by Janie Chang
Even then I knew Mrs. Hao was only defending me to preserve the prestige of the Yangs. I never managed to get used to the gibes and stares, but I got better at pretending to ignore them. The outside world, daunting though it was, couldn’t dampen my curiosity.
For one thing, it was my duty to tell Anjuin everything I’d seen. At night in our room, we exchanged news.
“Today the blind storyteller brought his daughter to the market,” I might say, “and she played the erhu while he sang the story of the Butterfly Lovers.”
Or “A vegetable seller lifted his shoulder pole without looking behind and knocked over the fishmonger’s stall. There was fish everywhere! And so much shouting!”
I wondered how I could have been content, how my mother could have been content, to live enclosed within the Western Residence. On the other side of its walls, other people went about their lives, lives that in no way resembled ours. How could I have lived inside these four walls, obedient and unquestioning? How was it that I’d never thought of disobeying my mother and running out to Dragon Springs Road?
Had it been fear of Noble Uncle that kept me docile?
Or had it been Fox?
CHAPTER 4
January 1909, Year of the Rooster
Master Yang handed out red paper envelopes of New Year’s money to all his wives and children, and then the servants. I took mine and tucked it into the bodice of my tunic, unwilling to open it until I was in the safety of my room.
“Goodness, child,” Third Wife said, giving my cheek a pinch. “No one’s going to take it away from you. It’s the New Year. What a strange, suspicious little thing you are.”
Out on Dragon Springs Road we clapped hands over ears to muffle the sharp percussive retorts of firecrackers that echoed up and down the street.
“The louder, the better,” Lao-er cried, handing a long match to Kejuin. “Drives away evil spirits.”
Kejuin lit another long string of firecrackers. They dangled from the small gabled roof above the front gate, each string made up of hundreds of tiny red cardboard tubes tied together. Lighting one powder-filled tube set off the rest, small explosions of flames and noise that sent shreds of red paper blowing through the street.
“May the Year of the Rooster bring prosperity to your family,” Master Yang said, bowing to our neighbor, Master Shen.
“A three-year-old sits on the Dragon Throne,” Master Shen said. “The prince regent is twenty-five years old and takes advice from the new dowager empress, a power-hungry general, and a court full of eunuchs.”
From his glum expression, the old man didn’t seem to think the coming year held much hope for China. Then he forced a smile. “May the New Year bring great profits to your business, Master Yang.”
“We work hard and hope the gods favor us,” was Master Yang’s modest reply.
Back inside the walls of his home, however, he proclaimed otherwise.
“This is the year!” he said, raising his wine cup to finish off their New Year’s dinner. “The looms will operate at capacity, enough to supply our own stores and sell to department stores in Shanghai.”
First Wife looked worried. “Husband, it’s not wise to tempt evil spirits.”
He waved his cup at her. “With all the noise from fireworks, there isn’t a single spirit, good or evil, who can hear me. I tell you, our luck began with the purchase of this property. A real bargain. Those Fongs were in far more desperate straits than anyone suspected.”
But First Wife was not convinced. She glared when I set down a plate of dried fruit between her and Third Wife.
“I’m sure that Western Residence is haunted,” she said. “I get a queer feeling every time I think about going in there. Like a hand in my mind pushing me away. And you, zazhong girl. You’re unlucky too.”
THERE WAS ANOTHER courtyard on the estate, the Eastern Residence. Until the Yangs came, I hadn’t realized it was also part of the property. It flanked the other side of the Central Residence, but unlike the Western Residence, which stood inside its own walls, only a garden path separated the Eastern Residence from the Central.
Shortly after the New Year, Master Yang hired carpenters to make repairs to the houses in the Eastern Residence and had a sturdy bamboo fence built along the garden path to separate the two homes.
“Should we rent out the Western Residence as well?” Grandmother Yang suggested. Master Yang was showing her the newspaper advertisements he had placed for the Eastern Residence.
There was the slightest wavering of air, the softest of breaths. I could almost see the suggestion skim above their heads like a dragonfly, hovering uncertainly.
