by Janie Chang
Then a voice called. “Jialing?”
Wan Taiyong stood there on the platform, just below my window. He carried a large box and wore a huge coat with a shearling collar turned up against the cold. A fur hat covered his head. I almost collapsed onto the seat in relief, but then I saw the strained expression on his face. Was it regret?
“I almost didn’t come,” he said, his voice hesitant. “I couldn’t believe the telegram because I read the article in Xinwen Bao about the fire. I thought the telegram might’ve been delayed by some mishap, that you’d sent it before you left Shanghai. Before you died. Then I realized it had been sent from Peking.”
“I wasn’t in the fire. It was another woman,” I said, searching his face for some clue to his feelings. “But it means Liu Sanmu thinks I’m dead. And he can continue believing that.”
“Why didn’t you get off the train?” he said. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“No. Not at all,” I said, suddenly shy. “Taiyong, I didn’t get off because I didn’t see you on the platform.”
“Please. Get off now,” he said. “I’m here.”
Pulling my satchel over my shoulder, I ran along the carriage to the door and down the few steps to the platform. Only then did we smile at each other, at the misunderstandings that might have prevented our reunion.
I pointed at the box he was holding, thick cardboard tied with string. “Is that for me?”
He put the box in my hands. It was heavy. “Ice skates,” he said. “The lakes are still frozen.”
The box dropped to the ground, and I threw my arms around him, laughing.
“Jialing,” he said, his lips against my cheek. And this time, when he said my name, the grasslands were in his voice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My gratitude to Antonia Levi for suggesting that I check into the memoirs of women missionaries who lived in China before the First World War; this avenue of research filled in so many gaps. Big thanks also to Patricia Webb and Amanda Vinoly, who read an early version of the novel when it was just one big bundle of woe, for their kind but firm advice to pare things down so that the novel contained one story instead of several. If Jennifer Pooley hadn’t insisted that I give Fox a bigger role, this novel wouldn’t have taken shape the way it did. Jen, many thanks from me and also from Fox.
To my editors at HarperCollins Canada and William Morrow: Iris Tupholme, Lorissa Sengara, and Jennifer Brehl—thank you for providing the insights and suggestions that sharpened the story. And extra thanks to Iris and Jennifer for believing in Dragon Springs Road back when it was nothing but a skimpy outline. To Jill Marr, who has been my literary agent, career coach, voice of reason and friend, all contained in one dynamic package: thank you, Jill, for being all that.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the author
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Meet Janie Chang
About the book
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Reading Group Guide
Behind the Book
Read on . . .
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Janie Chang Recommends . . .
An Excerpt from Three Souls by Janie Chang
About the author
Meet Janie Chang
JANIE CHANG is a Canadian novelist who draws upon family history for her writing. She grew up listening to stories about ancestors who encountered dragons, ghosts, and immortals and about family life in a small Chinese town in the years before the Second World War. She is a graduate of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University.
Born in Taiwan, Janie has lived in the Philippines, Iran, Thailand, and New Zealand. She now lives in beautiful Vancouver, Canada, with her husband and Mischa, a rescue cat who thinks the staff could be doing a better job. She is the author of Three Souls.
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About the book
Reading Group Guide
1. What was the longest time you were ever left alone as a child?
2. One of the central themes in Dragon Springs Road is that of identity and belonging. Which story elements echo this theme?
3. Dragon Springs Road is set during a time of great social and political upheaval. Discuss how Grandmother Yang’s reactions to change differ from those of her eldest grandson, Dajuin.
4. Fox spirits are popular in Chinese folklore. What culture(s) are represented in your family’s background and what folktales do you know about supernatural creatures?
5. Missionaries in nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century China faced many challenges. Have you ever met or known anyone who was a missionary in a foreign country?
6. From the tidbits of information Fox shares with Jialing, it’s clear that Fox has her own agenda. If you were to tell the story from Fox’s point of view, how would you describe the motivating factors behind her decisions?
7. Jialing is disadvantaged because of her mixed race, but other characters also suffer because of the customs and values of that era. Discuss these characters and how their situations contrast with our twenty-first-century expectations.
8. What would you do if you were given the opportunity to become a Fox?
Behind the Book
My original intention was to write a novel based on the rags-to-riches story of Luo Jialing (1864–1941), an orphaned half-French Shanghai girl who sold flowers and sexual favours to survive. She found her way into a corner of Chinese history when she married Silas Hardoon, a Sephardic Jew who became the “wealthiest man east of the Suez Canal.”
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Westerners settled in Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Harbin. Inevitably there was intermarriage and mingling of the races. It was fairly easy to find accounts of Eurasians who belonged to the upper classes; literate and successful, their lives were documented in private and public records. But when it came to the Eurasian underclass, I found very little. Only in missionary journals and memoirs could I find references to orphaned Eurasians, and even then only brief snippets. They sketched a grim picture.
