China to Me

by Emily Hahn

  The only way Nguchi could keep a hand in on this matter of health was to appeal to their common sense on behalf of the Japanese servicemen stationed in town and the Japanese residents of Hong Kong. Cholera among the despised Chinese would mean cholera among the Japs, he reminded them. Grumbling, they admitted this, and Selwyn was suddenly informed that he could now do something which the British Government had never in all his years of pleading permitted — he could inoculate the entire population, by law. Not that he was particularly pleased with this power, for he was not convinced that inoculation against cholera did any good. But the Japanese were superstitiously faithful to Western science, which they love; they love needles and medicine. We were all grabbed and jabbed, sooner or later; in the streets, on the ferry wharves, anywhere. People who could not show little pink cards in proof that they were inoculated were done then and there, even if they had been inoculated a dozen times in the past week. Other treatments followed: vaccination by law, typhoid inoculations by law, and anything else they thought of. Chinese who didn’t like it managed to buy fake tickets, of course; one man died as a result of nineteen needle jabs in one day, but he had collected a nice sum of money for his inoculation cards before he died. I myself cheerfully bought a whole set of cards for Carola. She had been done thoroughly by my own doctor, and I was damned if I’d put her through it again in a dirty government medical post. It was noteworthy that the Japanese weren’t prepared for this sort of graft. Japanese evidently don’t behave like that in Japan. Our liberators were horrified and flummoxed, as they so often were in their dealings with Chinese. They never could catch up. Certain things were outside their experience and beyond their comprehension.

  The Medical Department was busy but running as smoothly as one could reasonably expect, considering the difficulties, when disaster fell on them. One of the British doctors jumped his parole and escaped from Hong Kong. I am not going to pass judgment on him now. It was our private belief that he just couldn’t bear the prospect of working through the war under Selwyn-Clarke. Many of the doctors hated Selwyn bitterly, and this unprecedented wave of Selwyn-worship which was sweeping the community, foreigners and Asiatics alike, must have been gall and wormwood to people who felt they really knew the man. The medical group that practiced in Hong Kong before the war had always seemed to my innocent opinion to be particularly virulent, one against the other, even for a medical faculty. And if you know anything about them you know how little brotherly love does prevail among rival doctors in most communities. I had been shocked sometimes at the unethical mutual criticism that seemed to furnish an everyday topic of conversation among Hong Kong doctors. So perhaps this man felt that he would go mad if he stayed longer, or maybe he felt that his higher duty called him to escape. Knowing him, I’m sure he felt morally justified in his action. Anyway, he beat it. That was the end of the British Health Department’s freedom. Nguchi could not fight the gendarmes any more on behalf of everyone. He did manage to keep some people out, even so; Selwyn still retained his comparative liberty, though Duggie and Nina Valentine had to go to Stanley. A handful of English doctors, chosen by the Japanese, not by Selwyn (including the ration stealer), were still left outside. The rest, and all the enemy-national Red Cross workers who were driving trucks to Stanley, and a lot of other whites who had been associated one way or another with the department, were popped into camp on very short notice. Regulations all over were tightened up too. The gendarmes had one of their field days.

  Hilda and Selwyn were ordered to move, henceforth to live in St. Paul’s Hospital, usually called the French Hospital, in Happy Valley.

  When the gendarmes had satisfied their passion for vengeance, and I had said good-by tearfully to Nina, they let up a little. (Nina, going into camp, had a nasty experience. A gendarme with a chip on his shoulder confiscated all her stores when she was about to go through the last gate at the camp, and he slapped her. Nina is a beautiful, dignified woman, gray-haired and sweet. I still flush with rage when I think of it.) It was permitted that Selwyn bring out from Stanley one patient at a time for X ray at the French Hospital. This person was allowed to stay overnight, or for a longer time if the doctors (Japanese and British) pronounced it necessary, and he was permitted to bring a certain amount of supplies back into camp when he returned. So it turned out that Hilda became a shopper for Stanley Camp’s three thousand plus. It was a job requiring a lot of manual labor and more time than existed in one day. The patient would come in to hospital in the evening, duly escorted by Selwyn and guards, give Hilda his list, and go to bed. (Selwyn was angry in his chilly way if Hilda failed to keep fresh flowers in the patient’s room.) The Selwyn-Clarkes tried hard to provide him or her with decent food and plenty of it, as long as he was free, but this was difficult.

