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

  Father had further tests and stayed at the centre for a few days. Professor Hanbury was to inform us of his final diagnosis by post. We queued up at the business office for Father’s discharge papers. Because Father was a British citizen from Hong Kong and had no valid American medical insurance, we were told to settle his accounts immediately. When Niang was handed the statement, I could see she was startled by the amount. She was unaccustomed to American medical fees. Gently, I took the bills from her and wrote a personal cheque for the whole sum, promising her that Bob and I would meet all Father’s medical expenses in America.

  At San Francisco airport, sitting with a snack in a coffee shop while we waited for our flight to Los Angeles, Niang wandered off looking for postcards. Father was relieved, almost cheerful, at the completion of his examination. To take his mind away from his illness, I asked him about his past. When was the happiest time of his life?

  He thought for a while. ‘When I was a young man in Tianjin,’ he replied, ‘and you were all very small. I had started my own company and it was doing well. I began to export walnuts and drove from field to field inspecting the quality of the kernels. I used to start off at dawn and, before I knew it, it was dark again and time to hurry home for supper. I would be famished and suddenly realize I had eaten nothing all day. That was a very happy time for me.’

  ‘Tell me about Adeline,’ Bob said. ‘What was she like as a little girl?’

  ‘She was a bookworm who excelled in her studies,’ Father answered with a smile. ‘I got so used to her being top of the class that when she came in second, I would reproach her.’ His chest swelled with pride as my eyes filled with tears. ‘I remember once she even won a writing competition open to all the English-speaking schools in the world…’

  His voice trailed off. An expression of uneasiness crossed his face as he stared past us. Bob and I looked around to see Niang standing directly behind me. We had been so engrossed that no one had heard her approaching.

  ‘Well!’ she said sharply. ‘What are you talking about?’

  None of us knew what to say. We did not wish to displease her. ‘Joseph!’ she exclaimed irritably. ‘Has the cat got your tongue?’

  Father remained mute but suddenly looked deflated. As we filed into the plane, I thought that over the years, his silence had become his armour.

  Back at home in Huntington Beach, Father’s spirits revived sufficiently for us to suggest that James should join us for a short holiday.

  Shortly after James’s arrival, the letter from Professor Hanbury finally arrived. Niang had been forewarned by the physician in Hong Kong, and the confirmation of her fears came almost as an anticlimax. Father was suffering from generalized brain atrophy due to Alzheimer’s disease. CAT scans revealed that his brain had already shrunk to two thirds of its normal size. His was a hopeless diagnosis, forecasting the steady, irreversible deterioration of his mental faculty into that of a human vegetable. Otherwise he was healthy and would not suffer any physical pain. There was no known treatment except for general supportive measures.

  My mouth felt dry as I read the letter over James’s shoulder. I glanced at Niang sitting next to James, and wondered if she understood the tragic connotation of such an affliction. She suddenly stood up and went to her room, murmuring that she was at the end of her tether and needed a rest. James and I were left alone.

  We talked of many things that afternoon, as the implication of Father’s growing senility and Niang’s eventual control of his business empire dawned on us. I advised him, once again, to make his own way in life. ‘I can’t leave them now,’ he said, ‘not while they are being si mian chu ge (besieged by hostile forces on all sides). There is no one else.’ I reluctantly nodded my agreement. ‘Besides,’ he confessed, ‘the Old Lady is mellowing. Yesterday, she said something rather curious. ‘Your father had so many children,’ she told me, ‘yet, when it comes down to it, we can only count on you and Adeline.’ There is a lot of truth in that statement, don’t you think?’

  ‘Only you can put up with Niang!’ I exclaimed admiringly. ‘Anyone else would have left a long time ago.’

  My personal relationship with Niang improved dramatically after this visit. She even asked me to help them buy a house close to our home where they could come and spend their summers instead of Monte Carlo. The fact that we had shouldered all Father’s medical bills, amounting to around 50,000 US dollars, may have touched her. As a doctor, I was only too aware of the strains caused by Father’s illness and had genuine sympathy for her.

