writing assignment #8

Book Title: Wild Swans

Author: Jung Chang

Chapter 1: “Three-Inch Golden Lilies” – Concubine to a Warlord General

At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord

general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China. The year was

1924 and China was in chaos. Much of it, including Manchuria, where my

grandmother lived, was ruled by warlords. The liaison was arranged by her father,

a police official in the provincial town of Yixian in southwest Manchuria, about a

hundred miles north of the Great Wall and 250 miles northeast of Peking.

Like most towns in China, Yixian was built like a fortress. It was encircled by

walls thirty feet high and twelve feet thick dating from the Tang dynasty (A. O.

618-907), surmounted by battlements, dotted with sixteen forts at regular intervals,

and wide enough to ride a horse quite easily along the top. There were four gates

into the city, one at each point of the compass, with outer protecting gates, and the

fortifications were surrounded by a deep moat.

The town's most conspicuous feature was a tall, richly decorated bell tower of

dark brown stone, which had originally been built in the sixth century when

Buddhism had been introduced to the area. Every night the bell was rung to signal

the time, and the tower also functioned as a fire and flood alarm. Yixian was a

prosperous market town. The plains around produced cotton, maize, sorghum,

soybeans, sesame, pears, apples, and grapes. In the grassland areas and in the hills

to the west, farmers grazed sheep and cattle.

My great-grandfather, Yang Ru-shan, was born in 1894, when the whole of

China was ruled by an emperor who resided in Peking. The imperial family were

Manchus who had conquered China in 1644 from Manchuria, which was their

base. The Yangs were Han, ethnic Chinese, and had ventured north of the Great

Wall in search of opportunity.

My great-grandfather was the only son, which made him of supreme importance

to his family. Only a son could perpetuate the family name-without him, the family

line would stop, which, to the Chinese, amounted to the greatest possible betrayal

of one's ancestors. He was sent to a good school. The goal was for him to pass the

examinations to become a mandarin, an official, which was the aspiration of most

Chinese males at the time. Being an official brought power, and power brought

money. Without power or money, no Chinese could feel safe from the depredations

of officialdom or random violence. There had never been a proper legal system.

Justice was arbitrary, and cruelty was both institutionalized and capricious. An

official with power was the law. Becoming a mandarin was the only way the child

of a non-noble family could escape this cycle of injustice and fear. Yang's father

had decided that his son should not follow him into the family business of felt-

making, and sacrificed himself and his family to pay for his son's education. The

women took in sewing for local tailors and dressmakers, toiling late into the night.

To save money, they turned their oil lamps down to the absolute minimum, causing

lasting damage to their eyes. The joints in their fingers became swollen from the

long hours.

Following the custom, my great-grandfather was married young, at fourteen, to a

woman six years his senior. It was considered one of the duties of a wife to help

bring up her husband.

The story of his wife, my great-grandmother, was typical of millions of Chinese

women of her time. She came from a family of tanners called Wu. Because her

family was not an intellectual one and did not hold any official post, and because

she was a girl, she was not given a name at all. Being the second daughter, she was

simply called " Number Two Girl" (Er-ya-tou). Her father died when she was an

infant, and she was brought up by an uncle. One day, when she was six years old,

the uncle was dining with a friend whose wife was pregnant. Over dinner the two

men agreed that if the baby was a boy he would be married to the six-year-old

niece. The two young people never met before their wedding. In fact, falling in

love was considered almost shameful, a family disgrace. Not because it was taboo-

there was, after all, a venerable tradition of romantic love in China-but because

young people were not supposed to be exposed to situations where such a thing

could happen, partly because it was immoral for them to meet, and partly because

marriage was seen above all as a duty, an arrangement between two families. With

luck, one could fall in love after getting married.

At fourteen, and having lived a very sheltered life, my great-grand- father was

little more than a boy at the time of his marriage. On the first night, he did not want

to go into the wedding chamber. He went to bed in his mother's room and had to be

carried in to his bride after he fell asleep. But, although he was a spoiled child and

still needed help to get dressed, he knew how to "plant children," according to his

wife. My grandmother was born within a year of the wedding, on the fifth day of

the fifth moon, in early summer 1909. She was in a better position than her mother,

for she was actually given a name: Yu-fang. Yu, meaning " jade," was her

generation name, given to all the offspring of the same generation, while fang

means "fragrant flowers."

