time. Try it. It's easy."
"Easy, save time, but ugly! Look at these stitches. My stitches are invisible on the outside. Can the machine do that?"
After Mother gave up the idea, Aunty continued to bear a grudge against the machine that could sew even faster than she. In the past, no woman in her neighborhood could boast that. Aunty used to be very proud of the fact. As for me, years later it turned out that somehow I too enjoy sewing with a needle. It is slow, but I like the feeling. Stitch by stitch. The needle follows the heart. The heart is filled with peace. Unlike Aunty, I do have a sewing machine though. Once in a while I lend it to a friend from China. Most of the time, it sits in my attic gathering dust.
The house Aunty and her husband lived in was plain: gray brick walls, a small courtyard, three rooms facing south, and a kitchen, tiled roof overgrown with grass that leaked from time to time, windows with no glass but rice paper on them ... Nonetheless the house belonged to Aunty's husband, and that was a very big help. The young couple paid no rent. Moreover, Aunty could grow some vegetables and raise a few hens in the courtyard. Aunty managed her household affairs with success. Over the years, she saved a small amount of money for her children's education. Since others' children could go to school, hers would not stay home and be illiterate. That was Aunty's zhiqi.
When Aunty's son was six and her daughter three years old, suddenly news came that Nanjing would replace Beijing as the nation's capital. Governmental organizations, including the one in which Aunty's husband worked, were to move south. This brought Aunty and her husband face to face with a real dilemma: if they stayed in Beijing, Aunty's husband would lose his job. Where could he find another one? After the central government moved away, even fewer jobs would be available in the ancient city and more people would go after them.
On the other hand, if they moved to Nanjing, the husband's salary would not be sufficient. For in that case they would have to rent a house and rent was never cheap in a capital. Besides, neither Aunty nor her husband had ever been away from Beijing. It frightened them to imagine living in a city hundreds of miles away from their hometown. No relatives. No old neighbors. All the shops and streets would be unfamiliar, and every person a stranger. What if something happened and they needed help? In China if one had neither power nor a lot of money, such help from an acquaintance was indispensable. Who could they turn to? So either way it seemed the family would run into a lot of trouble.
Aunty's husband was deeply worried, he suddenly looked twenty years older and walked with a stoop. His wife was not much help; each time she thought about their dreadful dilemma, her mind went blank and she ended up weeping helplessly. At last, her husband decided to stay behind and try to find another job. He looked for a long time without success.
While he was looking for a job, the family's financial situation quickly deteriorated. First, they used up Aunty's small savings. Then they sold the furniture, piece by piece. Aunty's jewelry, which consisted of a few silver bracelets and jade earrings, went into the pawnshop together with the better clothes and were never redeemed. Then they had to borrow money from relatives and acquaintances, who after some time began to avoid them. These people were not affluent, they could not afford to throw their money into the river just to listen to the sound of it.
Then as the saying goes, "Good luck does not come by twos. Misfortunes never travel alone." Aunty's husband came down with an illness. By then the family was so impov
erished that they had to skip meals. Where on earth could Aunty find the money to send for a doctor and buy medicine? So in a few weeks her husband died, leaving behind a young widow of twenty-five, two small children, and a literally empty house.
It was a great disaster for Aunty. Now heaven had taken away her man, in the future who would be there to support her and her children? Aunty cried day and night. The thought of suicide, the time-honored solution for so many Chinese widows before her, loomed large in her mind. But she decided against it. Her son and daughter were too small! They were so helpless! Now their father was gone, she was the only one in the world they could turn to. She should be there for them. She would bring them up, no matter how hard it was.
To bring her children up, one option Aunty had was to remarry. Not a glorious option, of course, but feasible. Aunty was still young and good-looking. Neither her parents nor his family would object to the idea, since they were unable to give her financial support. So Aunty had a choice. Eventually she chose to stay as her late husband's "not-yetdead-person." Until she died at the age of seventy-four, she never had another man.