  Next morning Hilda went downtown with two big baskets, and she shopped. Shopping was our chief interest and it was becoming less and less fruitful, more and more of an ordeal. Although Selwyn was mysteriously producing funds for this work, he didn’t have much money, and Hilda had to go wearily all along the little side streets which were full of outside street-corner shops and were supposed to be comparatively cheap, haggling and searching and figuring, staying within the limits of the Japanese law on what could be taken in to Stanley and what couldn’t, carrying backbreaking loads back to Happy Valley on the tram. After a week or so she asked us, her foreign friends, to help. Then she got the housework coolie to do some of it, for it was much too big a job for one woman. Then we hired an Indian besides.

  In time the shopping routine became one of the group’s biggest jobs. In camp there was a strong feeling of hysterical gratitude for Hilda, replacing the earlier outburst of jealous resentment. She grew thin, but she told me she felt much better for the work. This sort of thing was what she was used to; she had done it on a larger and easier scale in the old days, when she was working on relief for China. Selwyn permitted himself to express a few words of approval now and then, when he came home late at night.

  I still saw Hilda almost every day. When we weren’t doing something about Stanley we were shopping for the three military camps, Bowen Road, Shamsuipo (where the enlisted men were), and Argyle Street, the officers’ camp. Each camp had one day a week when women were permitted to bring parcels. Bowen Road, as a hospital, still allowed us two days. That meant four mornings a week. Besides, Oda’s department now permitted parcels for Stanley once a week; we brought these parcels, carefully wrapped according to specification, to the bank building and listed them there, and turned them in. We had to guess as to what our friends needed, because letters had not yet been permitted from any of the prisoners. But we were sure they needed everything, and we went accordingly, within the limits of the law. Certain things only were accepted, and the rules were chopped and changed every week.

  Where, you will ask, was the International Red Cross all this time? Well, there wasn’t any. It took almost a year to get one set up. The Japanese even then maintained that they had not recognized it officially; the Red Cross was permitted to keep an office in town, and the Swiss in charge was permitted to make representations to the camp commandants, but nobody promised ever to listen to him or to take action on his suggestions. Officially, the Japanese said, they did not hold themselves bound by any rules laid down at Geneva as to international law in regard to prisoners of war. They made all decisions. They were the judges of what was humane and what unnecessary. They kept control of everything, and usually forgot all about it. “We do not recognize Geneva” was a common saying. I don’t know how many times Oda said it to me. Yet in his cynical way he did try to help, because Oda was a confirmed capitalist and he had been severely shocked at the sight of many Hong Kong millionaires he had known, brought low at Stanley. Even enemy rich men are still rich men, and Oda felt sympathetic toward them. His orderly instincts were horrified at sight of Bagram, a local taipan, wearing an apron at Stanley and peeling onions. Oda’s eyes were full of tears when he told me about it. I don’t think he was so
rry for ordinary Chinese coolies, but British bank directors were different. Oda obviously felt that his country was going too far.

