Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

  They attributed motives to my grandmother: she was scheming to get Dr. Xia to marry her, and would then take over the family and ill-treat his children and grandchildren.

  They also insinuated that she was plotting to lay her hands on Dr. Xia's money. Underneath all their talk about propriety, morality, and Dr. Xia's own good, there was an unspoken calculation involving his assets. The relatives feared my grandmother might lay her hands on Dr. Xia's wealth, as she would automatically become the manageress of the household as his wife.

  Dr. Xia was a rich man. He owned 2,000 acres of farmland dotted around the county of Yixian, and even had some land south of the Great Wall. His large house in the town was built of gray bricks stylishly outlined in white paint. Its ceilings were whitewashed and the rooms were wallpapered, so that the beams and joints were concealed, which was considered an important indicator of prosperity.

  He also owned a flourishing medical practice and a medicine shop.

  When the family saw they were getting nowhere, they decided to work on my grandmother directly. One day the daughter-in-law who had been at school with her paid a call. After tea and social chitchat, the friend got around to her mission. My grandmother burst into tears, and took her by the hand in their usual intimate manner. What would she do if she were in her position, she asked. When she got no reply, she pressed on: "You know what being a concubine is like. You wouldn't like to be one, would you?

  You know, there is an expression of Confucius: "Jiang-xinbi-xin Imagine my heart was yours"!" Appealing to someone's better instincts with a precept from the sage sometimes worked better than a direct no.

  The friend went back to her family feeling quite guilty, and reported her failure. She hinted that she did not have the heart to push my grandmother anymore. She found an ally in De-gui, Dr. Xia's second son, who practiced medic Me with his father, and was closer to him than his brothers. He said he thought they should let the marriage go ahead. The third son also began to weaken when he heard his wife describe my grandmother's distress.

  The ones who were most indignant were the eldest son and his wife. When she saw that the other two sons were wavering, the eldest son's wife said to her husband: "Of course they don't care. They've got other jobs. That woman can't take those away from them. But what have you got? You are only the manager of the old man's estate and it will all go to her and her daughter! What will become of poor me and our poor children? We have nothing to fall back on. Perhaps we should all die! Perhaps that is what your father really wants! Perhaps I should kill myself to make them all happy!" All this was accompanied by wailing and floods of tears. Her husband replied in an agitated manner: "Just give me fill tomorrow."

  When Dr. Xia woke the next morning he found his entire family, with the sole exception of De-gui, fifteen people in all, kneeling outside his bedchamber. The moment he emerged, his eldest son shouted "Kowtow!" and they all prostrated themselves in unison. Then, in a voice quaking with emotion, the son declaimed: "Father, your children and your entire family will stay here and kowtow to you till our deaths unless you start to think of us, your family and, above all, your elderly self."

  Dr. Xia was so angry his whole body shook. He asked his children to stand up, but before anyone could move the eldest son spoke again: "No, Father, we won't- not unless you call off the wedding!" Dr. Xia tried to reason with him, but the son continued to hector him in a quivering voice. Finally Dr. Xia said: "I know what is on your minds. I won't be in this world much longer. If you are worried about how your future stepmother will behave, I have not the slightest doubt that she will treat you all very well. I know she is a good person. Surely you can see there is no other reassurance I can give you except her character…"

  At the mention of the word 'character," the eldest son gave a loud snort: "How can you mention the word "character" about a concubine! No good woman would have become a concubine in the first place!" He then started to abuse my grandmother. At this, Dr. Xia could not control himself. He lifted his walking stick and began thrashing his son.

  All his life Dr. Xia had been the epitome of restraint and calm. The whole family, still on their knees, was stunned. The great-grandson started screaming hysterically. The eldest son was dumbstruck, but only for a second; then he raised his voice again, not only from physical hurt, but also for his wounded pride at being beaten in front of his family. Dr. Xia stopped, short of breath from anger and exertion. At once the son started bellowing more abuse against my grandmother. His father shouted at him to shut up, and struck him so hard his walking stick broke in two.

