Dragon Springs Road

by Janie Chang

  Hesitant birdsong greeted me in the courtyard. It was just bright enough to see that one of the doors in Dajuin’s erfang was slightly ajar. The nursery door. Looking in, I saw Amah Wu snoring on the bed she shared with Third Wife’s youngest boy. Anjuin sat on a stool beside the other bed, looking down at her niece. One hand rested against the small dark head. Her face held all the calm of a mountain lake, but tears glimmered on her cheeks.

  I remembered how carefully she had tended her younger siblings, how delighted she had been at the prospect of more children when Dajuin married Yun Na. How she doted on her little brother, Kejuin. How she had carried me to her bed when I was small, singing quietly until I stopped crying for my mother.

  That evening, I gathered my courage. I waited until after supper, when I saw Dajuin enter his study. I hurried over, determined to speak my piece even though servants were never supposed to disturb Dajuin or Master Yang when they were in their studies.

  “Please, Young Master,” I said, my head just inside the door, “if you have time, there’s something I’d like to say.”

  He looked up from his desk. “Of course, Jialing. What troubles you?” His voice was kind and calm, like Anjuin’s. I relaxed. He would not berate me or report me to Grandmother Yang.

  “It’s not about me. It’s about Anjuin. You’re the only one who can speak up to the Old Mistress and the Master.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Anjuin’s been crying, Young Master,” I said. The words blurted out. “You know how much she loves children, how badly she wants children of her own. If the Old Mistress doesn’t let her marry, she’ll be unhappy for the rest of her life!”

  He regarded me for a moment, his eyes deep-set and alert, his features a bolder version of Anjuin’s. You couldn’t mistake them for anything other than brother and sister.

  “I’m glad you spoke up, Jialing. I’m glad you care enough about Anjuin to ask.”

  THIRD WIFE TOOK his side when Dajuin spoke to his father and grandmother. She offered to find a matchmaker. As usual, First Wife sided with Grandmother Yang. This put Master Yang uncomfortably in the middle.

  “First Daughter is still a maiden,” he said. “She deserves a husband and a family of her own, Mother.”

  “As far as I’m concerned she’s a widow!” Grandmother Yang cried. “If she doesn’t remain chaste, it will shame the family.”

  “Grandmother, how can you deny her a husband and children?” Dajuin said.

  “If she married into a respectable family, how would that shame us?” Third Wife said in her most persuasive tones.

  “Mother, I agree that an old-fashioned family might think as you do,” Master Yang began.

  “How can you say I’m old-fashioned? It’s not as though I’m asking Anjuin to follow her husband to the grave.” And with that, Grandmother Yang stormed out of the sitting room in a rage.

  If only Fox were here to help change Grandmother Yang’s mind. But I knew what Fox would say if she were here. If there wasn’t the slightest inclination on Grandmother Yang’s part, she had no way to coax it into action.

  FOR THE FIRST time in his life, Master Yang disobeyed his mother. He had Third Wife send for a matchmaker and take charge. I contrived to be present at the meeting, pouring tea and fetching snacks.

  The matchmaker looked Anjuin over, her glum expression dragging down her jowls even more. It was a short first meeting.

  “The young lady’s age calls for a larger dowry,” she said. “Given Master Yang’s status as a factory owner and head of a merchant clan, people will expect more. I’ll ask around, but if you don’t double the dowry, I can do very little.”

  “What about the gold coins my mother left with your family?” I asked Anjuin afterwards. It wasn’t as though I would need them for my dowry. If Anjuin didn’t marry, where would I go?

  “That was how Father could afford such a big banquet for Dajuin’s wedding,” said Anjuin. “Your gold coins were spent to save face for our family.”

  She endured a series of unsuitable suggestions.

  “The matchmaker found a wine merchant in Ningpo,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I would be Third Wife to a man who is fifty years old and with four children. He lives with a widowed mother and two unmarried sisters.”