“Those houses in the Western Residence are too run-down,” Master Yang said, his voice dreamy. “It would cost a lot to repair them. Let’s wait and see what happens with the Eastern Residence.”
The idea darted away. Fox.
A SUCCESSION OF prospective tenants came to see the Eastern Residence, but none ever returned with an offer to rent. Months went by and the Eastern Residence remained empty.
“They look around and they’re pleased. Then they chat with the neighbors,” Mrs. Hao said. “The Shens’ gatekeeper is only too happy to talk about wailing ghosts and all the misfortunes that fell upon the previous owners.”
“You would think that having a well in their own courtyard would matter more than gossipy rumors,” Third Wife remarked.
Every one of the three courtyards had its own well of clear, cold water, but the haunted courtyard was proof to our neighbors that the gods always balanced the scales, advantage with adversity.
“Dajuin just paid for our ad to be translated for a foreign newspaper,” Anjuin said. “The North China Herald. He told Father that foreigners don’t believe in Chinese ghosts.”
I had never seen a foreign person, even from a distance, and now entire families of foreigners might be moving in. I knew they had big noses and ghostly white skin like rice paper. Some had eyes as pale as the sky. They sounded frightening, but I couldn’t wait for them to arrive.
When the Yangs saw that I looked nothing like a foreigner, they would realize I wasn’t zazhong after all.
WITHIN A WEEK, the English advertisement brought a reply, and scarcely a week after that, shouting voices and the rumble of an oxcart brought us to the front gates.
In the uncertain light of early evening, the first impression I had of the foreign man was his size, a broad torso and long legs. He climbed down from the seat beside the oxcart driver, and I gasped at how tall he was compared to Dajuin. A rickshaw followed the cart. The canopy hid its passengers in shadow, but the dark skirt and button boots that were visible undoubtedly belonged to a foreign woman.
“The state of the roads outside Shanghai made for a slow journey,” I heard the foreign man say to Dajuin. He spoke strangely accented Chinese. “It’s a good thing we were able to push the cart over the worst of the ruts.”
A low moan escaped from the rickshaw, and he hurried over to help the woman out of the rickshaw. I saw a thin figure step down, in a long dark coat that flared out from the waist. She leaned unsteadily against the wall and immediately vomited. Then a little girl jumped out of the rickshaw, white ruffled skirts flaring out below the hem of a blue coat. The dress reached only just to her ankles, and she wore leather shoes. Her father said something to Dajuin, who nodded in our direction, and the foreign man pointed us out to the little girl. The laborers who had followed the oxcart on foot began unloading furniture, and the man led his wife inside to their new home.
The girl came skipping toward us.
I clutched Anjuin’s hand. If the girl hadn’t been so small, I might’ve been terrified at her alarming appearance. Below a wide-brimmed hat, copper-colored curls hung to her shoulders. Her skin was not paper white but almost. Rust-colored flecks sprinkled her face, especially plentiful across her nose and cheeks. Most astonishing of all, her eyes were amber brown with glints of green and gold. Was she a type of foreign Fox spirit?
; When she spoke, her Chinese was perfect, with none of the uncertain, wavering tones that made her father’s speech awkward.
“My father asks if you could have someone bring hot water and tea for my mother.”
Anjuin gestured to the girl to follow us, and she skipped alongside, chattering nonstop about their ride in from Shanghai, a guileless outpouring of words.
“You speak Chinese!” Anjuin managed to say when the girl finally paused.
“Yes, my amah was Chinese. My family name is Shea, and my name is Anna. What are your names?”
“I’m Yang Anjuin. This is Jialing, our bond servant. Where’s your amah?”
“My mother didn’t like her so we didn’t bring her. How old are you? I’m eight.”
“I’m thirteen,” Anjuin said, “and Jialing is eight also.”
Anna smiled at me and I smiled back. It didn’t seem to matter to her that I was zazhong.
In the kitchen, Third Wife and Mrs. Hao were at the kitchen table cutting string beans into short, even lengths. They stared at Anna, amazed as the girl made her request in fluent Chinese. After some discussion, Mrs. Hao left for the Eastern Residence, a kettle of hot water in one hand, a basket holding cups and a paper twist of tea in the other. Anna followed, skipping along, still talking.