  The son reflected on his humiliation and pain for a few seconds. Then he pulled out a pistol and looked Dr. Xia in the face.

  "A loyal subject uses his death to remonstrate with the emperor. A filial son should do the same with his father. All I have to remonstrate with you is my death!" A shot rang out. The son swayed, then keeled over onto the floor. He had fired a bullet into his abdomen.

  A horse-drawn cart rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he died the next day. He probably had not intended to kill himself, just to make a dramatic gesture so the pressure on his father would be irresistible.

  His son's death devastated Dr. Xia. Although outwardly he appeared calm as usual, people who knew him could see that his tranquillity had become scarred with a deep sadness. From then on he was subject to bouts of melancholy, very much out of character with his previous imperturbability.

  Yixian was boiling with indignafon, rumor, and accusations. Dr. Xia and particularly my grandmother were made to feel responsible for the death. Dr. Xia wanted to show he was not going to be deterred. Soon after the funeral of his son, he fixed a date for the wedding. He warned his children that they must pay due respect to their new mother, and sent out invitations to the leading townspeople. Custom dictated that they should attend and give presents. He also told my grandmother to prepare for a big ceremony. She was frightened by the accusations and their unforeseeable effect on Dr. Xia, and was desperately trying to convince herself that she was not guilty. But, above all, she felt defiant. She consented to a full ceremonial ritual. On the wedding day she left her father's house in an elaborate carriage accompanied by a procession of musicians. As was the Manchu custom, her own family hired the carriage to take her halfway to her new home, and the bridegroom sent another to carry her the second half of the way. At the han dover point, her five year-old brother, Yu-lin, waited at the foot of the carriage door with his back bent double, symboli?ing the idea that he was carrying her on his back to Dr. Xia's carriage. He repeated the action when she arrived at Dr. Xia's house. A woman could not just walk into a man's house; this would imply a severe loss of status. She had to be seen to be taken, to denote the requisite reluctance.

  Two bridesmaids led my grandmother into the room where the wedding ceremony was to take place. Dr. Xia was standing before a table draped with heavy red embroidered silk on which lay the tablets of Heaven, Earth, Emperor, Ancestors, and Teacher. He was wearing a decorated hat like a crown with a tail-like plumage at the back and a long, loose, embroidered gown with bell-shaped sleeves, a traditional Manchu garment, convenient for riding and archery, deriving from the Manchus' nomadic past. He knelt and kowtowed five times to the tablets and then walked into the wedding chamber alone.

  Next my grandmother, still accompanied by her two attendants, curtsied five times, each time touching her hair with her right hand, in a gesture resembling a salute. She could not kowtow because of the mass of her elaborate headdress. She then followed Dr. Xia into the wedding chamber, where he removed the red cover from her head.

  The two bridesmaids presented each of them with an empty gourd-shaped vase, which they exchanged with each other, and then the bridesmaids left. Dr. Xia and my grandmother sat silently alone together for a while, and then Dr. Xia went out to greet the relatives and guests. My grandmother had to sit, motionless and alone, on the kang, facing the window on which was a huge red 'double happiness' paper cut, for several hours. This was c
alled 'sitting happiness in," symbolizing the absence of restlessness that was deemed to be an essential quality for a woman. After all the guests had gone, a young male relative of Dr. Xia's came in and tugged her by the sleeve three times. Only then was she allowed to get down from the kang. With the help of her two attendants, she changed out of her heavily embroidered outfit into a simple red gown and red trousers. She removed the enormous headdress with all the clicking jewels and did her hair in two coils above her ears.

  So in 1935 my mother, now age four, and my grandmother, age twenty-six, moved into Dr. Xia's comfortable house. It was really a compound all on its own, consisting of the house proper in the interior and the surgery, with the medicine shop, facing onto the street. It was customary for successful doctors to have their own shops. Here Dr. Xia sold traditional Chinese medicines, herbs and animal extracts, which were processed in a workshop by three apprentices.