  I shuddered. That was far too many women in one household with nothing better to do than find fault. Obedience to fathers before marriage, obedience to husbands and in-laws when married, and obedience to sons after husbands die. If a woman was fortunate, she might enter a family such as the Yangs where filial piety was stronger than obedience to sons. A woman could endure much if she could look forward to her turn as matriarch.

  The wine merchant from Ningpo found a bride with better family connections and a larger dowry.

  “I don’t think Master Yang is trying very hard to find Anjuin a husband,” I said to Mrs. Hao. “The matchmaker always says the dowry is too small and Anjuin’s too old. Why doesn’t Master Yang increase the dowry?”

  “Perhaps Master Yang doesn’t want to lose the one person who keeps the household running,” the cook said. “If the matchmaker can’t find a suitable husband, then the Young Mistress remains unmarried. As her grandmother wishes.”

  So Master Yang wasn’t disobeying his mother after all.

  CHAPTER 12

  January 1917, Year of the Snake

  Leah was not the best of students. Except for English, she never paid much attention to her classes. With her honey-colored skin and hair she was far more obviously hun xue than any of us. Even her eyes were a golden shade of brown. Her looks were so unusual that people shuddered when they saw her. The more superstitious stared and kept their distance. Few noticed how fine and smooth her skin was or that her wide tilted eyes and small chin gave her the look of a kitten. They were so busy noticing her differences they never seemed to realize that she was extraordinarily beautiful.

  On the few occasions when Miss Morris and the teachers took our music class to perform at foreign churches, Leah’s looks drew stares from foreigners. Especially the men. At such times, I thanked the gods for small mercies, that I was able to hide my mixed blood so long as I kept my head down.

  From Leah I learned the art of smiling when you did not agree and smiling when you did. Her expression never varied, her smooth face never betrayed delight, resentment, or distress. She offered a bland and featureless surface that reflected whatever others wanted to see. It was a skill that served her well. Unlike Grace, whose lively expression gave away her every thought, Leah kept to herself without anyone thinking her aloof.

  The year I was sixteen and Leah eighteen, her family found her. Or, rather, her aunt found her. Grace and I had just finished dusting the library shelves. Our lunchtime chores completed, we went to find Leah and saw her at the far end of the courtyard with Miss Morris and a strange woman who had her arm around Leah. Then Leah nodded rather stiffly and turned to walk in the other direction, toward the orphanage.

  We caught up with her on the walkway between the school and orphanage buildings.

  “Who was that woman?” I asked, panting a little.

  “That was my aunt,” she said. “She’s taking me away with her.”

  Grace clasped her hands together. “How wonderful! You never mentioned an aunt.”

  “I hardly know her,” Leah said, her voice dull. “She’s come to claim me.”

  “You’ll have a family,” I said, puzzled at her lack of excitement. “It’s like a fairy tale, your long-lost family.”

  “I must pack,” she said, not responding to my comment.

  Grace and I followed Leah to the orphanage dormitory where she put a few pieces of clothing in her pillowcase along with a few notebooks of English exercises.

  Outside, Miss Morris and Leah’s aunt waited beside the school gate. Leah’s aunt was of medium height. It was winter and she wore a high-necked vest over her plain gown, the collar lined with squirrel fur. Her face was broad and attractive, her eyebrows carefully
painted in. Modest gold hoops swung from her ears.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to finish school, Leah?” asked Miss Morris in English. “You only have a few months left.”

  Leah shook her head. Her small, secret smile had returned. “I will go with my aunt, Headmistress.”

  “So fluent in English,” Leah’s aunt exclaimed. “When I finally learned where she’d been all these years, I never imagined she would be so well educated.”

  “You’re always welcome if you want to return,” Miss Morris said to Leah, ignoring the woman. Miss Morris, who was the soul of courtesy. “Good-bye, my dear.” She held Leah’s face between her hands for a moment.

  We waved as the rickshaw puller jogged away, but despite her smile, Leah’s face seemed forlorn. I glanced up at Miss Morris, who seemed sad, not at all pleased that Leah was going to live with her own family.

  “We must write to Mary with this news,” Grace murmured. Then she put a finger in her mouth and looked at me, embarrassed.