The world she was born into was one of total unpredictability. The Manchu

empire, which had ruled China for over 26o years, was tottering. In 1894-95 Japan

attacked China in Manchuria, with China suffering devastating defeats and loss of

territory. In 1900 the nationalist Boxer Rebellion was put down by eight foreign

armies, contingents of which had stayed on, some in Manchuria and some along

the Great Wall. Then in 1904- 5 Japan and Russia fought a major war on the plains

of Manchuria. Japan's victory made it the dominant outside force in Manchuria. In

1911 the five-year-old emperor of China, Pu Yi, was overthrown and a republic

was set up with the charismatic figure of Sun Yat-sen briefly at its head.

The new republican government soon collapsed and the country broke up into

fiefs. Manchuria was particularly disaffected from the republic, since the Manchu

dynasty had originated there. Foreign powers, especially Japan, intensified their

attempts to encroach on the area. Under all these pressures, the old institutions

collapsed, resulting in a vacuum of power, morality, and authority. Many people

sought to get to the top by bribing local potentates with expensive gifts like gold,

silver, and jewelry. My great-grandfather was not rich enough to buy himself a

lucrative position in a big city, and by the time he was thirty he had risen no higher

than an official in the police station of his native Yixian, a provincial backwater.

But he had plans. And he had one valuable asset-his daughter.

My grandmother was a beauty. She had an oval face, with rosy cheeks and

lustrous skin. Her long, shiny black hair was woven into a thick plait reaching

down to her waist. She could be demure when the occasion demanded, which was

most of the time, but underneath her composed exterior she was bursting with

suppressed energy. She was petite, about five feet three inches, with a slender

figure and sloping shoulders, which were considered the ideal.

But her greatest assets were her bound feet, called in Chinese "three-inch golden

lilies" (san-tsun-gin-lian). This meant she walked "like a tender young willow

shoot in a spring breeze," as Chinese connoisseurs of women traditionally put it.

The sight of a woman teetering on bound feet was supposed to have an erotic effect

on men, partly because her vulnerability induced a feeling of protectiveness in the

onlooker.

My grandmother's feet had been bound when she was two years old. Her

mother, who herself had bound feet, first wound a piece of white cloth about

twenty feet long round her feet, bending all the toes except the big toe inward and

under the sole. Then she placed a large stone on top to crush the arch. My

grandmother screamed in agony and begged her to stop. Her mother had to stick a

cloth into her mouth to gag her. My grandmother passed out repeatedly from the

pain.

The process lasted several years. Even after the bones had been broken, the feet

had to be bound day and night in thick cloth because the moment they were

released they would try to recover. For years my grandmother lived in relentless,

excruciating pain. When she pleaded with her mother to untie the bindings, her

mother would weep and tell her that unbound feet would ruin her entire life, and

that she was doing it for her own future happiness.

In those days, when a woman was married, the first thing the bride- groom's

family did was to examine her feet. Large feet, meaning nor- mal feet, were

considered to bring shame on the husband's household. The mother-in-law would

lift the hem of the bride's long skirt, and if the feet were more than about four

inches long, she would throw down the skirt in a demonstrative gesture of

contempt and stalk off, leaving the bride to the critical gaze of the wedding guests,

who would stare at her feet and insultingly mutter their disdain. Sometimes a

mother would take pity on her daughter and remove the binding cloth; but when

the child grew up and had to endure the contempt of her husband 's family and the

disapproval of society, she would blame her mother for having been too weak.

The practice of binding feet was originally introduced about a thousand years

ago, allegedly by a concubine of the emperor. Not only was the sight of women

hobbling on tiny feet considered erotic, men would also get excited playing with

bound feet, which were always hidden in embroidered silk shoes. Women could

not remove the binding cloths even when they were adults, as their feet would start

growing again. The binding could only be loosened temporarily at night in bed,

when they would put on soft soled shoes. Men rarely saw naked bound feet, which

were usually covered in rotting flesh and stank when the bindings were removed.

As a child, I can remember my grandmother being in constant pain. When we

came home from shop- ping, the first thing she would do was soak her feet in a

bowl of hot water, sighing with relief as she did so. Then she would set about

cutting off pieces of dead skin. The pain came not only from the broken bones, but

also from her toenails, which grew into the balls of her feet.

In fact, my grandmother's feet were bound just at the moment when foot-binding

was disappearing for good. By the time her sister was born in 1917, the practice

had virtually been abandoned, so she escaped the torment.