"Aunty, do you love your husband?" Once after I read a romantic novel, I couldn't help asking her.
"What? No!" she said. Then she added, "I don't even remember him."
"Then why didn't you marry someone else?"
"I didn't want people to poke their fingers at my backbone and gos sip about me. Some of them might even insult me right to my face. I can't stand that. But what I feared more was that the second husband might be cruel to my children. Beat them. Curse them. Let them eat leftovers. Give them cotton padded jackets with only reed catkins inside, like the Peking opera I told you about. I heard too many stories about mean stepparents. I didn't want to risk it."
So that was why for half a century Aunty remained true to her dead husband, whom she did not love. "He was so useless! When there was trouble, he couldn't deal with it. He died! Leaving us behind to fend for ourselves. Look at how much he made me suffer. Look at your other aunts (meaning her sisters). See what comfortable lives they've had. Love him? Humph! Who'd love a man like that?" When Aunty said this, she was bitter as if the death of her husband was his fault and his failure.
Since men were not as dependable as they seemed, Aunty decided to depend on herself. In the future, she would try to find work and bring in money. She would raise her children and protect them too. She would not let them down as her useless husband did.
From then on, Aunty began to make clothes for other people. Although she was a skilled dressmaker, first she had to conquer her shyness and fear to find customers. By and by, she learned to talk with people and deal with strangers. While she did this, she knew that she had to be extremely cautious, for she was a widow. Men might want to take advantage of her and women would "chase the wind and catch a shadow" to gossip about a poor widow. Yet she could not afford to stay home and sit idle. She needed customers, male and female. Life was always a dilemma. But this time Aunty handled everything well. Over the years, in front of her gate there was no wind, no shadow. Eventually she convinced her neighbors that she was a chaste woman with a lot of zhiqi.
As for her business, the price she charged was more than reasonable. The work was always done on time. Even the pickiest customers had a hard time finding fault with the clothes she made. So as time went by, her reputation grew in the neighborhood. Her customers kept coming back.
This was no small success for Aunty. Fate had dealt her a heavy blow, but it did not crush her. It made her stronger. After she climbed up, she stood on her own feet. She no longer needed to depend on a husband or to beg for help from his or her relatives, which was so humiliating. She could support herself and her children with her ten fingers.
The first time Aunty came to Nainai's house was to make clothes. After my great-grandfather died, she came to help the family's own tailor rush the so-called filial apparel. In old China a proper funeral should last forty-nine days, and during this period everything in the family must be white. The clothes, caps, and shoes worn by the family members and servants, drapes, curtains, tablecloths, chair-covers, bedding ... A great deal of needlework had to be done in just a few days. Aunty worked conscientiously day and night. Her honesty, modesty, and competence left a deep impression on Nainai. Meanwhile Nainai gained Aunty's heart by her kindness and generosity. So years later, when Mother was pregnant and Aunty's old aunt suggested that her niece might be hired to take care of me, Nainai nodded her head and Aunty accepted the job.
Aunty earned handsome money during the funeral, but such good luck was hard to come by. In old Beijing, poor people who could not afford to make new clothes greatly outnumbered the rich ones who wasted their money on filial apparel. The rich families, moreover, had their own tailors. Unless it was an emergency, they did not have work for Aunty. So most of the time instead of making new clothes Aunty was altering old clothes for people who had less money and she had to charge a lower price for it. Then once in a while there weren't even old clothes to be altered; in that case Aunty would wash clothes for others to make ends meet.
Washing clothes the old-fashioned way was toilsome. Yet described by Aunty years later, it seemed quite beautiful to me. With a large bamboo basket, Aunty carried the clothes to a stream, where she soaked them and beat them gently piece after piece with a wooden stick against a flat rock. While she did this, the water flowed through the garments, carrying the dirt away. For the top of the rock was just an inch or so beneath the surface of the water. No "foreign soap" was applied. No funny smell. Dry the clothing in the sun. It smelled of the sun. To Aunty, this was always the best way in the world to wash clothes.