  For a moment she had forgotten Mary was gone, dead from cholera. During the epidemic she and other teachers-in-training had helped at the mission clinic in Hangchow. Neither the foreign god nor the rules of cleanliness had been enough to protect our friend.

  I WAS ONE of the best students when it came to speaking English, so Miss Morris often gave me the task of accompanying visitors who came to inspect the school. I would narrate a memorized introduction while taking them through the school and orphanage, finishing up in the front courtyard beside the donation box.

  One day, three Englishwomen came to the school. Miss Morris greeted one of the ladies very warmly and joined us on the tour.

  “How old are you, my dear?” one of the ladies asked, when we finished. She was the one Miss Morris treated like a friend.

  “I am sixteen,” I said, smiling. The lady put a small envelope into the donation box.

  “The Chinese are so petite they look younger than their age, don’t they?” the second lady remarked, as though I weren’t there.

  “What will you do after you graduate?” the first lady asked.

  I hesitated, unsure of what to say. What aspirations did I have beyond surviving?

  “She’s just a little parrot,” said the third. “Recites by rote with no idea of what she’s saying.”

  “Not at all,” Miss Morris said in her most pleasant voice. “Jialing has been very quick to learn English. She’s just shy.”

  “Her mixed blood will become even more evident as she gets older,” said the third lady. She examined me for a moment dismissively.

  “She’ll be hard-pressed to find a job or a husband,” I heard her say, as they strolled out the gates. “Even a good Chinese Christian wouldn’t want a half-Chinese wife, no matter how pretty.”

  I bit my lower lip. Somehow this matter-of-fact assessment of my future hurt more than the insults I’d learned to bear. From the way I was treated out on the streets, at the market square, and in shops, I knew what to expect when I grew older. When our teachers took us on outings, I’d seen how people treated Mary and Leah, who were older. I could expect contemptuous stares, people deliberately shoving me aside, spitting in my direction. Men making lewd suggestions.

  I had no expectations when it came to marriage. I would have to earn my own living. As Fox had pointed out, I couldn’t count on the Yangs forever. Especially now that Anjuin wouldn’t be getting married. Furthermore, Fox had been gone for six months. I had no idea when she would return. She was very bad at keeping track of time. I couldn’t count on her, either.

  “Will that be all, Miss Morris?” I asked.

  “Yes, dear. You did a lovely job as usual,” she said. She noticed my hesitation. “Is there something you’d like to ask?”

  “I’m worried about how I will earn a living,” I said.

  “Jialing, I’ll do my best to help you find a job,” Miss Morris said. “You know we do that for all our girls.”

  “I know, Miss Morris. But it will be difficult because I’m zazhong.”

  “Don’t use that ugly word,” she said. “Always say hun xue, mixed race. In English, say ‘Eurasian.’ To us you’re always our dear Jialing, half Chinese, half European, the best of both worlds.”

  There was no point in telling her that even here, at her school, I was not immune to scorn. How would my life be any easier, away from the protection of the classroom and my teachers? I still had time before graduation. Could I find my mother before then?

  “Please, Miss Morris,” I said, not looking at her. “Is there work I could do for you to earn some money?”

  “Do you need the money for anything in particular?” she asked. “Is it something I can help you with?”

  How could I explain? Still looking down at my feet, I answered, “I just want some money of my own, Headmistress.”

  She gave my shoulder a pat. “Come to my office after lunch.”

  I EXPECTED VERY little, perhaps for Miss Morris to say that she would think on what work she might have for me. At the most, I’d hoped for some work cleaning the school, sweeping the grounds, or helping at the orphanage.

  Instead she opened the door to the small workroom beside her office and sat me at the table there. She put a few sheets of manuscript in front of me. Each sheet of paper was divided in two columns, one neatly typed with lines of English, the other a Chinese translation.

  “I’ve been working on these for years,” she said. “It’s a textbook for teaching Chinese to English-speaking adults. But unless other missionary teachers find it useful, there’s no point in having them printed. So I must make copies to circulate to the other mission schools. Can you copy out the Chinese text and type the English?”