This inspired me to abandon the Cinderella story of Luo Jialing (but I kept her given name for my protagonist) and write about a harsher reality. With her mixed race, Jialing offers a window on a time and place that another character could not. At the same time, I hope the novel also conveys the complexities that defined the status of Eurasians in China; their places in society varied according to wealth, geography, gender, and prevailing attitudes toward Westerners (which changed with each era and not always for the better). Jialing’s story is only one version of what it meant to be biracial in China a hundred years ago and she is luckier than most.
As for Fox, of the many supernatural beings in Chinese folklore I could’ve borrowed, she seemed a natural choice. At first glance, Fox would appear to have nothing in common with an orphaned Eurasian girl. Jialing will struggle all her life because of her appearance while Fox can change her appearance and influence how people think. Yet Fox, who shifts between human and animal, also struggles. She wants to transcend her earthly existence but lacks the qualities needed to become xian, a fully spiritual being. They are both on a journey for identity and self-acceptance (although with the benefit of time, Fox is further along in her quest).
In ancient times, legends spoke of Foxes as attendants to the heavenly Queen Mother of the West. Fox spirits were also sages, counselors to rulers. In contemporary Chinese pop culture, however, Foxes have been reduced to mischievous seductresses. I wanted to reclaim some dignity for Fox by giving her more purpose than mere mischief. I have also taken the liberty of adding to her talents. Why shouldn’t a Fox transmit her abilities to humans via a small bite? Surely werewolves and vampires have set a precedent!
I will confess to taking liberties with “Full of Joy” by saying it’s an ancient melody. Actually it was composed in the 1950s but it’s such a lively and cheerful tune that I’m sure Chinese audiences from a thousand years ago would’ve loved it as much as I
do.
Many other details in the novel, however, have been inspired by true events: the reference in Miss Morris’s letter about the fate of Eurasian girls who learned English comes from an 1889 letter to the British Colonial Secretary. The double suicide of the young Englishman and his fiancée is based on the account of a Shanghai shipping magnate who wouldn’t allow his nephew to marry a Eurasian. In the scene at the racecourse, the young McBains are how I imagined the children of multimillionaire George McBain, who married a Chinese girl and was banned from Shanghai’s British Country Club as a result. His vast wealth made him and his Eurasian family otherwise impervious to social censure.
It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters, goes an old Chinese proverb.
Certainly there were families who cherished their daughters, but those who ill-treated their womenfolk could do so without fear of legal reprimand. Just being poor and female was a tragedy. Mary’s tale of how her auntie smothered a newborn comes from an account of a woman who “did what was necessary” when her family was starving. Infanticide and selling daughters to brothels or into bondage as servants (under conditions that qualified as slavery) were accepted practice when families faced dire poverty. And while new industries provided opportunities for females to earn a living outside the home, too often it was under cruel conditions. In fact one only has to do an Internet search on “child labor silk factories” to get an idea of what it was like, and what still takes place today in some countries.
When Grandmother Yang insisted that Anjuin remain unmarried, she was advocating the beliefs of the Faithful Maiden cult, which flourished during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It carried Confucian notions about chastity for women to ridiculous excess. Some Confucian scholars claimed that “after a girl is promised in marriage, she belongs to her husband.” Thus by extension, if the fiancé dies before the wedding, the girl becomes a widow who must remain chaste and faithful. For the sake of remaining incontestably chaste, some women even committed suicide. The practice had already died out by the time Anjuin was “widowed,” so given time and the right family connections, Grandmother Yang might’ve allowed Anjuin to marry or become a concubine (which is what happens—Anjuin goes on to become Stepmother in the novel Three Souls).
Family stories inevitably found their way into Dragon Springs Road. The Door comes from one of those stories. According to Chang family legend, during the eighteenth-century reign of the Qianlong Emperor, my six-times-great-grandfather vanished through a doorway and became an immortal. The beautiful dancing ghost who foretold death made an appearance to one of my ancestors when he was a little boy, too young to fear what he saw. First Wife’s descent into madness is the tale of a many-times-great-aunt who could not conceive. You can read these family stories on http://www.janiechang.com/the_family_stories.
As far as I know none of my ancestors encountered Fox spirits, although as Fox would say, “Just because there aren’t any stories doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.”
Read on . . .
Janie Chang Recommends . . .
For many historical novelists, research can turn into a fascinating rabbit hole because, well, we love history. Here are some of books I read with great interest and pleasure:
• Bound Feet and Western Dress: A Memoir, by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang. Doubleday (1996)
• Chinese Dress from the Qing Dynasty to the Present, by Valery Garrett. Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (Hong Kong) Ltd. (2007)
• The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China, by Xiaofei Kang. Columbia University Press (2006)
• Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842–1943, by Emma Jinhua Teng. University of California Press (2013)
• Four Sisters of Hofei: A History, by Annping Chin. Scribner, (2002)
• The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China, by Jane Hunter. Yale University Press (1984)
• On Chinese Gardens, by Chen Congzhou. Tongji University Press (1984)
• Shanghai, by Harriet Sergeant. Jonathan Cape Ltd. (1991)
• Shanghai Policeman, by E. W. Peters, Earnshaw Books Limited (2014)
• Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City, by Stella Dong. HarperCollins (2000)
• Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China, by Michael David Kwan. Macfarlane Walter & Ross (2000)
An Excerpt from Three Souls by Janie Chang
Pinghu, China, January 1935
We have three souls, or so I’d been told.
