by Ann Bridge
“Which room, Wang?” asked Count Herman of the attendant. “Here,” said the man, ushering them through an open doorway across which hung a white sheet; he stood at the door and held the sheet aside. By this time a queue of girls had formed up in the courtyard. Rupert saw at a glance that they were all young and attractive, and dressed in the unvarying style adopted by well-to-do Chinese women in the evening—a straight close-fitting dress of brocade reaching nearly to the ankles, buttoned on the left side, and shaped high at the neck into a stiff two-inch collar. To his surprise, he experienced a curious feeling of embarrassment—but whether it was the numbers of the girls, their difference of race, or their perfectly dignified appearance which caused this unexpected sensation, he could not have said.
Wang called the girls up one at a time, by name, and each in turn paused at the door for a few seconds of scrutiny by the guests, standing in attitudes of flower-like grace, with an exquisite nonchalance which was yet strangely courteous. The fifth in the queue walked straight into the room and sat down without a word.
“This is Yin T’ai,” said Count Herman, as the other girls continued to halt and pass on. “She is an old friend of mine; it is not possible for me to call anyone else here. But which do you like? You must call one of them.”
“Oh, the one in black,” said Rupert rather desperately. The last girl had by now vanished.
“There were two in black,” Wang said gravely, “which one do you wish, Li Tzu or Hsiao Feng?” Both were recalled, after much shouting, and Rupert, again embarrassed, indicated Li Tzu without really looking at her. She also entered then, and sat down as Yin T’ai had done.
The room in which they sat, though clean, was rather like a bed-sitting-room in a third-class Continental hotel. A brass bedstead, a wardrobe, a dressing-table and a sideboard constituted its main and most garish features; in the middle stood a table covered in oil-cloth, and four wooden chairs. A Chinese note was struck, however, by the presence of two large brass spittoons, and by the absence of any shade over the powerful electric bulbs which glared above the table as though in readiness for a major surgical operation. As they sat down to this table an old amah in black trousers and a short black coat shuffled in with four cups of tea, which she placed before them: to these she added a saucer of sun-flower seeds, a tray of caramels, and a tin of Three Castles Magnum cigarettes. “It is a long time since you have been here, Mr. Ssŭ,” she said; “Yin T’ai has waited every day for you.” She screwed up her eyes and beamed expectantly. The girls giggled.
“I was here a fortnight ago,” said Count Herman, replying in Chinese to her banter. “I am sure Yin T’ai has so many sweethearts that she has almost forgotten me.” The girls giggled again.
A second amah now appeared, accompanied by a small girl of about ten, who, it transpired, was Yin T’ai’s younger sister. They both sat down on the bed, which jingled disconcertingly, and stared with unblinking in-tentness at the two visitors.
“Do we have an audience all the time?” Rupert asked, glancing at the newcomers.
“Oh yes, rather—they come and go as they like,” replied Herman; “there is no such thing as privacy in Chinese life. Besides, this is the first time you have been here, and you are a foreigner, so everyone in the house will want to come and look at you, and then discuss your visit for days.” His rather malicious smile appeared. “If you commit some gaffe, or make an amusing mistake in your Chinese, they will enjoy it for weeks.”
Rupert’s slight sense of embarrassment was not much relieved by this helpful information. He turned to Li Tzu. By any standards she was an undoubted beauty. Her shiny black hair was bobbed and drawn back behind her ears in carefully tended waves; her nose was straight and chiselled, and dimples showed in her cheeks at every smile. But it was the eyes and mouth that were her most arresting features. Her eyes were large, but half-veiled, as though to keep some secret to herself—a strange contrast to the flaunting scarlet of her lips, which curved in a broad line, half-disdainful, half-inviting, but always restrained and self-assured. For the rest, she had that curious poise and grace which is the heritage of all Chinese women.
“How old are you?” Rupert asked her—it was the first thing that came into his head, but it happens to be one of the most correct opening gambits for a Chinese conversation.
“Eighteen.”
“And where do you come from?”
“Soochow.”