  A subtle change had taken place in the population. Most Chinese, even when they are very hungry, try to keep some wealth hidden away, and as the months went by a few brave greedy souls began to dig their money out and speculate with it, and put out feelers to see if business could be resumed. There was an odd little boom in brokerage. People sold medicine and tinned food at huge prices. People juggled with currency, betting on the Japanese treatment of the Hong Kong dollar against the yen. (Japanese did that too, and usually made a lot of money out of it.) We were rationed on rice, oil, and sugar. Each person, baby or full-grown man or whatever, was entitled to 6 .4 teels of rice a day — roughly, a third of a catty, the Chinese pound. That is not nearly enough rice for a Cantoness to live on, because the average coolie, who can’t afford much soong, the other food he puts with his rice, makes up for the deficiency by eating more of the rice itself, and he needs at least a catty a day if he wants to do any work on it. So they bought rice in the black market, and venal Japs smuggled rice from the stores and sold it to the Chinese. The ration rice, besides, was seldom edible. It was dust for the most part, or a kind of broken grain that Chinese had always used for pigs. Broken rice had almost no nutritional value at all. We had to depend on the black market for food. As for oil and sugar, the crowd waiting for the ration was always so big that you had to stand in line for three or four days before you could get your supply, and then it was completely insufficient and usually adulterated. Rationing in general was a huge bad joke. Soon we lived on the black market completely. Once in a while the Food Control authorities would “investigate” the situation and a few Japanese and Chinese heads would be cut off, and in the end we, the public, suffered more deprivation than ever. As for fuel for cooking — but I can’t even begin to talk about that racket. There is no time.

  How were we managing? Well, as speculation increased, so did our chances of getting money. The first thing I did, as soon as I could, was to grab the chance offered me by Selwyn to buy two twenty-eight-pound tins of powdered milk. It was an Australian brand made on Trubee King’s formula, called “Trufood.” I paid a hundred and ten dollars for the two tins, and gave six pounds of milk back to the man who sold it, as a bribe. That about cleaned out the Hahn purse, but I never stopped blessing the day I bought that milk, for it saw Carola through the whole show. Later powdered-milk prices reached an incredible height.

  So now I was broke and needed money. But money was looser in town, and I had jewels. Reeny did too. I sold my diamond ring, and that kept us going a long time. Then gold began to go up in value; we agonized as to what would be the best time to sell our gold jewels, and usually we guessed wrong. But with the help of Reeny’s family, who knew all about pawnshops, I turned my gold chain into money, and then my bracelet, and then some watches from a collection of French watches I had once made. I kept a jump ahead of destitution. The time was coming when any commodity would be worth more than money, and I had lots of stuff in the house. I sold a fur coat, and some books, and all sorts of things. I know now what to take with me the next time I’m going to be caught in an occupation. I will sell whatever I have in advance and buy gold instead, just lump gold, and in that gold I will put diamonds, like currents in a bun. When people get afraid of paper money they rush for gold and diamonds, and now I do too. It may look like gold and diamonds to you, but it means powdered milk to me, milk and baby shoes. I developed an obsession for powdered milk and shoes. I couldn’t see baby shoes anywhere in town without haggling for them and buying them; I was buying bigger and bigger ones, shoes that Carola couldn’t have worn until she was five years old, against the time when there would be none to buy. Carola was trying to walk, but she hadn’t succeeded as yet. Reeny’s Auntie May made shoes for her out of our old felt hats, and those were good enough at first.

  The new old house was big and rambling, and full of leaks and shell holes. We welcomed the discovery of every shell hole, because we hoped that the house was ramshackle and ancient enough not to tempt the Japanese. It was a vain hope, because the Japs were suddenly taken with a passion for grabbing all the houses they saw, even ancient ones. First the Army, then the Navy, then the government employees tried to kick us out. All over town this was happening, and the air resounded with shrill cries of civilian protest, usually unavailing, as households were booted out with four hours’ warning, or at the best a week’s notice. Theoretically only “enemy property” was liable to confiscation, but if a Japanese had enough power he didn’t worry about such little refinements. And if a gendarme wanted anything you just didn’t quote the law at all if you knew what was good for you. The rent situation was a mess. Nobody could pay rent, but the house owners naturally kept after everybody for rent until the government made some kind of law giving them retroactive powers of collection. On the other hand, the government said cautiously, if the tenant couldn’t pay — well, he couldn’t pay, and the landlord ought to be nice. The pronouncement changed nothing.

  Following on this, that same government told me to pay my rent or else. Until then I had managed to get rid of all comers by rushing straight downtown to Oda whenever somebody ordered us to move out. Oda would then telephone a Major Nakano, who arranged it. There came an awkward time when Major Nakano himself wanted the house … but Oda fixed that. As for the rent, it wasn’t due until September and I put the worry off. I was learning how to think properly under occupation conditions, and how to wait for trouble until it arrived.