But only in death could I confirm this.
The moment the priest spoke the last prayer and sealed my coffin, I awoke and floated upward in a slow drift of incense smoke, until I could travel no farther. I settled in the rafters of the small temple, a sleepy wraith perched in the roof beams. I had knowledge, but no memory. My first thoughts were confused, for clearly this was the real world. But surely I no longer belonged here. When would I take my journey to the afterlife?
Below me, pale winter sunlight from an open doorway illuminated the temple’s dark slate floors. Men and women in white robes crouched in front of an altar stained by decades of burning incense sticks. Noise assailed me from all directions. The tapping of wood-block instruments, the wailing of paid mourners, the chanting of acolytes. On the altar, a wooden tablet gleamed, gold-painted characters carved into its newly varnished surface. An ancestral name tablet, carved for a family shrine.
Song Leiyin. Beloved Wife. Dutiful Daughter.
I recognized that name. My name.
It was when the priests had finished their chanting that I saw my souls for the first time, three bright sparks circling in the air beside me. They were small, shining, and red as embers, but I knew that to the living they were as invisible as motes of dust.
One of the sparks floated in a lazy arc to rest atop the varnished tablet. A delicate rustling at the back of my mind said this was my yang soul. I could feel its presence, stern and uncompromising. My yin soul wafted down to settle on the coffin, a careless, almost impudent movement. My hun soul stayed beside me, watchful as a cat in a strange neighborhood.
I turned to my hun soul, a question forming in my still-sleepy mind, when a small, pale face in the crowd below caught my eye. A little girl in mourning robes of white, white ribbons woven through her braids. She knelt behind a man bent so low with weeping his forehead touched the slate floor. The girl shuffled on her knees and the elderly woman beside her put a warning hand on her back. Obediently the little girl stooped down again, her expression blank but for the slightest quiver of her lips. Her dark eyes were dull and rimmed with red. They should have been bright, alive with curiosity.
How did I know that about her eyes?
Memory flickered and I recognized the little girl. My daughter. Weilan. She was so still, so silent. I snapped into wakefulness and in the next moment, I was beside her on the slate, my arms around her thin shoulders.
Mama is here, my precious girl. I’m still with you. But I couldn’t feel her. I drew back, suddenly cautious. I didn’t want to frighten her. I was dead.
She took no notice of me and that made me weep, my relief struggling with disappointment, for although I longed to hold her, I didn’t want to give her nightmares about her mother’s ghost. I stayed kneeling beside her, whispering all the pet names I used to call her: Small Bird, Sesame Seed, My Only Heart.
I hoped for a tiny gap between our worlds, a crack that would allow my comforting thoughts to reach her even if words could not. She was only seven, so young to be motherless. Who would listen to her chant her times tables now and rub her cold hands on winter days? Who would arrange a marriage for her and teach her how to embroider cloth slippers as gifts for her husband’s family?
A restless, elusive tugging sensation told me I didn’t belong in this world, but I vowed to resist for as long as possible. If there was any way I could take care of my child, even if I couldn�
�t be seen or felt or heard, I wouldn’t abandon her until it became impossible for me to stay.
Borne aloft on the sturdy shoulders of hired mourners, my coffin left the courtyard. I followed, drifting beside my daughter as the funeral procession traveled through the streets of the town, my yin soul riding on top of the coffin. Beside my final resting place, I watched the ceremonies. The man who had been weeping arranged food offerings in front of the grave. Weilan lit a bundle of incense sticks, her small hands nearly blue with cold.
Tense and anxious, I watched as the coffin was placed in its grave. Surely once my body was buried, I would be snatched away to the afterlife.
But nothing happened. I was still here.
I returned to town with the funeral cortège, but my yin soul remained behind at the grave, and in my mind’s eye it shared with me what it saw. Workers were piling earth into a smooth mound on top of my burial spot.
When they finished, however, I didn’t drift upward, nor did my consciousness fade into oblivion. When was I supposed to begin my journey to the afterlife?
At the front gates of the estate, fewer than a dozen people entered, all that remained once the mourners had been paid off.
“Come, Granddaughter,” said the old woman. Her voice sounded tired, strained but kind. This was, had been, my mother-in-law. She would be the one to bring up my daughter now. “I told Old Kwan to have some sweet-date soup waiting for us. Let’s go and warm up in the dining room.” She led Weilan away.
I stood waiting by the temple, my mind full of questions. Finally my yin soul returned, sliding along a thin shaft of winter sunlight. It joined the two other sparks in a slow circling above the altar.
I’m dead and buried, I said to them. Am I not supposed to leave this earth now? Or will the gods let me stay to watch over my child?