Dragon Springs Road

by Janie Chang

  As for my childish hopes of finding my mother—how was I ever to accomplish that if my fate was tied to the Yangs? Now I understood it would take money because neither fate nor Fox were about to help me. Fox had known me for years and had never mentioned my mother.

  My grades were passable, my English scores very good. I wouldn’t be able to attend missionary college since I didn’t qualify for a scholarship. I needed a livelihood. At school, one of the teachers had passed around a newspaper article about the Shanghai Women’s Commercial and Savings Bank. The bank’s new general manager was a woman.

  “Perhaps I could find work there as a bank teller,” I whispered to Leah.

  “I wouldn’t count on any job that put you in front of customers,” she replied in her blunt way. “They don’t want our kind waiting on them.”

  As Fox instructed, I had been putting newspapers on her altar. This was much simpler than stealing incense from the Yang family shrine or food from the kitchen. My old playroom in the erfang was where Fox stacked the newspapers that I rescued from the kindling box or from Master Yang’s study. There was a small stack of English newspapers I had collected from school.

  I found Fox in the erfang one day, head cocked to one side, staring intently at the columns of English text in the Shanghai Daily News. She wore a creamy lace blouse with puffed sleeves and a long skirt. Her black, glossy hair was arranged in a pompadour, but when I looked more closely, the thick coil at the back was anchored with Chinese hairpins, dangling pendants of pearls and red coral.

  Translate that for me, she said, pointing at a column on the page. I’m not yet fluent in this language.

  Shanghai Municipal Police have concluded that two deaths at the Hotel Metropole were suicide. Henry Edward Wilkins and Dorothy “Dolly” Armstrong were found together in a room at the hotel on June 5, 1916. A medical examination determined they had swallowed opium.

  Wilkins was the nephew of shipping magnate Robert Edward Hayes, owner of the Star Sapphire Line. When Mr. Wilkins announced his intention to marry Miss Armstrong, whose mother is Chinese, Mr. Hayes refused to sanction the marriage and cut off his allowance.

  Miss Armstrong was the daughter of the late Dr. Charles Armstrong and his wife, Bai Qin (Betty) Armstrong (née Lin).

  “I’ve got nothing against Eurasians,” said Mr. Hayes. “But Henry was my heir. I don’t want mixed-race children inheriting the business after I’m gone. All Henry had to do was marry a white girl. He could’ve had his pick from all of Shanghai society.”

  I smoothed out the newsprint and set it down on the floor. I had seen the same story in a Chinese paper, Xinwen Bao, accompanied by an editorial deploring discrimination against Eurasians. Whatever a sympathetic editor might say, I knew that with my mixed blood and nonexistent dowry, it was impossible to hope that I would ever marry anyone respectable. Better not to marry at all.

  “Fox, have you ever wanted another human husband?” I asked.

  One was enough, she said, studying the front page of the week-old paper. I find it makes life too confusing.

  “Confusing?”

  We’re pulled in too many directions as it is, she said. By our animal natures and by our desire to emulate humans. By our affection for mortal friends and our desire to become xian.

  “Humans are so puny compared to what you are,” I said, feeling envious, “why would any Fox ever want to become human? A Fox can do everything a human can do and more.”

  She looked up at me, amber eyes glowing. My powers are minor compared to what some other Foxes can do.

  “You could make me rich. Foxes in stories often bring gold to poor young scholars.”

  Never. Her voice was severe. That gold always belongs to someone. The gods would put a black mark against me for stealing and it would harm my chances of going through the Door. Only weak-willed Foxes steal. Unfortunately . . .

  “Yes, yes, I know.” I sighed. “Unfortunately, it’s stories about bad Foxes that people remember.”

  NOW THAT ANJUIN was to be married, she and Third Wife became more like sisters than stepmother and stepdaughter. Third Wife was full of advice.

  “Just remember that we women must work quietly and patiently,” she said to Anjuin. “We suggest, we placate, we flatter. We help those who oppose us believe they’re the ones who’ve made wise choices.”

  Third Wife usually managed to get what she wanted. She exaggerated her girlish behavior to please Master Yang, who could always be jostled into a good mood by her little jokes.

