Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (12 page)

Aunt Baba asked whether Father had made any provision for us children. Lydia was living with Samuel and her in-laws in Tianjin. Father’s inclination was to leave his three teenaged sons in their Shanghai schools until graduation, then send them to university in England. Franklin and Susan were to go to Hong Kong with our parents. There was a short pause.

’That leaves .Ł.&Ł wu mei (Fifth Younger Daughter),’ Ye Ye said. ’What do you intend to do with her?’

Father picked up the ’food li&’ and scoured it. ’Lately she has become very rebellious. Her successful performance at school has given her a high opinion of herself. You have both spoilt her by giving her too much praise. We have decided to discipline her.’

Ye Ye was startled. ’What has she done to deserve this?’ he asked. ’She is only a little girl in primary school. What are you punishing her for?’

’This is the problem!’ Father replied. ’The two of you are entirely too protective. It is not exactly what she has done or not done. She must be taught to be obedient and modest. She

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should know her place and realize that her opinions and desires count for nothing. After all, she is nothing without her Father and Niang. We have decided to remove her from this cocoon of permissiveness. When we go to Tianjin next week, we are taking her with us. We plan to place her as a boarder back at St Joseph’s. She is to be left there on her own. I forbid you to write or mail her food packages like these!’ He started waving the list in Aunt Baba’s face. ’She will not be allowed to send or receive letters. The nuns will be instructed to keep her locked behind gates until she graduates.’

’The Communists! What about the Communists?’ Aunt Baba asked, ’The newspapers report intense fighting in Manchuria. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are pouring into Tianjin. Don’t you remember reading about those university students fleeing south? They were demonstrating in Tianjin for food and shelter when they were actually fired on by Kuomintang troops. Is it safe for her to go to school there now?’

’This must be stopped at once!’ Father shouted, brandishing the list. ’She must be separated from you two.’ Still clutching the list he rushed from Aunt Baba’s room, slamming the door behind him.

’What’s all this about?’ Aunt Baba asked Ye Ye in a shaky voice. ’The child has done nothing. He behaves as if he wants to destroy her. He knows it will shang xin (wound her heart) to be taken away from us. Can you make any sense of it?’

Ye Ye knew. ’His child has done no wrong. But every day her presence is like a thorn in their side: she annoys them by simply being around. They’re sending her away because they want to be rid of her.’

Those were uncertain times. Every other family with property, Kuomintang ties or even western professional training agonized over what to do next: to stay or to go. For established businessmen with homes, offices, families, friends, and guanxi

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(connections), the choice was particularly hard. Time was running out. Chiang Kai-shek’s army lost city after city. Were the Communists really as bad as all that? Could anyone be certain how things would evolve under the new regime? Many did not stay to find out. Everyday, trains, planes and boats were loaded with refugees heading for Taiwan and Hong Kong.

In later years Father would relate the fate of an acquaintance who wavered at the very last minute. He was actually on his way to Shanghai airport with his wife and son. He could not believe that he was a big enough player to be singled out for persecution. He stopped at the house of his cousin. They exchanged places. The cousin flew with wife and daughter to a life of prosperity in New York. Father’s friend stayed and was eventually stripped of everything he owned. His son was imprisoned for criticizing Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife. His wife committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution.

Father, Niang, Franklin and Susan left for Hong Kong in December 1948. Grand Aunt could not bear to leave her bank. She decided to stay and throw in her lot with the new rulers. Ye Ye’s departure was heartrending. He loved his home town and doubted if he would ever see it again. The sights, smellsj sounds and memories of Shanghai were irreplaceable. He dreaded the life stretching before him in Hong Kong but knew that he had to flee. Up to the last he tried to change Aunt Baba’s mind. This she simply could not do. Thirty years latert my aunt was unable to describe, their final parting without anguish.

One by one, the cities fell: Luoyang, Kaifeng, Jinzhou, Chanchun, Mukden. In December 1948 Beijing was surrounded by Communist troops. The city was under seige. In January 1949 the die was cast when the Battle of Huai Hai was finally won by the Communists. Over 300,000 Kuomintang soldiers were taken prisoner. On 2.1 January 1949, Chiang Kai-shek resigned as President of the Republic. The People’s Liberation Army crossed the Yangtse River in April. In less than a month, they took Nanking, Soochow and Hangchow.

