Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  As everyone continued to shriek at each other Hu finally reached the end of her lonely speech. She stopped. No one noticed. She decided to descend from the rostrum. She descended from the rostrum. Suddenly Shi Liang emerged from the scrum and hurried towards her.

  ‘Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Just what was needed,’ she said. ‘Now,’ she said, turning, ‘back to business.’ As she disappeared into the throng she pointed off to the side. ‘Help yourself to some food.’

  To one side stood this enormous table covered in what Hu assumed was food. But she’d never seen any food like this before. Mountainous. All shapes and sizes and exotic cuts and colours and textures and finely curlicued tidbits and delicate morsels of – what? Hu finally recognized some dumplings. She took two and, partly to avoid Mrs Nie, walked out into the fresh air.

  *

  She spent the next two hours, while all those inside laid siege to the table, walking around the magnificent gardens, nibbling her lunch and admiring especially the strutting, wonderful peacocks – their lacquered iridescent wings and breast feathers, their imperious eye, their wonderful displays. Though mainly of course, being from good peasant stock, she was wondering what they tasted like.

  Her role in this event seemed to have ended. What was she still doing here? Should she leave? She looked at her invitation again. It said she was invited from eleven til four. Another two hours? Should she go back inside?

  At this moment Li Dequan hurried out of the French windows and came towards her. Hu smiled with relief. Li would know. Li apologized profusely for abandoning her during lunch. Hu said it didn’t matter. Li congratulated Hu on her speech and said she thought it had gone down very well. Several women had spoken favourably to her about it.

  ‘But nobody was listening,’ said Hu.

  ‘Don’t believe that,’ said Li. ‘Mrs Nie came up to me at the end and mentioned several points you’d made.’

  ‘Was that that large woman with the loud voice?’

  ‘That’s her.’

  Hu’s heart sank.

  ‘Hu,’ Li reassured her, ‘society women have very sharp antennae. They can concentrate on many different things at the same time.’

  Hu looked at Li. Li looked at Hu. They both laughed.

  Li explained she’d been detained because she’d had to explain to the two Soong sisters before they left about the problems her husband Feng was having upstream in Chungking with building homes and factories for the refugees. They’d promised to speak to their husbands. She’d also been trying, without much success, to persuade all the society ladies here to donate generously to the Orphan Fostering Commission, which this event had been organized on behalf of. She was its vice chairman. ‘It’s hard work,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you should have been doing that,’ said Hu supportively. ‘Just passing all those starving, dying children on the street is terrible. It’s a scandal.’

  ‘Look,’ said Li, ‘I think you should stay this afternoon. Shi Liang has planned a bit of a show – to finally wrench the money out of these women. Someone you know will be there.’

  *

  Inside the ladies were being detached from their food and reassuring gossip and herded by a very determined Shi Laing out of another door into a large cobbled courtyard. Tall walls stood all around.

  Before them, in the bitter winter cold, stood a line of half-starved youngsters, scruffy and wild, desperate for food and warmth. Some of them had runny noses. They smelt, they were scabby, most were probably diseased. The women in their couture dresses just gaped. Hu was amazed to see, of all people, Spider Girl stood in their midst. Her hair and clothing had been distressed and her face muddied. She looked furious. This must be Shi Laing’s doing, thought Hu.

  The ladies stared at the lost legion of hobbledehoys and derelicts and waifs. The lost legion stared back. Even Mrs Nie was silent.

  Shi Liang, seasoned courtroom performer, seized the moment.

  ‘Dear ladies,’ stated short and bespectacled Shi, ‘we earlier spent a very pleasant lunch talking about starving children and homeless and abandoned orphans. So I thought it would be good for you to actually see some – to meet children abandoned by their parents, children whose families have been butchered by the Japanese, homeless, starving children who we have taken off the streets of Wuhan this morning.’

  ‘Ladies,’ she said, ‘I was at school with many of you. I studied at university with some of you. Look before you. Before you stands your problem, our nation’s problem. Abandoned children. We fine ladies travel through the streets of Wuhan in our automobiles, our carriages, our fine rickshaws, and we do not even notice them, see them.