  “I won’t mind how the Chens treat me,” Anjuin said. “I just want children of my own. Sons or daughters, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Young Mistress, one of the schoolteachers next door told me to give you this,” Ah-Jien’s voice came from the door. “They’ve been handing them out all over the neighborhood.”

  She held in her hand several copies of a leaflet.

  HOW TO PROTECT YOUR FAMILY FROM CHOLERA

  Cholera is carried by tainted food and water. Bathe and wash diapers away from sources of drinking water.

  Drink only safe water. Safe water is water that has been heated to a boil for at least one minute. Store your safe water in a clean, covered container.

  Wash your hands with soap and safe water before you prepare food or eat and before feeding your children. Wash your hands with soap and safe water after using the toilet, cleaning your child’s bottom, or after taking care of someone with diarrhea.

  Cook food well, eat it hot. Do not eat raw foods which you have not prepared yourself with clean hands and utensils.

  It had been a horribly hot summer and now it was August, the peak of the sweltering season. There were reports of yet another cholera outbreak. Even though the other servants laughed at me, I used only boiled water to wash the dishes and refused to eat raw foods, even Mrs. Hao’s pickled radishes, which I adored.

  When Grandmother Yang saw the list, she shook her head. “Such a lot to remember. Do foreigners truly believe this? Do they teach you this at the mission school, Jialing?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They say that in America, they’ve followed these rules of cleanliness for twenty years and there have been only a few outbreaks, and not many people die anymore.”

  “These foreign ways may or may not help, but they certainly cannot hurt,” Third Wife said, her voice soft and pleading. “Isn’t it worth trying?”

  “Please, Grandmother,” Anjuin said. “The servants say the Shens’ youngest grandson has diarrhea. It could be cholera.”

  “Let me think on it,” the old woman said.

  THAT NIGHT, I found myself sitting with Fox on the roof of the erfang.

  Cicadas hummed in the courtyard below and the faint rustle of leaves teased with hope of breezes. Fox wore a loose gown of dark blue silk, her hair in a simple braid down her back.

  I want you to see something, she said, her voice very quiet. She pointed a slim finger across the road, to the roof of the Shens’ home.

  I saw nothing, and then it appeared. A pale fog that gradually took shape.

  There on the tiled roof, a woman dressed in white robes danced slowly along the ridgeline. Her hair and clothing were of a style centuries old. Long sleeves flowed in slow motion about her as she swayed gracefully to silent music. Her arms moved in the complicated patterns of an ancient dance, and her tiny shoes barely touched the curved gray tiles. Apparently unaware of our presence, she floated through the motions of her dance. When she reached the end of the peaked roof, the beautiful woman vanished.

  “Is this a dream?” I asked Fox. “Who was that ghost?”

  You’re still in your bed, but what you just saw was real, she said. That ghost is one I haven’t seen in a long time, and now she’s appeared at the Shens’. She’s doomed to foretell death, poor thing.

  “Whose death?” I asked with a shudder.

  Someone at the Shens’. Perhaps more than one. She fell silent. Jialing, I must take a long trip. It may take as long as six months. I must try again to f
ind some other Foxes.

  “What for? Why must you go away for so long?”

  I have questions and it may take some time to find Foxes who can answer them.

  “Why are they so hard to find?”

  Goodness, she sighed. I’d forgotten how many questions mortal children ask. I’m looking for some very special Foxes. They know far more than I do. They live in high mountains and lonely grasslands. They’re very reclusive. They’re old and wise, almost xian, nearly immortal.

  “Nearly? Aren’t Foxes immortal?”

  We can’t die from disease or starvation, but we can be killed, she said.

  “What do you want to ask these special Foxes?” I asked, but before the words left my lips, I was back on my cot, the heavy cotton blanket kicked to one side.

  There was an emptiness in one corner of my mind. Fox had gone.

  EARLY NEXT MORNING, a woman’s voice disturbed the household. Her cries rang out on Dragon Springs Road, frantic and filled with despair. When I ran out to the front gate, the other servants were already there.

