Memoirs of a Eurasian
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Praise for Shanghai Girl
“Shanghai Girl is superb literature ... one of the best of contemporary novels written by Chinese authors … (Yang is a) Shanghai success ... We eagerly await Yang's next literary feat.”
-- EVE Magazine
“A novel that is hard to put down once you’ve picked it up ... Yang masterfully transports the living onto the page in a way that is sure to make any writer jealous and any reader sit up and take notice.”
-- Blogcritics.org
“Shanghai Girl – a feat in itself … Yang puts a new, often lighthearted spin on frequently covered topics like Chinese identity, the U.S. immigrant experience and reverberations of the Cultural Revolution.”
-- HK Magazine
“Yang brings with her an expanded array of journeys and experiences, reflective of not only a changing America, but also of a world in transition.”
-- The Museum of Chinese in America
“Compelling story … Fiercely feminine voice … Strong language … Great description … Inherently fascinating locale … Very likable narrator ... A pleasure to read.”
-- The New Jersey State Council on the Arts
“Another ‘Tale of Two Cities’ … Paris and London played roles in Dickens’ famous novel A Tale of Two Cities. In Shanghai Girl, it is Shanghai and New York.”
-- The Sampan (Boston)
“A new voice from Shanghai.”
-- The Hong Kong Standard
About the Author
Vivian Yang is the author of the novels Memoirs of a Eurasian (2011), Shanghai Girl (2010 and 2001), S.G. Shan Hai Gaaru (2011 and 2002), and the nonfiction Status, Society, and Sino-Singaporeans.
Born and raised in Shanghai’s former European quarters -- often the setting of her fiction, Vivian holds an M.A. in intercultural communication from Arizona State University and taught English and journalism at Shanghai International Studies University. She was a Literature Fellow in Prose of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a Publishing Project grantee from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, a Woolrich Writing Fund Scholar and a Writing Program Scholar at Columbia University, a Tuition Scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a top winner of The WNYC Leonard Lopate Essay Contest, the entry of which is a chapter of Memoirs of a Eurasian. Vivian has written for Business Weekly, China Daily, Far Eastern Economic Review, South China Morning Post, and The Wall Street Journal Asia, and has published fiction in literary journals in the United States and in Asia. Her work has also appeared in the Opinion page of HK Magazine, The National Law Journal, and The New York Times.
She lives with her husband and daughter in New York City.
Visit www.VivianYang.net, start a discussion on the “Vivian Yang Page” on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Yang/e/B001S03LZM/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0), join the Shanghai Girl Page on Facebook, and follow Vivian on Twitter @ ShanghaiGirlUsa.
ALSO BY VIVIAN YANG
Shanghai Girl *
S. G. Shan Hai Gaaru
Status, Society, and Sino-Singaporeans
*An excerpt of Vivian Yang’s novel Shanghai Girl
appears after Memoirs of a Eurasian
MEMOIRS
OF A
EURASIAN
A Novel
VIVIAN YANG
Copyright © Vivian W. Yang, 2011, 2003--2010
All rights reserved
Also available as a paperback
The novel is the private history of nations.
Honore de Balzac (1799 -- 1850), French novelist
History is the development and discord of human race.
Liang Qichao (1873 -- 1929), Chinese statesman
CONTENTS
1 Beautiful Adulterated Chinese
2 Down with the Chief Dog
3 At the Pushkin Graveyard
4 Like Borscht for Discontent
5 Don’t Know Much Biology
6 Love and the Troika Teens
7 Dreaming Stanislavsky
8 Seeing Red
9 Girls at Play
10 The Renaissance Shanghainese
11 A Revolutionary Étude
12 Heart on Top, Friend at the Bottom
13 Whether My Race Is Black White Brown Yellow or Red
14 Like Sleeping in Heaven
15 Until Daybreak It Sheds Its Tears
16 From Pravda to Prada
17 The Long Long Life Bar and The Pen Ball
18 A Query from Tokyo
19 Fortune Alley Revisited
20 And Quiet Flows the Huanpu
Appendix A: A conversation with Vivian Yang, author
Memoirs of a Eurasian and Shanghai Girl
Appendix B: A Brief Timeline for Memoirs of a Eurasian
An Excerpt of Shanghai Girl by Vivian Yang
About the Author
1 Beautiful Adulterated Chinese
“Call me Mo Mo,” I tell you, the first Westerner to interview me at Maison Jasmine.
You nod and admire the original mosaic window panels. “You must feel like living in a dream, Mo Mo.”
“Chekhov said something to the effect that the perception of reality is a dream itself, and vice versa. In a way all of my life’s experiences have led up to this moment.”
You stop examining the dragon chopsticks rest and gaze at me. I am used to such a savoring manner. I belong to a rare breed: three quarters Shanghainese, one quarter Russian. Drops of my Chinese blood mix and blend with fewer drops of Russian, albeit in different shades of red. The Red Square’s interpretation of Marxism-Leninism was badly tainted in the Chinese Communists’ view. My racial amalgamation was deemed degenerate in the first decades of the People’s Republic.