  ‘Ladies, I will remind you of one thing. The Japanese are coming. Creatures who drive bayonets into the arms, the legs, the bodies, the eyes, the vaginas of all the Chinese women they meet.’

  A ripple of fear passed through the ladies.

  ‘What shall we do? Flee? To Hong Kong, to Singapore, to Paris? But all our wealth is centred here in China. If we flee abroad we will lose it, become paupers on the streets like these very children.’

  By now her audience were definitely taking notice.

  ‘Our wealth can only survive if we stay here in China. But that will require us to fight the Japanese – with bayonets and rifles and guns. And to do that we will have to organize ourselves, our whole Chinese nation, educate and train all its peoples in order to fight them. We will require factories and steel plants and armouries, skilled engineers and technicians, roads and railroads and airfields and guns so we can attack and defeat these uncivilized barbarians. To do that, to fight them, to defeat them, what will we require above all else…?’

  The great performer looked questioningly about, then pointed dramatically at the line of bedraggled children.

  ‘We will require these children – precisely these urchins and strays and delinquents and hoodlums – disciplined and fed and nurtured and trained and educated – to fill those factories, build those machines, forge that steel, man those trenches, plough those fields. Skilled people alone can win this war. Bring victory to China. If you wish to survive this war this nation requires your money.’

  Shi cast a practised eye over her audience. They were moved, but not enough. She could see them calculating – ‘All right, I will give them money – but not today. I’ll give them money tomorrow – probably.’ Good, thought Shi, just as I want them. Shi, the consummate courtroom general, smoothly switched to phase two of her campaign.

  She clapped her hands. Another door onto the courtyard swung open and a discord of military music hit everyone’s ears as, from the door, marched a line of tiny five- and six-year-old tots, banging on drums and heartily blowing on penny whistles. But unlike the filthy and ragged older children, these tots were clad in smart clean khaki uniforms, their skin glowed from regular scrubbing and washing, their bellies were visibly full of food, and their heads lice free because every last wisp of hair had been shaved off.

  The line stopped dead in front of the ladies. The music stopped. There were some cooings and sighs from the ladies. Even Mrs Nie’s visage softened. These children were cute, cuddlesome, clean – everything the desperadoes and urchins were not.

  As if spontaneously they burst into a popular patriotic children’s song written by none other than Lao Xiang, Lao She’s pugnacious friend:

  ‘The snow is dancing,

  The lone crow is crying.

  I am making a fur hat for the soldier.

  Where can I find furs?

  I ask help from a fox.

  The fox runs into the grass.

  Oh fox, oh fox, please don’t run.

  Can you lend me a big fur coat?

  I won’t wear it,

  Nor will he,

  We are sending it to the soldier at the front.

  It feels so warm,

  It looks so good,

  We’re sure to beat those Japanese.’

  The song ended with a neat roll on the drums.


  ‘You see, ladies,’ Shi continued, ‘this is what we can do for orphans. How we can transform ourselves. Two weeks ago these sweet young children were urchins and waifs wandering the cold streets of Wuhan. Starving. But we raised enough money to open a small temporary orphanage and this is what warmth, food and discipline can do. These twenty orphans are now ready to be shipped upstream to Chungking where they will start new and useful lives. But, as you know, there are thousands upon thousands of lost, homeless children – like those behind them – who are desperate. Desperate souls are a threat to us all. Those who are starving are forced to turn to crime which can endanger us all. Instead, through your generosity, your desire to be patriotic women serving your country, you can help turn our country around. Make us fight.’

  There is nothing on this earth more difficult to do than appeal to the altruism of a wealthy person. Extracting money from their tightly clenched fingers. The crowd of rich women swayed backwards and forwards – slightly guiltily perhaps. Mrs Nie was checking her face in her mirror. Two or three perhaps walked back through the door to pay some small sum to assuage their consciences. The majority stayed put.

  Now came Shi Liang’s coup de théâtre. She turned and asked Spider Girl to step forwards.

