A Thousand Pieces of Gold

by Adeline Yen Mah

  I did not know it then, but during all those years in Shanghai, my childhood traumas were erecting my life’s foundation and building up my inner resistance. By the time I entered medical school in London, I had been conditioned to take the slings and arrows of discrimination unflinchingly, with equanimity and fortitude. After being challenged by a whole series of kua xia zhi ru, “insults from under the hips,” I had passed the test and was prepared to face the world.

  Xiao He continued, “Hahn Xin enlisted in Fourth Uncle Xiang Liang’s army as an ordinary soldier. After Fourth Uncle’s death, Hahn Xin became one of Xiang Yu’s bodyguards. He offered a variety of military strategies to Xiang Yu but was repeatedly rebuffed. Disillusioned, he decided to follow you instead. Soon afterward, he committed an offense and was sentenced to death with thirteen others. When all the others had been executed and the guards were leading Hahn Xin to the execution block, he happened to see your personal assistant, Xia Houyin, walking by. Hahn hailed him and said, ‘I hear that Liu Bang wishes to conquer the world. If this is true, why is he killing a warrior like me, who can help him achieve his goal?’

  “Xia was intrigued and halted the execution. After interviewing Hahn Xin, he realized that the man did have many ingenious ideas. So Xia pardoned him and recommended him to you. You promoted him to be keeper of the granary but ignored all the strategies he proposed. That’s why he ran away. When I found him gone, I hurried after him and persuaded him to return. In order to keep Hahn Xin, you must promote him. Otherwise, he will leave again. If Your Majesty intends to conquer All Under Heaven, you will need Hahn Xin.”

  “All right! All right!” Liu Bang exclaimed impatiently. “Because of your recommendation, I shall promote Hahn Xin to be a general.”

  “I’m afraid he might leave again if you make him only an ordinary general.”

  “How about general in chief?”

  Xiao He visibly brightened, “As general in chief I think he will stay.”

  “Tell him to come over and I’ll appoint him!” Liu Bang said.

  “If you are sincere in wanting to designate Hahn Xin as your general in chief,” Xiao He replied, “how can you be so arrogant as to summon him hither and thither like a little boy? You must demonstrate some respect. Make his appointment special and hold a grand ceremony for the occasion. Then deng tan bai jiang, ‘perform the ceremony on a platform in front of the entire army.’ Only then will Hahn Xin be convinced to stay.”

  When it was announced that “someone” was about to be appointed general in chief of Liu Bang’s army, excitement ran high among the rank and file. Every officer wondered whether he was going to be the lucky one.

  An auspicious day was selected by the court astrologer. Liu Bang fasted for three days, bathed, and changed into ceremonial robes. The whole army assembled in front of a high platform specially erected for the occasion, surrounded by tall red flags fluttering in the early morning breeze. (Red was the color chosen by Liu Bang to represent his new kingdom of Han.) Liu Bang knelt and prayed to Heaven at the altar. Then he stood up, turned to the audience, took the seal and tally with both hands, and announced in a solemn voice, “Will the general in chief please ascend the platform to accept his seal of office.”

  There was a gasp of astonishment when the tall figure of Hahn Xin stood up and strode forward to the sound of beating drums. He went up the stairs to the platform, knelt in front of Liu Bang, and accepted the seal and tally into his two outstretched hands with his head bowed. Never did anyone imagine that the new general in chief would be the former keeper of the granaries, who had narrowly escaped execution a few months earlier.

  After the ceremony a banquet was held. For the first time, Hahn Xin found himself seated next to Liu Bang.

  “Xiao He has told me repeatedly of your abilities,” Liu Bang began. “Now that we have an opportunity to talk, please tell me your plans and strategies.”

  “I thank Your Majesty,” Hahn Xin replied. “May I begin by asking you a question? When you go east to conquer All Under Heaven, would your chief opponent be Xiang Yu?”

  “Of course.”

  “In your own estimation, who is braver on the battlefield, you or Xiang Yu?”

  After a long silence Liu Bang said, “I am not as brave as Xiang Yu.”

