Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (4 page)

Japanese soldiers were everywhere, wearing surgical masks and carrying bayonets, demanding bows and obeisances, taking bribes and threatening violence. The foreign concessions remained neutral, small havens of uneasy independence amidst a vast sea of Japanese terror. The rest of Tianjin was now occupied territory under Japanese rule. In the evenings there were black-outs and curfews. Special permits were needed to cross key points at night, especially those conduit streets and bridges leading from the concessions into Japanese-patrolled

areas.

My mother’s labour pains started at four in the morning on

22

30 November 1937. Father did not possess the papers required to drive her past Japanese sentries on the way to the Women’s Hospital. However, Dr Ting had been issued with a pass allowing her to travel freely at night. Her chauffeur-driven black Ford, flying a small US flag given to her by the American consulate, arrived at my parents’ home an hour later. My birth was uneventful.

Dr Ting advised Father to transfer mother and baby to her hospital for a check-up and a few days’ rest. Father demurred. The birth had been so smooth and rapid. He considered it unnecessary. He also rejected Dr Ting’s advice to employ a nurse to care for my mother. He thought he could look after her himself, with the able assistance of Aunt Baba, who happened to be visiting at the time. Besides, trained nurses were expensive. A special bell was placed by mother’s bedside so that she could call for Father as needed. Mother was weak, so instead of using the bathroom down the hall, it was easier to slip a bedpan under her. Afterwards Father would wipe her with a towel held in his bare, unwashed hands. Mother thought Father knew best. Father was convinced he knew best.

The headaches and fever started three days after I was born. Mother’s temperature soared to 103 degrees and stayed there. Her lips were cracked and blistered. Her mind became cloudy and she was incoherent. Dr Ting diagnosed puerperal fever. In those days before penicillin this was virtually a death sentence.

Dr Ting immediately admitted yiy mother to the Women’s Hospital. She was given fluids intravenously and various medications were administered in a desperate attempt to save her life. Her temperature rose to 106 degrees. She became delirious, refused all food and drink, and tried to pull out all her tubes, making wild accusations that Dr Ting was trying to imprison and poison her. Dr Ting realized that the prognosis was hopeless and finally gave permission for her to go home to die.

Her condition worsened. Doctor after doctor was consulted but to no avail. A dark cloud hung over the entire family.

23

Towards the end there was a short period of lucidity. With Father weeping at her side, she spoke to her parents-in-law and saw her children one by one, calling out each name with yearning. When Aunt Baba came in to say goodbye, Mother was weak but clear-headed. She smiled at my aunt and asked for a hot dog. Then she added sadly, ’I’ve run out of time. After I’m gone, please help look after our little friend here who will never know her mother.’

My mother died two weeks after my birth, with five doctors at her bedside. She was only thirty years old and I have no idea what she looked like. I have never seen her photograph.

24

Surpassing Loveliness Good Enough to Feast Upon

After my mother’s death, Grandmother and Father persuaded Aunt Baba to resign her job at the Women’s Bank and stay on in Tianjin to take charge of the household. She was put on the payroll of Joseph Yen & Company at the same salary that she had been paid by Grand Aunt. She nagged and harried the servants and ensured that the house ran along similar lines as before. She became our surrogate mother, worrying about out meals, clothing, schooling and health. An invisible silken handcuff was thus slipped around her willing wrists, evaporating her chances of marriage and a family of her own. In those days, women in China were expected to sublimate their own desires to the common good of the family. In return, the men felt honour-bound to protect and support them for the rest of their lives.

Marriage brokers again clustered around, not for Aunt Baba, but for her newly widowed brother. The double standard accorded men and women determined that single girls not married off by the age of thirty often remained single for life, whereas a man was expected to take at least one wife, regardless of his age. Father had just turned thirty and headed his own company, with properties, investments and many thriving businesses. He had worked hard to achieve all this, putting business affairs and family welfare before

25

personal gratification. Now he decided to please himself.

Cruising with his sons around the neighbourhood in his impressive Buick on a Sunday afternoon, he spotted his secretary, Miss Wong, standing by the door of a modest apartment complex conversing with a girlfriend. He immediately noticed that the friend was very young and possessed a xiu se ke can (surpassing loveliness good enough to feast upon).