  ‘Ladies,’ said Shi, ‘I want to show you an example of outstanding courage.’

  Spider Girl waddled up to her. Hu stared open-mouthed.

  ‘This,’ declared Shi Liang, ‘this young girl, as you can see, cannot walk properly. She is partly crippled. And yet she undertook an extraordinary journey to get here to Wuhan. This young girl has rickets. It means that her legs and hips are wasted and bruised and feeble. It is extremely difficult and painful for her to walk. And yet, to join us free Chinese here in Wuhan, to do her bit, this young girl, with extraordinary courage, walked over one thousand miles to join us. To show her patriotism. I want you now to look at those twisted and tortured legs of hers so you can understand this girl’s sublime courage.’

  She turned to Spider Girl. Spider Girl stared grimly ahead.

  ‘Wild Pear Blossom, please raise your skirts so that all these good ladies can see your terrible affliction.’

  The women pushed forwards. (Let’s be honest, we all love something really ghastly!)

  Spider Girl – or to give her her formal name, Wild Pear Blossom – was naturally, like all ordinary Chinese girls, a deeply modest person. Nakedness was a taboo you never broke until your marriage night. She’d been greatly troubled by Shi’s proposal. She did not raise her skirt.

  ‘Wild Pear Blossom,’ said Shi Liang, ‘I can see you are a good and modest girl, and do not wish to do this in front of the other children.’

  The other children were marched out. The ladies were now getting very involved in what would be revealed beneath the skirts.

  ‘Wild Pear Blossom,’ asked Shi, ‘please raise your skirts.’

  Spider Girl did not. The ladies were in a heat of expectation.

  ‘Please raise your skirts,’ requested Shi Liang. ‘There are only women present. You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

  It was at this point that Shi’s carefully prearranged script came off the rails. Spider Girl, staring beadily ahead of her, did not raise her skirts. Just stood there.

  It took a moment for Shi Liang to realize this. With slight uncertainty she moved closer to her – hissed in her ear.

  ‘Wild Peach Blossom…?’

  ‘Wild Pear Blossom!’

  ‘Sorry, Wild Pear Blossom. Why aren’t raising your skirts? As we agreed to?’

  ‘Because I’ve decided not to.’

  By now the ladies were in a frenzy.

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘No.’

  Shi Liang looked her fully in the face.

  ‘What do you want?’ she hissed, desperately trying to soften her anger.

  ‘Money,’ Spider Girl hissed back.

  ‘I’ll pay you later.’

  ‘Now.’

  There was a pause. Things like this simply did not occur in courtrooms. Round the back of courtrooms, maybe. But never in an actual courtroom, in front of everyone.

  ‘How much?’

  A quick haggle ensued in which Spider Girl obviously held the superior hand. Very soon a considerable number of silver coins were surreptitiously showered into her purse and Spider Girl, still feeling the shame of it, raised her skirts.

  The ladies darted forwards. They feasted their cultured eyes on the bruises and swellings and lacerations, the twisted bones and cartilage and thighs of Spider Girl’s nether regions. And at their front, staring hardest at the red tortured flesh, was the face of Mrs Nie. It was as though, with this sight, all her profoundest feelings of anger and inadequacy and ugliness bathed and soothed and healed themselves in her intimacy with this horrible human suffering.

  As the mob pressed ever closer, Spider Girl slowly raised her eyes to look at the skies. Indeed, as they became more excited, so she became calmer, more peaceful. In her hand she held the tiny stone bottle containing the last of her family’s wild pear juice. She remembered another cold winter’s day on the farm with the brave little wild pear tree holding out its branches which were drenched in creamy white blossoms and gentle green leaves soft as silk, standing resilient against the cold blue skies. It was far too early in the year for any bees to have ventured out to pollinate it. So her father, as she watched, climbed high in the fragile old tree and, leaning out precariously, held a long stick with a soft brush tied to its end with which he gently flustered, stroked every blossom so each was pollinated, so each would bear sweet fruit and the family would once again drink the juice from the earth in which her father’s elder sister and the bones of all their other ancestors lay in.