At a time when any scrap of jewelry was condemned, I was the latchkey kid known as “the bourgeois lackey on a necklace leash.” The concept of a single parent had not yet reached China. Little if anything from the West had managed to infiltrate the ideological Great Wall of my socialist motherland. Whenever I asked about my father, my mother would say, as if spitting, “You don’t have one. Just be grateful that you have me.”
Mother herself was an orphan. And yes, I had at least her high nose bridge and cheekbones. Little cared about by the one parent, I made up a loving one I didn’t have. I always wished that my father were an elite Chinese fluent in English. After all, I was born in British Hong Kong in 1962.
But English was banned when I was growing up in Communist Shanghai. In my versatile mother tongue, there existed a catchy phrase for that language of the U.S. and British imperialists. Revolutionary Shanghai denizens deliberately pronounced the word En-g-li-sh to make it sound like yin-gou-li-chee: belonging to the gutters. By contrast, I taught myself what was condemned to the sewers out of a desire to someday share my incredulous life with a Westerner like you.
In my mind’s eye I can always visualize what I saw as a four-year-old the day I left Hong Kong: a red taxi with a white top, a dark train powered with coal, and a black chauffeured sedan. A passenger in each within two days, I was not to be on either for a long time to come. You see, in 1966, few automobiles could be spotted in Shanghai. Bicycles and buses for the masses, yes; but the few cars were for the exclusive use of the Communist Party cadres.
This day, Mami and I were leaving my birthplace Hong Kong for hers, Shanghai.
Ah Bu, our landlady and my nanny, was hailing a cab while Mami lugged our belongings to the curbside. To see us off, Ah Bu put on her new mandarin jacket that was meant to be worn during the upcoming lunar New Year. After helping the driver load Mami’s music score boxes onto the back seat, Ah Bu stuffed a small packet tied with a string into Mami’s hand, her jade bangle reflecting sun rays into my eyes.
“For Mo Mo during the train ride,” she said and
dabbed her tears with the sleeve of her jacket.
I knew it must be a Shanghai-style cucumber and dried shrimp omelet sandwich. It dawned on me that I would not be helping her beat the eggs and wash the cucumbers anymore, nor would I hear and the thump of her bangle hitting the edge of the kitchen table. I hugged her thigh and looked up at her. “Ah Bu … Ah Bu …!”
“She really wants to be with you,” Mami said. “And I only bought one ticket for myself, as I told you. You can still change your mind. Maybe the church can …”
I sensed Ah Bu’s body trembling. She said, “I’m s-sorry I can’t ... Nor can I let Mo Mo stay …”
Mami came to pull me but I wouldn’t budge. “You stay, then, I’m going.”
I let go of Ah Bu and followed Mami to the taxi. Tears came rolling down my cheeks.
“Don’t cry, my child. Don’t ruin that beautiful face your Mami gave you,” Ah Bu said.
Mami thrust me onto the back seat without a word and slammed the door shut. “Train station,” she ordered.
I turned backwards onto my knees and waved through the window.
“Goodbye to you two. May God bless you!” Ah Bu called out as we pulled away from King’s Road where the double-decker trams ran.
We had to ourselves the whole compartment: four berths, two upper and lower each facing one another.
“You’re supposed to pay half fare, but I took a chance because nowadays there aren’t many people going from Hong Kong to China. Listen, Mo Mo, you’ll call me Mother from now on and don’t ever talk back when people stare at us or say something about our looks. Just look away and stay quiet.”
“But why, Mami?”
“Didn’t I say no more Mami? Everybody would know we came from Hong Kong if you do, understand?”
“But, Ma- mm-mother, we are from Hong Kong.”
“No, we’re not! We’re from Shanghai. You’d better remember that! And shut up and go to sleep.”
Seeing my eyes brimming with tears, she shook her head and said, “Fine, I’ll teach you to fold a special origami and you stay quiet for the rest of the time.” She took out a stack of plain paper. “Here, use these.”
“Oh! These are so much nicer than the newspaper I usually fold origami with.”
“Forget about the newspaper, too. You’ve never seen one. Forget about everything from Hong Kong. You’re a Shanghai girl who’s spoken Shanghainese all your life anyway.”
I nodded dubiously and caressed the soft texture of the paper that must have been from the family she gave piano lessons. At the top of the first sheet, I wrote in my still shapeless Chinese: “Dear Ah Bu, when I grow up I will make you proud. Goodbye from your Mo Mo.”
The first stop after entering China was Guangzhou. Two men wearing the kind of gray tunics rarely seen in Hong Kong entered our compartment and settled on the seats facing us. They must be someone important as most other people on board were in mandarin jackets.
I avoided eye contact.
“Female Soviet expert,” the one with a blue cap said to the younger man with thick glasses. He took out a pack of Tiananmen Gate cigarettes and placed it on the tiny table separating us.
“So fair and such big chestnut-colored eyes,” the bespectacled one said as he fumbled for matches.
From the corner of my eye I saw Mother perched against the window, gazing outside. Our train continued to chug along this barren terrain, passing a landscape of sandy brown, sparse foliage, dusty rooftops, and peasants yoked like mules while dragging loads on their backs and plowing.
