by Emily Hahn
“They’re almost up to Nanking now,” he shouted excitedly, “and if they always make as good time as this they’ll be in Tibet before Christmas.”
“You’re all vultures,” I said. “This means you’ll all be leaving town; that’s one good thing.”
I hung up so viciously that the receiver almost cracked. Sinmay probably knew already, I reflected. Well, it would mean normality again, more or less. Only there would be no more trips into the country. We were surrounded. It couldn’t go on forever like this. Someday the Chinese would drive them out again, surely? Surely!
Chapter 9
One of my letters sums up the state of affairs pretty well. It is dated August 24:
They say the mail is going out. I can scarcely believe it, and won’t until I begin to get letters again, but I can’t send air mail too often or I will go broke, and anyway I can just write scrawls in the time we get; nobody knows until the last minute, usually, just when the people who evacuate can get on the boats.
Not nearly so many people are trying to go now. Elaine Coutts and her sister keep canceling their passages just as promptly as their menfolks engage them, and I can’t blame them. Why on earth must women be bundled out of town, down to an overcrowded city like Hong Kong, where cholera is raging and one fourth of a room is fifteen dollars a day? … I don’t know what the papers have been doing; worrying you to death, probably. I am so terribly sorry about that; I can only imagine how worried you were. … Americans aren’t allowed off at Hong Kong, which is too crowded; they must go on to Manila. The ships … are charging big sums to evacuate! I never heard of such a thing, did you? The Germans are taking their refugees out free, at least. …
I was dining last night with a Chinese who met me at the door — and said, “So sorry the other guests will not be here. They were all badly wounded in Nanking Road. Henry Wei is especially bad. Well, come along and have dinner, it’s a good one.”
From the Park Hotel I saw the different parts of the native city burning. It was beautiful and horrible, with planes swooping around, adding to it. The streets are always thronged with Chinese carrying their children, gathering in crowds — you can’t teach them not to — and peering into the sky. Now that I am in Avenue Joffre I don’t have planes overhead any more. It was constant before, and was getting on my nerves. But though I am careful and don’t take risks — the curfew makes everyone be home before ten o’clock at night — the most peculiar thing is that I have not been afraid as yet. Dick Smith says it is because I haven’t seen a real bombing, and pieces of body all around. I am sometimes nervous, but not very. I am, however, very, very angry all the time, and sick at heart. … I cannot be interested much in who is winning. Nobody wins a war. … Customs College is full of refugees and my students have most of them gone, but Loy hopes to open sometime soon. Nobody can tell if the war will stay here or what.
We did open Customs College, quite soon. The war had not yet moved off from Soochow Creek and we were near the scene of operations: many times I had to stop lecturing until the reverberations of a bomb had ceased, because the students couldn’t hear me. They didn’t lead interesting lives for some weeks, poor boys. Because they wore the school uniform it was decided that they had better not go outdoors at all, and they were virtually locked up all that time. A Chinese building is spacious enough, with courtyards for taking the air, so it wasn’t unhealthy, but they waited eagerly for teachers from outside such as myself to bring them the daily papers.
Loy Chang took his job of president very seriously, as seriously as he did the rest of his Customs work. Often he dropped in and talked over problems of teaching and curriculum. One day I mentioned idly that I was still in touch with some of the Japanese. “I don’t know how to cut off the acquaintanceship,” I complained. “I don’t dislike Matsumoto. In fact I like him very much. He’s lived so long in China that I think he is sincerely against this war. But I’ve met another one who calls himself ‘Tiger’ from some Rotary party — Tiger Kanai. He’s a nasty piece of work, and he’s been asking me to give him English lessons. I know that isn’t what he really wants. He’s trying to do a little spying on the foreign community. His English is all right.”
“But you should do it,” said Loy. “Do it, by all means. You might learn something from him, do you see? Yes, give him English lessons, and then tell me what he is saying.”
“Oh, in that case … It might be fun.”
