Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  Feeling sad, Spider Girl returned to the spot where she would meet her father. She looked around her. There were so many people, all crammed in on top of each other, all striving and pushing against each other, each trying to walk in a different direction. This is what cities are like. But why? What is the use of it? What is the point of all this random frenzy? Where do they come from, go to? How can you achieve anything with all this crazy movement?

  For a moment she felt dispirited but then shook her head, reminding herself she had practical things she must do. She looked around her. She saw something.

  *

  About half an hour later Wei returned and they greeted each other. He asked what had happened to The Ox. Spider Girl explained what she had done and he approved. Then he looked at her and explained what he had done.

  ‘When we were on the march I met a man, and he told me that the great god Heishen, the Great Black Dragon, that his power and influence is particularly strong here in Wuhan. You know how in a statue of mighty Heishen his one foot is placed on a great tortoise and his other on a great serpent…’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘…Well, on this side of the Yangtze there is a Tortoise Mountain on the north bank and a Serpent Mountain on the south bank, and this man said that Heishen, the Great Black Dragon of War, stands astride the great river, one foot on the Tortoise and the other on the Serpent, as a sign to show that he will make certain that good shall always prevail over evil and Wuhan will survive. And this man also told me that on the Serpent Mount there is this old and powerful temple – the Changchun Daoist Temple – so I decided to go there and pray.

  ‘I crossed the great river in a boat – it was terrifying – then I walked to the temple and I burnt incense and paper money and prayed. First I prayed at the altar to my own personal god, Tudeh, the god of the earth, who I was very angry with. All our family’s land in ruins, growing nothing, barren. And he had done nothing to protect us. Then…’

  ‘Then, Father,’ said Spider Girl, gently speaking over him, ‘then you prayed at the altar to Heishen. I know. I admire you for it. And he told you, as he should, that you must become a soldier and fight the awful enemy that has invaded our land. Which is the only honourable thing you can do. If you did not do it I would be ashamed of you. But at the same time it tears my heart out of my body. My heart lies on the ground between us.’

  Wei was silent. She had read his intentions.

  ‘You will be worried about me and my future, Father, because you are a good father, so you will sell me to the best and most honourable owner you can find.’

  Wei looked at the ground.

  ‘I have been looking around, Father, while you were away. I think I might have found the right owners.’

  After she had returned from helping The Ox she had seen this whole long line of badly wounded Chinese soldiers lying on the cobbles of the Bund. They were in terrible condition. Whole limbs blown away, gaping holes in their chests and abdomens, their wounds suppurating and bleeding, flies feeding. The Chinese Army had virtually no first aid facilities or services, and badly wounded soldiers were usually left to die. But here on the Bund at the head of this line of abandoned and dying soldiers someone had erected a small dressing station. At it these two women were swiftly and expertly cleansing the wounds of soldiers and putting on new clean bandages. The two women chatted to each other and to the soldiers as they bandaged them, smiling and laughing. One of the women interested Spider Girl especially. She took her to be a foreign woman. A heap of clumsily bunched curly black hair falling down over her face, and her round eyes were set hard on her task but with a softness and a gentleness to them. Spider Girl had hobbled over and started chatting to them.

  The two women were the American Agnes Smedley – a revolutionary from the glory days of the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW (the Industrial Workers of the World) – and now a newspaper correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, and the vivacious and talkative Hu Lan-shih, a mill girl from Shanghai. After her mill had been bombed by the Japanese she and many other girls had patriotically volunteered to help Chinese soldiers retreating from Shanghai. They provided entertainment, food, pep talks when the soldiers were thinking of deserting, and hand jobs when sexual tensions needed releasing. On the road, amid the fighting, she had picked up the basics of first aid.

  Now Spider Girl led her father over and introduced him to them.

  ‘My father has a proposal for you,’ she said. ‘He wishes to sell me to you.’

  Hu Lan-shih stared at her. As Wei spoke both Agnes and Hu continued their bathing and bandaging, Spider Girl starting to pass Agnes her dressings.

  ‘Good day,’ said Wei, ‘my daughter has spoken to me about you and she considers you to be people of high integrity and compassion. You must understand that I do not want to sell my daughter. She is a person who I hold in the very highest esteem. She is closer to my heart than my lungs or my liver. But we have just been driven from our lands by the foreign barbarians. My whole family except for my dear daughter have died or been killed upon our journey. I am responsible for that. Their deaths. So I feel that there is only one thing I can properly do. Join our army and fight the Japanese. Thus I must abandon my daughter. And I want to ensure she goes to humane and honourable owners.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Hu Lan-shih icily, ‘but we do not buy people.’ Agnes didn’t say anything.

  Wei, as a farmer, thought she was just haggling. Farmers haggle as naturally as cows chew cud. He continued.

  ‘I want this to be an honest transaction. I will be open with you. Her legs are none too strong. She had an illness when she was young. But at the same time she has just walked a thousand miles on her legs. She is a person of great inner strength and resource, but I would say she is not fit for heavy labour. But my daughter heard you say that, because of your work, you do not have time to cook, and she is an excellent and skilled cook.’

