Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (4 page)

But everything went smoothly.  The general, now past fifty, seemed m have mellowed, and did not look nearly as majestic as before.  As she expected, he did not say a word about where he had been, why he had left so suddenly, or why he was back, and she did not ask.  Quite apart from not wanting to be scolded for being inquisitive, she did not care.

In fact, all this time the general had not been far away at all.  He had been leading the quiet life of a wealthy retired dignitary, dividing his time between his house in Tianjin and his country mansion near Lulong.  The world in which he had flourished was becoming a thing of the past.  The warlord and their fief system had collapsed and most of China was now controlled by a force, the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, headed by Chiang Kai-shek.

To mark the break with the chaotic past, and to try to give the appearance of a new start and of stability, the Kuomintang moved the capital from Peking ("Northern Capital') to Nanjing ("Southern Capital').  In 19z8, the ruler of Manchuria, Chang Tso-lin, the Old Marshal, was assassinated by the Japanese, who were becoming increasingly active in the area.  The Old Marshal's son, Chang Hsueh-liang (known as the Young Marshal), joined up with the Kuomintang and formally integrated Manchuria with the rest of China- though Kuomintang rule was never effectively established in Manchuria.

General Xue's visit to my grandmother did not last long.

Just like the first time, after a few days he suddenly announced he was leaving.  The night before he was due to leave, he asked my grandmother to go and live with him at Lulong.  Her heart missed a beat.  If he ordered her to go, it would amount to a life sentence under the same roof as his wife and his other concubines.  She was invaded by a wave of panic.  As she massaged his feet, she quietly pleaded with him to let her stay in Yixian.  She told him how kind he was to have promised her parents he would not take her away from them, and gently reminded him that her mother was not in good health: she had just had a third child, the longed-for son.  She said that she would like to observe filial piety, while, of course, serving him, her husband and master, whenever he graced Yixian with his presence.  The next day she packed his things and he left, alone.  On his departure, as on his arrival, he showered jewels on my grandmother gold, silver, jade, pearls, and emeralds.  Like many men of his kind, he believed this was the way to a woman's heart.  For women like my grandmother, jewelry was their only insurance.

A short time later, my grandmother realized she was pregnant.  On the seventeenth day of the third moon, in spring 193i, she gave birth to a baby girl my mother.

She wrote to General Xue to let him know, and he wrote back telling her to call the gift Bao Q~m and to bring her to Lulong as soon as they were strong enough to travel.

My grandmother was ecstatic at having a child.  Now, she felt, her life had a purpose, and she poured all her love and energy into my mother. A happy year passed.  General Xue wrote many times asking her to come to Lulong, but each time she managed to stall him.  Then, one day in the middle of summer 1932, a telegram arrived saying that General Xue was seriously ill and ordering her to bring their daughter to see him at once.  The tone made it clear that this time she should not refuse.

Lulong was about 200 miles away, and for my grandmother, who had never traveled, the journey was a major undertaking.  It was also extremely difficult to travel with bound feet; it was almost impossible to carry luggage, especially with a young child in one's arms.  My grandmother decided to take her fourteen-year-old sister, Yulan, whom she called "Lan," with her.

The journey was an adventure.  The area had been convulsed yet again. In September 193I Japan, which had been steadily expanding its power in the area, had launched a full-scale invasion of Manchuria, and Japanese troops had occupied Yixian on 6 January 1932.  Two months later the Japanese proclaimed the founding of a new state, which they named Manchukuo ("Manchu  Country'), covering most of northeast China (an area the size of France and Germany combined).  The Japanese claimed that Manchukuo was independent, but in fact it was a puppet of Tokyo.  As its head they installed Pu  Yi, who as a child had been the last emperor of China.

At first he was called Chief Executive; later, in 1934, he was made emperor of Manchukuo.  All this meant little to my grandmother, who had had very little contact with the outside world.  The general population were fatalistic about who their rulers were, since they had no choice in the matter.  For many, Pu Yi was the natural ruler, a Manchu emperor and proper Son of Heaven.

Twenty years after the republican revolution there was still no unified nation to replace the rule of the emperor, nor, in Manchuria, did the people have much concept of being citizens of something called "China."

One hot summer's day in 1932 my grandmother, her sister, and my mother took the train south from Yixian, passing out of Manchuria at the town of Shanhaiguan, where the Great Wall sweeps down from the mountains to the sea.  As the train chugged along the coastal plain, they could see the landscape changing: instead of the bare,  brown-yellow soil of the plains of Manchuria, here the earth was darker and the vegetation denser, almost lush compared with the northeast. Soon after it passed the Great Wall, the train turned inland, and about an hour later it stopped at a town called Changli where they disembarked at a green-roofed building which looked like a railway station in Siberia.

My grandmother hired a horse-drawn cart and drove north along a bumpy, dusty road to General Xue's mansion, which lay about twenty miles away, just outside the wall of a small town called Yanheying, which had once been a major military camp frequently visited by the Manchu emperors and their court.  Hence the road had acquired the grand name of 'the Imperial Way."  It was lined with poplars, their light-green leaves shimmering in the sunlight.  Beyond them were orchards of peach trees, which flourished in the sandy soil.  But my grandmother scarcely enjoyed the scenery, as she was covered in dust and jolted badly by the rough road.  Above all, she was worrying about what would greet her at the other end.

When she first saw the mansion, she was overwhelmed by its grandeur. The immense front gate was guarded by armed men, who stood stiffly at attention beside enormous statues of reclining lions.  There was a row of eight stone statues for tying up horses: four were of elephants, and four of monkeys.  These two animals were chosen for their lucky sounds: in Chinese the words 'elephant' and 'high office' have the same sound (xiang), as do 'monkey' and 'aristocracy' (hou).