  The result of her rapprochement with me was her deliberate exclusion of Edgar. Later that year, she held a gala seventieth birthday celebration party for Father in Hong Kong. Gregory and Matilda flew over from Canada with their two children. Bob and I attended with our Roger and Ann. James, Louise and their brood were also there. Besides our immediate family, she also invited a dozen other guests. Edgar was never informed and only found out much later.

  CHAPTER 23

  Cu Cha Dan Fan

  Coarse Tea and Plain Rice

  After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping became deputy chairman and began a series of liberal reforms, including the opening of China to tourism. In 1979, we were asked by American friends to join them on an organized tour visiting Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing.

  In December 1979 we embarked on a journey which would have been unthinkable three years earlier. I was overwhelmed by the thought of seeing my Aunt Baba again when I wrote to her of our impending visit. Our sporadic correspondence, perennially frowned upon by Niang, had been halted by the Chinese government since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. My aunt replied immediately. The sight of her handwriting filled me with nostalgia. She had been living in a room at a neighbour’s house in the same lane since 1966 and I should look for her there. She was full of joyful expectation at our imminent reunion.

  In Hong Kong, our tour group was lodged at the Hilton Hotel (pulled down in 1995), a mere ten-minute taxi ride from Magnolia Mansions. We travelled from the airport in Kowloon to Hong Kong via the newly constructed cross-harbour tunnel instead of the time-consuming vehicular ferry. I had not visited Hong Kong since 1978 and marvelled afresh at the colony’s meteoric development as the island’s breathtaking skyline exploded into view.

  Niang had written that Father could no longer control his bladder functions. We brought from California several large cartons of adult-sized diapers when we visited them. James and Louise were already there when we arrived. Father appeared much worse. After greeting us with a feeble smile, he did not say one word during the meal and seemed incapable of comprehending any of the conversation around him.

  After dinner, we retired to the living-room while Father was escorted away by his night nurse. Below us, the lights of Hong Kong and Kowloon beckoned to each other across the harbour. Father used to rhapsodize over the magnificent view from their balcony, lit up each night as if on perpetual electrical parade.

  Niang handed a cigar to James and lit a cigarette for herself. This was their nightly ritual whenever James dined with Niang. James had confided to me many times that he loathed those cigars; but it never stopped him from accepting and smoking them.

  As she puffed away, she launched into a diatribe against Aunt Baba. Whatever my aunt might have us believe, Niang exhorted, she was keeping up with Aunt Baba’s monthly allowance and ‘giving her everything she could possibly want’. Then she began to rage against Lydia, warning us that my sister would probably try to enlist our help in getting her children out of China. ‘Do nothing of the sort!’ she instructed. ‘If only your Father could speak for himself, he would tell you that the whole Sung family is poison. I want you to know that Samuel and Lydia blackmailed your Father when they first returned to Tianjin in 1950. To your face they’ll flatter you, and behind your back they’ll plot against you. Once you start helping one family member, all the others will demand a handout and eventually they will all land on your doorstep. They will
turn your life topsy-turvy. No one will be grateful.

  ‘Adeline, take my advice!’ she continued. ‘Life has been good to you. Why do you need to get embroiled with the likes of Lydia and Samuel? I’m warning you, if you associate with snakes you will be bitten. Tell Lydia that your Father and I forbid you to lift a finger to help them. Let them rot in their misery! They deserve it!’ Niang’s voice was becoming increasingly shrill.

  We left as soon as we decently could. James and Louise drove us back to the Hilton.

  ‘The Old Lady is vindictive,’ James commented in the car. ‘Aunt Baba must have offended her in the past. Niang hates her and always will.’

  ‘Do you think I should help Lydia if she asks me?’

  ‘Have you written to her about your trip to China?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. The only person I want to see is Aunt Baba.’

  ‘Then why not leave things as they are? Suan le!’