Jeanne Virginie Prosperi was the seventeen-year-old daughter of a French father and a Chinese mother. Her features were an exquisite combination of Chinese delicacy and French sensuality. Her face was oval, with a white, porcelain-like cornplexion. She had lustrous, large, round, dark eyes, fringed by long lashes. Her head was crowned with thick, silky, jet-black hair. That day, her slender frame was dressed in a simple white blouse with a scooped-out square neckline and a royal-blue cotton skirt tied with a bow at the waist. Later on Father was to discover that Jeanne was a skilled seamstress and made all her own clothes.

Next day at work, Father made discreet enquiries and found out from Miss Wong that Jeanne was her classmate and had just started work as a typist at the French consulate. At lunchtime he drove over to the consulate on the pretext of applying for additional import-export licences from France, found her there and made her acquaintance.

Jeanne’s father had been a soldier in the French army and was involved in the building of railways in China. He married a woman from Shandong Province. They had five children and times were hard. He left the army and found a job working as a security guard for a firm in the French Concession in Tianjin. He died suddenly in 1936, reputedly trying to break up a barroom brawl.

His widow coped as best she could. She had a small widow’s pension. She and her spinster sister, Lao Lao, took in sewing to make ends meet. Being French citizens, all five children were given special scholarships by missionary schools within the

26

French Concession. Both Jeanne and her older sister, Reine, graduated from St Joseph’s Catholic School for Girls, run by the Franciscan sisters.

Although Jeanne was not someone with an impressive social pedigree, she did graduate from the most exclusive convent school in Tianjin and, along the way, had acquired many of the social graces. Besides Mandarin, she spoke fluent French and English. Father was enchanted by her beauty and style. The fact that she was half European made her something of a trophy, to be prized, cherished and put on display.

During the 19305, in the treaty ports such as Tianjin and Shanghai, everything western was considered superior to anything Chinese. A young, beautiful and educated European wife was the ultimate status symbol. Jeanne Prosperi, therefore, possessed considerable allure. She was always perfectly groomed and remained so all her life. Still in her teens, she displayed all the beguiling modesty instilled at the convent. In addition, there was a gleam in her eyes that suggested that she was a little more exciting than an ordinary girl barely out of school. Father began to desire Jeanne with a desperation in which sexual longing mingled with social aspirations. A decorous courtship began.

Father would pick her up from the French consulate every day and drive her home, sparing her the unpleasant crush of Tianjin public transport. They went for meals at exclusive hotel restaurants, danced at the country club and went to the movies. Tianjin boasted three cinemas, the Gaiety, Empire and Capitol, which showed romantic Hollywood films. He gave her at first flowers and chocolates; then pearls, jade and diamonds. The trinkets became increasingly expensive. Jeanne must have had a fairly clear idea as to where things were leading when she expressed a desire for a Russian sable coat costing four thousand taels of silver. Though Ye Ye voiced his objection in front of Jeanne and called it ’senseless extravagance’, Father went ahead with the purchase and had the coat delivered three days later. That Father should have behaved in such an unfilial way

27

was a clear indication of his passion for Jeanne. Things started out as they were destined to continue, with Jeanne stating her terms and Father agreeing to meet them. As the Chinese saying goes: to Father, even Jeanne’s farts were fragrant.

Father also made himself agreeable to her family. Jeanne’s home was only a mile from Shandong Road. Mindful that her exquisite daughter was poised to enter a world far more luxurious than any she could ever provide, Mrs Prosperi encouraged the courtship. Father suspected that Mrs Prosperi came from peasant stock. In her rented, cramped apartment, conversation was limited to the basic to and fro of daily life. Her Mandarin was coloured by a heavy Shandong accent and her spoken French was very elementary. She could read or write neither language. Her eldest son had been in trouble with the police and had been sent away to labour camp in Hanoi. Her older daughter, Reine, had just married a sensible and educated Frenchman who worked for the United Nations. There were also two younger sons. Eventually, Father was to give the older boy, Pierre, a job in his company and send the youngest son, Jacques, to school in France.

