The ease with which money has been made, by both merchants and mandarins, is reflected in the monstrous cost of living and in a degree of luxury in some respects unequaled either in New York or Buenos Aires. I have seen something of the stupendous wealth of both these cities during and since the war. I have walked their streets and dwelt in their hotels.… But in the matter of mellow creature comforts of savoury fleshpots deftly served, no Croesus of America, North or South, can ever hope to attain to the comfortable heights and depths that Shanghai takes for granted. And neither Fifth Avenue nor the Calle Florida is in the habit of treating the dollar with quite the same splendid insouciance as Shanghai’s Nanking Road.
Shanghai, according to John Fairbank, “came to represent both the best and the worst aspects of China’s modernization.” This was due primarily to two factors—its geographical location and its colonial-derived city government. City services had evolved under the Shanghai Municipal Council, a ruling body started by the foreign residents in the middle of the nineteenth century, to which Chinese were not invited until 1921. The port was run by the Imperial Maritime Customs Service, which collected taxes from foreign ships under the direction of a British inspector general, a successor to the famous Englishman Robert Hart. The Chinese government whose authority was confined to areas outside the International Settlement, was not a body that Chinese residents could look to for help or services. For that, they had to turn to the Green Gang, a secret society that worked with the foreign police—especially those in the French Concession—in what Fairbank called a “marriage of convenience.”
One of the major political purposes of secret societies before 1911 had been the overthrow of the Manchus. Once that was accomplished, their political functions were taken over by the parties: the Kuomintang and eventually the Communists. In societal and economic matters, however, the secret societies remained active, representing the poorest members of urban society and the overtaxed peasants in the provinces, offering spiritual support and a sense of belonging. The three most important secret societies in China were the Green Gang, centered in Shanghai; the Red Gang, which had started as an organization for sailors stopping off in port and operated in southern China; and the Society of Elder Brothers, strong in Szechuan and the Northwest. They were known as the Triad. There were also quite a number of smaller secret organizations and, in the words of one agent of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA, “Some were benevolent and some were sinister.” As Shanghai emerged as the most important industrial center in China, it had attracted—along with armies of unskilled workers—petty smugglers, bandits, and police from the provinces who had come to the city to make their fortunes. Unlike some other societies, the Green Gang had embraced these criminals and organized their activities to a degree the Sicilian and American Mafias might well have envied. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it had become the most important secret society in the city—and the most dangerous.
The Green Gang was elaborately intertwined with the successful business establishments in Shanghai, since it controlled the many and varied forms of vice in which the new industrialists indulged themselves. A highly visible force, it was headed by Huang Jin-rong, known behind his back as “Pockmarked Huang.” Aside from the pits left by a bad case of smallpox, Huang was not bad-looking as a young man; his nose was square, his eyes piercing, his head bald or shaved. But by the time he reached middle age, he gave off what one writer called a “sinister aura.… This was the face of a man… accustomed to the vicious deployment of power.”
Huang’s father had owned a teahouse next to the French Concession where Huang started his work life as a waiter. There he met the petty criminals who lived under and around a nearby bridge, along with two neighborhood bosses—an expert in martial arts and a dark-skinned enforcer known as “Black-skin lord”—to whom the local merchants paid protection money. With the help of these two, Huang organized the local riffraff into a gang. When he was twenty-four, his father arranged for him to join the police force in the French Concession; using his contacts in the world of petty crime, he became invaluable to the force and moved up quickly to the rank of detective. It was said that Huang could find a piece of jewelry stolen anywhere in the concession within twenty-four hours, merely by speaking to one of the local gangsters. When members of the French police returned to Europe to serve in the armed forces of World War I, Pockmarked Huang became chief superintendant of the force. According to one of Chiang’s biographers,* Huang carried around a tiny gold-plated gun that folded up and could be hidden in the palm of his hand.