However, when my grandmother was growing up, the prevailing attitude in a

small town like Yixian was still that bound feet were essential for a good marriage-

but they were only a start. Her father's plans were for her to be trained as either a

perfect lady or a high-class courtesan. Scorning the received wisdom of the time-

that it was virtuous for a lower class woman to be illiterate- he sent her to a girl's

school that had been set up in the town in 1905. She also learned to play Chinese

chess, mah-jongg, and go. She studied drawing and embroidery. Her favorite

design was mandarin ducks (which symbolize love, because they always swim in

pairs), and she used to embroider them onto the tiny shoes she made for herself. To

crown her list of accomplishments, a tutor was hired to teach her to play the qin, a

musical instrument like a zither.

My grandmother was considered the belle of the town. The locals said she stood

out "like a crane among chickens." In 1924 she was fifteen, and her father was

growing worried that time might be running out on his only real asset- and his only

chance for a life of ease. In that year General Xue Zhi-heng, the inspector general

of the Metropolitan Police of the warlord government in Peking, came to pay a

visit.

Xue Zhi-heng was born in 1876 in the county of Lulong, about a hundred miles

east of Peking, and just south of the Great Wall, where the vast North China plain

runs up against the mountains. He was the eldest of four sons of a country

schoolteacher.

He was handsome and had a powerful presence, which struck all who met him.

Several blind fortune-tellers who felt his face predicted he would rise to a powerful

position. He was a gifted calligrapher, a talent held in high esteem, and in 1908 a

warlord named Wang Huaiqing, who was visiting Lulong, noticed the fine

calligraphy on a plaque over the gate of the main temple and asked to meet the

man who had done it. General Wang took to the thirty-two-year-old Xue and

invited him to become his aide-de-camp.

He proved extremely efficient, and was soon promoted to quartermaster. This

involved extensive traveling, and he started to acquire food shops of his own

around Lulong and on the other side of the Great Wall, in Manchuria. His rapid

rise was boosted when he helped General Wang to suppress an uprising in Inner

Mongolia. In almost no time he had amassed a fortune, and he designed and built

for himself an eighty-one-room mansion at Lulong.

In the decade after the end of the empire, no government established authority

over the bulk of the country. Powerful warlords were soon fighting for control of

the central government in Peking. Xue's faction, headed by a warlord called Wu

Pei-fu, dominated the nominal government in Peking in the early 1920s. In 1922

Xue became inspector general of the Metropolitan Police and joint head of the

Public Works Department in Peking. He commanded twenty regions on both sides

of the Great Wall, and more than 10,000 mounted police and infantry. The police

job gave him power; the public works post gave him patronage.

Allegiances were fickle. In May 1923 General Xue's faction decided to get rid of

the president, Li Yuan-hong, whom it had installed in office only a year earlier. In

league with a general called Feng Yu-xiang, a Christian warlord, who entered

legend by baptizing his troops en masse with a firehose, Xue mobilized his 10,000

men and sur- rounded the main government buildings in Peking, demanding the

back pay which the bankrupt government owed his men. His real aim was to

humiliate President Li and force him out of office. Li refused to resign, so Xue

ordered his men to cut off the water and electricity to the presidential palace. After

a few days, conditions inside the building became unbearable, and on the night of

13 June President Li abandoned his malodorous residence and fled the capital for

the port city of Tianjin, seventy miles to the southeast.

In China the authority of an office lay not only in its holder but in the official

seals. No document was valid, even if it had the president's signature on it, unless it

carried his seal. Knowing that no one could take over the presidency without them,

President Li left the seals with one of his concubines, who was convalescing in a

hospital in Peking run by French missionaries.

As President Li was nearing Tianjin his train was stopped by armed police, who

told him to hand over the seals. At first he refused to say where he had hidden

them, but after several hours he relented. At three in the morning General Xue

went to the French hospital to collect the seals from the concubine. When he

appeared by her bed- side, the concubine at first refused even to look at him: "How

can I hand over the president's seals to a mere policeman?" she said haughtily. But

General Xue, resplendent in his full uniform, looked so intimidating that she soon

meekly placed the seals in his hands.

Over the next four months, Xue used his police to make sure that the man his

faction wanted to see as president, Tsao Kun, would win what was billed as one of

China 's first elections. The 804 members of parliament had to be bribed. Xue and

General Feng stationed guards on the parliament building and let it be known that

there would be a handsome consideration for anyone who voted the right way,

which brought many deputies scurrying back from the provinces. By the time

everything was ready for the election there were 555 members of parliament in

Peking. Four days before the election, after much bargaining, they were each given

5,000 silver yuan, a rather substantial sum. On 5 October 1923, Tsao Kun was

elected president of China with 480 votes. Xue was rewarded with promotion to

full general. Also promoted were seventeen "special advisers"-all favorite

mistresses or concubines of various warlords and generals. This episode has

entered Chinese history as a notorious example of how an election can be

manipulated. People still cite it to argue that democracy will not work in China.