“Nonsense,” interposed Herman. “They all say that. Soochow is where all Chinese beauties are supposed to come from. Her parents are probably shopkeepers in Shanghai.”
“And how old are you?” Yin T’ai asked now of Rupert.
“How old do you think?”
“Forty-nine.”
“Forty-seven,” Li Tzu put in.
Rupert had little personal vanity, but this unflattering consensus of opinion was rather a shock. Herman laughed at the sight of his face.
“It’s your hair,” he said. “By their standards it’s fair, which is the same thing as white hair to them, and can only mean age. You ought to feel complimented that they didn’t say sixty.”
“I am thirty-two,” said Rupert firmly, to the two girls.
“And what do you do?”
Rupert was unprepared for this. “I am a merchant,” he said, on the spur of the moment.
“No use saying that,” said Herman in English, again with his malicious smile. “They will know exactly who you are within twenty-four hours.”
“Well, you explain to them, then, that I do so much commercial work at the Legation that it comes to the same thing.”
“Right. To be an official will give you immense face.”
The girls accepted Mr. Ssu’s explanation without comment. It took them ten minutes, however, to be convinced that Rupert had no wife and family. “To be a bachelor at thirty-two is incredible here,” said Herman.
From the courtyard came the sound of voices and laughter, evidently of new arrivals, for “Guests” wailed Wang’s voice again. “Back in a moment,” said Yin T’ai and Li Tzu, dropping their cigarettes and hastily examining their make-up in the mirror on the dressing-table. As they ran out of the room another girl, in a plain cotton dress, with a pale featureless face came in, and calmly began to select an armful of clothing from the wardrobe. The two amahs appeared to object to this, and for some minutes a heated argument took place, which Rupert, fortunately for him, could not understand, though he caught the words “dog” and “grandmother.” When she departed, triumphant, and they were left alone with the two old amahs, Herman turned with his smile to Rupert. “Eh bien, mon cher, what do you make of it all?”
“It’s most interesting—and even odder than I expected,” said Rupert. “The girls are lovely, of course. But what does it all amount to? Are they prostitutes? One imagines so.”
Herman blew out a cloud of smoke. “In the West,” he began sententiously, “chastity is enjoined by religion, but here it only depends on social convenience. Many of these girls have young lovers—’little white faces,’ they are called—whom they often support out of their earnings, and many of them have a ‘patron’ among their clientele. But they are not here for that purpose at all. These places are not maisons tolérées. These girls are simply professional entertainers, and they work every night from about seven to one.”
“Most extraordinary,” said Rupert.
“Not really,” said Herman. “As you know, the Chinese have nothing which corresponds to our club life. Instead, a few friends go out together to one of these singsong places to chat, and to play mah-jongg or poker. Some prefer to hire a room in a restaurant and call the girls out to join them for an hour or two. Nearly all the important political and military leaders amuse themselves in this way, and discuss their affairs at the same time. In fact they often transact their most important business on these occasions. Anyone who takes the trouble to make a tour of this district now and then, and to become friendly with some of the girls, can often pick up a lot of usef
ul information.”
“H’m,” said Rupert. He thought he began to see why many of the diplomats in Peking saw so much of Count Herman. But he was really more interested for the moment in the sing-song industry itself. “And how do the ‘patrons’ get hold of the girls?” he asked. “How does one become a regular patron?”
“It’s a tremendous business, that,” said Herman. “Up till quite recently the set series of formalities to be gone through before you could make a sing-song girl your mistress was almost as elaborate as marrying a wife. It is all designed to give the girl face, of course. First the amahs have to be taken into your confidence—and bribed. Then you must give a series of banquets to the house she lives in—the expenditure on each of these must not be below a certain prescribed minimum—and several mah-jongg parties on the same scale. There is an appropriate and prescribed period of waiting, too, and finally the auspicious day must be chosen.” He smiled again. “Very unlike Europe, isn’t it? No hurry, no furtiveness. The wooing of a courtesan in China is much more decorous than many marriages in America or England.”