Tired of the sight, I tried to picture Shanghai. Mother said it was the most modern city in China. I began to wonder if it had the same double-decker trams like those outside our apartment or the red pillar letterboxes with the dome on top. Then I reminded myself not to think about Hong Kong.
“The little one is more Chinese. She may well grow up to be prettier than the half-breed.”
Mother shifted her weight and crossed her legs, still staring at the yellow earth and occasional leafless trees outside.
“Yes, her father must be one lucky fellow,” the young man said, lighting the cigarette for the other.
A laugh in unison followed.
I was always regarded as beautiful. Almost every grownup in our North Point tenement had complimented me and Mother on our good looks. I’d never given it a second thought until that moment: we’re not pure Chinese, unlike the rest of the people in China. Maybe that was why Mother asked me not to look at them. I couldn’t help but to sneak a peek at the men; their skin was beige and their eyes were narrow with no lid-folds and lashes so short they were hardly visible.
Before long, cigarette smoke began to fill our compartment. Mother coughed and moved her sitting position again.
“But Comrade Secretary, haven’t all the Soviet experts been sent home following our ideological rift with The Kremlin?”
“In theory yes, but this one seems to have settled down here with a Chinese.”
Mother uncrossed her legs and faced them. “Comrades,” she said in Mandarin Chinese, “there should be many compartments on this train that aren’t fully occupied.”
The men exchanged surprised looks. “Do you happen to be an actress with the Shanghai Film Studio, Comrade Beautiful?” asked the younger man with a grin.
Mother did not answer. She just pointed her finger to the door.
We had the whole space to ourselves for the rest of the journey. After Mother opened the window to let out the smoke, she said, “Thank goodness. Now let’s eat something from Ah Bu.”
Between bites, I asked in a low voice, “Mother, you told me not to look back at people. Is it because we are not pure Chinese and come from Hong Kong?”
She replied in a whisper. “Yes. Even though most people in Hong Kong are pure Chinese, they’re under the British rule. But few white people live in mainland China after Liberation, so people will stare at us involuntarily and think we are beautiful and different. Pretend you don’t notice.”
The monotonous but gentle rocking of the train lulled me into a semi-conscious state. Facts and fancies merged. Ah Bu’s delicious omelet sandwich bought me back to the time she and I spent together in the tenement flat on King’s Road …
Mami was rarely in. Ah Bu watched me in the kitchen. “Ai-ya! So many of us Shanghainese refugees fleeing the Communists to settle here in Hong Kong!” The small-framed lady would repeat this while stir-frying with a pair of long bamboo chopsticks, the jade bangle moving up and down on her bird thin wrist. “Sorry I can’t cook anything Russian the way she likes.”
The smell of the signature Shanghai dish of hairy-peas with pickled vegetables permeated the kitchen air. I became the little apprentice in Ah Bu’s domain. My tasks varied from removing pods to washing cucumbers to dicing carrots.
Mami shut herself up in the room to practice on a cardboard piano keyboard she glued to a small desk, our only piece of furniture besides the bed. Ever since I got slapped for smudging a black key that Mami outlined with a sketch pencil, I was forbidden to touch her “piano”.
I felt most secure when Mami was out. “A rich Hong Kong family hires your Mami because they can impress their friends by employing a Western-looking teacher. But she’s paid less because she doesn’t have a Hong Kong diploma,” Ah Bu once told me. “They don’t particularly like her type but she’s cheaper but makes them look good to outsiders. The real British won’t have anything to do with her especially since she can’t speak English.”
The day Ah Bu came down with a cold I stayed in our room. Mami was practicing on the cardboard. With her stool inches away from the bed where I was, I kept as quiet as a little pilgrim in a Buddhist temple. I watched her from the back as her curly, smoky brown hair bounced like loose springs, holding my breath as she moved her torso so vigorously that the legs of the stool squeaked. Even though I never heard an actual melody except for the tapping sound of her fingers, I clapped when she finished and exhaled.
Mami turned to look at me; he
r large eyes glossy. “Would you like to live with Ah Bu?” she asked.
Unsure of what she meant, I said, “Don’t we already live with her?”
She stared blankly at me and shook her head. Then, unprovoked, she yelled, “Don’t stand in front of me!”
I burst out crying and ran to the kitchen where a sniffing and sneezing Ah Bu was making some comfort congee. She dried my tears with a face towel and said, “Don’t cry like this again or you’ll ruin that beautiful face.”
A few days later in the afternoon, I was folding origami dolls at the kitchen table from a dated Chinese newspaper. Ah Bu was napping with her head resting against the wall. There was a knock at the door. “Miss Mo Na-di?”
I nudged Ah Bu, who was jerked awake. She rubbed her eyes and wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll get the door,” she said.
A Royal Mail uniformed man was holding a telegram. I stood on tiptoes to appear taller. “Mami’s not home. You can give it to me.”
“You’re pretty and clever but still too young.”
“But I’ll be four after the Chinese New Year.”
“Tell your mummy to pick it up tomorrow at the post office,” the postman said.
Ah Bu asked who it was from.
“The Affiliated Middle School of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.”