Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  It seemed the things taken from the looted homes had not been securely stored away. In the course of the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, many people must have had access to them. Now that the government had decreed that looted goods should be returned to their owners, the local officials had to make a show of doing so. Thus they organized this bureau to put on an act and invited us to take part. When a sufficient number of receipts for worthless objects had been collected and enough pledges made to relinquish claims, the work of returning looted goods to their rightful owners could be considered accomplished successfully.

  While I was not hopeful that I would recover anything of value, I could not very well ignore a letter from a government department. Therefore I went at the time and on the day specified. I was received by a woman official who asked me right away if I would be interested in going to a warehouse to look for books and records.

  “I’m pretty certain all my books were burned. As for records, it’s possible a few were saved, but I’m not interested in getting them back. I’ll sign a paper to that effect,” I told her.

  “I have some really good news for you,” she said, laying emphasis on “good news” and “you.”

  After rummaging through the files on her desk, she took out a sheet of paper and said to me, “Some of your porcelain pieces have been located because they were in boxes bearing your name. These pieces are at a warehouse. However, the Shanghai Museum is interested in purchasing fifteen pieces from you. These fifteen pieces are at the museum. You can go to the warehouse and show the man in charge this letter of authorization.”

  She handed me a document identifying me as the owner of the pieces of porcelain contained in boxes bearing my name.

  “What about the pieces displayed in my house and not put away in boxes when the Red Guards came on August 30, 1966?” I asked her.

  “If there was no identification, it would be very difficult to find them.”

  “What about my white jade collection?”

  “Items made of precious stones or semiprecious stones were put away with the jewelry. We are still trying to locate them,” she said rather impatiently. I thought she was displeased that I had mentioned them. She was probably thinking that I should be satisfied that my porcelain pieces had been found.

  “I ask only because there were some in boxes with my name on them,” I explained.

  “You may find a few pieces with your porcelain,” she said.

  “Thank you very much for locating my porcelain pieces. It must have been hard work.”

  “The Shanghai Museum helped us. They want to get in touch with you about those fifteen pieces.”

  I was overjoyed that some of my porcelain pieces had been saved, and when I got home I got in touch with Little Fang, asking him to help me get them back. It would seem my fight to save them in 1966 when the Red Guards were looting my home had not been in vain.

  A few days later, Little Fang drove me in his power company truck to the underground warehouse at the other end of the city. After I had presented the letter to the security guard, we were allowed to enter the dark, cavernous interior. The man in charge told us to wait by a long, dusty table under a feeble light. Others were already gathered there. We waited with anticipation, moving restlessly in the airless room.

  When the items were brought out and laid on the table, we were told to identify our things. There were scrolls, fans, boxes of various sizes, and containers tied together with string. Everything was covered with a thick layer of sooty dust peculiar to coal-burning, industrial Shanghai. A man sighed deeply and uttered a stifled exclamation that sounded rather like a sob when he picked up his antique fan to find that the paper, on which had been a valuable painting by a famous Ming dynasty painter, had rotted away with mildew. A woman standing beside him, perhaps his wife, murmured to him to throw away the now worthless fan. But he carefully took out his handkerchief and folded it lovingly around the fan to take it home.

  Back home Little Fang helped me to carry my boxes upstairs to my room and took his leave. The odor from them was overpowering. I opened each box and took the porcelain pieces out. Then I took all the dirty and broken boxes out to the fresh air of the balcony. I saw that some of the vases, bowls, and plates were chipped or cracked; a few had been broken and then glued together again. All had identification numbers and other indecipherable writing on the delicate glaze. On a large plate of Ming celadon, some Revolutionary had expressed his hatred for the rich by declaring in writing that collectors were bloodsuckers. I was heartbroken to see the beautiful pieces so carelessly defaced. But I knew that they might easily have been smashed if someone somewhere hadn’t succeeded in talking the Red Guards into taking them to the underground warehouse.

  I filled the bathtub with lukewarm water, sprinkled a little soap powder in it, laid towels at the bottom of the tub, and placed the pieces there to soak. In the water the patched pieces disintegrated. I bent over the tub and washed each piece with a soft cloth to remove the markings. After rinsing, I placed them on a sheet spread on the floor of my room. It was already nightfall when I had finished. I realized that less than half of my original collection was left intact, including my Dehua Guanyin, covered with black ink stains but not broken. After washing, it was as gleaming and beautiful as ever. I placed it on my desk and sat down to enjoy looking at it. It was like being reunited with an old friend after a long separation.

  I checked the list of the fifteen pieces the museum wished to buy and saw that it included what was left of my Xuande blue-and-white as well as an apple green (fenqing) Yongzheng vase I particularly liked. It had a raised pattern of a lizard with such a fluid line that it looked as if it were ready to slither off the vase. The Shanghai Museum also wanted my Zhengde chicken-fat-yellow plate and my best piece of Song dynasty Ding ware with an incised pattern of waterlilies.