Aunty's nostalgia, however, did not make her forget the harsh reality. In fact, it was from her stories that I first came to know how difficult the lives of the working people had been in the old society, long before such narrative became fashionable in China. (In the sixties I sat through many "Recalling Bitterness Big Meetings" at my middle school. They got me into trouble. But when Aunty told her story, she was perfectly calm-unlike the speakers we had at school-and I felt no pressure to act out my hatred for the class enemies. We were both comfortable.)
Aunty said that for her the winter nights in Beijing were long and bitterly cold. The northwest wind from Mongolia howled over people's roofs. It shook and penetrated the thin window paper. It sneaked in from the cracks in the wooden doors. Rushing with clothes orders, Aunty sometimes had to sew far into the night. The light from her oil lamp shuddered and dimmed. The small fire in the stove was about to die out. Her fingers were so cold that they became stiff. Her feet felt like two pieces of ice. She kept her head lowered for so long, she felt a pain burning in her neck and shoulders. But she had no time to stretch or move.
The hot summer was equally hard for a seamstress. The sweat on her hands dulled the needle. The work went more slowly than usual. Aunty got behind in her orders. Many evenings while her neighbors were in the courtyard "riding the cool," she was by the oil lamp sewing. When the moon rose above the old date trees, the outside cooled down. But in the house it was still as hot and stuffy as in the afternoon. She had a palm-leaf fan lying next to her; but as she had only two hands, how was she to use it?
Hundreds of stitches, thousands of stitches, millions of stitches. Aunty's money did not come easily. Every cent had to be used at exactly the right place. Aunty told me that in old Beijing roasted peanuts were very cheap. For one big copper coin, you could buy a small packet, wrapped in old newspaper into the shape of an ice-cream cone. They were delicious! Many times Aunty's son and daughter begged her for it. Many times she had to harden her heart and say no to them.
All the year round, her family lived on a diet of corn flour bread. White flour was a luxury for birthdays and festivals. In summer, when vegetables were cheap and plentiful, Aunty would buy them from a peddler at the end of the day when they were on sale. The rest of the year, all they had were salted vegetables. Meat almost never appeared on the
ir dinner table except on Chinese New Year, the biggest festival.
With such self-denial, Aunty not only survived, she put her son through elementary school. Later with her son's help, Aunty sent her daughter into high school. Like other old-fashioned Chinese mothers, Aunty placed all her hopes on her children, and they did not disappoint her. Though they grew up in poverty, they made no bad friend and acquired no bad habit. This, I guess, was to some extent attributable to Aunty's talk about zhiqi. But more important was her own example. It turned out that her children were not only honest and modest, they were also filled with filial piety. Both hoped fervently that someday they would find good jobs, make enough money, so that Aunty would cease to toil. In her old age, she would be surrounded, loved, and waited on by her children and grandchildren.
Finally, Aunty's daughter graduated from high school. To Aunty's great satisfaction, she got a job in the Chinese Customs and later she married a young officer in the same department. In 1949 the daughter was pregnant. Aunty waited impatiently for her first grandchild to come. But before the baby arrived, the army led by the Communists came down from the northeast. All the Nationalist organizations including the customs were going to Taiwan. If Aunty's daughter and her husband stayed behind, both would lose their jobs. No one knew how many months or years they'd have to wait before they could find other jobs. The unemployment rate by then had reached an all-time high. It was even worse than in the late twenties. Meanwhile, the baby was coming ...
History in China has a nasty habit of repeating itself. The same dilemma that Aunty and her husband had faced twenty-one years earlier returned to haunt the family, bringing back all the nightmares Aunty had tried to forget. Only this time it was up to Aunty to decide if she wanted her daughter to stay or to leave, and there was no time to hesitate. She had to make a decision in just a few days. Such a decision, Aunty knew from her past experience, could be a matter of life and death.