All the Flowers in Shanghai (37 page)
Read All the Flowers in Shanghai Online
Authors: Duncan Jepson
Madam Zhang had no reply.
I closed my eyes again and dropped my head against the back of the chair. I felt the back of her hand press against my cheek again and then she stood up.
Knowing you were alive I forgot I was hungry and my pain eased but then there was a sudden burning sensation in my feet as the feeling and the frostbite returned to them. Madam Zhang stooped down, swiftly undid the wraps, and slowly submerged them in a bowl of warm water. The pain increased, then became less intense until I could move them freely. Madam Zhang put a cup of hot tea next to me.
“Your feet look bad, I will go and fetch the doctor,” she grunted, “for all the good she will do.”
“Yes,” I smiled, “I think she is trained only in ideological health and welfare.”
“Well, let’s see if in this cold she is as barefoot as they say!”
She left me alone to think of you, Lu Meng, and Xiong Fa who had made himself a good father.
M
adam Zhang and I sat by the opening of the
kang
with its meager flames, the light had almost dropped from the sky, and we huddled together under the thick blankets. Every minute was now spent thinking of food, sometimes I would dream of Jin Hua ham but instead we had to pick at the ground for roots and grubs and stripped the bark from the trees. I had spent several weeks writing on white cloth as Madam Zhang suggested telling this story to you. I had imagined your wedding, what sort of ceremony could you have, we had wasted such riches and you now have nothing but dark green, blue, and a little red. I looked at Madam Zhang sleeping next to me and I woke her.
“I would like to send my daughter a wedding present.”
“We will have to be careful. What do you want to send? We don’t have much.”
“Can we create a shawl for her, with flowers on it? Each flower would be one of those my grandfather showed me. Can we do this?”
For a few minutes I was excited.
Madame Zhang looked at me sympathetically as we both knew we had few materials to use.
“Yes, we can. We can use the materials in the dress in the bedroom.”
“But you have been working on that for so many years.”
“Who knows how many years of madness we can endure and what will be left. Besides our fingers are rough and stiff,” she stretched her fingers a little, “and this may be the last beautiful thing I create.”
She laughed heartily.
“Anyway these materials I have saved should be worn. What better way than as a beautiful garden?”
We smiled at each other.
“Thank you.”
Dear Yu,
I will not live to see you but I am here now thinking of you. We hear that the country is falling apart again and that it’s not even possible to think of a future because there is only the present. There is no education, no respect for the aged, no love, no wisdom, no truth, and no lies. But I wish you every happiness in your marriage and hope that you and your husband love each other.
I hope you have found this letter and shawl. The shawl contains all the flowers that I loved when I would visit the gardens with your great-grandfather. Madame Zhang and I have colored it with yellows, pinks, greens, reds, and gold. Lu Meng can tell you the names of each flower as I learned them from Great-grandfather. Please tell Lu Meng I love him and have missed him terribly. The garden was my happiest time and enjoyment of such things has been long forgotten.
Please live for me and someday come here. I leave two books, explaining my life. I have no right to ask anything of you, but find these lines and words when it is possible and know that I have always loved you. Don’t suffer and hate the way I have. I wish with all that I have lost and all that is left of me, my useless legs, torn muscles, and blistered face, that I had only opened my eyes that night and let myself love, as all of us should. Finally I can smile, happy that you have found me.
Ma
To my wife, Charmaine, for your love, patience, and support.
To my good friend (and agent), Marysia Juszczakiewicz, for all your help, hard work, and determination.
To my editor, Wendy Lee, for believing that a man can tell a story on a woman’s behalf.
To Lynn Curtis for helping me tell the story.
Thank you.
A
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AUTHOR INSIGHTS, EXTRAS & MORE . . .
FROM
DUNCAN
JEPSON
AND
1. What is Feng’s relationship like with her parents compared to her grandfather? What important lessons does her grandfather teach her?
2. Why is Feng attracted to Bi? What kind of background does he come from, and why is it considered unacceptable for Feng to associate with him?
3. Describe the hierarchy in the Sang family. Where does Feng fit in? How does she learn to manipulate these relationships to her own advantage?
4. What is Feng’s sister and mother’s view of an ideal life? How is this different from what Feng wants? Does Feng finally achieve this life, and if so, how does it make her feel?
5. Do you think Xiong Fa is a good or bad husband? Is he also a victim of society’s expectations of him?
6. Why does Feng decide to give away her daughter? Even if you may not agree with her decision, can you sympathize with her reasons for doing it?
7. Do you think the suffering that Feng endures during the Great Leap Forward is enough to atone for the mistakes she has made? Why or why not?
8. How does Feng change throughout the novel? Has she learned anything about herself?
9. Based on this novel, what do you feel is the prevailing attitude toward daughters in China? Is it very different from how daughters are perceived in the West?
10. Are you surprised that the author is a man, given the book’s first-person perspective and subject matter? Do you think that men can write about these things?
My mother was the central figure in our family, always insisting that a core Chinese principle was that families were inclusive no matter how distant the bonds and relationships. To her, family was more than the immediate four of us but must always include the extended Chinese side of her sister’s and brother’s families, the latter being based in her native Singapore.
