Four Sisters of Hofei : A History (9781439125878)

by Chin, Annping

  When Shen Ts’ung-wen read Chao-ho’s sad lament on the frailties of human relationships, it was his turn to comfort her. He writes: “Let’s not say any more about those who do not consider us friends. We should know that these are the rules of the city dwellers. Because we don’t understand them, we end up like this.” In this letter, we find a postscript: “My little mom, all your love and all the good you have done for me—nothing could save me from harm. This is fate. I will be sacrificed.”

  Not long after he came home, Shen Ts’ung-wen tried to take his own life. He drank kerosene and cut his wrists and throat. Chao-ho’s cousin, who happened to be visiting, found him half-conscious and in shock: “He kept repeating ‘I’m from Hunan. I’m from Feng-huang.’ ”

  Shortly before his attempted suicide, Shen had tried to see Ting Ling. It had been thirteen years since they’d last seen each other. His whole family was excited about their impending reunion, despite their misgivings about her. They believed that these two had once shared a secret life, an interior life, that no one else could be privy to, and because of their understanding of each other, now only Ting Ling could “turn him around.” Shen Ts’ung-wen took Hu-hu along on this visit. His son later wrote: “I had no idea that her place was so near. Dad held my hand tightly and was so quiet all the way there. I understood that he was full of anticipation.” Ting Ling offered him nothing: “It was like being received by a senior officer. . . . The room was big and warm. The mood was cold and indifferent.”

  Before her husband tried suicide, Chao-ho had taken steps to keep life from descending into melodrama. She knew that society’s rules as well as human relationships had changed. At times she felt as hurt as Shen Ts’ung-wen when friends became estranged. Yet Chao-ho believed that she could adapt and be of some use to the new society. So when a local cadre suggested that she “catch up with the times” and “get herself reeducated in the revolutionary tradition,” she agreed. She applied to North China University, a school established for such a purpose, and was admitted a few weeks later.

  There was much speculation about why Chao-ho took this step at a time when her husband was so ill and when the communists themselves could not say for sure that they had won the war. Was this purely a practical move for her, to give her family a footing, in case the socialist vision was going to be China’s future? Was she thinking about work? Chao-ho was always worried about not being able to put her education to use and not having a proper career. Did she feel that the new society could give her better opportunities if she underwent indoctrination? Or was Chao-ho drawn to the socialist vision? Her education at school, both in Le-i and in Nanking, was highly politicized. Then, every national crisis was an occasion for raising awareness, and even physical education was brought into the discussion of nation building. Chao-ho was a good student and an athelete in college. While her sisters were steeped in the arts, she was training for the all-round category in her school’s annual sports day. In her diary from 1930, she said that “violent oppression and wide inequity between the rich and poor” incensed her, but she was not ready at that point “to attempt some astonishing feat.” Did she feel that she was ready in 1949?

  Chao-ho’s teenage boys supported her decision: “To think that Mom might be a cadre in a Lenin suit—how smart!” Lung-lung and Hu-hu preferred their mother’s way. Where would they be and what would they do if they had accepted their father’s reasoning? His depression had dragged the whole family down. They loved him, but it was unbearable to be in his presence, to hear him sigh, to see him so dejected and so scared. Hu-hu wrote:

  Dad was stricken at the worst possible time and with an illness that was most inappropriate. His illness had become the family’s collective anxiety. It weighed so much on us that we couldn’t hold our heads up. Our mom, my brother, and I wanted so much to understand how it got started and how it declined to this point. So this was what we talked about when we were together. We would rack our brains and still could not get anywhere.

  Chao-ho postponed her plans to be at North China University until her husband had come home from the hospital after his bungled suicide, and was showing signs of coping with his depression. Their sons were living at home and could keep an eye on him. Shen Ts’ung-wen’s recovery was slow. Music became his companion, and Puccini and Verdi, his healers. He told Chao-ho that “truths in books and well-intended words did not sink into his head,” that “repression and exclusion” could not persuade him, that even self-analysis could not reform him. But he could “totally surrender” himself to “beautiful music.” “This is because its instruction lies in the process, not in the mechanics of right and wrong.” Shen Ts’ung-wen would sit by the radio. Sometimes the music made him weep. He would scribble poems and tear them up as soon as he finished. He would guard the radio long after the station had signed off.

  Peking University canceled his classes when the fall term began, and by the winter of 1949, Shen was assigned a new position: he was to label the artifacts in Peking’s Historical Museum. His younger son remembers the “dark and dank storehouse” where his father worked. “The place was not allowed to have a charcoal fire. [In the winter] the filthy rags used for cleaning the artifacts would freeze into lumps. . . . Sometimes, to keep the dust out, Dad tied a handkerchief across his face, letting only his eyes show. I thought he looked like Jesse James, but without the swash—he was too civil, too weak.”