  Hahn Xin bowed and said, “I agree with your estimation. Your Majesty has the vision to know yourself and the courage to admit the truth. These are unusual traits. Another of your strong points is your ability to listen to advice from others. This comes from a generosity of spirit that not many people possess.

  “As for Xiang Yu, I used to work for him and know him well. When he shouts in anger on the battlefield, chi zha feng yun, he appears to be ‘commanding the wind and the clouds’ and ‘earthshaking in his power,’ so much so that he can frighten away a thousand brave warriors. However, he is unable to delegate authority and is jealous of those who are capable. That is why I consider him to be pi fu zhi yong, ‘an ordinary man whose bravery is really recklessness.’ Toward his friends and subordinates he appears soft and kind. When they are wounded, he cares for them and shares his food, often with tears in his eyes. But when an officer performs a valiant deed deserving of promotion, Xiang Yu is frequently reluctant to hand over the appropriate award. Fu ren zhi ren, ‘his benevolence is like that of a woman.’ (Note the prevailing misogyny in the ancient historian Sima Qian’s comments about women.) Even though presently he rules the world and is overlord of all the kings in the empire, he has not the wisdom to recognize the importance of geographical location in determining his own ultimate destiny. This lack of foresight resulted in his choice of his native state of Chu as his base rather than the vastly superior ‘Land Within the Passes.’

  “In front of the whole world, Xiang Yu went against the covenant. Wherever he sends his army, he allows his soldiers to burn, rape, rob, and steal. He rules by fear, and tong ru gu sui, ‘everyone hates him to the marrow.’ Although nominally he is Lord Protector and rules All Under Heaven, in reality he has already lost the heart of the people and no one wants to be ruled by him.

  “The three kings set up by Xiang Yu to rule ‘The Land Within the Passes’ were all surrendered generals from Qin. Many of their troops were killed while under their command. Remember that less than a year ago, Xiang Yu executed 200,000 surrendered Qin soldiers and only spared the lives of these three generals. How terrible that of all the people under heaven, Xiang Yu should appoint these three as the Qin people’s new kings! What arrogance! What stupidity!

  “When Your Majesty entered Xianyang last year, qiu hao wu fan, you did not ‘trespass against the smallest downy hair’ (encroach on the interests of the people to the slightest extent). Not only did you liberate them from the cruel and complicated Qin laws, you made a pact with the elders to adopt your three simple codes. You have the Qin people’s support, and they are on your side. Should you decide to attack, I think you will be able to take the Land Within the Passes without difficulty.

  “Many of your officials and soldiers are from east of the mountains and are longing to return home. If you use their homesickness ji feng er shi, ‘without delay, as a weapon when it is still sharp,’ you can accomplish a lot. But when everything settles down and people become accustomed to their new surroundings, their homesickness disappears and that weapon is gone. Therefore it is better to move forward as soon as possible.”

  Liu Bang was highly pleased with Hahn Xin’s analysis and knew that he had chosen the right man to be his general in chief. Hahn Xin worked out a plan whereby Xiang Yu’s three kings could be outwitted and the Land Within the Passes taken over in a surprise attack. Liu Bang and Hahn Xin trained the officers, drilled the troops, and piled up provisions. They also deployed spies to the other states to gather information while preparing for a major assault to the east.

  The concept of using homesickness as a weapon demonstrates that the yearning for one’s lao jia is a natural and universal phenomenon that has been recognized by the Chinese for ove
r 2000 years. When one moves away and adapts to her new environment, homesickness gradually lessens but never entirely disappears.

  My lao jia still stands in the heart of Shanghai in the old French Concession. To reach it, you walk through an imposing gate into a long tang, a complex of similar houses built in the same style, surrounded by a communal wall. On each side three narrow alleys open onto a central main lane ending in bustling Avenue Joffre, now called Huai Hai Central Road.