In early summer the following year General Xue visited Yixian. Though it was

not a large town, it was strategically important. It was about here that the writ of

the Peking government began to run out. Beyond, power was in the hand s of the

great warlord of the northeast, Chang Tso-Jin, known as the Old Marshal.

Officially, General Xue was on an inspection trip, but he also had some personal

interests in the area. In Yixian he owned the main grain stores and the biggest

shops, including a pawnshop which doubled as the bank and issued its own money,

which circulated in the town and the surrounding area.

For my great-grandfather, this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, the closest he

was ever going to get to a real VIP. He schemed to get himself the job of escorting

General Xue, and told his wife he was going to try to marry their daughter off to

him. He did not ask his wife for her agreement; he merely informed her. Quite

apart from this being the custom of the day, my great-grandfather despised his

wife. She wept, but said nothing. He told her she must not breathe a word to their

daughter. There was no question of consulting his daughter. Marriage was a

transaction, not a matter of feelings. She would be informed when the wedding was

arranged.

My great-grandfather knew that his approach to General Xue had to be indirect.

An explicit offer of his daughter's hand would lower her price, and there was also

the possibility that he might be turned down. Genera l Xue had to have a chance to

see what he was being offered. In those days respectable women could not be

introduced to strange men, so Yang had to create an opportunity for General Xue

to see his daughter. The encounter had to seem accidental.

In Yixian there was a magnificent 900-year-old Buddhist temple made of

precious wood and standing about a hundred feet high. It was set within an elegant

precinct, with rows of cypress trees, which covered an area of almost a square

mile. Inside was a brightly painted wooden statue of the Buddha, thirty feet high,

and the interior of the temple was covered with delicate murals depicting his life. It

was an obvious place for Yang to take the visiting VIP. And temples were among

the few places women of good families could go on their own.

My grandmother was told to go to the temple on a certain day. To show her

reverence for the Buddha, she took perfumed baths and spent long hours

meditating in front of burning incense at a little shrine. To pray in the temple, she

was supposed to be in a state of maximum tranquility, and to be free of all

unsettling emotions. She set off in a rented horse-drawn carriage, accompanied by

a maid. She wore a duck-egg-blue jacket, its edges embroidered in gold thread to

show off its simple lines, with butterfly buttons up the right-hand side. With this

she wore a pleated pink skirt, embroidered all over with tiny flowers. Her long

black hair was woven into a single plait. Peeping out at the top was a silk black-

green peony, the rarest kind. She wore no makeup, but was richly scented, as was

considered appropriate for a visit to a temple. Once inside, she knelt before the

giant statue of the Buddha. She kowtowed several times to the wooden image and

then remained kneeling before it, her hands clasped in prayer.

As she was praying, her father arrived with General Xue. The two men watched

from the dark aisle. My great-grandfather had planned well. The position in which

my grandmother was kneeling revealed not only her silk trousers, which were

edged in gold like her jacket, but also her tiny feet in their embroidered satin shoes.

When she finished praying, my grandmother kowtowed three times to the

Buddha. As she stood up she slightly lost her balance, which was easy to do with

bound feet. She reached out to steady herself on her maid's arm. General Xue and

her father had just begun to move forward. She blushed and bent her head, then

turned and started to walk away, which was the right thing to do. Her father

stepped forward and introduced her to the general. She curtsied, keeping her head

lowered all the time.

As was fitting for a man in his position, the general did not say much about the

meeting to Yang, who was a rather lowly subordinate, but my great-grandfather

could see he was fascinated. The next step was to engineer a more direct

encounter. A couple of days later Yang, risking bankruptcy, rented the best theater

in town and put on a local opera, inviting General Xue as the guest of honor. Like

most Chinese theaters, it was built around a rectangular space open to the sky, with

timber structures on three sides; the fourth side formed the stage, which was

completely bare: it had no curtain and no sets. The seating area was more like a

cafe than a theater in the West. The men sat at tables in the open square, eating,

drinking, and talking loudly throughout the performance. To the side, higher up,

was the dress circle, where the ladies sat more demurely at smaller tables, with

their maids standing behind them. My great-grandfather had arranged things so

that his daughter was in a place where General Xue could see her easily.

This time she was much more dressed up than in the temple. She wore a heavily

embroidered satin dress and jewelry in her hair. She was also displaying her

natural vivacity and energy, laughing and chat- ting with her women friends.