  The facade of the house was surmounted by highly decorated red and gold eaves. In the center was a rectangular plaque denoting the Xia residence in gilded characters. Behind the shop lay a small courtyard, with a number of rooms opening off it for the servants and cooks.

  Beyond that the compound opened out into several smaller courtyards, where the family lived. Farther back was a big garden with cypresses and winter plums. There was no grass in the courtyards the climate was too harsh. They were just expanses of hard, bare, brown earth, which turned to dust in the summer and to mud in the brief spring when the snow melted. Dr. Xia loved birds and had a bird garden, and every morning, whatever the weather, he did qigong, a form of the slow, graceful Chinse exercises often called tai chi, while he listened to the birds singing and chirping.

  After the death of his son, Dr. Xia had to endure the constant silent reproach of his family. He never talked to my grandmother about the pain this caused him. For Chinese men a stiff upper lip was mandatory. My grandmother knew what he was going through, of course, and suffered with him, in silence. She was very loving toward him, and attended to his needs with all her heart.

  She always showed a smiling face to his family, although they generally treated her with disdain beneath a veneer of formal respect. Even the daughter-in-law who had been at school with her tried to avoid her. The knowledge that she was held responsible for the eldest son's death weighed on my grandmother.

  Her entire lifestyle had to change to that of a Manchu.

  She slept in a room with my mother, and Dr. Xia slept in a separate room. Early every morning, long before she got up, her nerves would start to strain and jangle, anticipating the noise of the family members approaching. She had to wash hurriedly, and greet each of them in turn with a rigid set of salutations. In addition, she had to do her hair in an extremely complicated way so that it could support a huge headdress, under which she had to wear a wig. All she got was a sequence of icy "Good morning's, virtually the only words the family ever spoke to her. As she watched them bowing and scraping, she knew they had hate in their hearts. The ritual grated all the more for its insincerity.

  On festivals and other important occasions, the whole family had to kowtow and curtsy to her, and she would have to jump up from her chair and stand to one side to show that she had left the chair empty, which symbolized their late mother, to acknowledge their respect. Manchu custom conspired to keep her and Dr. Xia apart. They were not supposed even to eat together, and one of the daughters-in-law always stood behind my grandmother to serve her. But the woman would present such a cold face that my grandmother found it difficult to finish her meal, much less enjoy it.

  Once, soon after they had moved into Dr. Xia's house, my mother had just settled down into what looked like a nice, comfortable, warm place on the kang when she saw Dr. Xia's face suddenly darken, and he stormed over and roughly pulled her off the seat. She had sat in his special place. This was the only time he ever hit her. According to Manchu custom, his seat was sacred.

  The move to Dr. Xia's house brought my grandmother a real measure of freedom for the first time but also a degree of entrapment. For my mother it was no less ambivalent. Dr. Xia was extremely kind to her and brought her up as his own daughter. She called him "Father," and he gave her his own name, Xia, which she carries to this day and a new given name, "De-hong," which is made up of two characters: Hong, meaning 'wild swan," and De, the generation name, meaning 'virtue."

  Dr. Xia's family did not dare insult my grandmother to her face that would have been tantamount to treason to one's 'mother." But her daughter was another matter. My mother's first memories, apart from being cuddled by her mother, are of being bullied by the younger members of Dr. Xia's family. She would try not to cry out, and to hide her bruises and cuts from her mother, but my grandmother knew what was going on. She never said anything to Dr. Xia, as she did not want to upset him or create more problems for him with his children. But my mother was miserable. She often begged to be taken back to her grandparents' house, or to the house General Xue had bought, where everyone had treated her like a princess. But she soon realized she should stop asking to 'go home," as this only brought tears to her mother's eyes.

  My mother's closest friends were her pets. She had an owl, a black myna bird which could say a few simple phrases, a hawk, a cat, white mice, and some grasshoppers and crickets which she kept in glass bottles. Apart from her mother, her only close human friend was Dr. Xia's coachman, "Big Old Lee." He was a tough, leathery-skinned man from the Hing-gan mountains in the far north, where the borders of China, Mongolia, and the Soviet Union meet.