  So many of my childhood memories are connected to that house. They start with the living room where we had our family reunion and I as a six-year-old spoke up against my stepmother’s beating of her baby daughter, thereby incurring her wrath. The curved, wooden banister on which I used to slide instead of using the stairs. The landing where a leaking water tank caused my three brothers to be whipped by Father. The room that I shared with my Aunt Baba and the hours and hours we spent reading together. The feeling of sheer joy when I watched my pet duckling, PLT, wandering between our beds before she was bitten and killed by my father’s German shepherd. The countless evenings when I did my homework or wrote my kung fu stories with the door closed. The closet where my aunt kept her safe deposit box. The day my stepmother caught me attending a friend’s birthday party and my terror as she drilled me in my room. The awful afternoon twelve of my classmates secretly followed me home to give me a surprise celebration party for winning the election for class president and I was summoned upstairs by my stepmother, where she screamed at me and slapped me for breaking her rules and letting them into the house. The final hours I spent with my aunt before I was wrenched away from her at the age of ten, when she made me promise that I would try to do my best at all times, and we went through the contents of her safe deposit box together.

  This is the house where my aunt lived for most of her life. It is also where much of my autobiography was recorded and written. Between 1990 and 1994, I spent many days there alone with my aunt, taping an oral history of our family and reliving my past. She spent the last days of her life in this house and died there. At the age of eighty-nine she became bedridden following a fall that broke her hip. X rays showed that she had cancer of the colon, which had already spread. She categorically refused to consider surgery or even hospitalization, chiding me for my grandiose plans of rescue and telling me that she did not wish to prolong the agony of dying.

  A few days before she died, she asked me to find a black handbag buried beneath a pile of towels in her closet. From it she extracted a pair of jade earrings, which I had given her for her eightieth birthday, and a large envelope, telling me, “These are for you.” When I opened the envelope, I saw with a pang that it contained all the American dollars I had given her since we met again in 1979. Instead of spending them, she had saved them all and was now returning them to me.

  My aunt was almost ninety years old when she died, and I had the privilege of spending her last days with her. Toward the end she could no longer see but continued to ask me to read to her and tell her stories from America, saying it was the one remaining activity we could still share. She and I both knew that her days were numbered, but she wished to listen and learn even to the last, looking forward to as yet another adventure with every turn of the page.

  It has been eight years since my aunt passed away. Since then I have received many offers from would-be buyers who are interested in purchasing my Shanghai house. But somehow, I cannot sell it. It still seems incredible that I, the unwanted daughter who was thoroughly despised as a child, should end up owning the Yen family residence from which I was so terrified of being banished at the age of ten.

  Recently, I leased the house to three young men, one of whom had read Falling Leaves and professed an interest in restoring the house to its former glory. In less than three months they succeeded in transforming the dilapidated building into a slice of Old Shanghai. Tears welled up in my eyes when I visited my renovated lao jia recently. Its beautiful parquet floors were polished and glistening. The original window frames, metal grilles, and old-fashioned handles were neatly painted and glazed. A beautiful Chinese lantern hung in the hallway above the gracefully curving wooden stairway. Outside in the replanted garden, granite stones bordered a neat lawn that surrounded the giant magnolia tree, under which I had buried my beloved duckling, PLT.

  As I stood in the radiance of my redecorated former bedroom looking down at the dewy green grass where Father’s German shepherd used to roam, I was filled with a sense of nostalgia. I knew that my three young tenants had put their hearts into the project, and I was deeply moved. Since two of them were Chinese and one was American, I silently dared to hope that my lao jia would be a dwelling where East and West would live in amity and where Shanghai’s past would step harmoniously into a bright new future in the twenty-first century.

  If this dream should become reality, then instead of yi jing ye xing, “dressing in the finest brocades to parade in the dark of night,” I would be yi jing huan xiang, “returning to my lao jia, hometown, in silken robes after having made good.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Plot to Sow Discord and Create Enmity

  Fan Jian Ji

  Although my father was still alive in 1985, he was already suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease and had been hospitalized in the Hong Kong Sanatorium for over two years. One evening, at home in California, I received an urgent phone call from my stepmother. She informed me that Aunt Baba, who lived alone in Shanghai, was seriously ill from colon cancer. Would I fly there to help her?