As the cart passed through the outer gate into an inner yard my grandmother could see only a huge blank wall facing her; then, off to one side, she saw a second gate.

This was a classic Chinese structure, a concealing wall so that strangers could not see into one's property, also making it impossible for assailants to shoot or charge directly through the front gate.

The moment they passed through the inner gate, a servant materialized at my grandmother's side and peremptorily took her child away.  Another servant led my grandmother up the steps of the house and showed her into the sitting room of General Xue's wife.

As soon as she entered the room, my grandmother went down on her knees and kowtowed, saying, "I greet you, my mistress," as etiquette demanded.  My grandmother's sister was not allowed into the room, but had to stand outside like a servant.  This was nothing personal: the relatives of a concubine were not treated as part of the family.  After my grandmother had kowtowed for a suitable length of time, the general's wife told her she could get up, using a form of address which immediately established my grandmother's place in the hierarchy of the household as a mere sub mistress closer to a higher form of servant than to a wife.

The general's wife told her to sit down.  My grandmother had to make a split-second decision.  In a traditional Chinese household, where one sits automatically reflects one's status.  General Xue's wife was sitting at the north end of the room, as befitted a person in her position.  Next to her, separated by a side table, was another chair, also facing south: this was the general's seat.  Down each side of the room was a row of chairs for people of different status.  My grandmother shuffled backwards and sat on one of the chairs nearest the door, to show humility.  The wife then asked her to come forward just a little.  She had to show some generosity.

When my grandmother was seated, the wife told her that from now on her daughter would be brought up as her (the wife's) own daughter and would call her, not my grandmother, "Mama'; my grandmother was to treat the child as the young mistress of the house, and was to behave accordingly.

A maid was summoned to lead my grandmother away.

She felt her heart was breaking, but she forced back her sobs, only letting herself go when she reached her room.  Her eyes were still red when she was taken to meet General Xue's number-two concubine, his favorite, who ran the household.  She was pretty, with a delicate face, and to my grandmother's surprise she was quite sympathetic, but my grandmother restrained herself from having a good cry with her.  In this strange new environment, she felt intuitively that the best policy was caution.

Later that day she was taken to see her 'husband."  She was allowed to take my mother with her.  The general was lying on a kang, the type of bed used all over North China, a large, flat, rectangular surface about two and a half feet high heated from underneath by a brick stove.  A pair of concubines or maids were kneeling round the prostrate general, massaging his legs and stomach.  General Xue's eyes were closed, and he looked terribly sallow.  My grandmother leaned over the edge of the bed, calling to him softly.  He opened his eyes and managed a kind of a half smile  My grandmother put my mother on the bed and said: "This is Bao Odin."  With what seemed a great effort, General Xue feebly stroked my mother's head and said, "Bao Odin takes after you; she is very pretty."  Then he closed his eyes.

My grandmother called out to him, but his eyes remained shut.  She could see that he was gravely ill, perhaps dying.  She picked my mother off the bed and hugged her tight.  But she had only a second to cuddle her before the general's wife, who had been hovering alongside, tugged impatiently at her sleeve.  Once outside, the wife warned my grandmother not to disturb the master too often, or indeed at all.  In fact, she should stay in her room unless she was summoned.

My grandmother was terrified.  As a concubine, her whole future and that of her daughter were in jeopardy, possibly even in mortal peril. She had no rights.  If the general died, she would be at the mercy of the wife, who had the power of life and death over her.  She could do anything she wanted sell her to a rich man, or even into a brothel, which was quite common.  Then my grandmother would never see her daughter again.  She knew she and her daughter had to get away as fast as possible.

When she got back to her room, she made a tremendous effort to calm herself and begin planning her escape.  But when she tried to think, she felt as though her head were flooding with blood.  Her legs were so weak she could not walk without holding on to the furniture.  She broke down and wept again partly with rage, because she could see no way out. Worst of all was the thought that the general might die at any moment, leaving her trapped forever.

Gradually she managed to bring her nerves under control and force herself to think clearly.  She started to look around the mansion systematically.  It was divided into many different courtyards, set within a large compound, surrounded by high walls.  Even the garden was designed with security rather than aesthetics in mind.  There were a few cypress trees, some birches and winter plums, but none near the walls.  To make doubly sure that any potential assassin would have no cover, there were not even any large shrubs.  The two gates leading out from the garden were padlocked, and the front gate was guarded around the clock by armed retainers. My grandmother was never allowed to leave the walled precincts.  She was permitted to visit the general each day, but only on a sort of organized tour with some of the other women, when she would file past his bed and murmur, "I greet you, my lord."

Meanwhile, she began to get a clearer idea of the other personalities in the household.  Apart from the general's wife, the woman who seemed to count most was the number-two concubine.  My grandmother discovered that she had instructed the servants to treat her well, which made her situation much easier.  In a household like this, the attitude of the servants was determined by the status of those they had to serve.  They fawned on those in favor, and bullied those who had fallen from grace.

The number-two concubine had a daughter a lime older than my mother. This was a further bond between the two women, as well as being a reason for the concubine's favor with General Xue, who had no other children apart from my mother.

After a month, during which the two concubines became quite friendly, my grandmother went to see the general's wife and told her she needed to go home to fetch some clothes.  The wife gave permission, but when my grandmother asked if she could take her daughter to say goodbye to her grandparents, she refused.  The Xue bloodline could not be taken out of the house.

And so my grandmother set off alone down the dusty road to Changli. After the coachman had dropped her off at the railway station, she started asking around among the people hanging about there.  She found two horsemen who were prepared to provide her with the transportation she needed.  She waited for nightfall, and then raced back to Lulong with them and their two horses by a shortcut.  One of the men seated her on a saddle and ran in front, holding the horse by the rein.