  The Shens’ First Daughter-in-Law staggered along the road, clothing disheveled and hair unbound. Although sunrise tinted the whitewashed walls with golden light, she held an oil lamp in her hand, the flame burning high. She turned here and there with each step as if expecting to find someone beside her.

  “Xiao Di, come back!” she called. “Can’t you hear me, Xiao Di? It’s your mother. Come back to your body. I’ve made you sweet rice cakes. Xiao Di!”

  A servant trailed behind her, weeping helplessly.

  “What is she doing?” I whispered to the other servants.

  “Young Madame Shen is out searching for her son’s souls,” Ah-Jien said, civil to me for once. “He’s very ill and they’ve gone wandering away in confusion. She has to find them and lead them back home to his body if she’s to save his life.”

  But as the woman reached the end of the street, loud screams erupted from the Shens’ estate. It was too late. Xiao Di’s souls would never find their way home.

  MISS MORRIS HALTED CLASSES that week. The schoolteachers went from house to house, nursing and caring for the fallen. By the end of the week, all that remained of the Shens was their youngest son. He had hurried home from university in Hangchow just in time to bury his family.

  The Shens weren’t the only neighbors to suffer tragedy. For weeks it seemed as though we witnessed a funeral procession every day. The Yangs remained blessedly unscathed. I burned incense at the Fox altar in thanks to the original Fox who had given us the spring. Just in case my prayers could reach her.

  OLD MASTER SHEN’S funeral was the most elaborate I’d ever seen.

  I had thought of him as just a gloomy old man but now we learned our elderly neighbor had once been an imperial scholar who had passed the civil service examinations with the highest of honors. Out of respect, Master Yang and Dajuin would walk in the procession. They didn’t belong to the Shen family, but the Shens’ youngest son accepted gratefully. He didn’t have much family left to fill the procession.

  Two dozen mourners hired from the beggars’ guild led the procession. Their horns blared out woeful notes, and the deep, slow beat of drums set the pace. Master Yang and Dajuin followed young Master Shen behind the coffin. At the very end came other hired mourners. They carried boxes of incense sticks, offerings of food, and paper models of houses and furniture, all to burn at the grave.

  It was the ninth day of the ninth month, an auspicious day for Master Shen’s burial. By now funerals were such a common sight that only neighbors bothered turning out to watch as the procession moved along Dragon Springs Road. That was why I noticed the stranger when he walked up to Mrs. Hao.

  He wore a long blue student’s gown and cloth shoes. His foreign hat, a wide-brimmed fedora, was a little too large for him and he kept pushing it off his forehead, an absentminded gesture. He was very handsome and Mrs. Hao was practically simpering as they talked. Then he walked away, out onto Chung San Road, his back as straight as if he were on parade.

  “Was that man one of the Lins’ tenants?” I asked Mrs. Hao when she returned.

  “No, no. Just someone who came in from Chung San Road to watch the procession. He wanted to know whose funeral that was.” She grinned at me. “Good looking, wasn’t he? Not for the likes of you, of course.”

  I turned away before she could see my cheeks redden. Not in embarrassment that she had noticed me staring at the young man but because I was reliving the shame of a memory, the memory of a day when Teacher Ko took a group of us to visit St. John’s University. The grounds of the private university were beautiful, its greenery and gardens meticulously tended, the buildings grander than anything I’d ever seen.

  “Only the very best students and the very wealthy can attend because tuition is so expensive,” Teacher Ko said. “This university is for men only, and professors teach all their classes in English.”

  We crossed paths with a group of students, some wearing Western clothes, some in long Chinese-style student gowns, all expensively dressed. One of them stared admiringly at Zhuhai, who at sixteen looked much older. She smiled back before looking down modestly.

  Then one of them drawled, “Don’t waste your sighs on those girls, my friends. They’re just orphans from the mission school.”

  They strolled past, unaware that we were crimson with humiliation. What were we to these sons of rich fathers? To them we were daughters of beggars and prostitutes, born to women who gave us away to better feed a son, sold off by fathers desperate for another sticky brown pellet of opium.