  Less than a week later I was in Shanghai. At Aunt Baba’s bedside I found my oldest sister, Lydia, who, unlike the rest of my siblings, had never left China. In those days Lydia was extremely affectionate toward me, hooking her arm protectively in the crook of my elbow whenever we crossed the street and placing the tastiest morsels from her bowl onto my plate at every meal. She would also thank me repeatedly for helping her two children out of Communist China and getting them educated in America. My hunger for my family’s approval was so strong that I was blithely unaware of her true feelings.

  I bought two new bicycles at the Friendship Store in Shanghai and gave one to my aunt’s surgeon and the other to the administrator at the best hospital in the city. The very next day they hospitalized my Aunt Baba, excised her tumor under general anesthesia, and discharged her five days later to recuperate at home.

  One morning after breakfast, I was clearing the dishes when Aunt Baba said to me, “Let me comb your hair and give you a new hairstyle. Remember how you used to wear your hair when you were little? I think you will look so much prettier without a fringe on your forehead.”

  “Let me comb your hair first,” I said. “Then you can do mine.”

  We were happily engaged in combing each other’s hair when Lydia walked in. She watched us in silence for a while. Aunt Baba said, “Younger women like you two with lots of hair should spend at least twenty minutes every morning combing your hair. Use a fine-toothed comb like this one here, which I’ve had for fifty years. Be sure that the comb touches the scalp with every stroke. This way, the scalp gets repeatedly massaged and will remain healthy. By doing this, I still have some hair left on my head even though I’m already eighty.”

  Lydia suddenly said to me, “Come into the kitchen for a minute, Wu Mei, Fifth Younger Sister! My eyes are failing, and I need you to read a label.”

  Somewhat reluctantly, I followed Lydia into the kitchen. I was feeling relaxed and a little drowsy. It had been enormously comforting to have my hair lovingly combed by my aunt, reminding me of another era when she and I shared a room and meant everything in the world to each other.

  In the kitchen Lydia said, “Actually, there is no label for you to read. I just wanted to tell you something in private. How can you let your clean, shampooed hair be touched by that filthy old comb of hers, which probably has never been washed? You are in Communist China, not the United States of America! I know for a fact that during the Cultural Revolution, she didn’t have a bath
for years. Nobody did! Aren’t you scared of picking up some awful disease like head lice? Just look at the flakes of dandruff on her collar! I’m only telling you this because you are my sister and I want to protect you. For heaven’s sake, keep this conversation between us private and don’t breathe a word! Let’s not hurt her feelings!”

  Images of creepy-crawlies invading my hair entered my mind in spite of myself. On returning to Aunt Baba’s bedroom, I suddenly had no further wish for her to comb my hair.

  This episode came back to me when I was doing research on the continuing struggle between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu for the control of China. In hindsight, I now realize that Lydia’s words and actions were part of a deliberate plot on her part to sow dissension between my aunt and me. Far from wishing to protect me, Lydia was trying to alienate me from my aunt.

  While reading Shiji, I came across a passage in which the Grand Historian Sima Qian coined a special term to describe stratagems similar to the one that Lydia used. It is called fan jian ji, “plot to sow distrust by spreading rumors.” Over two millennia before Lydia was born, professional military advisers were already devising similar plots in order to divide and conquer.

  To Liu Bang’s delight, his spies reported that most of the new kingdoms created by Xiang Yu were in a state of turmoil. Those who were given kingdoms considered them too small whereas those who were denied felt excluded and left out.

  A case in point was Xiang Yu’s decision regarding Qi (present-day Shandong Province on the northeast coast of China).

  Before unification, the Tian family ruled Qi for many generations during the Warring States period. King Jian, the last king of Qi, surrendered to the First Emperor against his ministers’ advice without a fight in 221 B.C. Considered a coward by his countrymen, King Jian’s capitulation did not earn him the reprieve he expected. Instead, he was imprisoned in a remote area and starved to death.