Thereafter for some time I saw Mr. Tiger Kanai three times a week at the hotel where he lived. He never told me anything particularly interesting in itself, but he was my first good specimen of the unofficial ambassador. I listened for minutes on end to his fluent if ungrammatical exposition of Japan’s true aims. She was waging this war, he assured me, with a breaking heart. And anyway it was all for China’s good. And anyway it wasn’t really war. Nobody had declared it as war. The Chinese didn’t understand Japan, that was the whole trouble; soon they would, and then we would all be happy again.
The Matsumoto friendship was another matter entirely, and was built upon a melodramatic incident. I was at Sinmay’s house one night when a few overheated young newspapermen had a meeting there. Sinmay and I often agreed that the Shanghai Chinese were far from perfect, and chief among their imperfections was a taste for indirect battle rather than the open, fair kind. They went in for assassination whenever they could, but very few of them volunteered for the more dangerous life of the Army. We heard countless stories of “guerrilla” activity on the outskirts of town, where small bands of Chinese bullies set themselves up to investigate lone travelers at night. If the man proved himself a “loyal” Chinese he was allowed to proceed; if, however, he was a “traitor” they robbed him.
“It’s not good enough,” I said. “They’re just little cowards using the war as an excuse.”
“Yes,” said Sinmay, “I hate all that loose talking.”
We heard a lot of it that night from the newspaper boys. They drank a little yellow wine and decided to “execute” the traitor Matsumoto. I stayed long enough to hear them make some rather fuzzy plans, and then I went home and phoned Shigei.
“Are you still living out near Kiangwan?” I asked him.
“Yes, though I spend most of my time at the Domei office.”
“Well, I oughtn’t be doing this, but I don’t approve of assassinations. … There’s probably nothing to it, but if I were you I wouldn’t go home alone after dark.”
“I see,” said Shigei. “It is only natural, I suppose. Though I have lived here twelve years and thought I had no enemies. Thank you, Mickey.”
And so, though I was now beginning to hate Japan with all the emotions I usually deplore, generalizing about race and working myself up to a strong desire for vengeance, I continued to see Matsumoto. We had a lot of conversation in those days when Shanghai was surrounded and besieged. I dined with him often, at least once every fortnight. I dined with him unwillingly, though, when the news reached Shanghai about Nanking. It was not because I had forgotten that Matsumoto was Japanese that I had managed to get along with him. I had liked his being Japanese. He was my last chance, I felt, to discover what was going on in the minds of these people before I closed and locked the door against them. I don’t like finalities, and I still felt in those long-gone days that there could be a way out of war, if only people would be wise, if only they would try. That night after the sack of Nanking I lost my hopes. I suppose Shigei was the only Japanese in town who wouldn’t have lied to me that night.
“It’s all true, what they’re saying about the soldiers and the way they behave?” I demanded.
Shigei nodded slowly. “It’s all true,” he said.
“But why? How can you account for it? The Japanese I met weren’t like that, surely? What has happened to your country, Shigei?”
“It is the Army,” said Shigei. “You can’t know what they are like. You didn’t meet those poor peasants who have been brutalized after years in the Army. They are permitted to do this.
It is worse than that; they are encouraged. It is their reward for taking a town; the officers promise them three days to do as they like, when a town is captured. They always do. … It is because Nanking is so important that you Americans hear about it this time, but it has always been true.” He walked up and down his living room, much agitated. “It is a universal shame,” he said. “I will tell you something. When I was younger, to avoid serving my military term I made myself ill. I starved for a year, so that I would be too ill to be accepted for military service. I succeeded: they put me into the seventh class, which is very poor. But now there is no escape for a pacifist. I cannot fight the nation alone. Nanking is a fait accompli. It is our destiny to be here, in China, for some years at least. We will have power. We will have hatred, too, from China and the other nations, but we will have power. Do not doubt that.”
“And you are proud of it,” I said accusingly. “I can see, you’re proud.”
“It is possible,” admitted Shigei. “I am human.”