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The Red Army entered Shanghai in triumph on Z5 May,

1949. Young, zealous and disciplined PLA troops were seen marching up and down Nanking Road. They cheerfully helped residents and shopkeepers clean up the sandbags and other impediments put up by the Nationalists. They were courteous and well fed. There was no looting.

For my aunt, there now followed a period of unprecedented peace and happiness. Within a matter of days Grand Aunt’s bank reopened. The Communists bent over backwards to maintain law and order. Shops and restaurants resumed business as usual. Inflation was finally halted. Gold Yuan Certificates were changed into Jen Min Pi, the new currency of the People’s Republic. Prices of commodities stabilized and supplies became once more available. Public services such as transportation, mail delivery and street cleaning seemed better managed than before. The new regime repeatedly assured the populace in newspapers and radio broadcasts that properties and businesses of Chinese and foreign merchants would be for ever protected, and their religions respected.

Aunt Baba was in charge of the household, supervising my three brothers who were still at school in Shanghai. She spent her bank salary for her own needs and collected the monthly rental income from Father’s properties to run the house. She trimmed the domestic staff down to two maids and Miss Chien. She was profoundly moved when she heard Chairman Mao’s broadcast from Beijing on i October 1949, proclaiming the founding of the People’s Republic of China. All her fellow employees gathered around a radio to hear Mao announce, ’The Chinese people have arisen.’

Her days were calm and orderly. After breakfast, she saw the boys off to school before going to work herself. They ate dinner together as usual at seven thirty and the boys were encouraged to bring their friends home. Each was given a fair weekly allowance so that they could take themselves off on outings from time to time. The Communist interference did not extend beyond the compulsory registration of everyone in

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the abode, including Franklin’s governess, Miss Chien. A hu kou (residents’ committee) was set up for administrative purposes. Later these committees became government tools to control and account for the movements of every inhabitant in Shanghai.

Miss Chien was a spinster in her mid-thirties. After the departure of Franklin and Susan, she had no obvious function and feared that she would be dismissed. Her education had ceased at the age of fourteen and she was now unable to teach the boys in any subjecTTSheT:ried to curry Aunt Baba’s favour by preparing regional delicacies from her home town. When the weather turned cold, she warmed Aunt Baba’s bed with hot-water bottles and brought up thermos flasks of hot water for Aunt Baba’s nightly bath. She spent her days reading the newspapers, gossiping with the two remaining maids, writing letters and knitting tirelessly. Aunt Baba was amazed at her seemingly endless supply of good-quality wool which was becoming impossible to procure in the neighbourhood stores. Many imported commodities were in short supply as westerners were leaving in droves and foreign firms were closing down. Generously, Miss Chien gave many of her hand-knitted cardigans to Aunt Baba and the boys as gifts.

Gregory graduated from middle school in 1950. Under Father’s instruction, he and Edgar went by train to Tianjin and had some western-style suits custom-made by Uncle Pierre’s tailor. Travel in those days was,,still free and easy. They left Tianjin by boat for Hong Kong with their new clothes. Three weeks later, they were sent to England for further studies.

James remained at school for another year during which Aunt Baba lavished loving care on him. The maids were told to cook his favourite dishes. He took expensive riding lessons, entertained his friends at home and went on excursions to neighbouring cities. Gallant and witty, he proved a good cornpanion to my aunt. They often read Ye Ye’s letters together and James was coaxed into writing weekly to Father and sometimes to Ye Ye as well. He enjoyed considerable freedom in

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Shanghai; so much so that when word came from Father for him to leave for Hong Kong in 1951 he was reluctant to go. Aunt Baba pleaded James’s case with Ye Ye but to no avail. Ye Ye replied that the two of them must have taken leave of their senses. He thought it unwise to even show their letter to Father. By the time James left in July 1951, travelling restrictions had tightened. Accompanied by Third Uncle, Frederick (our own dead mother’s youngest brother), they travelled by tram to Canton. A special pass was needed to cross the border into Hong Kong which they lacked. They were finally smuggled across in a leaky boat in the dead of night. Luck was with them and they sailed peacefully into Hong Kong harbour. Back in Shanghai Aunt Baba was now left alone with the two maids and Miss Chien.

