Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter Read online

  After President Nixon’s recognition of China, life of the ordinary Chinese improved dramatically; 1972 was a watershed year. Food was more plentiful and political meetings less frequent. Bank accounts were unfrozen and Father’s monthly remittance was again allowed into Shanghai.

  Aunt Baba wrote begging Father to send Grand Aunt a regular allowance. Like everyone else, she had been driven out of her penthouse home by the Red Guards in 1966. Her bank deposits were permanently frozen and non-transferable. Eking out an existence on the fifteen yuan per month allowed by the government, she was often cold and hungry. After receiving Aunt Baba’s letter, Father sent money to Grand Aunt regularly until she died from pneumonia three years later.

  In 1974 the Criticize Lin Biao campaign was followed by the Criticize Confucius campaign. Confucius was a nickname for Premier Zhou Enlai, coined by Madame Mao. My aunt’s hu kou attempted to whip up enthusiasm during meetings. Attendance was supposedly compulsory, but many pleaded illness and were absent. People were simply fed up with these endless campaigns.

  On 7 April 1976, there was a mass display of public sentiment in Tiananmen Square to commemorate the dead Zhou Enlai. This was a communal gesture of support for Deng Xiaoping (Zhou Enlai’s protégé) and covert criticism of Madame Mao. Police and armed soldiers opened fire to disperse the crowds. Thousands of unarmed demonstrators were killed. This was the First Tiananmen Massacre.

  In July 1976, a major earthquake registering 8.0 on the Richter Scale shook Tangshan, an industrial city not far from Tianjin. Over one million people died. Everywhere in China, people whispered that the quake was an omen and predicted the end of Mao Zedong. Mao passed away two months later.

  On 8 October 1976, a hu kou meeting was called after supper in Aunt Baba’s lane to announce the arrest of the ‘Gang of Four’, a term originally coined by Mao Zedong himself to describe Madame Mao and three of her henchmen from Shanghai, Yao Wenyuan, Zhang Chunqiao and Wang Hong-wen, who had grouped themselves together to spearhead the Cultural Revolution. Their power had been absolute because they had had the full support of Mao until his death.

  Next day, there was a parade commemorating the downfall of Madame Mao. My aunt pleaded illness and did not attend. Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated and appointed vice premier in 1977. China’s doors started to open to the outside world, and the age of reform began.

  CHAPTER 21

  Tian Zuo Zhi He

  Heaven-Made Union

  My career continued to flourish after the finalization of my divorce in 1971. Despite the dire predictions of older doctors who warned that within five years at most private practice would be a thing of the past, Medicare legislation went on creating something of an unexpected bonanza for physicians like myself. As an anaesthesiologist, my fees were based on a scale published by the American Society of Anaesthesiology. Three years after I started practice, these standard rates had already risen by 20 per cent. However, most patients were oblivious of this steep increase because they were not out of pocket. Health-related charges were automatically reimbursed by Medicare and other insurance companies. In fact, it was considered somewhat vulgar to discuss fees with the doctor.

  In the early 1970s, racial and gender discrimination was still prevalent. The easy camaraderie prevailing in the operating room evaporated at the completion of surgical procedures. There was an unspoken pecking order of seating arrangements at lunch among my fellow physicians. At the top were the white male ‘primary producers’ in prestigious surgical specialities. They were followed by the internists. Next came the general practitioners. Last on the list were the hospital-based physicians: the radiologists, pathologists and anaesthesiologists – especially non-white, female ones like me. Apart from colour, we were shunned because we did not bring in patients ourselves but, like vultures, lived off the patients generated by other doctors. We were also resented because being hospital-based and not having to rent office space or hire nursing staff, we had low overheads. Since a physician’s number of admissions to the hospital and referral pattern determined the degree of attention and regard accorded by his colleagues, it was safe for our peers to ignore us and target those in a position to send over income-producing referrals. This attitude was mirrored from the board of directors all the way down to the orderlies.