  Shen’s work at the museum required little thinking, and that was the way he wanted it. It also allowed him to handle objects to which he had been drawn emotionally since he was a young soldier in the army, working as the cataloguer of a Hunan military commander’s private collection. But most important, the job gave him something to do, and it was useful and safe work, work that could not have attracted anyone’s notice. So eventually people forgot about Shen Ts’ung-wen, and that too was what he wanted. Early Chinese literature on the art of reclusion points out just how difficult it is not to come out of one’s lair when summoned. Harder still is it to live in anonymity after one has known fame. The fifth-century writer K’ung Chih-kuei called those who “retired on impulse, with hearts still contaminated” “imposters.” Of one such man, he said: “When the belled messengers entered the valley / And the crane summons reached his hill, / His body leapt and his soul scattered / His resolve faltered and his spirit wavered. / Then / Beside the mat his eyebrows jumped, / On the floor his sleeves danced. / He burned his Castalian garments and tore his lotus clothes / He raised a worldly face and carried on in a vulgar manner.”

  In a letter written years after his recovery from depression, Shen Ts’ung-wen told Chao-ho that he had been reading Notes on a Trip to Hunan and thought the author (who was himself) was a fine writer:

  But I have heard that he keeps his identity hidden. What can one do to get him to use his pen again? This is a real conundrum. Alas! This is just the way we feel about Ts’ao Tzu-chien. We wonder why “he did not write more poetry.” What we don’t understand are his intellectual and social conditions, and his private circumstances. From his biographies, we can see that lots of his contemporaries were ready to bow to every wind. These were the people that battered him until he was beyond recognition. So at the end, he drifted from place to place with a band of old retainers until he expired. And [the other writer] Ts’ao Hsüeh-ch’in simply died of destitution. They were only around forty when they passed away. The author of Notes on a Trip to Hunan is fortunate after all. He is half a century old, still vigorous and strong. At home he has a precious treasure—she is dark bronze and black jade, known far and wide (especially here)!21 Perhaps a person needs to endure extreme straits in order to write well. Without it he can never make a name for himself. Or perhaps there are other reasons why this is so.

  In this letter, Shen Ts’ung-wen refers to himself in the third person as the author of Notes and places himself in the literary tradition of Ts’ao Tzu-chien and Ts’ao Hsüeh-ch’in, two of the most arresting writers of their times, one a poet from the t
hird century and the other a novelist from the eighteenth century. Both Ts’aos were isolated and repressed. They died young and in straitened circumstances, but the author of Notes was “luckier,” his trump being his wife—his “dark bronze and black jade”—and the fact that he was better able to keep his name concealed. If people did not know him anymore, it was not because he had not suffered for his writing or he no longer had what it took to be a good writer: There were “other reasons” why this was so. The “wind,” or political climate, made writing a perilous pursuit, and there was also the problem with “art.” Shen could not see why his contemporaries would refer to certain activities as art and certain things as beautiful: “I don’t understand art anymore,” he tells Chao-ho in the same letter. “And what I do understand, I don’t know what we are supposed to call it.”

  It is possible that Shen Ts’ung-wen intended these words as a criticism of his wife even though he acknowledged her as his “precious treasure.” She had been encouraging him to write again, and so he asked her rhetorically whether she thought anything could rouse him to pick up his pen once more. During his long retreat from the literary world, Chao-ho had become an editor of People’s Literature— in other words, an arbiter of literary worth in the socialist dominion. She and her husband debated art and literature passionately in their letters, when Shen was on the road for reeducation or work. Several of these letters, dated between 1951 and 1957, have survived. Shen had extended stays in Szechwan and Shanghai during this time, and he also visited his wife’s home in Soochow and his own home in West Hunan. He wrote frequently, as did she, whenever she could, sometimes sending him works by his contemporaries. He tells her in a letter posted from Shanghai on October 29, 1956:

  Third Sister,

  Thank you for sending the essays. I have read them and didn’t find any interesting. They are all crass simplifications. Plus there are many mistakes, some close to being pure nonsense. And whenever the subject is literature, the writing is even more shallow, “like a dragonfly skimming the water surface,” completely wide of the mark. . . . I feel that many of the editors [working on books and essays] are also not being responsible. When you find over thirty mistakes and misprints in an essay, is this supposed to be funny, or a way to educate the reader?

  Shen sent a piece of his own—an essay based on the artifacts he had been studying—to a pictorial, although he knew that “it did not fit their requirements”:

  What these magazines wanted was simply captions copied from the catalogues of the Imperial Museum. . . . Anything intelligent, they wouldn’t get, so regard it as unnecessary. What a waste of my time! In a way I do understand why the writings have been so flat and without any energy. It’s because no one dares to say the wrong thing. So the banal writing continues. But maybe smart editors should do better. At least they should correct the obvious mistakes.

  We do not have Chao-ho’s reply. But from a letter to him written nearly a year later, we learn something about her view, an editor’s view:

  It’s best that you read more fiction by contemporary writers. That way you will have some idea of the creative energy and the standard in current literature. Some rightist authors say that there hasn’t been any good writing since the liberation, that everything is formularized and generalized. Although I haven’t read that much, I have come across some good manuscripts in my work. I can say that they hold up quite well against the standard.

  Three days later, Chao-ho amended these words slightly. She conceded that good writing was, after all, hard to come by, and that this was a problem for editors who had to find something to publish. She said that most writers were “being mobilized for political campaigns” and so couldn’t do any writing. And when they did write, their works either lacked “appeal and meaning” or, “if they had aesthetic values,” were riddled with “serious political problems.”