General Xue hardly looked at the stage. After the show there was a traditional

Chinese game called lantern- riddles. This took place in two separate halls, one for

the men and one for the women. In each room were dozens of elaborate paper

lanterns, stuck on which were a number of riddles in verse. The person who

guessed the most answers won a prize. Among the men General Xue was the

winner, naturally. Among the women, it was my grandmother.

Yang had now given General Xue a chance to appreciate his daughter's beauty

and her intelligence. The final qualification was artistic talent. Two nights later he

invited the general to his house for dinner. It was a clear, warm night, with a full

moon-a classic setting for listening to the qin. After dinner, the men sat on the

veranda and my grandmother was summoned to play in the courtyard. Sitting

under a trellis, with the scent of syringa in the air, her performance enchanted

General Xue. Later he was to tell her that her playing that evening in the moonlight

had captured his heart. When my mother was born, he gave her the name Bao Qin,

which means "Precious Zither."

Before the evening was over he had proposed-not to my grand- mother, of

course, but to her father. He did not offer marriage, only that my grandmother

should become his concubine. But Yang had not expected anything else. The Xue

family would have arranged a marriage for the general long before on the basis of

social positions. In any case, the Yangs were too humble to provide a wife. But it

was expected that a man like General Xue should take concubines. Wives were not

for pleasure-that was what concubines were for. Concubines might acquire

considerable power, but their social status was quite different from that of a wife.

A concubine was a kind of institutionalized mistress, acquired and discarded at

will.

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 "unfilial"- and to be unfilial 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 sub missive 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, until 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 symbol 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 covering 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 carts 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 grand- mother 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. Soshe 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 fighting came right up to the walls of the town,

with pitched battles just outside the gates. Looting was widespread. One Italian

arms company appealed to the cash-strapped warlords by advertising that it would

accept "lootable 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 fighting 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 court- yard 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 20°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 grand- mother 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 mah-jongg 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 mah-jongg parties.

Throwing mah-jongg parties was a normal part of life for concubines all over

China. So was smoking opium, which was widely avail- able 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 cope 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 them-

selves with the general and ruin her life. But everything went smoothly. The

general, now past fifty, seemed to have mellowed, and did not look nearly as

majestic as before. As she expected, he did not say a word about where he had

been, why he had left so suddenly, or why he was back, and she did not ask. Quite

apart from not wanting to be scolded for being inquisitive, she did not care.

In fact, all this time the general had not been far away at all. He had been

leading the quiet life of a wealthy retired dignitary, dividing his time between his

house in Tianjin and his country mansion near Lulong. The world in which he had

flourished was becoming a thing of the past. The warlords and their fief system had

collapsed and most of China was now controlled by a single force, the

Kuomintang, or Nationalists, headed by Chiang Kai-shek. To mark the break with

the chaotic past, and to try to give the appearance of a new start and of stability, the

Kuomintang moved the capital from Peking ("Northern Capital") to Nanjing

("Southern Capital"). In 1928, the ruler of Manchuria, Chang Tso-Jin, the Old

Marshal, was assassinated by the Japanese, who were becoming increasingly active

in the area. The Old Marshal's son, Chang Hsueh-Jiang (known as the Young

Marshal), joined up with the Kuomintang and formally integrated Manchuria with

the rest of China- though Kuomintang rule was never effectively established in

Manchuria.

General Xue's visit to my grandmother did not last long. Just like the first time,

after a few days he suddenly announced he was leaving. The night before he was

due to leave, he asked my grandmother to go and live with him at Lulong. Her

heart missed a beat. If he ordered her to go, it would amount to a life sentence

under the same roof as his wife and his other concubines. She was invaded by a

wave of panic. As she massaged his feet, she quietly pleaded with him to let her

stay in Yixian. She told him how kind he was to have promised her parents he

would not take her away from them, and gently reminded him that her mother was

not in good health: she had just had a third child, the longed-for son. She said that

she would like to observe filial piety, while, of course, serving him, her husband

and master, whenever he graced Yixian with his presence. The next day she packed

his things and he left, alone. On his departure, as on his arrival, he showered jewels

on my grandmother-gold, silver, jade, pearls, and emeralds. Like many men of his

kind, he believed this was the way to a woman's heart. For women like my

grandmother, jewelry was their only insurance.

A short time later, my grandmother realized she was pregnant. On the

seventeenth day of the third moon, in spring 1931, she gave birth to a baby girl-my

mother. She wrote to General Xue to let him know, and he wrote back telling her

to call the girl Bao Qin and to bring her to Lulong as soon as they were strong

enough to travel.

