Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (5 page)

When she reached the mansion, she made her way to a back gate and gave a prearranged signal.  After a wait that felt like hours but was in fact only a few minutes, the door in the gate swung open and her sister emerged in the moonlight, holding my mother in her arms.  The door had been unlocked by the friendly number-two concubine, who had then hit it with an axe to make it look as though it had been forced open.

There was hardly time for my grandmother to give my mother a quick hug besides, she did not want to wake her, in case she made a noise and alerted the guards.  She and her sister mounted the two horses while my mother was fled onto the back of one of the horsemen, and they headed off into the night.  The horsemen had been paid well, and ran fast.  By dawn they were at Changli, and before the alarm could be given, they had caught the train north.  When the train finally drew into Yixian toward nightfall, my grandmother fell to the ground and lay there for a long time, unable to move.

She was comparatively safe, 200 miles from Lulong and effectively out of reach of the Xue household.  She could not take my mother to her house, for fear of the servants, so she asked an old schoolfriend if she could hide my mother.  The friend lived in the house of her father-in-law, a Manchu doctor called Dr.  Xia, who was well known as a kindly man who would never turn anyone away or betray a friend.

The Xue household would not care enough about my grandmother, a mere concubine, to pursue her.  It was my mother, the blood descendant, who mattered.  My grandmother sent a telegram to Lulong saying my mother had fallen ill on the train and had died.  There followed an agonizing wait, during which my grandmother's moods oscillated wildly.  Sometimes she felt that the family must have believed her story.  But then she would torment herself with the thought that this might not be the case, and that they were sending thugs to drag her, or her daughter, back. Finally she consoled herself with the thought that the Xue family was far too preoccupied with the impending death of the patriarch to expend energy worrying about her, and that it was probably to the women's advantage not to have her daughter around.

Once she realized the Xue family was going to leave her alone, my grandmother settled back quietly into her house in Yixian with my mother.  She did not even worry about the servants, since she knew that her 'husband' would not be coming.  The silence from Lulong lasted over a year, until one autumn day in 1933, when a telegram arrived informing her that General Xue had died, and that she was expected at Lulong immediately for the funeral.

The general had died in Tianjin in September.  His body was brought back to Lulong in a lacquered coffin covered with red embroidered silk. Accompanying him were two other coffins, one similarly lacquered and draped in the same red silk as his own, the other of plain wood with no covering.  The first coffin contained the body of one of his concubines, who had swallowed opium to accompany him in death.  This was considered the height of conjugal loyalty.  Later a plaque inscribed by the famous warlord Wu Pei-fu was put up in her honor in General Xue's mansion.  The second coffin contained the remains of another concubine, who had died of typhoid two years before.  Her corpse had been exhumed for reburial alongside General Xue, as was the custom.  Her coffin was of bare wood because, having died of a horrible illness, she was considered ill fortune.  Mercury and charcoal had been placed inside each of the coffins to prevent the corpses rotting, and the bodies had pearls in their mouths.

General Xue and the two concubines were buried together in the same tomb; his wife and the other concubines would eventually be interred alongside them.  At a funeral, the essential duty of holding a special flag for calling the spirit of the deceased had to be performed by the dead man's son.  As the general had no son, his wife adopted his ten-year-old nephew so he could carry out the task.  The boy also enacted another ritual kneeling by the side of the coffin and calling out "Avoid the nails!"  Tradition held that if this was not done, the dead person would be hurt by the nails.

The tomb site had been chosen by General Xue himself according to the principles of geomancy  It was in a beautiful, tranquil spot, backing onto distant mountains to the north, while the front faced a stream set among eucalyptus trees to the south.  This location expressed the desire to have solid things behind on which to lean mountains and the reflection of the glorious sun, symbolizing rising prosperity, in front.

But my grandmother never saw the site: she had ignored her summons, and was not at the funeral.  The next thing that happened was that the manager of the pawnshop failed to turn up with her allowance.  About a week later, her parents received a letter from General Xue's wife.  My grandfather's last words had been to give my grandmother her freedom. This, for its time, was exceptionally enlightened, and she could hardly believe her good fortune.

At the age of twenty-four, she was free.

2. "Even Plain Cold Water Is Sweet' My Grandmother Marries a Manchu Doctor (1933-1938)

The letter from General Xue's wife also asked my grandmother's parents to take her back.  Though the point was couched in the traditional indirect manner, my grandmother knew that she was being ordered to move out.

Her father took her in, but with considerable reluctance.

By now he had abandoned any pretense of being a family man.  From the moment he had arranged the liaison with General Xue, he had risen in the world.  As well as being promoted to deputy chief of the Yixian police and entering the ranks of the well-connected, he had become relatively rich, and had bought some land and taken up smoking opium.

No sooner had he been promoted than he acquired a concubine, a Mongolian woman who was presented to him by his immediate boss.  Giving a concubine as a present to an up-and-coming colleague was a common practice, and the local police chief was happy to oblige a protege of General Xue.  But my great-grandfather soon began casting around for another concubine; it was good for a man in his position to have as many as possible they showed a man's status.  He did not have to look far: the concubine had a sister.

When my grandmother returned to her parents' house, the setup was quite different from when she had left almost a decade before.  Instead of just her unhappy, downtrodden mother, there were now three spouses. One of the concubines had produced a daughter, who was the same age as my mother.  My grandmother's sister, Lan, was still unmarried at the advanced age of sixteen, which was a cause of irritation to Yang.