  ‘As my friend said,’ said Agnes, ‘we do not buy people. I would however pay her an honest wage to be my cook.’

  ‘That is not good enough,’ said Wei. ‘I want you to buy her because then you will have a lifetime obligation to her, an obligation of honour to always feed and house and protect her. Wages are no good. You could pay her for two weeks and then say “I do not wish you to work for me any longer” and sack her. My daughter will be on the street, penniless, defenceless. She will die horribly.’

  ‘We do not pay a father money for his daughter,’ repeated Hu.

  ‘I do not want the money for myself. What use would I have for it? I am going into the army and will probably die.’

  ‘Do not say that, Father,’ said Spider Girl sharply.

  ‘If you pay me for her,’ continued Wei, ‘I will immediately give her that money in case difficulties arise for her in the future.’

  ‘This is what we will do,’ said Agnes. ‘I will pay you a fair price for your daughter, but I will also pay her wages.’

  And so it was decided. Money and the body were traded. Wei handed the money to his daughter. Agnes then told Wei that she knew an army medical officer who could help get him into the army. She handed him a slip of paper with her name and the address of the Wuhan Press Club on it so that were he to return he could contact his daughter through her. If they wished to reunite she would give his daughter back for free. She wished Wei luck in fighting the Japanese. Wei bowed to her and Hu.

  Agnes and Hu carried on working on the wounded, Hu still objecting to the principle of a father selling his daughter.

  ‘You,’ said Agnes to Hu, ‘are from a place where women look after themselves. These people come from a place where women have no such ability. Her father is doing his very best to protect her; she obviously trusts him implicitly. Are you saying he should not fight the Japanese? In war you cannot be right, you can only be pragmatic.’

  Hu had never thought she – a socialist, a Christian, a trade unionist – would live in a world where she owned a slave. But here she was. Such
is war.

  It became time, in the midst of the chaos of crowds, for father to bid farewell to daughter.

  ‘Dearest Wild Pear Blossom,’ said Wei.

  Wei rarely used Spider Girl’s formal name to her. They both knew it was filled with deep meaning and emotion.

  ‘You have been in my life like a wild pear tree. Standing alone in a barren winter landscape, all other plants and trees around you dead, leafless. But always in the midst of darkness and frost you have thrown up brave white and pink blossoms of laughter and wisdom and light. Your jokes, your thoughts, your spirit. You have kept me living.’

  Spider Girl was silent. Then she remembered something and searched under her clothing. She brought out the small bottle of wild pear juice.

  ‘Father, as head of the family, you must take this wild pear juice with you. So the family will always be with you.’

  ‘No, daughter,’ said Wei, pushing it back, ‘you have it now. You are now head of our family, and I am proud of you.’

  Spider Girl touched his arm. She had never dared do this in the past. He smiled, touched her arm, then turned and walked away. She watched for a while and then turned and resumed helping her new owners Agnes and Hu at the dressing station.

  18

  Late one night in December, amid slush and snow, my train finally arrives at Hankou Railway Station. Outside the usual mob of rickshaw drivers fight each other for who will carry the wealthiest patrons. Bloodcurdling oaths splatter the skies. Just like Beijing, I reflect, and feel oddly at home.

  I have little money and virtually no baggage so I walk down the packed streets and across the Bund – crowds everywhere and wounded and soaking wet soldiers lying in rows on the cobbles.

  I catch a junk to ferry me across to Wuchang. The passengers board and we edge out into the Yangtze, through the other shipping, past the line of foreign gunboats, then the current snatches us and we whirl downstream past the foreign banks, treacherous undercurrents in the water boiling to the surface and swirling out in huge black circles. I look down, I think of my wife, plunge into its depths. I can smell her, she is so close to me, lost to me. Without even taking out her Indian scarf I can smell her body, her whole body, pungent, in love. I shake myself, fight it off, look around me. The rowers are doubling their stroke, standing to their oars facing forwards, stamping on the wooden deck and chanting ‘Hey Yah, Hai-yah.’ We gain a favourable cross-current and they rest on their oars as the boat drifts diagonally towards the lighted other shore. As we glide between the moored boats towards the quay they ship their oars and light their cigarettes. A gangway is run ashore and we are immediately invaded by piratical-looking coolies clamouring for our baggage. Mercifully I don’t have any but get roundly cursed for it all the same. Most of the curses I do not understand. A mental note – I must learn the local dialects as soon as possible, so I can curse back and so I can give my students a new world to discover.

  On land I ask for directions and walk to the campus. One of Feng Yuxiang’s aides shows me to my room. It is very neat, very tidy. Almost immediately I fall asleep.

  The next morning I awake to a room full of light. I hurry to the window, look outside. I see a quiet courtyard. In its centre grow the unmistakable boughs of a red persimmon tree. Snow hangs from its branches like spring blossom. The first thing I must do in the morning is hurry to the central post office and see if there are any letters for Wu Lei.