  Her father had been a great king bee at the centre of all her family, working incessantly to bring sustenance and shelter and harmony and blessing on them.

  Spider Girl slowly realized the fine ladies were sated, were turning away, starting to make a beeline towards the room where at last they could make their – not particularly generous – donations. The day’s entertainment was over. Shi Liang was herding the ladies indoors. Li Dequan had left in disgust before this highly lucrative pantomime had even started. Hu moved towards Spider Girl to offer her comfort.

  It was at this moment, as the ladies were reaching the door, that the final and totally unrehearsed sensation occurred. From the door, despite the weather, stepped a slight lady immaculately dressed in a superb Mandarin dress with bright floral patterns slashing across a deep blue background – effortlessly combining Western and Chinese styles in one chic statement. Wearing high heels, her hair beautifully coiffured, an elegant cigarette dangled from her fingers. Every single wealthy lady stopped dead. All breathed in simultaneously.

  ‘Ladies,’ the lady stated, ‘please continue indoors and contribute generously, extremely generously, to this wonderful charity for orphans. I myself have just contributed over ten thousand dollars.’

  The entrance to the door suddenly became a scrum of upper-class women all desperate to be seen outspending each other. Shi Liang followed, smiling.

  Superbly poised, the lady continued her way into the courtyard. Only Hu and Spider Girl still stood there.

  Many strange and inexplicable things had happened to Hu Lan-shih today, ever since she’d walked through the iron gates of high society. She’d given a talk which no one had listened to but everyone had praised. She had seen a peacock spread its tail feathers. She’d watched while poor Spider Girl had been virtually forced to lift her skirts so that a whole lot of bizarre high-class ladies could stare at her crotch. But now – this topped it all. This lady was walking straight towards her and Spider Girl. Hu hastily looked behind them to see if there was someone else she might be walking towards – there wasn’t!

  ‘Good afternoon,’ the lady said, holding out her hand to Hu, ‘you must be Hu Lan-shih.’

  Hu of course knew who this woman was. Her photograph was in every paper. Hu Lan-shih was shaking h
ands with, being addressed by none other than, Soong Meiling herself, the youngest of the Soong sisters, the cleverest, and China’s First Lady. The wife of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek himself.

  ‘I am delighted to meet you,’ said Madame Chiang.

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked a puzzled Spider Girl.

  Hu looked at Spider Girl with a flicker of uncharacteristic irritation. ‘Don’t you know who this is? This is the wife of General Chiang Kai-shek.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked Spider Girl.

  Madame Chiang effortlessly took over the conversation. ‘Hello,’ she said to Spider Girl. ‘I am told you are Wild Pear Blossom. I believe you have rickets. Please accept my sympathies, and I hope you will be able to get some treatment for it.’

  She said this genuinely, without falseness or affectation.

  She then turned and concentrated solely on Hu.

  ‘I must apologize profusely for not being at your lecture, which I particularly wanted to hear. I’m afraid I was detained on other matters.’

  ‘Of course,’ said a still bewildered Hu.

  ‘Shi Liang gave me a general idea of what you’d told her, but I really wanted to hear it from your own lips, so I sent a secretary of mine to copy down your speech word for word and I will read it this evening.’

  ‘I am honoured,’ said Hu.

  ‘The biggest problem our country faces – and we will have to face it if we are going to survive – is that we ruling classes are so out of touch with ordinary people. There is a vast and terrifying gap between the rich and poor, and, unless it is bridged, it will mean the end of our civilization. We must have modern health services and education systems, modern industry and manufacturing, good social services and far more social equality. We must even try – chaotic as it always is – democracy. We either do these things, or we die.’

  Madame Chiang had finished her cigarette. In one movement she flicked it away, snapped a gold cigarette case full of Wills’s Gold Flake, offered them to Spider Girl, who took two and stuck them behind her ear, offered one to Hu, who refused because she did not smoke, took one herself, lit it, and continued, all without a break.