  In his long changpao gown, the scholarly young man had reminded me of that day, of those other young men. Whatever fate had in store for my classmates, mine would be worse. Grandmother Yang’s obligations to me only lasted as long as Miss Morris’s payments. I had to earn some money and find my mother. And somehow, I had to earn a living.

  THE DAY AFTER Old Master Shen’s funeral, Mrs. Hao and I moved the kitchen table to a spot where we could enjoy what little breeze flowed through the door. Mrs. Hao had a huge basket of taro root and put me to work peeling the tough skin while she prepared pork slices to steam with the taro. Third Wife sat beside the door, fanning herself. Anjuin joined us, sitting down with the weekend edition of Xinwen Bao, Dajuin’s preferred newspaper. Master Yang subscribed to the more conservative Shen Bao.

  She looked up from the paper. “Mah Juhou was murdered yesterday.”

  “Is he important?” Third Wife said, wiping her damp forehead. “Why do I know that name?”

  “He was one of Shanghai’s wealthiest businessmen,” Anjuin said. “Wealthy and influential.” She read the article out loud to us.

  Yesterday afternoon, at four o’clock, prominent businessman Mah Juhou was shot down at No. 14 Rue Chapsal in the French Concession by an unknown assassin. Mah went to the house expecting a business meeting with executives of a mining company from Manchuria.

  Mah, aged 55, was from one of Shanghai’s oldest families. He was a supporter of the Nationalist Party and a personal friend of Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

  Shanghai Municipal Police are following up rumors that the warlord General Zhang Zuolin was behind this murder.

  “Is that the same General Zhang who is leader of the Fengtian clique?” Third Wife asked. “Isn’t he the one who wants to bring back a Manchu emperor?”

  Anjuin looked up. “Yes. And if he’s behind this, it means the Nationalists will never agree to an alliance with the Fengtian clique, not while General Zhang is alive.”

  China had splintered into territories controlled by Yuan Shikai’s former military governors. The governors were warlords now, forming alliances and cliques that balanced military strength to achieve some semblance of stability. All the while they plotted for ways to take over Peking because whichever clique controlled the capital city was the one foreign governments recognized as the official government of China. It was all very confusing.

  Master Yang appeared at the kitchen doo
r.

  I nearly sliced through my hand in surprise, not only because of his sudden appearance but because the master of the house had no reason to come to the kitchen.

  “First Daughter, your grandmother wishes to see you,” he said. A somber expression clouded his usually cheerful face.

  Third Wife hurried to follow Anjuin. I gazed imploringly at Mrs. Hao, who shook her head. She too had seen the distress on Master Yang’s face and wouldn’t let me eavesdrop. We continued working in silence, waiting for Anjuin to return.

  But when footsteps came to the kitchen door, they belonged to Yun Na, not Anjuin.

  “You, girl, you bring the children their supper as usual,” she said to me. “Mrs. Hao, Grandmother says to delay supper for the adults until everyone has come back from the temple.”

  “Temple?” Mrs. Hao said. “What’s happened?”

  “We’re going to pray for Anjuin’s betrothed,” Yun Na said, with obvious relish. “He’s dead. The entire Chen family’s dead. The young man, his parents, brothers, and sisters. Cholera.”

  AS FAR AS Grandmother Yang was concerned, Anjuin was now a widow. Even though there hadn’t been a wedding, the moment the marriage contract was signed, she belonged to the Chen family. The Yangs had merely been raising and training Anjuin on behalf of her in-laws.

  “If her in-laws had survived the cholera,” the old woman said, “I’d send Anjuin to live with them and care for them. As their daughter-in-law, it would be her duty.”

  “Well, we’d better hurry up and do some matchmaking for Anjuin,” Third Wife said. “She’s not getting any younger.”

  “There’s no need,” said Grandmother Yang. “She’s a widow now. She can’t remarry.”

  Anjuin walked out of the room.

  THE CREAK OF the door intruded on my sleep. I turned over and saw that Anjuin’s bed was empty. Outside, her footsteps pattered across the veranda’s wooden floor. She was away a long time, longer than needed to go to the outhouse. The gray, uncertain light indicated early morning, so I got up.