That night, there was shouting and weeping from the Eastern Residence. Voices bruised the air in a language I couldn’t understand.
IN SHANGHAI, FOREIGNERS were so common that only visitors from small towns or the truly unsophisticated gaped at their strange appearance. But we were west of Shanghai, in the External Roads area where foreigners were still a rare sight. Whenever Anna and her mother went out to Chung San Road to signal for a rickshaw, urchins followed them, laughing and pointing. Mrs. Shea pressed her lips tightly and twitched her long skirts away when the children came too close. Anna merely grinned and insulted them in fluent Chinese, but this only made some of them bolder and they would reach for her copper curls or tug at her dress.
After a while, Mrs. Shea no longer ventured out but instead made their only servant, a surly cook, go out to Chung San Road and bring a rickshaw into their courtyard. Then she and Anna would ride out with the canopy up to shelter them from inquisitive eyes.
Anna’s father was a constable with the Shanghai Municipal Police.
“He’s the most senior constable at the Gordon Road Station,” Anna said. “He earns more than most constables because he passed the police force’s Chinese exams. He says it’s all thanks to practicing with me!”
Anna’s father wanted to live closer to the police station, but their other reason for moving was that her mother wanted a house with a garden of her own, like the ones back in England. Constable Shea could afford this only by moving out of Shanghai’s city limits. The Sheas were a small family for such a large home. The three foreigners and their cook occupied the entire Eastern Residence compound: a main house, two erfang, and a reception hall. A wealth of space, yet Anna said her mother was unhappy and complained they were now too far away from her friends.
Mrs. Shea borrowed Lao-er to dig a bed for rosebushes, but she didn’t bother planting anything else in their courtyard garden. Nor did she seem to care about the roses once they were in the ground. She stayed indoors all day, behind latticed windows hung with flowered draperies, roses and ferns that didn’t need her care.
It was during the afternoons, while Grandmother Yang napped and Mrs. Shea hid inside her house, that Anna and I became friends. Our friendship began when I showed her how to draw water from the well and helped her carry buckets to water the roses. Anna inspected each bloom with anxiety, frowning over every brown leaf and misshapen bud. The flower bed was a wide straight trench, incongruously rigid beside the pebbled path that curved through a miniature landscape of bamboo and mossy rocks.
“Look, flowers from home,” she said one day. “My grandmother sent them.”
She held out three small brown envelopes printed with foreign words and drawings of strange flowers. She opened them to show me tiny seeds. “Mother says they’ll die in this climate. But let’s try. If they grow, what a nice surprise for her.”
She used an old chopstick and poked a series of holes in the dirt beneath the roses. Into each one she placed a few seeds.
“Except for these,” she said, scattering a thimbleful of seeds from the last packet. “Grandmother’s letter said to sprinkle them anywhere you want them to grow. There. I’ve still got some left, just in case.”
WITH ANNA’S ARRIVAL, my world expanded even more.
On school days a donkey cart came by in the morning and she climbed in to join a half-dozen other foreign girls whose laughing faces I glimpsed briefly through the opening in the canvas canopy. Kejuin went to school, always trailing behind his amah on their way out of Dragon Springs Road, but Anjuin wasn’t allowed to attend school. How different life was for foreign girls.
Anna’s self-assurance was the most foreign thing about her. She ran around with her socks falling down and hair ribbon half untied, her curiosity boundless and uninhibited. She thought nothing of chatting with the servants up and down Dragon Springs Road.
“Mummy doesn’t like me playing with you because you’re half Chinese,” Anna said. “But she doesn’t like me playing with Chinese girls either. And she didn’t like the other English families around us when we lived in Shanghai.”
There was usually an hour each afternoon when we could play together, after she came home from school and before Grandmother Yang woke from her nap. We never played in the Eastern Residence, for fear of disturbing Anna’s mother. We played in the garden behind the main house of the Central Residence, where I could hear Grandmother Yang call for me.