It was Sinmay who first heard that I was suspected by the government of China, at least by some of the officials. I believe they actually put a “tail” on me, and discovered that the rumors were true, and that I was, indeed, in the habit of calling on a Japanese named Kanai three times a week. Anyway I was fed up with the Tiger, and he never said anything interesting once he had gone through his repertoire; after that it was all repetition. I gave him up without regret, but I did not give up Matsumoto. After about six months of rapidly increasing “power” in his office, during which all the other Japanese residents, too, gained in political weight, Matsumoto fell ill. He phoned one day to say that he was really not feeling well at all, and when I heard of him again he was struggling for his life against a bad case of typhoid. He recovered somewhat; his wife came and took him back to Japan, and he went on long sick leave. I didn’t see any more Japanese socially. Ake tried to make a success of one of his mixed parties, during Christmas; he invited Sinmay and me to dinner and among the guests were the Horiguchis. Sinmay talked politely enough with Yoshinori, but before we had finished the first bowl of Swedish punch he decided to go home, and I didn’t blame him.
One day I stopped at the Shanghai Pet Store and looked in the window. Mr. Mills, in a large cage with a little tree in it, looked out at me. He didn’t get a good view from the branch on which he squatted, so he climbed down to the floor and put his head to one side and looked at me again. His face was black; his fur was beige. He turned a somersault.
I ran into the shop. “What is that in the window?” I demanded.
The shopkeeper, a Filipino, smiled lovingly. “A gibbon from Singapore,” he said. “I show you.”
Mr. Mills went running around the room, pausing now and then to look at me from odd angles. When I grabbed at him he bit me gently.
“Hold him by the hand, not the body,” advised the Filipino.
In the course of the next ten minutes before I bought him I learned something about him. He was quite young, not a baby, but about the same stage as a three-year-old child. He didn’t like cold weather. He ate fruit and cake and insects, and especially worms of the kind the Chinese use to feed their birds. I could bathe him if I insisted; he didn’t mind very much.
Mr. Mills bit me a couple more times and then I bought him, paying one hundred and seventy Shanghai dollars, which was only about one third the usual market price on gibbons. The war was forcing the Filipino to close out his shop. I bought the cage too, and went home in a state of hysterical happiness. I have always been fond of apes and monkeys, but I had throttled my natural affections since coming to China. The average commonplace monkey in those parts is the Singapore rhesus, not a particularly easy animal to manage in the house. This gibbon was something quite special.
I must have been a pathetic picture of a spinsterish woman at this time. I used to laugh at the picture of those two sisters in The Old Wives’ Tale and their troubles over the poodle and the other dog, and now, I realized uncomfortably, I was contributing to a picture not unlike that one. I couldn’t help it, though; being self-conscious about such things doesn’t cure them. My letters home, which I have here at my elbow, were packed with stories of Mr. Mills and his cleverness. I would have groaned at such a letter from any proud mamma among my relatives, but I just couldn’t help it.
“It’s old age,” I said in a worried way to Sinmay. “I’ve made this sort of life for myself and I shouldn’t complain about it, I suppose. I must make up my mind to it. I’ll get old and fat out here, with my comfortable little cottage, and people will call on me, I hope, on Sunday afternoons.”
“Oh, you are morbid,” said Sinmay. “It is not like that at all. You are part of my family and will never be alone. I tell you what we can do: you must marry me and then it will be really all right.”
“Marry you?” Nothing Sinmay said had surprised me for more than two years, so I was not surprised. But I was puzzled. “Now how would you work that?” I asked. “You’re married already. Zoa wouldn’t like it a bit.”
“Yes, she would. We have been talking about it. No, do not laugh; we have been quite serious. It is about the press. You are claiming that it is yours, but perhaps the Japanese won’t accept our word for that. So Zoa herself has made this suggestion, because you have said the other evening that you will never marry. Of course if you were to want to marry we could not do it. Zoa and I, according to the foreign law, have never married. It is often that way in careless old families like mine. Now suppose you were to declare yourself as my wife; the printing-press matter is settled, and all the work you have done for us, protecting us, becomes more permanent. In return for this help you have a family. You have us already, of course, but in this way it becomes true in the eyes of our friends, which would be nicer, wouldn’t it? One of our children, any one you like (except my son as I have only him) will be yours, legally. We give her to you. I suggest Siao Pau, but it is for you to choose. The others will be yours and Zoa’s together. Anyway they already call you ‘Foreign Mother.’ And when you are dead you will be buried in our family graveyard at Yuyao. And when you are old you will come to live in our house, as I am always asking you to do now only you do not like it, I don’t know why. I think it a good idea.”