My grandmother was ecstatic at having a child. Now, she felt, her life had a

purpose, and she poured all her love and energy into my mother. A happy year

passed. General Xue wrote many times asking her to come to Lulong, but each

time she managed to stall him. Then, one day in the middle of summer 1932, a

telegram arrived saying that General Xue was seriously ill and ordering her to

bring their daughter to see him at once. The tone made it clear that this time she

should not refuse.

Lulong was about 200 miles away, and for my grandmother, who had never

traveled, the journey was a major undertaking. It was also extremely difficult to

travel with bound feet; it was almost impossible to carry luggage, especially with a

young child in one's arms. My grandmother decided to take her fourteen-year-old

sister, Yu-lan, whom she called "Lan," with her.

The journey was an adventure. The area had been convulsed yet again. In

September 1931 Jap an, which had been steadily expanding its power in the area,

had launched a full-scale invasion of Manchuria, and Japanese troops had occupied

Yixian on 6 January 1932. Two months later the Japanese proclaimed the founding

of a new state, which they named Manchukuo ("Manchu Country"), covering most

of northeast China (an area the size of France and Germany combined). The

Japanese claimed that Manchukuo was independent, but in fact it was a puppet of

Tokyo. As its head they installed Pu Yi, who as a child had been the last emperor

of China. At first he was called Chief Executive; later, in 1934, he was made

emperor of Manchukuo. All this meant little to my grandmother, who had had very

little con- tact with the outside world. The general population were fatalistic about

who their rulers were, since they had no choice in the matter. For many, Pu Yi was

the natural ruler, a Manchu emperor and proper Son of Heaven. Twenty years after

the republican revolution there was still no unified nation to replace the rule of the

emperor, nor, in Manchuria, did the people have much concept of being citizens of

something called "China."

One hot summer's day in 1932 my grandmother, her sister, and my mother took

the train south from Yixian, passing out of Manchuria at the town of Shanhaiguan,

where the Great Wall sweeps down from the mountains to the sea. As the train

chugged along the coastal plain, they could see the landscape changing: instead of

the bare, brown- yellow soil of the plains of Manchuria, here the earth was darker

and the vegetation denser, almost lush compared with the northeast. Soon after it

passed the Great Wall, the train turned inland, and about an hour later it stopped at

a town called Changli where they disembarked at a green-roofed building which

looked like a railway station in Siberia.

My grandmother hired a horse-drawn cart and drove north along a bumpy, dusty

road to General Xue's mansion, which lay about twenty miles away, just outside

the wall of a small town called Yanheying, which had once been a major military

camp frequently visited by the Manchu emperors and their court. Hence the road

had acquired the grand name of "the Imperial Way." It was lined with poplars, their

light-green leaves shimmering in the sunlight. Beyond them were or- chards of

peach trees, which flourished in the sandy soil. But my grandmother scarcely

enjoyed the scenery, as she was covered in dust and jolted badly by the rough road.

Above all, she was worrying about what would greet her at the other end.

When she first saw the mansion, she was overwhelmed by its grandeur. The

immense front gate was guarded by armed men, who stood stiffly at attention

beside enormous statues of reclining lions. There was a row of eight stone statues

for tying up horses: four were of elephants, and four of monkeys. These two

animals were chosen for their lucky sounds: in Chinese the words "elephant" and

"high office" have the same sound (xiang), as do "monkey" and "aristocracy"

(hou). As the cart passed through the outer gate into an inner yard my grandmother

could see only a huge blank wall facing her; then, off to one side, she saw a second

gate. This was a classic Chinese structure, a concealing wall so that strangers could

not see into one's property, also making it impossible for assailants to shoot or

charge directly through the front gate.

The moment they passed through the inner gate, a servant materialized at my

grandmother's side and peremptorily took her child away. Another servant led my

grandmother up the steps of the house and showed her into the sitting room of

General Xue's wife.

As soon as she entered the room, my grandmother went down on her knees and

kowtowed, saying, "I greet you, my mistress," as etiquette demanded. My

grandmother's sister was not allowed into the room, but had to stand outside like a

servant. This was nothing personal: the relatives of a concubine were not treated as

part of the family. After my grandmother had kowtowed for a suitable length of

time, the general's wife told her she could get up, using a form of address which

immediately established my grandmother's place in the hierarchy of the household

as a mere submistress, closer to a higher form of servant than to a wife.

