Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (3 page)

The first my grandmother knew of her impending liaison was when her mother broke the news to her a few days before the event.  My grandmother bent her head and wept.

She hated the idea of being a concubine, but her father had already made the decision, and it was unthinkable to oppose one's parents.  To question a parental decision was considered un filial and to be un filial was tantamount to treason.  Even if she refused to consent to her father's wishes, she would not be taken seriously; her action would be interpreted as indicating that she wanted to stay with her parents. The only way to say no and be taken seriously was to commit suicide. My grandmother bit her lip and said nothing.  In fact, there was nothing she could say.  Even to say yes would be considered unladylike, as it would be taken to imply that she was eager to leave her parents.

Seeing how unhappy she was, her mother started telling her that this was the best match possible.  Her husband had told her about General Xue's power: "In Peking they say, "When General Xue stamps his foot, the whole city shakes."  In fact, my grandmother had been rather taken with the general's handsome, martial demeanor.  And she had been flattered by all the admiring words he had said about her to her father, which were now elaborated and embroidered upon.  None of the men in Yixian were as impressive as the warlord general.  At fifteen, she had no idea what being a concubine really meant, and thought she could win General Xue's love and lead a happy life.

General Xue had said that she could stay in Yixian, in a house which he was going to buy especially for her.  This meant she could be close to her own family, but, even more important, she would not have to live in his residence, where she would have to submit to the authority of his wife and the other concubines, who would all have precedence over her.  In the house of a potentate like General Xue, the women were virtual prisoners, living in a state of permanent squabbling and bickering, largely induced by insecurity.  The only security they had was their husband's favor.

General Xue's offer of a house of her own meant a lot to my grandmother, as did his promise to solemnize the liaison with a full wedding ceremony.  This meant that she and her family would have gained a considerable amount of face.  And there was one final consideration which was very important to her: now that her father was satisfied, she hoped he would treat her mother better.

Mrs.  Yang suffered from epilepsy, which made her feel undeserving towards her husband.  She was always submissive to him, and he treated her like dirt, showing no concern for her health.  For years, he found fault with her for not producing a son.  My great-grandmother had a string of miscarriages after my grandmother was born, un61 a second child came along in 1917 but again, it was a girl.

My great-grandfather was obsessed with having enough money to be able to acquire concubines.  The 'wedding' allowed him to fulfill this wish, as General Xue lavished betrothal gifts on the family, and the chief beneficiary was my great-grandfather.  The gifts were magnificent, in keeping with the general's station.

On the day of the wedding, a sedan chair draped with heavy, bright-red embroidered silk and satin appeared at the Yangs' house.  In front came a procession carrying banners, plaques, and silk lanterns painted with images of a golden phoenix, the grandest s3nnbol for a woman.  The wedding ceremony took place in the evening, as was the tradition, with red lanterns glowing in the dusk.  There was an orchestra with drums, cymbals, and piercing wind   instruments playing joyful music.

Making a lot of noise was considered essential for a good wedding, as keeping quiet would have been seen as suggesting that there was something shameful about the event.  My grandmother was splendidly dressed in bright embroidery, with a red silk veil coveting her head and face.  She was carried in the sedan chair to her new home by eight men.  Inside the sedan chair it was stuffy and boiling hot, and she discreetly pulled the curtain back a few inches.  Peeping out from under her veil, she was delighted to see people in the streets watching her procession.  This was very different from what a mere concubine would get a small sedan chair draped in plain cotton of the unglamorous color of indigo, borne by two or at the most four people, and no procession or music.  She was taken right around the town, visiting all four gates, as a full ritual demanded, with her expensive wedding gifts displayed on cans and in large wicker baskets carried behind her. After she had been shown off to the town, she reached her new home, a large, stylish residence.  My grandmother was satisfied.  The pomp and ceremony made her feel she had gained prestige and esteem.  There had been nothing like this in Yixian in living memory.

When she reached the house General Xue, in full military dress, was waiting, surrounded by the local dignitaries.

Red candles and dazzling gas lamps lit up the center of the house, the sitting room, where they performed a ceremonial kowtow to the tablets of Heaven and Earth.  After this, they kowtowed to each other, then my grandmother went into the wedding chamber alone, in accordance with the custom, while General Xue went off to a lavish banquet with the men.

General Xue did not leave the house for three days.  My grandmother was happy.  She thought she loved him, and he showed her a kind of gruff affection.  But he hardly spoke to her about serious matters, in keeping with the traditional saying: "Women have long hair and short intelligence."  A Chinese man was supposed to remain reticent and grand, even within his family.  So she kept quiet, just massaging his toes before they got up in the morning and playing the qin to him in the evening.  After a week, he suddenly told her he was leaving.  He did not say where he was going and she knew it was not a good idea to ask.

Her duty was to wait for him until he came back.  She had to wait six years.

 In September 1924, fighting erupted between the two main warlord factions in North China.  General Xue was promoted to deputy commander of the Peking garrison, but within weeks his old ally General Feng, the Christian warlord, changed sides.  On 3 November, Tsao Kun, whom  General Xue and General Feng had helped install as president the previous year, was forced to resign.  The same day the Peking garrison was dismissed, and two days later the  Peking police office was disbanded.  General Xue had to leave the capital in a hurry.  He retired to a house he owned in Tianjin, in the French concession, which had extraterritorial immunity.  This was the very place to which President  Li had fled the year before when Xue had forced him out of the presidential palace.