  Should I accede to the museum’s request for the fifteen pieces, or should I refuse? Before the Cultural Revolution, when I was writing my last will, I had discussed the matter of my collection with my daughter. It was at her suggestion that I had willed my collection to the Shanghai Museum as a gift. Her death and the careless disregard for cultural relics demonstrated during the Cultural Revolution had cooled my enthusiasm for leaving my collection to the museum, a bureaucratic organization of the government, subject to political pressure. On the other hand, I had already decided to leave China. None of my collection was exportable. Would it not come to the same thing whether I left it to the museum or not? Therefore I decided I would give the museum the fifteen pieces they wanted rather than accept a token purchase price arbitrarily arrived at by some official who had no knowledge of the true worth of the pieces in question. However, I should get something out of the deal, I thought. All the blackwood stands that went with the pieces had disappeared. If I wished to enjoy looking at my collection until I left Shanghai, I must have stands to display it. I decided to ask the museum to make a few stands for me in exchange for my fifteen pieces. It was not an equal exchange by any means, but I did need the stands, and there was no other way to get them.

  The Shanghai Museum sent me an invitation for an interview, and I went there to see them. The men received me with excessive politeness. They brought out my fifteen pieces, all beautifully clean and gleaming against the white satin lining of the new boxes in which they lay, and allowed me to examine each piece. Then we talked about them as if we were disinterested connoisseurs, pointing out a particular color or design and turning them over to examine the markings. When they deemed that sufficient courtesy had been shown me to establish themselves as civilized individuals and to put me in a receptive mood, they turned to the business at hand. The man who seemed to enjoy deference from the others said to me, “The museum has to work within the limits of a budget. We have to be very selective when we make purchases. You have many beautiful pieces in your collection, but we have decided, for the time being, to request you to sell us only these fifteen pieces.”

  “Of course. Yo
u can have the fifteen pieces you have selected. It’s better to have visitors to the museum enjoying them than to leave them in my cupboard,” I said.

  They all beamed, and the man who had spoken nodded with approval.

  “I’ll make you a gift of all fifteen pieces if you meet my conditions,” I added.

  “What do you want us to do?” the man asked me.

  “Nothing very difficult for the museum,” I told him. “I would like the museum carpenter to make me some stands so that I can display the pieces that have been returned to me in my room and enjoy looking at them. I’ll of course pay for the wood and the labor of your carpenter.”

  They looked at each other, surprised at the nature of my condition. Then they all laughed heartily.

  “That’s easy. I’ll send our carpenter to your house to measure the pieces. How many do you want made? Do you want a stand for each piece?” the man asked me.

  “No, of course I can’t ask you to make so many stands. I think maybe ten or twelve will be all I want,” I said.

  “That will be perfectly all right,” he promised readily.

  “About your idea of making these fifteen pieces a gift to the museum, will you furnish us with a formal letter to that effect?” another man said.

  “Certainly. I’ll give it to the carpenter when he comes. Could he come tomorrow?”

  “I’ll get the carpenter now, and you can discuss the matter with him yourself,” the man said and left the room.

  When he came back with the carpenter in tow, the old man seemed unhappy to have this extra job thrust upon him.

  “I have got a lot of work on hand just now,” he muttered.

  “It doesn’t seem right to ask this old comrade to do this extra job for me during working hours. It might delay whatever he is doing for the museum. What about asking him to do my work in his spare time, and I will settle with him about payment?” I suggested.

  “You can’t do that,” the museum official said firmly. Obviously he couldn’t condone such a practice. But he had decided to let me have my stands, so he told the old carpenter to put aside whatever he was doing for the museum for the time being. We arranged that the carpenter would come to my apartment the next day to measure the pieces.

  “We are holding an exhibition next week of our recently acquired items. All friends of the museum who have pieces displayed in the exhibition are invited to a special preview and a banquet afterwards. We hope you will come,” the man said, handing me a gold-embossed invitation card. My name was already written on it. Evidently they had been quite certain I was going to let them have my fifteen pieces. Of course, since the Shanghai Museum was a government organization, their request to purchase was as good as a polite order to sell. Nevertheless, one doctor had refused to sell his collection of Tang porcelain pillows, as I was told by one of the Shanghai Museum officials with a great deal of regret and indignation.

  The special exhibition was held in the hall on the ground floor of the Shanghai Museum. Strolling among the well-lit cases were the private collectors who had contributed the exhibits, their wives, and a large number of government officials, escorted by museum personnel. With each exhibit was a card giving a description of the piece and the name of the donor. Of my fifteen pieces, four were on display, including a large Xuande blue-and-white plate sixteen inches in diameter, with a pattern of grapes, and the Yongzheng vase with the raised pattern of a lizard. The museum official showing me around explained to me that due to the limited space, only token pieces from each collector were shown.