  Women physicians were still comparatively rare in the late sixties and early seventies. I became friendly with Alcenith Crawford, a divorced ophthalmologist. Thirty years older than I, Alcenith took me under her wing. At a time when it was difficult for even the most privileged of women to qualify as doctors, Alcenith had put herself through medical school by loans and outside jobs. There were only two other women doctors on the staff at West Anaheim Community Hospital where I worked. They used to sit in the doctors’ dining-room and complain about their husbands. Actually, all four of us had troubled private lives.

  Alcenith explained it this way. ‘We women doctors have unhappy marriages because in our minds we are the superstars of our families. Having survived the hardship of medical school, we expect to reap our rewards at home. We had to assert ourselves against all odds and when we finally graduate there are few shrinking violets amongst us. It takes a special man to be able to cope. Men like to feel important and be the undisputed head of the family. A man does not enjoy waiting for his wife while she performs life-saving operations. He expects her and their children to revolve around his needs, not the other way. But we have become accustomed to giving orders in hospitals and having them obeyed. Once home, it’s difficult to adjust. Moreover, we often earn more than our husbands. It takes a generous and exceptional man to forgive all that.’

  Success in my career could not compensate for the collapse of my marriage. In my mind, I equated divorce with deep, dark failure. In front of my colleagues, I maintained the façade of the self-sufficient female doctor but inside there was an aching void. My friend Alcenith understood the emptiness of my life when she observed that I was running like a well-oiled machine with a missing part. She decided to supply the absent component and arranged a blind date for me. He was Professor Robert Mah, her son’s Chinese-American friend who taught at UCLA. We were to meet in front of the School of Public Health.

  It was a typical southern California spring afternoon in 1972: hot, sunny and smoggy. Even though I followed the detailed directions that Professor Mah had given over the telephone, I got lost. When I asked the attendant at the filling station how I could get to UCLA, I was told that the best way was to study hard!

  When I arrived, thirty minutes late, I saw him standing on the steps, scanning the road. I was thrilled to note that he was rather handsome and quite tall, with thick, glossy, black hair and a boyish air. He smiled and said, ‘Yes, you’ve come to the right place. I’m Bob.’

  Bob was born in California and had never set foot in China. Originally from Toishan village in Guangdong Province, his parents emigrated to San Francisco in 1906. Uneducated and without special skills, they eked out a living in the restaurant trade in Fresno, then a small farming community of about 30,000 people in the San Joaquin Valley. Converted to Catholicism, they had eight children (six boys and two girls) of whom Bob was the youngest. When he was three, his father died of a heart attack, leaving his widow with very little money and many offspring, the oldest of whom was only seventeen. With so many mouths to feed, Bob’s mother had no alternative but to go on welfare.

  When Pearl Harbor was attacked, nine-year-old Bob was told to wear a little badge in class declaring ‘I am Chinese’ to distinguish him from his Japanese schoolfriends and avoid being branded as the ‘enemy’. Even at that age he was baffled and angered to see Japanese children taunted and interned. His own family had to combat racial prejudice as well as poverty. The children developed a fierce loyalty to each other and to their widowed mother. She encouraged them to participate in the war effort and be good Americans. Two of Bob’s older brothers enlisted. Nineteen-year-old Ed, who had dropped out of Stanford University to serve his country, was sent to fig
ht in Germany. Stranded in a shack with nine wounded soldiers, he single-handedly held off a murderous German counter-attack. He was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery and heroic achievement.

  Another brother, Earl, was rejected by the army because of a deformity of his hand. He put himself through engineering school at Fresno State College while working full-time as a sheet metal worker at Rohr Industries. As soon as it became economically feasible, their mother directed Earl to write to the Welfare Department and relinquish their benefits. To supplement their meagre income, she planted Chinese vegetables in the garden of their West Fresno home, donating part of the proceeds towards the war effort. Her health was frail and she suffered a massive stroke soon after the war ended, leaving her crippled and aphasic.

