Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots Read online

  A little intimidated by the tuxedoed waiter, they hesitantly asked whether there was a ‘daily lunch special’. Informed that it was re gou (dog meat, served hot), Aunt Baba was only slightly nonplussed. She had heard that in some provinces dog was considered a delicacy; but Miss Ren was much more dubious, remembering her family’s pet Pekinese at home. She promptly remarked that ‘today’s special’ usually meant ‘yesterday’s leftovers’.

  The waiter became impatient. He was one of those Chinese who had adopted the haughtiness of the foreigners and preferred to serve the wealthy whites from the concessions. On this occasion the two girls were the only Chinese in the restaurant. They began to feel like gauche simpletons and, as much to be free of the arrogant waiter as anything else, they both ordered the dog dish. Aunt Baba was pleasantly surprised by the sausage that arrived wrapped in a bun and ate it with relish. Miss Ren, however, could not stop thinking about the little family pet and gave up after one bite. They laughed heartily when they eventually learned from Grand Aunt that re gou ‘hot dog meat’ was, in fact, the classic American hot dog.

  On one of Father’s frequent visits to Shanghai to discuss business at the Women’s Bank, he was introduced to Miss Ren. Xiao qiao ling long (petite, vivacious and interesting) was Father’s verdict. They began to correspond. Five months later, they were married. An enormous banquet was held at the Xin Ya (New Asia) restaurant in the International Concession just off Nanking Road. Besides immediate relatives, most of the guests were business associates of Grand Aunt’s and Father’s. It was 1930.

  Father took his bride to Tianjin and bought a large house at 40 Shandong Road, conveniently located in the town centre of the French Concession and very near a public park. Across the street was St Louis Catholic Boys’ School.

  Their marriage was happy and they had four children in as many years. The young couple were ru ying sui xing (inseparable as each other’s shadows). First came a daughter. The baby was large and Dr Mary Mei-ing Ting, an obstetrician, applied forceps during the difficult delivery. Force had to be exerted and the baby (my eldest sister Jun-pei) was born with a partially paralysed left arm. Then came three sons (Zi-jie, Zi-lin and Zi-jun). There was a gap of three years before I (Jun-ling) came along.

  The family house was spacious, with two storeys and a large attic where the servants slept. With its rounded bow windows, balconies, charming porch and pretty garden, the house was considered ultra-modern because of its flush toilets, running water and central heating. The latter constituted the height of luxury: most Chinese homes were still being heated by raised brick sleeping benches called kangs.

  Father converted the ground floor of his house into offices for some of his staff. The rest of the family lived with Ye Ye and Grandmother on the second floor. There were seven servants to take care of the household. Father bought a large black Buick for himself and a black rickshaw for Grandmother to visit friends and play mah-jong.

  Aunt Baba often took the train from Shanghai to Tianjin, a two-day journey in those days, and stayed for long visits. Father and Mother would meet her at the station in the Buick and the three would spend hours catching up on Shanghai gossip and Grand Aunt’s latest business triumphs. There were outings to restaurants, films and the Chinese opera. According to Aunt Baba, it was an idyllic time for them all.

  Mother’s obstetrician, Dr Ting, was almost a member of the family by the time my three brothers were born. Like Grand Aunt, who was her classmate and childhood friend, she too had been educated at Shanghai’s McTyeire School for Girls. She converted to Christianity and at the age of fifteen had spurned an arranged marriage. The intended bridegroom came from a wealthy family but was sickly, in pain and already addicted to opium. On her wedding day, the bride simply vanished. Her parents were sued and forced to pay the bridegroom’s family a great many taels of silver in compensation for breach of promise, besides enduring considerable loss of face. With the help of her uncle, Mary escaped to Hong Kong where she continued her studies at another missionary school. Mary’s uncle followed her to Hong Kong, cut off his queue (pigtail) and sent it to their family in Shanghai in a gesture of defiance. This was a serious crime and amounted to a public declaration of rebellion against the Qing emperor. (After the Manchus conquered China in 1644, they had imposed the partly shaven head and queue on every Chinese man to state their dominance.) Mary and her uncle were both disowned. He went to work in Hong Kong to pay for Mary’s education. Later Mary won a scholarship to the University of Michigan Medical School and specialized in obstetrics and gynaecology. Returning to China, she settled in Tianjin rather than Shanghai where painful memories haunted her. She founded her Women’s Hospital and became the best obstetrician in town. My sister and three older brothers were all delivered at Dr Ting’s hospital.

  When my mother became pregnant with me, the political situation in China had deteriorated drastically. In 1928 the Manchurian warlord, Chang Tso-lin, had been murdered by the Japanese while riding in his private railway coach. Over the next few years, Japanese soldiers invaded Manchuria. A puppet regime (Manchukuo or Nation of Manchu) was established under the former boy emperor Puyi in 1932. The United States refused to become directly involved. Britain looked the other way and recommended compromise. The League of Nations promised to investigate. Chiang Kai-shek, commander in chief of the army and head of the Nationalist party (Kuomintang), was fully occupied fighting the Communists, who had formed their own army and government in the rural strongholds of Yan’an in the north-west. Emboldened, Japan proceeded to launch a full scale attack on Tianjin and Beijing in July 1937. This was the beginning of the Sino–Japanese war which was to rage on for eight long years.

  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 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 my 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.

  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.

  CHAPTER 4

  Xiu Se Ke Can

  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 our 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 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 complexion. 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 lunch-time 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 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 1930s, 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 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 League of 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 Ye 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. 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, living-room 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 the 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.