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Extend the Same Treatment to All

Father and Niang took me north to Tianjin in September 1948 at the height of the Civil War. Province after province was being lost to the victorious Red Army. Most people were fleeing in the opposite direction.

Following the collapse of the Kuomintang army in Manchuria, refugees were arriving at the rate of 600 a day, bringing with them pestilence and squalour. Tianjin’s population swelled by 10 per cent within a matter of months. City services, already desperately strained, simply could not cope. Soon the refugees were kept out by force and housed in primitive camps. Dysentery was rife.

Against this backdrop Niang enrolled me as a boarder at St Joseph’s. There were only about a hundred pupils left. I was one of four boarders; the rest were day girls. Classes were sporadic because attendance was erratic. Over the next few weeks, the number of girls dwindled. Soon we were gathered together into one classroom, ranging in age from seven to eighteen. No Chinese was spoken during school hours. Indeed, while I was there, no Chinese was taught at the school. We had to converse with each other in English or French.

I was miserable. Chinese had been the language of instruction at my primary school in Shanghai. English was a second language; French was never taught. I was lonely and longed to

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return to Aunt Baba, James and my friends in Shanghai. I poured out my wretchedness in long letters, begging for a few kind words from home. Day after day I waited expectantly for my name to be called when mail was distributed. No letter ever came. I did not know of my parents’ instructions to the nuns that I was to receive no visitors, no phone calls and no mail.

Sealed in a hermetic world behind convent gates, I was totally unaware that meanwhile the Communists, having captured Manchuria, were sweeping past the Great Wall and moving steadily towards Beijing and Tianjin. Kuomintang and Communist troops fought pitched battles for the control of North China. Many students and their families fled to Taiwan and Hong Kong. Formal classes were abandoned. We spent our time reading English books of our choice. I steeped myself in the EnglishChinese dictionary. During an informal conversation class one day, our teacher asked us each to name one favourite book. Everyone laughed when I said mine was the dictionary. And if I could have one wish granted what would it be? To receive a letter addressed to me. Just one letter. From anyone.

More and more girls left the school as the Communist armies approached. Inside St Joseph’s there were no more farewell parties. Girls simply failed to appear at class. The nuns seemed distraught and preoccupied. They were being advised by their superiors in France to leave Tianjin and save themselves from persecution.

I spent every Sunday and every holiday by myself in the school, including Christmas and New Year. All the other boarders would go home to their families. I was not allowed to accept any invitation from my friends. The nuns did not know what to do with me. I wandered like a ghost from classroom to classroom, spending much time reading fairy tales in the library. My memory of that Christmas is sitting by myself in the enormous refectory, eating ham, potatoes and plum pudding and pretending I hadn’t a care in the world. Outside, I could hear the sweet refrain of ’Silent Night’ piercing the air as I

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stoically avoided the solicitous glances of kindly Sister Helene rushing in and out while I ate my Christmas dinner alone.

On 31 January 1949, victorious Communist troops marched into Beijing without a shot being fired. Next day Fu Tso-I, the Nationalist general, surrendered with all his armies and rich military supplies. He was rewarded with the post of Minister of Water Conservation of the People’s Republic. Tianjin was taken by the Communist general, Lin Biao, about the same time.

My eldest sister, Lydia, was actually living in Tianjin with her husband Samuel and his parents during the time I was incarcerated in the convent. They neither visited nor enquired after me. When they fled from the Communists to Taiwan in January 1949, they left me behind without having made contact.

Day after day I sat alone in the library wondering what was to become of me. My school routine had disappeared. There were no more classes and every day was a ’free’ day. My teachers appeared at a loss as to how to educate one solitary child who spoke little English or French. The mood at the convent was one of barely controlled panic, relieved only by Roman Catholic rituals.