  The older children now jointly took on the responsibility of looking after their mother and the two youngest brothers. Bob’s eldest sister stayed at home to give constant care to their mother. His other sister, only a high school sophomore, volunteered to do the domestic and cooking chores. Besides attending college and working at his demanding job as an engineer, Bob’s brother Earl found time to care for Bob, correct his homework, pack his lunches and wake him so that he would catch the school bus. The others pooled their paycheques towards the household expenses and Bob’s college education. With their assistance, Bob graduated with a Ph.D. in microbiology and became a professor. I could not help but compare their love and mutual support to the strife and jealousy in my own family. While his family had helped Bob fulfil his ambition, I felt that whatever I had accomplished was achieved in spite of mine. Whereas he had had an abundance of love, I was starved of it.

  When Bob invited me to dinner at his home I found that he had been preparing for two days in advance. He chopped and cleaned the fresh vegetables; and had trimmed off every bit of fat from the pork and chicken marinating in separate bowls. Much thought went into the choice of wines to accompany the different dishes. As we shared this meal prepared with so much love I dared to hope that we were destined for each other. Were the gods smiling on me at last? Was this the tian zuo zhi he (heaven-made union) celebrated by the T’ang poets?

  That evening I told him about my childhood. A floodgate opened and I could not stop. As he sat holding my hand, I poured out my pain and yearning. I was the ostracized outsider longing for acceptance; the ugly duckling hankering to return as the beautiful swan; the despised and unwanted Chinese daughter obsessed with my quest to make my parents proud of me on some level. Surely some day, if I tried hard enough to help them in dire need, they would love me.

  Since I was working as hard as possible and taking emergency calls three out of four nights, I didn’t have time to see Bob except on my rare evenings off. Not infrequently, my pager would go off at the most inopportune moments, summoning me to the operating room as if I was being pulled on a leash. Operations often lasted well into the night. But, no matter what time I returned home, I would find dinner cooked and Bob waiting for me. In my whole life, I had never encountered anyone so caring or felt so cherished. He was good not only to me, but also to my son, taking him to basketball games and attending his school functions even when I was away on emergencies. Most of all, he provided the stability I had always yearned for. Bob was the only man I knew who professed his love, not by words, but by his every action. Towards the end of that year, for his birthday, I sent him a card. ‘The day you were born was the luckiest day in my life. Your love shields me from life’s worst blows. With you, I feel completely safe. Thank you for always being there for me.’

  With trepidation I wrote to my parents, asking their permission to marry Bob. I received a short note enclosed with their annual Christmas card. ‘I am glad you found a moment to write to us before your wedding,’ Father wrote, reminding me of my negligence the first time around. ‘Bob sounds like a nice man employed in a suitable profession. However, why is he still single at this advanced age? Does he have any homosexual tendencies? Be sure to retain all your properties in your own name.’

  We were married soon afterwards. Our daughter, Ann, was born two years later. I felt that I had come home at last. It took me a long time to accept that no one was going to rob me of my happiness.

  We moved into a new home in Huntington Beach. The house sat on a small waterfront plot. Its front door led into an arching stairway suspended over an atrium filled with bamboo, palm, philodendrone, bromeliads and a tall schefflera tree. It was a large house with space and light and we fell in love with it at first sight.

  CHAPTER 22

  Si Mian Chu Ge

  Besieged by Hostile Forces on All Sides

  Through the sixties and early seventies Father’s businesses, remained enormously profitable. He developed several blocks of apartment complexes and some large residential houses in Hong Kong that he successfully sold. His industrial building in Cha Wan, erected on land purchased at fire sale prices during the Hong Kong riots in 1966, was fully leased out. He owned two tons of gold safely stored away in Swiss bank vaults.