  Our tour group of forty people made the train journey from Hong Kong to Guangzhou on Christmas Day 1979. We were shepherded into the thirty-three-storey Baiyun (White Cloud) Hotel. Even though it was only two years old, the rooms and furnishing already seemed frayed and worn. Tips were not allowed and the hotel staff appeared surly. Breakfast was served promptly at seven forty-five. Forty fried eggs appeared on forty plates laid out at four separate round tables, ten to a table. Most of our group were still asleep in their beds while their eggs awaited them, rapidly congealing. Metal teapots were banged on to the tables, together with eighty pieces of toast, twenty per table. At nine sharp, breakfast was over. Eggs, toast and tea were whisked away by put-upon waitresses within five minutes. This was our introduction to life in Communist China.

  Two days later, we flew into Shanghai. As our bus drove from Hongqiao airport towards the Jinjiang Hotel, where we were scheduled to stay, I felt tense with excitement. We passed impressive red-brick Tudor mansions built in the British colonial style, complete with walled gardens and lush green lawns. The bus turned a corner and I found myself travelling on familiar Avenue Joffre. I saw once more the wide, straight, tree-lined boulevard stretching on and on. I craned my neck to read the street signs written in the new, abbreviated, Chinese script. Avenue Joffre was now renamed Huai Hai Road. The bus headed east, on and on away from the afternoon sun, dispersing hundreds of bicycles in its wake, like a giant whale surrounded by teeming fish. Now we were on Huai Hai Zhong (Central) Road. Some of the buildings began to be recognizable. It was five o’clock and amidst the tinkling of bicycle bells and swishing of tyres, crowds of workers dressed in identical dark blue Mao jackets were rushing home from work.

  Suddenly there they were! As our bus approached the centre of the former French concession, out of the cityscape arose a vision more powerful to me than any other on earth: two modest pillars guarding the entrance to the lane leading to my lao jia (old family home). I sighted the concrete grey villas, solid and unchanged as in a painting from the past. Bamboo poles poked out of many windows, heavily laden with underwear, sheets, blankets, Mao jackets and trousers, all flapping in the wind.

  Soon our bus was traversing the landmarks of my childhood. I caught a glimpse of Do Yuen Gardens and the Cathay Cinema. The myriad shops between and beyond no longer bore fanciful, bilingual placards. Gone were the neon signs lit up in blue, red, yellow, green, purple and white. Gone were the hair salons, boutiques, booksellers, coffee shops and French bakeries.

  Now the stores, unpainted and weatherbeaten, carried drab names in the new, simplified characters proclaiming their wares. Nothing frivolous was offered. Thirty years had passed, during which Shanghai had lost its gaiety and sparkle, but at least it was now a city without beggars or newspaper-wrapped female baby corpses.

  Our bus turned north a short way east of the Cathay Cinema and pulled up in front of our hotel, only a few hundred yards from my old Sheng Xin primary school. Bob and I dropped our luggage and immediately took a taxi to visit my aunt.

  It was a bitterly cold December day. The city horizon was enveloped in a haze of dull yellow pollution. Bob told me to instruct the driver to take a short detour along the Bund, once known as the Wall Street of China. It thrilled me to converse with him in my native Shanghai dialect and to hear it once more all around me after thirty years. Already it seemed as if I had never left the city. Fifteen minutes later we were driving along the wide loop of the Huangpu River, whizzing past the well-remembered Huangpu Park (once infamous for prohibiting entry to dogs and Chinese) and the majestic office towers erected by the British in the 1930s. None of the exterior façades had altered, though some lofty edifices did spout laundry-laden bamboo poles incongruously from their upstairs windows.

  Our taxi turned left at the Peace Hotel, with its distinctive triangular tower glowing against a fading sky, on to bustling Nanjing Lu (formerly Nanking Road), awash with pedestrians and bicycles. We drove past the department stores, photography studios, restaurants and provisional markets; past my Grand Aunt’s Women’s Bank at 480 Nanking Road, still imposing but now called the Bank of Commerce and Industry. It was dark when we arrived at our destination. Aunt Baba was living in No. 21, a once stately dwelling fallen into disrepair, as were all its neighbours. The lane was badly lit and we had to grope our way into the building. Its front door stood half open for the world to enter.