The second most powerful criminal in Shanghai was Du Yueh-sen, or “Big-Eared Du.” Aside from his famously large ears, Du’s face was narrow with searching eyes, a drooping left eyelid, and sensuous mouth. He had been born in a small town across the river from Shanghai to a family so poor that he had attended school for a total of only five months. Orphaned at a young age, he was sent to live with an uncle who treated him so badly that he ran away. In Shanghai, Du got himself apprenticed to a fruit seller who worked near the waterfront of the French Concession. There he came into contact with the lowest-rung members of the Green Gang, which he joined at the age of sixteen. He also met runners who worked for Pockmarked Huang. Hanging around Huang’s home, he managed to impress Huang’s wife, the former madam of a brothel, and then meet Huang himself. An addicted gambler and gifted criminal, Du was soon managing one of Huang’s gambling houses, and he was often seen in Shanghai’s cabarets with three or four girls in furs and diamonds. A writer from the West described the scene: “A carload of advance bodyguards came and ‘cased’ the cabaret from kitchen to cloak-rooms, then took up stations to wait for the boss. Du himself always travelled in a large, bullet-proof sedan.… Behind the leader’s limousine a second carload of bodyguards travelled. Du never got out until these had surrounded him. Then, with one at each elbow, he ventured to cross the footpath and enter the cabaret.… Inside, while he and his party sat at a front table, guards sat beside and behind, guns in plain view!”
Huang’s main source of income was opium. Before the turn of the century, the Chinese had begun planting their own poppy fields, and in 1908, the British agreed to restrict their exports of opium from India. To “protect and dispose of ‘existing stocks,’” the Westerners employed a private police force—an arrangement that lasted until the end of World War I, when the Chinese bought out Western holdings. Suddenly, the opium business was thrown open to every gangster and petty criminal in the city. Members of the Green Gang competed with lesser bandits to steal shipments of opium while they were still in the harbor, the train station, or en route within the city from one building to another.
At this point Big-Eared Du hit upon a solution to the dangerous and unprofitable chaos: he convinced Pockmarked Huang to allow him to organize a new concern under Huang’s leadership and unify all the factions by arranging for them to share the take. The new organization was called the Black Stuff Company. Under this system, opium hongs were charged $3,000 to $10,000 a month,* yielding $180,000† to the authorities and heaven knows how much to the Green Gang. In addition, Du established the Opium Pipe Company, which earned $.30 per day per pipe, collected by Du’s men every afternoon. (Those who attempted to cheat were charged $50 a pipe.) This part of the operation alone earned the Green Gang some $100,000 a month.‡ The selling and use of opium were so open in the French Concession, carefully protected by Huang, that dealers put their names and addresses on packages of the drug.
Under Du’s sponsorship, opium in varying grades was available to rich and poor alike. The former took their opium lying on silken couches with servants standing by to fill their pipes, while the latter had to beg or steal a few grains of the bitter, sticky, yellowish brown substance. Opium dens, frequented by those who fell on the social scale somewhere between the wealthy and their servants, were divided into cubicles, each of which was outfitted with a low table holding the necessary paraphernalia. The raw opium was t
wisted around a pin and cooked over a lamp until it hardened, then placed in the bowl of the pipe, which was inhaled next to the heating lamp. It took only a few minutes to complete a pipe, and some smokers would have six or more before declaring themselves satisfied. It also took practice to learn to smoke opium. “Imagine that you are a child that sucks its mother’s breast” was the advice given one British writer when he started.
A member of the Anti-Opium Information Bureau in Geneva met Big-Eared Du in Shanghai and left a devastating picture of the opium king at home:
a gaunt, shoulderless figure with long, aimlessly swinging arms, clad in a soiled, spotted blue cotton gown; flat feet shod in untidy old slippers; a long, egg-shaped head, short-cropped hair, receding forehead, no chin, huge, batlike ears, cold, cruel lips uncovering big, yellow, decayed teeth, the sickly complexion of an addict.… He came shuffling along, listlessly turning his head right and left to look whether anyone was following him. We were presented. I had never seen such eyes before. Eyes so dark that they seemed to have no pupils, blurred and dull—dead, impenetrable eyes.… A huge, bony hand with two-inches-long brown, opium-stained claws.