  That summer of 1976, Father and Niang flew to Monte Carlo as usual to escape the heat. During his regular private French lessons, Father participated less and less in spite of his tutor’s exhortations, refusing to repeat French phrases after her. The sessions deteriorated into long, expensive daily tête-à-têtes between Niang and the French tutor, with Father staring vacantly at his Beginner’s French, Part 1.

  On social occasions, he became more and more withdrawn. During the annual Red Cross Ball hosted by Princess Grace, he refused to dance with anyone. At home, he sat for hours reading, or pretending to read, the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune. More often than not he dozed off.

  Once, when driving along the winding roads of Monaco, he scraped the side of his Mercedes. When Niang questioned him about the dents he claimed that the mountainside had never been there before. As she ranted and raved about his hu tu (confusion), she was surprised to see that he had nodded off in the midst of her spirited harangue.

  On his return to Hong Kong he stopped dyeing his hair. He had difficulty signing his name and practised for hours behind closed doors, trying to keep a steady hand. After his death, I found a stack of notebooks hidden underneath some towels. Every page was diligently filled with his signature. As I read his name over and over, I sensed his bewilderment and shame.

  In the mornings he got up earlier and earlier. On golfing days he would summon his chauffeur at four to drive him to the club at Stanley. They would arrive in pitch darkness and snooze in the car, waiting for the gates to open at six.

  In early 1977 I received a letter from Niang. A prominent Hong Kong physician had advised Father to go to Stanford University for medical consultation. I invited them to stay with us in our new home. Though I was deeply concerned about Father, I was thrilled that they had turned to me for assistance.

  It was thus with a combination of dread and anticipation that Bob and I, both having taken the day off work, drove to the airport to meet them. I wept when I saw my Father, looking so frail and feeble, his hair completely white. There was a vacant, scared look in his eyes. We greeted each other formally with a handshake.

  Bob had met my parents for the first time on a two-day visit to Monte Carlo three years earlier and was shocked at so drastic a change in their appearance. Though immaculately dressed in a mauve cashmere coat and wearing pearls and diamonds, Niang looked much older than her fifty-six years. Our housekeeper Ginger opened the front door when we arrived. Framed against the backdrop of tall bamboos in the airy atrium were our two children, Roger and Ann, running eagerly towards us to greet their grandparents.

  Father crossed the threshold, stopped and gave a small gasp of pleasure at the glorious view of the harbour from our doorway through the soaring, bright, plant-laden foyer. Father’s look of pride was apparently too much for Niang. ‘Go in and sit down, Joseph,’ she said irritably. ‘What are you staring at? It’s only Adeline’s house.’

  Bob and I flew up to San Francisco
with them. We rented a car and checked into the local Holiday Inn before driving to the medical centre where Father was admitted. Various tests were performed, including a CAT scan. The four of us were then ushered into Professor Hanbury’s office where Father was to have a face-to-face evaluation. Father was able to answer all the routine questions until Professor Hanbury asked him to subtract seven from one hundred.

  There was a short pause.

  Finally, to my relief, Father replied, ‘Ninety-three.’

  ‘Please continue. What is seven from ninety-three?’

  Father thought and thought. He started to sweat. His face turned red. He could not think of the answer. In desperation, he finally blurted out, ‘Why is everything so difficult for me? These problems used to be so easy to solve. They are impossible now. Why, doctor? Why?’

  I felt his fear and wished with all my heart that there was something I could do to reassure him. I glanced at Niang standing glumly next to me and tried to put a comforting arm around her but she moved away with a slight frown.

  ‘I am afraid it is part of the process of growing old,’ Professor Hanbury replied. ‘Leaving maths aside, Mr Yen, how many children do you have?’

  Again Father hesitated. Twice he tried to answer but held back each time. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I could not bear it.

  Bob took my hand and led me outside. He dried my tears with a tissue. ‘Don’t cry. That’s a loaded question, the one about the number of children. Your poor father probably doesn’t know what the party line is just now. Do you count the disowned daughters or don’t you? Besides, the ones that were dispossessed yesterday may be in favour tomorrow.’