  The stench hit us like a physical blow as we stepped into the hallway. We had never smelt anything like it before. The grime and sweat of those who had lived in this house for the past thirty years had penetrated every crevice. It was the stink of rotting food, unwashed bodies, unlaundered clothes and untended plumbing. Although rubbish and dirt covered the stairs and hallway, there were a few polished, oiled and chained bicycles gleaming against the filthy walls.

  My chest felt heavy as I slowly climbed the stairs and called out, ‘Aunt Baba! Aunt Baba!’ All at once she stood there, a tiny figure silhouetted against the light of an open doorway. How small she was! Bob and I both towered over her. I hugged her tightly and felt her bony body inside her bulky padded Mao jacket. She could not have weighed more than eighty pounds.

  She led us into her room and made us sit down on her bed. She took a long look at us, her eyes glowing with tender pride.

  ‘Your handwriting hasn’t changed much from that of the little girl who left in 1948! It’s not the calligraphy of a physician with degrees from England and America. It’s still that of a child going to primary school!’ she exclaimed, her voice rasping with emotion.

  Her room was cold and dingy. The only furniture was a bed, a wooden table and one small, hard-backed chair. All her earthly possessions were kept in one large wooden trunk and some cardboard boxes stacked in rows. Near by was a small kerosene stove on which she was cooking a large pot of soup noodles. She kept a portable enamel urinal under her bed. From the centre of the room dangled some wires, attached to which was a single, naked, electric bulb.

  She considered herself incredibly lucky to have been assigned a room of her own for the last thirteen years. Just down the hall, the owner of the house had to share his single room with his wife and two sons. The whole dwelling now gave shelter to nine families.

  She served us freshly cooked noodles covered with pickled vegetables. I watched her intently as she bustled about her room, the way I used to when I was little and she was my entire world. Her thinning hair was now greyish white and combed tidily into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Her large eyes appeared sunken, delineated by eyebrows matching the colour of her hair.

  I clasped her small hand while we related the stories of our lives, trying to bridge the thirty-year span that separated us. My aunt’s voice dropped to a whisper. Fear of informers and denouncers could not be so soon overcome. ‘It seems incredible that we should be sitting across from each other and speaking of absolutely anything and everything. This would have been dangerous during the Cultural Revolution three years ago.’

  We talked deep into the night. She recounted the story of our family and begged me to
write down these memories before time obliterated all. ‘Our entire family suffered when your Niang entered our home. The spell she cast over your Father was like that of the fox-devil of our ancient folklore. Besides her youth and beauty, he was probably in awe of her foreign blood. Remember, he grew up in the French concession during an era which was unique in China. We are all victims of history.’

  Before we left that night, Aunt Baba said she had a present for us. She rummaged for quite a while through the contents of her old trunk and finally extracted from the lining of her winter coat a neatly folded envelope. On opening it I saw that it was an old American ioo-dollar bill which she must have hoarded for at least thirty years. For a long while we remained silent, afraid that words might shatter the magic of this moment beyond joy and sorrow.

  The next day, I took Aunt Baba back to our hotel, where she enjoyed her first bath for many years. Our designated tour guide, a Party member, regarded her with contempt. At that time, an unofficial policy existed in China which divided people into four classes. Each class was treated accordingly.

  First class were the white tourists, especially if they were rich North Americans. Second class were the overseas Chinese who could speak Chinese. I belonged to this category. We were dealt with as returning heroes who would provide financial support for a new economic structure in China. Third class were the hua qiao (American-born ethnic Chinese) whose parents had emigrated before 1949 and who could not speak Chinese, such as Bob. They were attended to with a mixture of mild contempt and overt honour, the balance being swung by the degree of their prosperity and professional achievements. The general assumption was that anyone from America was probably rich and well connected. Fourth class were the hundreds of millions of native Chinese such as Aunt Baba. Her clothing and demeanour easily earmarked her.