  In many ways our new house wasn’t so good. It was surrounded, for one thing, by Japanese tenants; ours was one of a row of houses and every other one had Japs living there. It was across the street from St. Joan’s Court, a modern apartment building which had been taken over by one Japanese admiral, not as a residence but as a kind of week-end cottage. At the time, when there was a severe housing shortage due partly to the Japanese passion for commandeering buildings and partly to the fact that a lot of houses had been bombed, the public felt indignant at this lavish use of St. Joan’s Court. It was a big place with twelve apartments, and we were irritated when we saw two little Chinese tarts lolling about, now on one veranda and now on another. Nobody else ever came there but the admiral and a few select pals. Our house was also next door to a big building, formerly the property of the Ho family but now the swankiest geisha house in town. At night you could hear sounds of revelry in the Japanese tradition.

  Worst of all, there was a tree on the slope above us which the soldiers often used for their own amusements. They tied Chinese malefactors to this tree and flogged them. They took turns at this, because they enjoyed themselves at it and each one wanted his share of the fun. And when the soldiers weren’t indulging in this pastime Indian watchmen were. The tarts leaned out from their apartment house, from the window nearest the flogging tree, and called shrill encouragement to the executioners or scolded the Chinese victim, until one day Ah King could bear it no longer. In his choicest Cantonese dialect he talked to the ladies, reminding them of the day of judgment in the future. After that they stayed indoors quietly when people were being flogged.

  I’ve seen a soldier leading a peasant woman on a string, like a dog. She must have been caught stealing dry leaves or branches for fuel; it was a common misdemeanor, punishable by death if the Japanese gendarme happened to feel that way. The woman was yelling and then at intervals getting down on her knees, bumping her head on the ground. The soldier was highly amused. I think he was in such a good temper that he may possibly have let the woman go, but if so I didn’t see that part of it. I wish I had.

  When she was six months old Carola sat up, and two weeks later her first tooth appeared. I asked the sentry at the hospital to tell Charles about the tooth. Charles had disappeared from the veranda. For months I didn’t see him when I brought the parcels, and I couldn’t find out why. The officer in charge, an amiable little fellow named Sieno, just opened his eyes
at me when I asked, and said, smiling:

  “Oh, Boxer very well.”

  I heard afterward why it was. The imprisoned officers had all been told to sign paroles, promising they would not try to escape. Such a promise should have been merely an academic matter to Charles, because his arm was helpless and he wouldn’t have had the strength to make such an attempt anyway, but he maintained that as a regular officer he must not sign a parole. The duty of an officer, he insisted, was to escape if he possibly could, and he would not sign.

  Tony Dawson-Grove wouldn’t either. So Tony and Charles were put into a ward in back of the building and weren’t allowed to walk on our side of the hospital on parcel day. It was planned as a punishment for Charles; he couldn’t look at me or the baby until he signed. We got around that, afterward; I walked along another lower road at the back of the hospital at a certain time on a certain day each week, and though there was a tremendous distance between Charles’s beat and mine, I could still make him out, with his white sling, and he could still see me with the baby. When Carola learned to walk, at ten months, I took her along that road and then she walked with me, hand in hand, up and down. I heard Charles laugh. Then an Indian watchman came and chased us away.

  I have come to a ticklish part of the book. It is so ticklish that I am not going to write anything about it. I have been thinking it over and this is the safest way. The war isn’t over yet.

  I will say this much: I never did any spy work during my stay in Hong Kong, and to the best of my knowledge Selwyn never did either. If we were dealing with any enemy but the Japanese my secret would not be a secret at all. We did nothing wrong even from their point of view, but they wouldn’t believe that. As it is, I am still full of a guilty feeling, and I don’t dare write about our activities. Anyway, I can say that they were entirely to do with relief work. Selwyn was getting money from friendly natives in town, and we used this money in certain ways, to provide food and medicine and clothes for people who needed it. We took risks. Some of us were caught. The work was the whole meaning and aim of our existence, for months. I will not say any more. You can’t go through months of discretion without feeling the effect of it.