  “Of course, Miss Morris,” I said. “I can do this at lunch. But . . .”

  She smiled at my eagerness. “But what?”

  “Please, could you . . . could you not mention to anyone that you’re paying me to do this?” I said in a low voice. “I don’t want my classmates to know. They would be . . . envious.”

  EACH DAY I gobbled down my lunch and hurried to the workroom beside Miss Morris’s office. I worked my way through the stack of pages, first typing the English side of a page, then copying out the Chinese characters in blue ink, using one of Miss Morris’s fountain pens. At the end of the first week, when she handed me some coins, I couldn’t believe it was possible to get paid for a task so simple and pleasurable.

  For the first time in my life, I was earning some money. It wasn’t very much, but there was something reassuring about the coins weighing down my pocket, tied up tightly in a handkerchief so they wouldn’t jingle. Judging from the stack of papers on the table, I would have many, many more weeks of work.

  “What will you do with the money?” Anjuin asked when I showed her the coins. She was the only one who knew. We were getting ready for bed and she was brushing her hair.

  “There’s something I’ve decided to do,” I said, still hesitant to confide in her. “But don’t laugh or scold me.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I want to find my mother.”

  She put down the hairbrush and turned to me. “How would you find her?”

  No scoffing or ridicule, just interest and genuine concern. I pulled a newspaper from my school satchel and pointed at a narrow column of print. Small classified ads in search of missing people.

  I was old enough now to realize that my foreign father must’ve been a brothel customer, that my mother had been Noble Uncle’s mistress, and that Noble Uncle was the Master Fong who sold the estate to the Yangs. If I ever found her, I wanted my mother to tell me why she had left me behind. Had she been forced by Noble Uncle? Or had she abandoned me willingly, intending to come back once she was free of him? I wanted to know about my father, perhaps how to find him. Perhaps I could persuade her to contact him. In my daydreams, once he learned he had a daughter, he would look after me. The way Grace’s father looked after them.

  “Do you think an ad in the new
spaper would be best?” I said. “Or do you think I should save up to hire a detective?”

  “Let’s ask Dajuin,” she said. “He’ll know what to do.”

  Approaching Dajuin was nearly as intimidating as asking a favor of Master Yang, but Anjuin had total confidence in her brother. The next evening, she pulled me into Dajuin’s study. He studied me while Anjuin explained the situation, as though he were seeing me for the first time.

  “A detective would be very expensive,” he said, after a pause. “Why not start with newspapers and see whether we get any results?”

  “We,” as though it mattered to him. Perhaps because he could tell it mattered to Anjuin.

  “But you must save enough to pay for many months of advertising,” he said. “You can’t count on your mother seeing the ad right away. Plus, you must advertise regularly to make sure enough people see it. Every week for six months, perhaps eight months. Can you afford that, Jialing?”

  “I’ll wait until I’ve earned enough,” I said. “Thank you, Young Master. Thank you for your advice.”

  “LOOK AT THIS,” Anjuin said, pointing at a small advertisement in the newspaper. We now read the classified to see how others wrote missing persons ads.

  Wanted. Any intelligence concerning the abduction and murder of a foreign child, female, Anna Shea, last seen in the External Roads area, August 1909. Reward offered for information leading to the abductor. Write to R. Shea, Post Office Box 305, Shanghai Central Post Office, The Bund.

  After all these years, Anna’s father was still living in Shanghai, still seeking justice for his daughter.

  FIRST WIFE FINALLY completed her altar cloth and donated it to nearby Jing’an Temple, where it draped the table in front of the Goddess of Mercy. Now she awaited the miracle of pregnancy.

  Master Yang had turned part of the front courtyard into a shop. It sold cloth from the mill, a suggestion from Anjuin. She wanted something more than just to run a small household.

  “It won’t be a very busy shop since we’re not out on Chung San Road,” Anjuin said to her father, “but it would cost us nothing to run, so it would be all profit.”