In the meantime my grandmother was caught up in the renewed fighting. Control of the northeast was vital in the struggle between the warlord armies, and towns on the railway, especially junctions like Yixian, were particular targets.  Shortly after General Xue left, the fighfng came right up to the walls of the town, with pitched battles just outside the gates.  Loofng was widespread.  One Italian arms company appealed to the cash-strapped warlords by advertising that it would accept loo table villages' as collateral.  Rape was just as commonplace.  Like many other women, my grandmother had to blacken her face with soot to make herself look filthy and ugly.  Fortunately, this time  Yixian emerged virtually unscathed.  The fighfng eventually moved south and life returned to normal.

For my grandmother, 'normal' meant finding ways to kill time in her large house.  The house was built in the typical North Chinese style, around three sides of a quadrangle, the south side of the courtyard being a wall about seven feet high, with a moon gate which opened onto an outer courtyard, which in turn was guarded by a double gate with a round brass knocker.

These houses were built to cope with the extremes of a brutally harsh climate, which lurched from freezing winters to scorching summers, with virtually no spring or autumn in between.  In summer, the temperature could rise above 95 F, but in winter it fell to minus 2o F, with howling winds which roared down from Siberia across the plains.

Dust tore into the eyes and bit into the skin for much of the year, and people often had to wear masks which covered their entire faces and heads.  In the inner courtyard of the houses, all the windows in the main rooms opened to the south to let in as much sunshine as possible, while the walls on the north side took the brunt of the wind and the dust.  The north side of the house contained a sitting room and my grandmother's chamber; the wings on the two sides were for the servants and for all other activities.

The floors of the main rooms were tiled, while the wooden windows were covered with paper.  The pitched roof was made of smooth black tiles.  The house was luxurious by local standards and far superior to her parents' home but my grandmother was lonely and miserable.  There were several servants, including a doorkeeper, a cook, and two maids.  Their task was not only to serve, but also to act as guards and spies.  The doorkeeper was under instructions not to let my grandmother out alone under any circumstances.  Before he left, General Xue told my grandmother a cautionary tale about one of his other concubines.  He had found out that she had been having an affair with a male servant, so he had her tied to a bed and stuffed a gag into her mouth.  Then raw alcohol was dripped onto the cloth, slowly choking her to death.

"Of course, I could not give her the pleasure of dying speedily.  For a woman to betray her husband is the vilest thing possible," he said.  Where infidelity was involved, a man like General Xue would hate the woman far more than the man.

"All I did with the lover was have him shot," he added casually.  My grandmother never knew whether or not all this had really happened, but at the age of fifteen she was suitably petrified.

From that moment she lived in constant fear.  Because she could hardly ever go out, she had to create a world for herself within the four walls.  But even there she was not the real mistress of her home, and she had to spend a great deal of time buttering up the servants in case they invented stories against her which was so common it was considered almost inevitable.  She gave them plenty of presents, and also organized mahjongg parties, because the winners would always have to tip the servants generously.

She was never short of money.  General Xue sent her a regular allowance, which was delivered every month by the manager of his pawnshop, who also picked up the bills for her losses at the mahjongg parties.

Throwing mahjongg parties was a normal part of life for concubines all over China.  So was smoking opium, which was widely available and was seen as a means of keeping people like her contented by being doped and dependent.  Many concubines became addicted in their attempts to ape with their loneliness.  General Xue encouraged my grandmother to take up the habit, but she ignored him.

Almost the only time she was allowed out of the house was to go to the opera.  Otherwise, she had to sit at home all day, every day.  She read a lot, mainly plays and novels, and tended her favorite flowers, garden balsam, hibiscus, common four-o'clock, and roses of Sharon in pots in the courtyard, where she also cultivated dwarf trees.  Her other consolation in her gilded cage was a cat.

She was allowed to visit her parents, but even this was frowned upon, and she was not permitted to stay the night with them.  Although they were the only people she could talk to, she found visiting them a trial.  Her father had been promoted to deputy chief of the local police because of his connection to General Xue, and had acquired land and property.  Every time she opened her mouth about how miserable she was, her father would start lecturing her, telling her that a virtuous woman should suppress her emotions and not desire anything beyond her duty to her husband.  It was all right to miss her husband, that was virtuous, but a woman was not supposed to complain.  In fact, a good woman was not supposed to have a point of view at all, and if she did, she certainly should not be so brazen as to talk about it.  He would quote the Chinese saying, "If you are married to a chicken, obey the chicken; if you are married to a dog, obey the dog."

Six years passed.  To begin with, there were a few letters, then total silence.  Unable to burn off her nervous energy and sexual frustration, unable even to pace the floor with a full stride because of her bound feet, my grandmother was reduced to mincing around the house.  At first, she hoped for some message, going over and over again in her mind her brief life with the general.  Even her physical and psychological submission was mulled over nostalgically.

She missed him very much, though she knew that she was only one of his many concubines, probably dotted around China, and she had never imagined that she would spend the rest of her life with him.  Still she longed for him, as he represented her only chance to live a sort of life.

But as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, her longing became dulled.  She came to realize that for him she was a mere plaything, to be picked up again only when it was convenient for him. Her restlessness now had no object on which to focus.  It became forced into a straitjacket.  When occasionally it stretched its limbs she felt so agitated she did not know what to do with herself.  Sometimes, she would fall to the floor unconscious She was to have blackouts like these for the rest of her life.

Then one day, six years after he had walked casually out of the door, her 'husband' reappeared.  The meeting was very unlike what she had dreamed of at the beginning of their separation.  Then she had fantasized that she would give herself totally and passionately to him, but now all she could find in herself was restrained dutifulness.  She was also racked with anxiety in case she might have offended one of the servants, or that they might invent stories to ingratiate themselves with the general and ruin her life.