  He had very dark skin, coarse hair, thick lips, and an upturned nose, all of which are very unusual among Chinese. In fact, he did not look Chinese at all. He was tall, thin, and wiry. His father had brought him up as a hunter and trapper, digging out ginseng roots and hunting bears, foxes, and deer. For a time they had done very well selling the skins, but they had eventually been put out of business by bandits, the worst of whom worked for the Old Marshal, Chang Tso-lin. Big Old Lee referred to him as 'that bandit bastard." Later, when my mother was told the Old Marshal had been a staunch anti-Japanese patriot, she remembered Big Old Lee's mockery of the 'hero' of the northeast.

  Big Old Lee looked after my mother's pets, and used to take her out on expeditions with him. That winter he taught her to skate. In the spring, as the snow and ice were melting, they watched people performing the important annual ritual of 'sweeping the tombs' and planting flowers on the graves of their ancestors. In summer they went fishing and gathering mushrooms, and in the autumn they drove out to the edge of town to shoot hares.

  In the long Manchurian evenings, when the wind howled across the plains and the ice froze on the inside of the windows, Big Old Lee would sit my mother on his knee on the warm kang and tell her fabulous stories about the mountains of the north. The images she took to bed were of mysterious tall trees, exotic flowers, colorful birds singing tuneful songs, and ginseng roots which were really lit He girls after you dug them out you had to tie a red string around them, otherwise they would run away.

  Big Old Lee also told my mother about animal lore.

  Tigers, which roamed the mountains of northern Manchuria, were kind-hearted and would not hurt human beings unless they felt threatened. He loved tigers. But bears were another matter: they were fierce and one should avoid them at all costs. If you did happen to meet one, you must stand still until it lowered its head. This was because the bear has a lock of hair on his forehead which falls over his eyes and blinds him when he drops his head. With a wolf you should not turn and run, because you could never outrun it. You should stand and face it head-on, looking as though you were not afraid. Then you should walk backwards very, very slowly. Many years later, Big Old Lee's advice was to save my mother's life.

  One day when she was five years old my mother was in the garden talking to her pets when Dr. Xia's grandchildren crowded around her in a gang. They started jostling her and calling her names, and then began to hit her and shove her around more violently. They forced
her into a corner of the garden where there was a dried-up well and pushed her in. The well was quite deep, and she fell hard on the rubble at the bottom. Eventually someone heard her screams and called Big Old Lee, who came running with a ladder; the cook held it steady while he climbed in. By now my grandmother had arrived, frantic with worry. After a few minutes, Big Old Lee resurfaced carrying my mother, who was half unconscious and covered with cuts and bruises. He put her in my grandmother's arms. My mother was taken inside, where Dr. Xia examined her.

  One hipbone was broken. For years afterward it sometimes became dislocated and the accident left her with a permanent slight limp. When Dr. Xia asked her what had happened, my mother said she had been pushed by "Number Six [Grandson]." My grandmother, ever attentive to Dr. Xia's moods, tried to shush her up because Number Six was his favorite. When Dr. Xia left the room, my grandmother told my mother not to complain about "Number Six' again, so as not to upset Dr. Xia. For some time my mother was confined to the house because of her hip. The other children ostracized her completely.

  Immediately after this, Dr. Xia began to go away for several days at a time. He went to the provincial capital, Jinzhou, about twenty-five miles to the south, looking for a job. The atmosphere in the family was unbearable, and my mother's accident, which might easily have been fatal, convinced him that a move was essential.

  This was no small decision. In China, to have several generations of a family living under one roof was considered a great honor. Streets even had names like "Five Generations Under One Roof' to commemorate such families. Breaking up the extended family was viewed as a tragedy to be avoided at all costs, but Dr. Xia tried to put on a cheerful face to my grandmother, saying he would be glad to have less responsibility.

  My grandmother was vastly relieved, although she tried not to show it. In fact, she had been gently pushing Dr. Xia to move, especially after what happened to my mother. She had had enough of the extended family, always glacially present, icily willing her to be miserable, and in which she had neither privacy nor company.