“Quite right, too,” said Rupert. “It’s partly the hurry and furtiveness that make prostitution in Europe so disgusting. But why do you say up till quite recently?”
“Ah, because now, since the hard times began, the formalities are being relaxed a little. For a Chinese-speaking foreigner who is thoroughly conversant with li—you know what li is—the rules of courteous usage—things are getting a good deal easier.”
By this time the recently arrived party had settled down in an adjoining room and were making a deafening noise playing a game rather like “Up Jenkins.” Two players each raise a clenched fist, and straightening as many fingers as they choose, simultaneously guess at the combined total thus exposed. “Two, seven, three, three, nine.” Through the wall it sounded like an auction. Then the thin piercing screech of a Chinese violin was added to the hubbub, the bow scraping across the strings like a carpenter’s saw, with no tune perceptible by a European. The shrill voice of a girl joined in, equally tuneless though less harsh.
“For Heaven’s sake don’t let them do that in here!” said Rupert, putting his hands to his ears. “Hullo—here’s another! To what do we owe this pleasure, do you suppose?” he asked, as a rather impish-looking girl came in, sat down at the table with a familiar smile, and began carelessly to crack sunflower seeds.
“That is the one who was quarrelling with the amahs just now,” said Herman.
“This one? Nonsense, Herman. Look at her face!”
“She has just, so to speak, constructed it,” said Count Herman. “You must remember that China knew more about the art of cosmetics two thousand years ago than Paris knows today.”
“It’s incredible,” said Rupert, still gazing at the girl. “What about our two—are they as plain as she was without make-up?”
“No—Li Tzu and Yin T’ai only need quite a little powder and lip-stick—nature has treated them well,” observed Herman.
“By the way, were those huge jade bracelets Li Tzu was wearing real?” Rupert asked.
“I understand that she has no ‘patron,’ therefore the bracelets were certainly imitation,” said Count Herman. “But that reminds me of a rather characteristic story. There used to be a girl in the next house to this, called Mei Yu, who had a pair of jade garters worth at least twenty thousand dollars. They were a present from her ‘patron,’ a general from Hupei. He could afford expensive presents because he had made enough out of the opium revenue in his province to build a whole house of jade, if he wished. Naturally the garters made the girl famous and popular; any party which she condescended to attend even for ten minutes was a success. In the same house was another girl called Hua Ying, in whom a young foreigner became rather interested. Presently this youth had to go away to Honan on business; he was bored there, and one day he sat down and just pour se désennuyer, wrote Hua Ying a long and ardent love-letter in quite good Chinese. When the letter arrived here it created a sensation; naturally she showed it to the whole street. No sing-song girl had ever received such a letter from anyone, least of all from a foreign devil. Soon the sing-song houses in Shanghai and even in Canton were discussing the story, and suddenly it became evident that Hua Ying’s name was made. Everyone sought her favour, and presently she accepted the attentions of a certain political agent of the Hupei clique in Peking, and therefore of the same party as Mei Yu’s patron.”
“Well, and then what?” asked Rupert, as Herman paused to light a cigarette. He thought the story rather dull, like the evening itself; a sing-song house was about as exciting as a Mothers’ Meeting.
“Ah, now we come to it,” said Herman. “It is this which is so characteristic. Mei Yu felt that Hua Ying’s success was making her lose face; her garters were supplanted in the public estimation by Hua Ying’s love-letter. So she tried to arrange an intrigue for her rival’s downfall. Unfortunately the plot was too complicated, like all Chinese plots; Hua Ying became suspicious, and one evening there was an open quarrel and the two girls scratched each other’s faces terribly before they were separated. Soon all the sing-song houses were divided into two camps. As you know, mediation is at once a fine art and a staple industry here; naturally all the various interests involved employed the most renowned professional peace-makers, but without success. And then, of course, the ‘face’ of the two Hupei patrons, the general and the official, became involved.”
“Oh come—not over a sing-song girls’ quarrel?” said Rupert incredulously.