Sinmay’s ideas were so many and so fantastic that I didn’t take it too seriously at first. Later, however, I decided it was not so fantastic. In the end I actually did sign a paper in his lawyer’s office, declaring that I considered myself his wife “according to Chinese law,” and Zoa presented me with a pair of mutton-fat jade bracelets, in accord with one of the many customs of China. It was half a joke; none of us took it seriously. The paper was put away to be used it the Japanese demanded proof that I really owned the press, and I forgot about it for some years. But in one way Sinmay had been right: the thought of that grave in Yuyao comforted me, for some absurd reason. I ceased to worry about my old age.
Chapter 10
The foreigners of Shanghai, after having made sure that the war had indeed moved westward, began to creep out of their fox holes and adjust themselves. Those who had lived long enough in China to remember some of her many civil wars decided at last that it was no more than one of those. We saw the signs of increasing damage every day, in the slow death of all native business enterprise chiefly. Then, too, many of our Chinese friends crept away, but the foreigners didn’t notice that so much. The brokers did, but they tried to be hopeful, meantime keeping a sharp eye on the Shanghai dollar, which slipped and slipped and slipped.
The “comprador class,” Sinmay’s scorned acquaintances, moved down to Hong Kong where they could go on living like bright young things in safety. They didn’t like Hong Kong very much; the band at the Hongkong Hotel wasn’t really hot and the old-fashioned Cantonese didn’t encourage them to enjoy themselves in a European fashion. Young men about town were limited to the older-style dissipations of West Point, and the young Chinese women of Shanghai found that they were expected to act demure and sober in Hong Kong
. Nobody English thought of inviting Chinese people to informal parties. Not that they wanted to go, especially, but Shanghai was certainly friendlier.
The T’ien Hsia crowd had happier experiences. They departed from Shanghai in a tremendous hurry and a blue funk, soon after the fireworks started. Wen Yuan-ning was positive that his name was first on the Black List. That Black List needs some mention before I go any further: I was to hear about it all over China and Hong Kong whenever there was trouble in the offing. I still believe it is a figment of the lively Chinese imagination, and by this time I ought to know, but you will never convince the Chinese. They still believe in it. Well then; the Black List is supposedly made up by the Japanese Secret Service of the names of all the people most inimical to the Japanese conquest of Pan-Asia. One would suppose that such enemies of the Rising Sun would be led by generals, admirals, and other warlike experts, but according to literati like Wen, or certain brokers I have met, or even prominent hotelkeepers, the Japanese hate them first of all, individually and fiercely. Wen was certain that in the Japanese estimation he himself was Public Enemy Number One. I still doubt it, and as I have said before, I ought to know. … But I will never convince Wen. I used to try to, and oddly enough, instead of being reassured he was insulted.
Seriously, absurd as it may seem to an outsider, these claims were not the only preposterous ones I have heard made, and Chinese are not the only proud people who have made them. I’ve known many Englishmen and Americans to indulge in the same fantasies. One of the worst of this kidney was W. H. Donald. He was always sure that he was being followed, listened in on, set upon by bribed domestics, and otherwise harried. I don’t deny for a moment that the Japanse did spy on Mr. Donald and on the hotelkeepers as well, and the brokers and Wen Yuan-ning and everybody else, even me, but I do deny that any one of us was as closely watched as he thought he was … or as important an enemy to the Japanese genius. I still think that the Japs would rather capture Chiang Kai-shek, for example, than any of us. I’ll have a lot more to say about this. A lot more of it happened. For the time being we are talking about the precipitate flight of T’ien Hsia from Shanghai.