Appearances aside, Du was very rich. Unlike most other gangsters, he used much of his wealth to support supplicants—from scholars and politicians to widows and orphans. Beggars lined up on the street when they knew he would be in their part of town, and his following grew enormous. Moreover, Du never tried to replace Huang, the man who had given him his big chance. He was, according to one journalist who knew him, “an amazing character because he was also an honest businessman… and a great patriot during the Sino-Japanese War.” With riches came power—and respectability. It was said that Big-Eared Du held positions on more directorates of banks and businesses than any other man in the city, and his name eventually appeared in Shanghai’s Who’s Who as a “well-known public welfare worker.” By that time, he had become president of two banks, a member of the French Municipal Council, head of the Chinese Red Cross, and, ironically, a member of the board of the Opium Suppression Bureau. More important, Du had by then befriended Chiang Kai-shek, the man who would capitalize most successfully on the symbiotic relationship between the world of crime and that of Shanghai society.
11
If we want to know how developed a nation is, we have to look at the status of women in that nation.… Unfortunately, a large number of Chinese women… live a life similar to that of hundreds of years ago.
—MADAME CHIANG KAI-SHEK
IN 1918, May-ling, who had supervised the the family’s move to the new house on Seymour Road, ended up with little blisters all over her body, diagnosed as paint poison* but probably what she later called urticaria (hives) and what the doctors termed neurodermititis. “Mother said it was because I refused to go to Revival meetings with her that it was a case of Retribution,” she wrote Emma. “Well, anyway I was and [am] miserable for it itches and swells. If you ever had a bad case of ivy poison you would have an idea of one tenth of the agony I am now undergoing.”
The Soong sisters never underestimated the discomfort of their physical ailments, and May-ling was probably the most dramatic of the three. As sometimes happened when she was bedridden (which was frequently), she took the opportunity to evaluate her life. “I felt and feel that I am going to pieces, so to speak, through lack of mental exercise,” she wrote her friend.
I have tried writing; but gads! I have not succeeded in turning out anything worth a penny.… I am supposed to have an active mind, and yet since I have returned home, I am surrounded with every deadening force possible.… What about the various committees I belong to?… They are superficial and the members meet more to observe each other’s clothes than to discuss means of improvement.… But I am going to tell you a secret. I am going to get connected with some active social work, active in the sense of hard, real, live, amount-to-something, worthwhile work, some work that will make me damnably uncomfortable physically, work that would make me too tired to care what kind of bed I shall be sleeping on. And a work that is not going to have any frills.
Added to this letter was a P.S.: “I’ve committed myself. I have just made an appointment by phone with one of the secretaries of the Y.W.C.A. to find me a hard job without pay.”
Meanwhile, she took a pleasure trip to the North with brother T.V., sister Ai-ling and Ai-ling’s husband, H. H. Kung. Their first stop was Tientsin, the major port of northern China, where, as she wrote Emma, they had
a whopping good time… Sister has so many friends here that we are motored… dined, and treated every minute of our waking hours. We never get to bed before 1:30 A.M. We have Mr. Kung, my sister, the two children, three servants, an uncle, my brother and I here all in the hotel. We have a wing all to ourselves.… The rickshaw coolies here are far better dressed than those in Shanghai, and here I have not seen a single beggar whereas Shanghai is full of them.… As my sister never gets up before 11, and as I am always up by seven, I take the children out quite a bit. We go to the bund to watch the ships come in; it’s lots of fun.