  The most senior official present was a vice-mayor of the city, Zhang Chengzhong, who was concurrently the director of the Commission for the Administration and Control of Cultural Relics. He was surrounded by a large entourage and many museum officials ready to answer his questions. After everybody had looked at the exhibits, we were invited to sit down on chairs already placed in the center of the spacious hall. Vice-Mayor Zhang made a speech praising the patriotic spirit of the private collectors who had added to the collection of the Shanghai Museum. In particular he welcomed a young couple who had traveled to Shanghai from the United States to attend the ceremony as representatives of their grandfather, who had died during the Cultural Revolution and could not personally witness his own collection being included in this exhibition. After his speech, a representative of the museum invited the private collectors to come forward. As each man came to where Zhang Chengzhong was seated, the vice-mayor stood up to present him with a certificate of merit in a gold frame and a red envelope containing the purchase price. While this was going on, an official of the museum slipped into the seat next to mine and told me in low whispers that a separate ceremony would be held for me because I had donated my pieces. After everybody had been called, we were taken by special buses to the newly opened tourist hotel on Huashan Road and given an elaborate banquet in the large dining room.

  The young couple from the United States and the collectors who had links with businessmen in Hong Kong were given the seats of honor at Vice-Mayor Zhang’s table. Since the declaration of the new policy of attracting foreign investment, these individuals’ personal importance in the eyes of the People’s Government had increased a thousandfold. Until the government succeeded in establishing firm business ties with foreign countries, these men were useful for their ties with overseas Chinese in Hong Kong and elsewhere. The rest of us sat wherever we happened to find ourselves. At each table, an official of the Shanghai Museum acted as host. I knew no one at my table. We did not introduce ourselves or make conversation. And no one ate very much of the delicious food put in front of us. We were stiff and formal, patiently waiting for the banquet to end. The museum people were, however, in high spirits. They went around from table to table, wineglasses in hand, to toast each other.

  Collectors do not like to part with their collections because they form a sort of sentimental tie with each item. Throughout the meal, I was thinking of the pieces I had surrendered to the museum. Though I did not regret having given them away, I felt rather sad. I thought the others were probably in the same frame of mind. It was true they had all been paid a purchase price, but they were not really in need of the money, and it was a certainty that the price represented only a fraction of the market value of the items.

  When we saw Zhang Chengzhong preparing to leave, we quietly laid down our chopsticks too. The moment Zhang Chengzhong disappeared out the door with his entourage, we stood up to shake hands with the host at our table. Then we filed out to the elevators. Those at other tables behaved in exactly the same manner. It was only when we were on the street and about to mingle with the crowd, far from the aureole of officialdom, that we smiled at one another and said goodbye to those within earshot.

  A week later, two museum officials took me in an official car to the Shanghai Mansions, an apartment hotel for foreign visitors. The ceremony of presenting me with the certificate of merit was to be held in the penthouse apartment reserved for official use. In the spacious lobby, an attendant led me to a table on which were an ink slab and several writing brushes. As I signed my name in the brocade-covered guest book, a cameraman took several photographs of me. The officials signed their names after mine. The attendant then threw open the double door leading to the reception room. Other officials of the museum, including the director, were introduced to me. I saw that my neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. Gu Kaishi, had been invited to make up the party. Dr. Gu was an eminent surgeon, and his wife a gynecologist at the No. 6 People’s Hospital. He had given his family bronze collection to the Shanghai Museum.

  After a little while, Vice-Mayor Zhang Chengzhong arrived. He sat down in the middle of the long sofa that had been left vacant for him. The attendant served us green tea while we chatted about the weather and politely inquired after each other’s health. When the preliminary exchanges were over, one of the junior officials of the museum brought a framed certificate of merit and placed it on the coffee table in front of the vice-mayor. Zhang made a short speech praisin
g my patriotic act of presenting the museum with pieces from my collection. Then he stood up, took the certificate of merit, and held it out to me with both hands. I stood to accept it and bowed to him. He also presented me with a scroll and said it was a gift from the Shanghai Museum to show their appreciation of my donation. I accepted and bowed again.

  The scroll was taken out of its brocade cover and unrolled. It was a beautiful reproduction of the famous painting A Lady with Peony, by the great Ming dynasty painter Tang Yin. The original was one of the Shanghai Museum’s proudest possessions. The scroll was about two yards long and twenty-eight inches wide, so perfectly reproduced that it was the exact replica of the original. It now adorns the wall of my Washington, D.C., condominium and is enjoyed by my friends.

  When the presentation was over, Zhang Chengzhong sat down. I made a short speech expressing my pleasure at being able to add to the museum’s collection. During the proceedings, the man with the camera took several pictures. These and the book containing the signatures of the guests were later given to me as souvenirs of the occasion.

  The attendant announced that lunch was served. Led by the vice-mayor, we went into the adjacent dining room and were seated around the table. A sumptuous meal, the most elaborate I had ever had in socialist China, was served to us, with three kinds of wine, fruit, and dessert. The vice-mayor and everybody else were extremely polite and pleasant. During the meal, the vice-mayor told me that he himself had been incarcerated. When I expressed surprise and indignation, he said, “You are surprised that an old revolutionary like myself could be locked up by people who claim to be revolutionaries? Politics is a very complicated thing, you know.”

  Encouraged by the example of the vice-mayor, others also told me about their imprisonment. It soon emerged that among the ten people seated around the table, only three had escaped imprisonment.

  “However, we are all rehabilitated now,” one of the officials declared.