  When Shen Ts’ung-wen received this letter, he was at a retreat in Tsingtao, with a group of writers and artists affiliated with the Cultural Ministry. His description of them explains why his wife was having problems soliciting manuscripts and selecting from her slim pile anything worth publishing:

  Most people here seem not to have any interest in books, and so they can’t really be interested in writing. The weather is so pleasant, yet four would sit around a table and play mah-jongg all day with such intensity and glee. Some take turns with those around while others are just glued to their seats. This really puzzles me. Perhaps some people, by habit, don’t think much about life’s purpose.

  These people in Tsingtao were different from the boatmen and trackers along the Yuan River and the women living in “hanging terraces,” who “dispatch each day as the day before.” Shen Ts’ung-wen had no love for these new acquaintances and no desire to write about them. They did not stir him. This was yet another reason why he abandoned his art. His subjects had vanished.

  For years his wife mistook his inactivity in creative writing for “a loss of confidence.” She thought that his critics had scared him into silence: “Therefore, you are so indecisive. To write or not to write? Of course, writing is hard. . . . The important thing is to try to overcome the difficulties, to actually start the creative process and then go from there. If you don’t write at all and just proclaim a lot of empty theories, then you won’t leave behind anything significant.” Chao-ho also accused her husband of “not having a comprehensive view of things.” By this she meant that he had not factored in the goals of the state and was wanting in political awareness:

  You still cannot let go of your personal attachments and your sentiments; this, as a result, has stopped you from seeing so many things worth getting excited about. You are not inspired, so you are reluctant about helping us put into words the passion and enthusiasm we have for our present society.

  Chao-ho also could not understand why, years earlier, when they had very little and were always pressed for money, her husband would write day and night even while he was suffering from his endless nosebleeds. “Now,” she says, “the Party cares so much about writing and gives writers so much encouragement and support. When you finally can write, you don’t write.”

  Shen Ts’ung-wen did not stop writing altogether. In the 1950s and 1960s, he produced books on ancient lacquerware, silk embroideries, T’ang and Sung dynasty mirrors, and Ming dynasty brocades. He also published articles on architecture, decorative art, and folk art, and finished a multivolume history of Chinese costumes. And when he was at the right place, found the right subjects, and did not feel constrained by requirements, he still wrote the way he used to. But after 1949 he had only one person to write to, and that was Chao-ho. They had chosen different paths and worked in different ways, but she remained the person to whom he could tell everything, whether or not she understood it or felt empathetic.

  On a trip to Hunan, he described to her again what it was like to be home in Feng-huang:

  The streets are being built all the way to the old city walls. There are still a lot of run-down areas in this town. The place is too old. Yet, as a whole, it has the feel of a painting, a painting from the Northern Sung.

  Today, starting from the house I grew up in, I walked the whole town. It was just like years ago when I was an urchin. It’s very odd. There are only about ten people who still know me. Several were from my old neighborhood. I hear that they were either hauling goods or growing vegetables. Even if I see them, I wouldn’t know what to say to them. In my memory, the place is so familiar. Yet when I am actually here, I feel I don’t know it so well anymore.

  I think my impression of this place now is that it is “strange.” Strange, because lots of things seem changed and yet not changed at all. Many kids were walking on stilts, trying to knock each other down. It was what I liked to play as a child. Stands that sell sour radishes are everywhere, just like before. Lots of old women are still guarding the stands. They sit, with their arms huddling their chests, and they chat to each other so affectionately. Yes, they are poor but seem satisfie
d.

  Seven days later he writes from Ch’ang-sha:

  In Feng-huang, I spent some time with my parents and grandparents by their grave mounds. Our sister-in-law carried a bamboo basket with some cured meat and oranges in it. Two cadres also came along. There was a light drizzle, and everyone wore a rain cape. The whole thing seemed like a page from a Turgenev novel. From the top of the mound, one could see the trucks and cars go by on the new highway. . . .

  Around here there is a place called the Stone Lotus Pavilion. Besides the beautiful scenery around it, it also had a sculpture of [the bodhisattva] Kuan-yin in white, with a smile that made her look real. The main part of the building had been torn down. A new hospital stands in its place. The people here could not bear to see their Kuan-yin destroyed, so they moved her to a cowshed, which belonged to a local co-op. If someday someone decides to expand the cowshed, it would be unlikely that they could hold on to their Kuan-yin. Several teachers wanted to take me to see their Kuan-yin. So I went. The whole thing looked just like the Nativity with Jesus and the Madonna. . . .

  The inns along the way, all multilevel, feel as if they could collapse anytime. The floor creaks and wobbles when you walk on it. Thin boards divide each floor into small rooms, but you can hear everything going on next door. The beddings weigh over ten kilos. . . . In the morning, someone rings a bell, to get the guests off the bed and on the road. The good thing is that these inns still follow the old custom of providing you with hot water to wash your face and feet. On the streets, there are gangs of dogs, and ducks and kids. . . .