From Tientsin, the family moved on to the capital. “The streets are on the whole narrow and bumpy with dust ten inches thick,” she wrote two weeks later,
& when it rains, the mud is over a foot thick, and squashy! Except in the Legation Quarter, the streets are very winding and narrow. Mule carts are in great evidence; on the whole, belonging to the Manchus. The Manchu women still effect [sic] their ridiculously unsightly and tall head-dress, & their faces are clownish with powder and paint an inch thick.… In Peking, you will find China as it was before it came under foreign influence.… Palaces sometimes have over a hundred rooms, each of which in one direction or another open to one or more courts. On the whole, the palaces are of one story high, but beautifully finished with brilliant tiles and carvings. Some of our friends live in these palaces.… We were invited to the President’s Reception. My brother-in-law Mr. Kung was ordered by the President to his office. He wanted to consult Mr. Kung on matters of state. We were too busy to attend the Reception as we were buying rugs. Fancy that, can you?
Somerset Maugham, who visited China the following year, was also captivated by shopping in Peking, and Sir Osbert Sitwell, who arrived in the 1930s, was fascinated by Peking’s pigeons, which had whistles attached to their tails and created various melodies as they circled overhead. “In former years,” according to Sitwell’s Chinese source,* some of the pigeons had been taught to steal. They flew to the Imperial Granaries, where they swallowed as much rice as they could, and returned home to be “dosed with alum and water and made literally to disgorge their booty. After being washed, the rice would then be sold.”
Returning to Shanghai, May-ling volunteered two mornings a week at the YWCA doing office work. She was also put on the committee for the financial campaign and enjoyed it tremendously, developing a skill that would serve her well—some might say too well—in the future: “I go to the managers of the Banks personally and look them in the eye, and literally the money rolls in!” she wrote Emma.
I never say the same thing to two men; I first size them up to see which of my arguments would more likely appeal to him, and then I strike while the iron is hot! For instance, one man might be interested in the development of Social Service, another would like a more “commercial” argument.… In each case, however I tell them then that I am a volunteer worker and that I get nothing for my service except the satisfaction of knowing that I am trying to work for the betterment of China, and that because they cannot give their service, I am now giving them the privilege of giving financial support. I find that my being a volunteer worker, they are most impressed with that fact. I am liking the job! The men are very polite and seem interested. They are mostly foreigners. I thank they are impressed with the fact that Chinese are interested in Chinese!…
I always take one of the old maid secretaries along for chaperone, but I do all the talking because as I told you the appeal coming from a Chinese girl is more effective than from
a foreigner.… I always put on my best clothes… when I go to the offices, for to my mind nothing gives one more confidence than the feeling that she has on a becoming hat, plenty of powder to keep the shine off the nose, and sumptuous furs. And then too, to be well dressed means that a larger contribution will be assured, for the men would be ashamed to give any sum too small to buy my shoes with at least! And then again, I never ask for money as charity. I always give the men the privilege of contributing to something which would in time benefit them, for a better China socially means a greater China commercially. I am enjoying my work very much and as I have the motor at my disposal, I do not have to exert myself unnecessarily and can reserve my strength for the interviews.
Back in the social life of upper-class Shanghai, May-ling began to think again about marriage, recommending it for her friend Emma and adding that she herself believed that “women lose interest in life, at least they feel a distinct lack, as though they have been cheated out of life, if they do not marry.… And then too, really what has one to look forward to if one does not have children?”
In attempting to help her friend, who was currently going through an emotional crisis, May-ling was also trying—sometimes rationally, sometimes not—to sort out her own ideas about life, love, and responsibility: “you are not sure which is the correct path to take if there is such a thing as a correct path,” she wrote Emma. “I have had something very like the experience you are having, only in my case I was sure what I wanted only the gods did not see fit to give it to me.… I have noticed that the most successful men are usually not the ones with great powers as geniuses but the ones who had such ultimate faith in their own selves that invariably they hypnotise others to that belief as well.”
The Last Empress Page 15