She had immigrated to the U.K. in the mid-1950s along with her siblings, on the slimmest of opportunities afforded by the British colonial government: if my grandfather passed his degree, taken in his late thirties, then his children would be allowed to continue their studies in the U.K. Working hard, she became a doctor, engaging and enjoying English culture while retaining what she could of her Chinese heritage as she remembered it.
Her profession quickly provided her with the option of independence, even the possibility of breaking from her family and building her own life as one might in a Western family, but it also provided the means to help and support her family, and this she chose, something that was and would always be her priority. It did mean that, unlike millions of other Chinese immigrants before and after her, she did not have to rely on the Chinese immigrant diaspora that existed in Chinatowns all over the world. The Chinese clans who would support lonely immigrant laborers and new arrivals were the ultimate extended family, which at its simplest level was based around one’s family name, such as Tan, Chen, Yeung, and so on.
It was just after my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006 that I began to reflect more deeply on her—and therefore a mother’s—role in what Asian families in particular refer to as
keeping the family together
. My wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer three years previously, and so I was not shocked or confused by the situation but was almost immediately aware of the grim reality and possibilities for the future. I was sad at the possible devastating conclusion that, in my mother’s case, would come so quickly, some nine months later.
My mother was a person who loved fiercely. Even in her flashes of extreme anger, common in those who draw on deep passion, her love would eventually get the better of her darker moments. The extended family she had held together was made of disparate characters, and over the months that passed between her diagnosis and her final days, the two of us occasionally discussed what might happen if she did not win the battle. The week before she finally slipped into deep unconsciousness, I told her that without her, these relationships would surely wither and this extended family would diminish. Several days before her death, as I sat at her side, she urged me to continue her efforts to keep the family together. I had to admit to her that I could not do what she had done, and reminded her of a number of events that despite her efforts and energy had only been costly and disappointing to her personally. She waved these off and lying, thin and tired in her hospital bed, adopted a tone and demeanor that reminded me that while I may be a grown man, I would always be her child. She told me I must do this. I replied that I had thought hard about it but for various reasons I could not find the same depth of devotion as she had. Ultimately, I had needed reasons to make the effort, whereas, fortunately for us, she had not.
My mother’s commitment, like many, was endless. She was never ill-intentioned though sometimes her attention and energy and their consequence were unwelcome, but there was no denying her devotion and the depth of her feeling. To be a Chinese mother is to have considerable power in determining the direction of the family. It is rooted, first, in their intense unquestioning passion for their family and, second, in the duties and responsibilities placed on them by tradition and history. Unfortunately, when this power is applied in the most unthinking manner, it can cause terrible harm.
In writing this book, I wanted to explore Chinese attitudes toward motherhood, children, and family. Similar to mothers in many Asian cultures, a Chinese mother plays a central role, with the father being the provider, often a silent provider. The dynamic in a Chinese family between father, mother, sons, and daughters is complicated. It was, and largely still is, a patriarchal structure with the mother required to focus on raising the children. Historically, there was always a preference for sons over daughters, traditionally explained by the practical need for strong arms and hands in the fields. It is difficult to accept the relevance of this reasoning today, but those urges of preference and discrimination are still present, whether among the poor or rich. It is an ugly and inexcusable way to think and act, and it is this relationship between a Chinese mother and daughter I wanted to focus on in my story.
As a Eurasian, but brought up in the U.K., over years of studying, dating, traveling, and working in Singapore, Hong Kong, and China, I have noticed that often this favoritism of sons over daughters, and often eldest over youngest, is regularly promoted by the mothers themselves. It is as though providing and raising a son, guarding the family name, must be done regardless of the cost to those around them, even though in modern Asia the cost is unnecessary. Like some atavistic calling, the prejudices must be maintained no matter that they contradict logic and fairness and, most important to me, are accumulated by many mothers in the face of their own experiences of this same attitude.
But the preference does not always stop at favoritism and its wretched cousin, discrimination; it can become an actual victimization of daughters. At worst, as is well documented, a daughter can be rejected and abandoned on the street to die or, more simply, drowned. I wanted to use this story to explore how a mother could intentionally treat a daughter in this manner, having often been treated this way herself; to understand what forces would push a woman to act this way. I wondered what must then happen for a mother to reconsider how she treats her daughter and what event must occur to awaken her to become fully aware and cognizant of the senselessness of this prejudice, particularly in a culture that declares its belief in family so fervently. Finally, I wanted to explore what prevents others from intervening and disrupting this “tradition.” In the end, let’s be clear, everyone is culpable for the harm caused.
My mother told me that she had made up her mind not to return to Singapore only a few years after arriving in the U.K. She might have missed home, and I think she always did, but the enjoyment and prospect of freedom from tradition and from conservative expectations was not to be sacrificed for anything. She felt that Chinese women needed to question the lives they were asked to lead and should be able to choose how and with whom they would spend their futures. I believe she would have liked the intentions behind my story and I wish she could have read it.