Anna sometimes brought books and let me turn the pages. The color plates that illustrated the stories were so strange. Pictures of small humans with dragonfly wings, gnarled little men coming out of a mountain cave, a fox talking to a raven who sat in a tree. The most beautiful picture was of a girl with a fish tail instead of legs, seaweed and shells woven into her long yellow hair. Anna would read a line in English, then repeat it in Chinese. At times she mixed English and Chinese in a flowing stream that carried me along, confident of her meaning, if not the specific words.
In return, I told her the stories I knew, including the ones I’d heard from the blind storyteller in the marketplace. Anna was familiar with many of the tales and knew even more. Her Chinese amah had been a prodigious storyteller with a great fondness for gruesome folktales. Potbellied hungry ghosts, drowned girls, hanged ghosts with long black tongues, ghosts with ancient grievances seeking revenge. These now filled my imagination as Anna’s hushed words warned of their existence.
I often sensed Fox listening to us from beneath a tangle of quince shrubs. At times she snorted. I could tell, however, that Fox liked Anna.
“What about foreign ghosts?” I asked Anna, shivering with pleasant anticipation.
Just like Chinese ghosts, there were foreign spirits who haunted their place of death. There were also monsters similar to jiangshi, except that instead of draining a human’s qi life force, they drank the blood of their victims. She told me about men who turned into wolves when the moon was full.
“So you must be very careful,” she said, “of anyone who goes away once a month.”
“Did your amah tell you anything about Fox spirits?” I queried.
“Yes. She met one many years ago at her grandmother’s home, when she was just a girl,” Anna said. “She said the Fox often visited her grandmother. She appeared as a nice middle-aged woman, very friendly and talkative. I’d like to meet one.”
“But you’re English. Foreigners don’t believe in Chinese spirits.” I doubted Fox would show herself to Anna.
She shook her head. “I’m Irish. My father says we Irish can see the spirit world.”
She’s very amusing, Fox said, trotting beside me on the path back to the main house after Anna and I parted. Such interesting stories. Talking animals wit
h magical powers. Doors into magical worlds. And clever foxes of course.
Despite my initial hopes, the foreigners didn’t change how the Yangs thought of me. Although I looked nothing like the Sheas, I was still zazhong. Kejuin was convinced that Anna played with me only because of our shared foreign blood.
ALL TENANTS COME with their own problems, and the Sheas turned out to be more troublesome than the Yangs ever expected.
Constable Shea sometimes had to sleep at the barracks of the Gordon Road police station in Chapei. Our lives were quieter when he was away. When he was home, the sound of arguments frequently disturbed our evenings, and the Sheas’ fights always ended with sobs.
If Constable Shea was home on a Sunday, the family took rickshaws to attend church, which Anna said was like a temple. They only had one deity, but Anna assured me he had a mother and many disciples who shared the work of attending to the prayers of all the foreigners.
Several times a week, Mrs. Shea would get into a rickshaw to go shopping in Shanghai. Invariably she returned in a foul mood. She berated their only servant in a mix of pidgin English and badly pronounced Chinese. The servant, also nominally the cook, soon let it be known that Mrs. Shea’s shopping baskets contained more liquor than food.
Finally, Mrs. Shea shouted at her cook once too often. If Constable Shea had been home that day, he might have talked the cook out of leaving, but this time the long-suffering servant declared he could take no more. He left Dragon Springs Road, shouting insults against foreigners as he stormed away. It was nearly unheard of for servants to leave a foreign household, where wages were higher and mistresses less vigilant.
There followed a series of new servants, none of whom lasted more than a few weeks. When one of them departed, we knew Mrs. Shea’s rage would erupt later in the evening. If Mr. Shea was home, her wrathful words were for him. If he wasn’t, her anger was unleashed on Anna.
Anna would flinch when her mother called her home. Sometimes Mrs. Shea’s voice seemed to sing with laughter, but there was always a note of despair in the gaiety. Other times, her cries were ugly, hoarse with recrimination. I didn’t understand her words, but I understood their meaning.