  BOOK TWO

  WUHAN

  To Joe, Niki and, of course, Yma.

  The wagons rumble and roll,

  The horses whinny and neigh,

  The conscripts each have bows and arrows at their waists.

  Their parents, wives and children run to see them off,

  So much dust’s stirred up, it hides the Xianyang bridge.

  They pull clothes, stamp their feet and, weeping, bar the way,

  The weeping voices rise straight up and strike the clouds.

  A passer-by at the roadside asks a conscript why,

  The conscript answers only that drafting happens often.

  ‘At fifteen, many were sent north to guard the river,

  Even at forty, they had to till fields in the west.

  When we went away, the elders bound our heads,

  Returning with heads white, we’re sent back off to the frontier.

  At the border posts, shed blood becomes a sea,

  The martial emperor’s dream of expansion has no end.

  Have you not seen the two hundred districts east of the mountains,

  Where thorns and brambles grow in countless villages and hamlets?

  Although there are strong women to grasp the hoe and the plough,

  They grow some crops, but there’s no order in the fields.

  What’s more, we soldiers of Qin withstand the bitterest fighting,

  We’re always driven onwards just like dogs and chickens.

  Although an elder can ask me this,

  How can a soldier dare to complain?

  Even in this winter time,

  Soldiers from west of the pass keep moving.

  The magistrate is eager for taxes,

  But how can we afford to pay?

  We know now having boys is bad,

  While having girls is for the best;

  Our girls can still be married to the neighbours,

  Our sons are merely buried amid the grass.

  Have you not seen on the border of Qinghai,

  The ancient bleached bones no man’s gathered in?

  The new ghosts are angered by injustice, the old ghosts weep,

  Moistening rain falls from dark heaven on the voices’ screeching.

  Du Fu, ‘Song of the Wagons’

  *

  Like white featherless broken crippled abandoned chickens

  Beneath a blazing sun common people suffer, wracked with pain.

  In a stream of blood and tears the drums summon the troops.

  General Li Pinxian

  *

  God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.

  1 Corinthians 1:27–28

  1

  Marriages and executions have a lot in common. Especially if they involve a famous person. They must be planned meticulously. Their symbolism and pageantry and ritual have to be pre-rehearsed to perfection and then, well, flawlessly executed. Especially if they involve an important person.

  For six months now Japanese troops had been pouring into China, annihilating her armed forces, butchering her civilians. Millions had died. Millions had been enslaved.

  Japan was advancing from the north and from the east into the very heart of China, her new capital of Wuhan. They must be stopped. The country needed time to transport its heavy industry, its arms factories, its soldiers and civilians all the way up the Yangtze River, through the natural barriers of the Three Gorges, so it could find a safe haven in its south-western provinces and there organize itself so it could continue the war. But how could the Japanese be held back for six months to give them time for this retreat? How?

  Although a full general, the President of China, General Chiang Kai-shek, had never been a fighting soldier. He was a politician. A very clever politician. In a civil war many generals fight each other. Civil wars tend to be won not by the most brilliant generals but by those who can most effectively broker deals and build up alliances between all these fighting generals. Civil wars are not won on the battlefield but over the negotiating table. And a negotiator as brilliant and subtle as Chiang Kai-shek, having finally won supreme power, out of self-preservation does not then surround himself with brilliant and fiery generals who are only too likely to overthrow him, but with generals even more mediocre and timid than himself. Such generals had been in charge of China’s armies and had just lost disastrous battle after disastrous battle against the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek h
ad to be seen to be doing something! Immediately!

  On 11 January 1938, he summoned a grand meeting of all the senior generals of his Supreme Military Command. It was held in the conference room of his presidential palace in Wuchang, the part of Wuhan which lies on the southern bank of the Yangtze River. The generals who had just lost all these battles sat before him in resplendent uniforms, lining either side of the long table he stood at the head of.

  Chiang had decided he needed to make an example of someone. That he must pick on one particularly incompetent general and, after fierily denouncing him, publicly strip him of his rank and all his decorations and then cast this disgraced dog out into the wilderness. This would show his people that he was firmly in control of matters and demonstrate to the rest of his generals that they needed to up their game.

  But there was one fly in this ointment. At the bottom of this great long table sat three extremely angry generals. These three extremely angry generals also happened to be, by far, China’s most competent generals. Brave, patriotic, brilliant. The very generals who, because of their competence and ferocity, had been kept furthest away from the fighting. They were at this meeting because popular disgust and anger demanded they be there. And these three extremely angry generals were loudly demanding, from the bottom of the table, that one of Chiang’s favourite generals – they didn’t mind which – should be immediately court martialled, stripped of all rank and decorations, and, for total incompetence and cowardice, executed.

  Chiang thought he could fairly easily deal with this. He asked for opinions from his tame generals, assuming they would automatically be against it. But he was taken aback by how little support he received. Such was the immensity of the crisis that his generals did not seem too averse to an execution – provided, of course, it was not they themselves who were executed. Pretty soon the meeting descended into a hunt for the most incompetent general with the fewest friends.