When they became engaged there were diamond earrings, a diamond bracelet and necklace as well as a spectacular ring. In the face of tradition, Jeanne brought no dowry. The wedding ceremony took place at Notre-Dame des Victoires Catholic church. Father appeared nervous in his well cut tuxedo. Jeanne looked spectacular in a figure-hugging white satin dress trimmed with lace, resplendent in all her jewellery. None of us children attended. The Prosperi clan brought many guests, including a good many children. Aunt Baba said that she, Ye Ye and Grandmother felt somewhat uncomfortable at the lavish reception paid for by Father at the grand Astor House Hotel. Ye Yt found himself one of the very few male guests dressed in a long Chinese gown, matching satin ma-gua (short jacket), skull cap and cloth shoes. All the other men were in western suits and ties. The French guests called for endless toasts but the Chinese party were simply not used to drinking so much.

28

My aunt believed that she may have embarrassed Jeanne and her family because she had to retire to vomit more than once.

Afterwards Jeanne complained to Father that some of his Chinese kinsmen at the wedding banquet offended her delicate French relatives by being too loud and strident. However, her expression was sweet and demure when she said this. Father was utterly in her thrall, so much so that he began to adopt ambiguous notions about his own race. Growing up in the treaty ports, observing daily the symbols of western might, living within a foreign concession in his native country, ruled by extraterritoriality, he, like many Chinese, had come to see westerners as taller, cleverer, stronger and better. Although Jeanne was fluent in three languages, she could not read or write Chinese and was proud of this because it proclaimed, yet again, her western heritage.

Jeanne’s taste reflected her mixed origins. She invariably wore western clothes and she wore them well. She liked to be surrounded by French furniture, red velvet curtains and richly textured wallpaper. At the same time, she collected antique Chinese porcelain, paintings and chairs. She liked plants and flowers to scent the hallway, livingroom and her own bedroom. Like Grandmother, she smoked incessantly.

I think Jeanne was happy at first. Ye Ye and Grandmother welcomed the idea of Father’s remarriage as it was not right for a young man to be without a wife. Aunt Baba, moreover, was partially released from her housekeeping obligations and might, in theory, have picked up tne threads of her own life. Quite how my sister and brothers reacted to the marriage I cannot really say as I was only an infant when it took place. But a Chinese saying goes, if you are to have but one parent, choose your beggarwoman mother rather than your emperor father.

Father bought the house next door on Shandong Road as a present for his bride and the newlyweds moved in by themselves. The rest of the family and the servants remained in the old house, where Father still kept his offices. The family ate

29

dinner together every evening. Father and Ye Ye continued to work downstairs side by side and business thrived.

Since my elder sister and brothers still spoke frequently of our own dead mother, whom they called Mama, Grandmother told us children to call Jeanne Niang, another term for mother. We, in turn, were given new European names by Niang. Overnight, my sister Jun-pei became Lydia, my three brothers Zi-jie, Zi-lin and Zi-jun were named Gregory, Edgar and James, and I, Junling, was called Adeline.

Japanese troops, which already occupied Tianjin and Beijing, were now moving steadily southwards. They met surprisingly strong resistance in Nanking and, in retaliation, went on a terrifying spree of rape, looting and murder. Over

300,000 civilians and prisoners of war were tortured and killed during the Rape of Nanking in 1937 and early 1938 after the city was captured by the Japanese. Shanghai fell and Chiang Kai-shek fled westwards across China, up the Yangtse River, deep into the mountainous province of Sichuan. There he set up his wartime government in the town of Chongqing. It’s not hard to imagine the tension and turmoil that these momentous political upheavals must have imposed on Chinese family life.

In 1939, suddenly and without warning, Tianjin was drowned in a great flood. The disaster was of staggering proportions. Ye Ye called it ’China’s sorrow’ and went to the Buddhist temple to burn incense and offer prayers for relief, Pro-Japanese newspapers printed in Tianjin blamed the catastrophe on Chiang Kai-shek while the Nationalist party (Kuomintang) press in Chongqing accused the Japanese. Dykes on the Yellow River had been deliberately dynamited and river water released to slow the advance of troops. The flood encompassed three provinces. All crops in its path were destroyed. Two million people became homeless. Hundreds of thousands died from starvation and disease. Schools were closed. Businesses came to a standstill. However, Father’s lumber company kicked into high gear. The price of rowing