The general's wife told her to sit down. My grandmother had to make a split-

second decision. In a traditional Chinese household, where one sits automatically

reflects one's status. General Xue's wife was sitting at the north end of the room, as

befitted a person in her position. Next to her, separated by a side table, was another

chair, also facing south: this was the general's seat. Down each side of the room

was a row of chairs for people of different status. My grandmother shuffled

backwards and sat on one of the chairs nearest the door, to show humility. The

wife then asked her to come forward- just a little. She had to show some

generosity.

When my grandmother was seated, the wife told her that from now on her

daughter would be brought up as her (the wife's) own daughter and would call her,

not my grandmother, "Mama"; my grandmother was to treat the child as the young

mistress of the house, and was to behave accordingly.

A maid was summoned to lead my grandmother away. She felt her heart was

breaking, but she forced back her sobs, only letting herself go when she reached

her room. Her eyes were still red when she was taken to meet General Xue's

number-two concubine, his favorite, who ran the household. She was pretty, with a

delicate face, and to my grandmother's surprise she was quite sympathetic, but my

grandmother restrained herself from having a good cry with her. In this strange

new environment, she felt intuitively that the best policy was caution.

Later that day she was taken to see her "husband." She was allowed to take my

mother with her. The general was lying on a kang, the type of bed used all over

North China, a large, flat, rectangular surface about two and a half feet high heated

from underneath by a brick stove. A pair of concubines or maids were kneeling

round the prostrate general, massaging his legs and stomach. General Xue's eyes

were closed, and he looked terribly sallow. My grandmother leaned over the edge

of the bed, calling to him softly. He opened his eyes and managed a kind of a half-

smile. My grandmother put my mother on the bed and said: "This is Bao Qin."

With what seemed a great effort General Xue feebly stroked my mother's head and

said, "Bao Qin takes after you; she is very pretty." Then he closed his eyes.

My grandmother called out to him, but his eyes remained shut. She could see

that he was gravely ill, perhaps dying. She picked my mother off the bed and

hugged her tight. But she had only a second to cuddle her before the general's wife,

who had been hovering alongside, tugged impatiently at her sleeve. Once outside,

the wife warned my grandmother not to disturb the master too often, or indeed at

all. In fact, she should stay in her room unless she was summoned.

My grandmother was terrified. As a concubine, her whole future and that of her

daughter were in jeopardy, possibly even in mortal peril. She had no rights. If the

general died, she would be at the mercy of the wife, who had the power of life and

death over her. She could do anything she wanted-sell her to a rich man, or even

into a brothel, which was quite common. Then my grandmother would never see

her daughter again. She knew she and her daughter had to get away as fast as

possible.

When she got back to her room, she made a tremendous effort to calm herself

and begin planning her escape. But when she tried to think, she felt as though her

head were flooding with blood. Her legs were so weak she could not walk without

holding on to the furniture. She broke down and wept again-partly with rage,

because she could see no way out. Worst of all was the thought that the general

might die at any moment, leaving her trapped forever.

Gradually she managed to bring her nerves under control and force herself to

think clearly. She started to look around the mansion systematically. It was divided

into many different courtyards, set within a large compound, surrounded by high

walls. Even the garden was designed with security rather than aesthetics in mind.

There were a few cypress trees, some birches and winter plums, but none near the

walls. To make doubly sure that any potential assassin would have no cover, there

were not even any large shrubs. The two gates leading out from the garden were

padlocked, and the front gate was guarded around the clock by armed retainers.

My grandmother was never allowed to leave the walled precincts. She was

permitted to visit the general each day, but only on a sort of organized tour with

some of the other women, when she would file past his bed and murmur, "I greet

you, my lord."

Meanwhile, she began to get a clearer idea of the other personalities in the

household. Apart from the general's wife, the woman who seemed to count most

was the number-two concubine. My grandmother discovered that she had

instructed the servants to treat her well, which made her situation much easier. In a

household like this, the attitude of the servants was determined by the status of

those they had to serve. They fawned on those in favor, and bullied those who had

fallen from grace.

The number-two concubine had a daughter a little older than my mother. This

was a further bond between the two women, as well as being a reason for the

concubine's favor with General Xue, who had no other children apart from my

mother.

After a month, during which the two concubines became quite friendly, my

grandmother went to see the general's wife and told her she needed to go home to

fetch some clothes. The wife gave permission, but when my grandmother asked if

she could take her daughter to say goodbye to her grandparents, she refused. The

Xue bloodline could not be taken out of the house.