My grandmother had moved from one cauldron of intrigue into another. Her father was resentful of both her and her mother.  He resented his wife simply for being there, and he was even more unpleasant to her now that he had the two concubines, whom he favored over her.  He took his meals with the concubines, leaving his wife to eat on her own.  My grandmother he resented for returning to the house when he had successfully created a new world for himself.

He also regarded her as a jinx (kc), because she had lost her husband. In those days, a woman whose husband had died was superstitiously held responsible for his death.

My great-grandfather saw his daughter as bad luck, a threat to his good fortune, and he wanted her out of the house.

The two concubines egged him on.  Before my grandmother came back, they had been having things very much their own way.  My great-grandmother was a gentle, even weak person.  Although she was theoretically the superior of the concubines, she lived at the mercy of their whims.

In 1930 she gave birth to a son, Yu-lin.  This deprived the concubines of their future security, as on my great grandfather's death all his property would automatically go to his son.  They would throw tantrums if Yang showed any affection at all to his son.  From the moment Yu-lin was born, they stepped up their psychological warfare against my great-grandmother, freezing her out in her own house.

They only spoke to her to nag and complain, and if they looked at her it was with cold stony faces.  My great grandmother got no support from her husband, whose contempt for her was not pacified by the fact that she had given him the son.  He found new ways to find fault with her.

My grandmother was a stronger character than her mother, and the misery of the past decade had toughened her up.  Even her father was a little in awe of her.  She told herself that the days of her subservience to her father were over, and that she was going to fight for herself and for her mother.  As long as she was in the house, the-concubines had to restrain themselves, even presenting a toadying smile occasionally.

This was the atmosphere in which my mother lived the formative years from two to four.  Though shielded by her mother's love, she could sense the tension which pervaded the household.

My grandmother was now a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties. She was also highly accomplished, and several men asked her father for her hand.  But because she had been a concubine, the only ones who offered to take her as a proper wife were poor and did not stand a chance with Mr.  Yang.

My grandmother had had enough of the spitefulness and petty vengefulness of the concubine world, in which the only choice was between being a victim and victimizing others.  There was no halfway house.  All my grandmother wanted was to be left alone to bring up her daughter in peace.

Her father was constantly badgering her to remarry, sometimes by dropping unkind hints, at other times telling her outright she had to take herselfoffhis hands.  But there was nowhere for her to go.  She had no place to live, and she was not allowed to get a job.  After a time, unable to stand the pressure, she had a nervous breakdown.

A doctor was called in.  It was Dr.  Xia, in whose house my mother had been hidden three years before, after the escape from General Xue's mansion.  Although she had been a friend of his daughter-in-law, Dr. Xia had never seen my grandmother in keeping with the strict sexual segregation prevalent at the time.  When he first walked into her room, he was so struck by her beauty that in his confusion he backed straight out again and mumbled to the servant that he felt unwell.  Eventually, he recovered his composure and sat and talked to her at length.  He was the first man she had ever met to whom she could say what she really felt, and she poured out her grief and her hopes to him although with restraint, as be fitted a woman talking to a man who was not her husband.  The doctor was gentle and warm, and my grandmother had never felt so understood.  Before long, the two fell in love, and Dr.  Xia proposed.  Moreover, he told my grandmother that he wanted her to be his proper wife, and to bring my mother up as his own daughter.  My grandmother accepted, with tears of joy.  Her father was also happy, although he was quick to point out to Dr.  Xia that he would not be able to provide any dowry.  Dr.  Xia told him that was completely irrelevant.

Dr.  Xia had built up a considerable practice in traditional medicine in Yixian, and enjoyed a very high professional reputation.  He was not a Han Chinese, as were the Yangs and most people in China, but a Manchu, one of the origin aI inhabitants of Manchuria.  At one time his family had been court doctors for the Manchu emperors, and had been honored for their services.

Dr.  Xia was well known not only as an excellent doctor, but also as a very kind man, who often treated poor people for nothing.  He was a big man, over six feet tall, but he moved elegantly, in spite of his size. He always dressed in traditional long robes and jacket.  He had gentle brown eyes, and a goatee and a long drooping mustache.  His face and his whole posture exuded calm.

The doctor was already an elderly man when he proposed to my grandmother.  He was sixty-five, and a widower, with three grown-up sons and one daughter, all of them married.  The three sons lived in the house with him.

The eldest looked after the household and managed the family farm, the second worked in his father's practice, and the third, who was married to my grandmother's schoolfriend, was a teacher.  Between them the sons had eight children, one of whom was married and had a son himself.

Dr.  Xia called his sons into his study and told them about his plans. They stole disbelieving, leaden glances at one another.  There was a heavy silence.  Then the eldest spoke:

"I presume, Father, you mean she will be a concubine."  Dr.  Xia replied that he was going to take my grandmother as a proper wife. This had tremendous implications, as she would become their stepmother, and would have to be treated as a member of the older generation, with venerable status on a par with her husband.  In an ordinary Chinese household the younger generations had to be subservient to the older, with suitable decorum to mark their relative positions, but Dr.  Xia adhered to an even more complicated Manchu system of etiquette.  The younger generations had to pay their respects to the older every morning and evening, the men kneeling and the women curtsying.  At festivals, the men had to do a full kowtow.  The fact that my grandmother had been a concubine, plus the age gap, which meant they would have to do obeisance to someone with an inferior status and much younger than themselves, was too much for the sons.

They got together with the rest of the family and worked themselves up into a state of outrage.  Even the daughterin-law who was my grandmother's old schoolfriend was upset, as her father-in-law's marriage would force her into a radically new relationship with someone who had been her classmate.  She would not be able to eat at the same table as her old friend, or even sit down with her; she

would have to wait on her hand and foot, and even kowtow to her.