“But most certainly! Here things are like that. In the end Mei Yu somehow succeeded in discrediting Hua Ying, and that was the end of the comedy in the singsong houses. But not in Hupei! Hua Ying’s defeat involved the public prestige of her patron, the Hupei official, for the whole town knew the story. He lost so much face that he had to leave Peking. He went back to Hankow, officially for a short holiday; but as soon as he got home he revenged himself on the general by getting him dismissed on a charge of treason to the Hupei government. It’s a fact,” said Count Herman, smiling at Rupert’s astounded stare.
“Well then, the general, of course, had no option but to change sides, and offer his services and his fifty thousand useless troops to some other provincial clique. All that was some time ago. But the general will attack Hupei as soon as the summer civil-war season opens; he badly needs to recover his opium revenue, but what he wants even more is to be able to execute the political agent. So there will be one more war in China because of a foreigner’s idle love-letter to a sing-song girl.”
“My God! And these people belong to the League of Nations!” was Rupert’s only comment.
Count Herman became sententious again. “My dear friend, that is just what makes world politics so interesting at the moment. The West is now enslaved by its own American-born idealism; the East goes quietly on its millenial realism. But the East is quite astute enough—in China, anyhow—to exploit this situation by doing noisy lip-service to Western ideals, for which in reality it does not care two hoots, and so adding to the difficulties of those Western nations whose hands are tied in the East by a set of new conceptions which are barely valid yet even in Europe, and here are simply an absurdity.” He smiled finely. “And the cream of the joke is that America, who started the whole game, has drawn her skirts aside, refuses to touch the League with a barge oar, and has her Nicaraguan expedition as and when it suits her. But still she is the rallying-point for this lip-service in the Far East, and comes out with some highly sanctimonious pronouncement whenever any member of the League she will not join attempts to act in accordance with facts as they are and not with a sentimental idealism. For us outsiders, this is very funny. Your statesmen do not appear to notice all this,” he concluded.
“Our poor wretched statesmen——” Rupert was beginning, when Yin T’ai and Li Tzu returned. They complained of the rowdiness of the other party and Li Tzu suggested that they should all adjourn to her room for another cup of tea. Just as they were
about to go the face of a young Chinese, adorned with horn-rimmed spectacles, was poked round the door.
“Hullo, Charlie!” said Count Herman. “Come in.”
“Hullo, Mr. Stefany,” replied the newcomer. “I heard there were foreigners here and I thought maybe it was you. Got up from Tientsin this evening, and just came out here to see the girls. Gee, I’m glad to see you again.” Herman introduced Rupert. “Glad to know you, Mr. Benenden. Say, how d’you like China? Find it pretty slow here, I guess, in some ways, don’t you? I’ve been eight years in the States—went through College there. Here’s my card.”
He handed Rupert a large piece of pasteboard on which was printed:
Charles (Ch’a-Li) Wang,
B.A. Memphis College, U.S.A.
The Oriental Emporium, Tientsin.
“Speak Chinese?” Mr. Wang went on. “Bit, eh? Mr. Stefany’s is wonderful. What d’you think of the Chinese girls? Pretty cute, some of them, hey? But you gotta know how to handle them; no rough stuff like in the States. Guess I know how all right. You sweet on this girl?” He indicated Li Tzu. “You leave it to me—I’ll fix you up.”
Rupert declined the offer. Mr. Wang pinched Li Tzu’s cheek; the girl shrank back with a pout of annoyance. “Well, I’ll bet she’s pretty inexperienced any way,” continued Mr. Wang, ignoring her. “You come down to Tientsin and I’ll show you some fine girls.” He glanced at a square gold wrist-watch. “Gee—nine-forty-five. Guess I must rush; got a date along the street. So long, Mr. Stefany—Goodbye, Mr. Benenden.” He was gone.
“There’s the new China,” said Count Herman. “Most of them are like that—amusing perhaps, but quite unreliable; they think only of pleasure. The American-educated ones are the worst—they have none of the charm and dignity of the old-style Chinese left.”
“God, no,” said Rupert. “If America were as near China as Russia is, the whole place would turn into one vast Y.M.C.A. in no time. Praise Heaven for the Pacific, for China’s sake.”