And so my grandmother set off alone down the dusty road to Changli. After the

coachman had dropped her off at the railway station, she started asking around

among the people hanging about there. She found two horsemen who were

prepared to provide her with the transportation she needed. She waited for

nightfall, and then raced back to Lulong with them and their two horses by a

shortcut. One of the men seated her on a saddle and ran in front, holding the horse

by the rein.

When she reached the mansion, she made her way to a back gate and gave a

prearranged signal. After a wait that felt like hours but was in fact only a few

minutes, the door in the gate swung open and her sister emerged in the moonlight,

holding my mother in her arms. The door had been unlocked by the friendly

number-two concubine, who had then hit it with an axe to make it look as though it

had been forced open.

There was hardly time for my grandmother to give my mother a quick hug-

besides, she did not want to wake her, in case she made a noise and alerted the

guards. She and her sister mounted the two horses while my mother was tied onto

the back of one of the horsemen, and they headed off into the night. The horsemen

had been paid well, and ran fast. By dawn they were at Changli, and before the

alarm could be given, they had caught the train north. When the train finally drew

into Yixian toward nightfall, my grandmother fell to the ground and lay there for a

long time, unable to move.

She was comparatively safe, 200 miles from Lulong and effectively out of reach

of the Xue household. She could not take my mother to her house, for fear of the

servants, so she asked an old school friend if she could hide my mother. The friend

lived in the house of her father- in-law, a Manchu doctor called Dr. Xia, who was

well known as a kindly man who would never turn anyone away or betray a friend.

The Xue household would not care enough about my grand- mother, a mere

concubine, to pursue her. It was my mother, the blood descendant, who mattered.

My grandmother sent a telegram to Lulong saying my mother had fallen ill on the

train and had died. There followed an agonizing wait, during which my

grandmother's moods oscillated wildly. Sometimes she felt that the family must

have believed her story. But then she would torment herself with the thought that

this might not be the case, and that they were sending thugs to drag her, or her

daughter, back. Finally, she consoled herself with the thought that the Xue family

was far too preoccupied with the impending death of the patriarch to expend

energy worrying about her, and that it was probably to the women's advantage not

to have her daughter around.

Once she realized the Xue family was going to leave her alone, my grandmother

settled back quietly into her house in Yixian with my mother. She did not even

worry about the servants, since she knew that her "husband" would not be coming.

The silence from Lulong lasted over a year, until one autumn day in 1933, when a

telegram arrived informing her that General Xue had died, and that she was

expected at Lulong immediately for the funeral.

The general had died in Tianjin in September. His body was brought back to

Lulong in a lacquered coffin covered with red embroidered silk. Accompanying

him were two other coffins, one similarly lacquered and draped in the same red silk

as his own, the other of plain wood with no covering. The first coffin contained the

body of one of his concubines, who had swallowed opium to accompany him in

death. This was considered the height of conjugal loyalty. Later a plaque inscribed

by the famous warlord Wu Pei-fu was put up in her honor in General Xue's

mansion. The second coffin contained the remains of another concubine, who had

died of typhoid two years before. Her corpse had been exhumed for reburial

alongside General Xue, as was the custom. Her coffin was of bare wood because,

having died of a horrible illness, she was considered ill fortune. Mercury and

charcoal had been placed inside each of the coffins to prevent the corpses rotting,

and the bodies had pearls in their mouths.

General Xue and the two concubines were buried together in the same tomb; his

wife and the other concubines would eventually be interred alongside them. At a

funeral, the essential duty of holding a special flag for calling the spirit of the

deceased had to be performed by the dead man's son. As the general had no son,

his wife adopted his ten-year-old nephew so he could carry out the task. The boy

also enacted another ritual- kneeling by the side of the coffin and calling out

"Avoid the nails!" Tradition held that if this was not done, 'the dead person would

be hurt by the nails.

The tomb site had been chosen by General Xue himself according to the

principles of geomancy. It was in a beautiful, tranquil spot, backing onto distant

mountains to the north, while the front faced a stream set among eucalyptus trees

to the south. This location ex- pressed the desire to have solid things behind on

which to lean- mountains-and the reflection of the glorious sun, symbolizing rising

prosperity, in front.

But my grandmother never saw the site: she had ignored her sum- mons, and

was not at the funeral. The next thing that happened was that the manager of the

pawnshop failed to tum up with her allowance. About a week later, her parents

received a letter from General Xue's wife. My grandfather's last words had been to

give my grandmother her freedom. This, for its time, was exceptionally

enlightened, and she could hardly believe her good fortune.

At the age of twenty-four, she was free.