by Carl Crow
XXIII
The end of an era
“The hard work of a hundred years may be destroyed in an hour.”
On the morning of August 14th, 1937, which is now known in Shanghai as “Black Saturday,” I got to the office of my advertising agency a half hour earlier than usual for I had some very important letters to write before the mail for America closed at noon. In spite of the fact that it was usually insufferably hot, August was always a busy month for us. The advertising schedules and merchandising plans which we worked on during that summer-vacation period would not be put into effect until the following January, but they had to be discussed and approved by many people in many distant parts of the world. In order to avoid delays it was necessary to get an early start and in midsummer try to visualize what sort of a curve would be shown on next year’s charts showing sales of goods in China.
This was the first August in a long time when the annual task of outlining advertising and sales campaigns for the following year could be undertaken with any degree of cheerfulness. Seven lean years had come, one after the other, during which times were not only bad but there seemed little reason to believe that they would improve. In the face of sales that were either stationary or dropping, it was often difficult to find sound reasons why an advertiser should spend any money at all in China.
But August of 1937 presented a much more cheerful picture, for the prosperity with which the year had started had continued through the first seven months. We foreign devils were making money. There were a number of reasons for this - which had been a long time in the making - though we were just now beginning to feel the effects. The reformed National government of China had been in power for ten years, and during that period officials had been spending tax-collected money on public works - railways, wharves, highways, schools, hospitals and many other useful enterprises - instead of stealing the money more or less openly as had been the immemorial custom in China.
This governmental progress and reform crowded into a comparatively brief period was rather staggering to those of us who lived in Shanghai. On weekend motor trips into the countryside we were constantly discovering fine new roads leading to ancient beauty spots or linking important market towns. For several years highway development had been going ahead so fast that the map publishers could not keep up with it and motor route maps were continually out of date. The Chinese themselves were developing the country on a scale the foreigners had never dreamed of. The ghosts who had retarded progress for a century were dead and forgotten.
The most amazing reform was intangible, for it was found in the fact that officials of this new National government were honest. Shanghai importers found it hard to believe that they could sell goods to all of the important government bureaus without having to pay heavy commissions to the officials. That had always been the accepted and customary procedure, generally regarded as one of the many old Chinese institutions which time would never change. But the change came suddenly for Chiang Kai-shek’s Confucian code of ethics, known as the “New Life Movement,” had been adopted by the country with something of the fervor with which an old-fashioned Methodist revival engulfs a small Midwestern town. Relations between foreigners and Chinese were definitely improving. It had taken a long time but they had finally become acquainted with each other.
The possibilities of a huge and profitable trade in China had intrigued American and other manufacturers for several generations but their hopes had never been fully realized. The period of Manchu rule was one of stagnation and of opposition to all foreign ideas and the use of foreign goods. The Revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the republic appeared to promise better things. Many times during the quarter of a century following this event we thought we saw prosperity just around the corner. We never turned the corner because a civil war or some political upheaval of one sort or another always intervened. I know that so far as I was personally concerned, every time I started to make a little money it appeared to be the signal for a Chinese war lord to ravage some part of the country, and start my Chinese accountants dipping their pens in the red-ink bottle. That had been the experience of all of my friends. But now the corner had definitely been turned. It was the opinion of all of us that there was a long period of prosperity ahead of us.
I had embodied some of these facts in a letter to a New Haven toothpaste manufacturer to accompany a proposal for his 1938 advertising. I could write to him with a good deal of confidence because his sales had been going up remarkably and I felt quite justified in suggesting that he should spend in 1938 about twice as much for advertising as he had spent in 1937.
I was finishing the final draft of the letter when the window-panes in my office rattled and some of them broke, from the concussion of a huge bomb which Chinese aviators had dropped in an attempt to hit the Japanese flagship anchored about two hundred yards from the desk at which I was sitting. In quick, succession we heard the deafening roar of two other bombs and then the vicious staccato of anti-aircraft guns.
It was in this way that the undeclared war came to me - as it came to thousands of other foreigners and to millions of Chinese who live in the colorful city of Shanghai. It marked the end of an era.
If I had stage-managed the affair myself, I could not have had a better seat for the lifting of the curtain. Shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns fell all about us, killing and wounding many in the street below. Everywhere you looked, people were running. Motorcars had to drive around wheelbarrows and rickshas which had been deserted in the middle of the street. One of the janitors in our office building moved these obstructions out of the way and then carefully closed all the windows in my office as a vain precaution against shrapnel and machine-gun bullets. People on the street ran inside for protection. Those in the office buildings ran outside to see what was going on. The first attack on the Japanese flagship was followed by others, each one leaving the obsolete old gunboat untouched but dealing death and destruction over a wide area. An aviator released a bomb ten seconds too soon and so killed hundreds of civilians, including several Americans, in and about the Palace and Cathay hotels.
Before the end of the day which had started so cheerfully thousands had been killed, thousands wounded, and the gay city of Shanghai was a city of terror, with people running here and there as excitedly as a colony of ants whose nest has been disturbed. Sudden death had descended on the city so completely that it had, through the snuffing out of the lives of relatives or friends, touched every one of us.
Before the dead had been carted off the streets a great many things happened, any one of which would have seriously upset the ordinary course of life in any big city. The exceptionally good telephone service, an automatic dial system, continued to function efficiently, although it was so heavily overtaxed with calls that one often had to wait ten or fifteen minutes for dial tone after taking the receiver off the hook. Impatient people jiggled the hook and so sent their call back to the end of the queue again. Gas was shut off, and those who depended on it for cooking had to borrow little charcoal stoves from their Chinese servants. The usual supplies of milk failed. The largest Shanghai dairy, an American enterprise, with four hundred imported cows, was in the battle zone and, as no one could get in to feed the cows, they were turned loose in the fields to forage for themselves. Japanese aviators shot them down with machine guns.
Taxicabs would not answer calls, for idle cars were occupied as soon as they returned to a station. The only way one could get a taxi was to walk to a station or ride there in a ricksha and then wait until a car was available. The ricksha coolies made plenty of money and I don’t think anyone begrudged it, for they were cheerful and smiling, as indifferent to the airplanes and shrapnel as they are ordinarily indifferent to the sun and the rain. In fact the Chinese kept on with their regular daily work as if it were a sacred religious ritual. I heard of no servants who ran away, though many of them were in constant danger. The bomb which killed hundreds at the corner of Nanking Road and The Bund shattered
all the glass in the Cathay Hotel. Before the ambulances arrived to pick up the dead and wounded the hotel servants were busy tidying up the lobby. A few days later, in the bustling haste of getting our furniture away for storage, our house coolie insisted on polishing the precious ash trays which had been the object of his attentions for the past twelve years. The old amah put on her spectacles and searched my socks for a hole which she might mend. The cook, never noted for energy, bestirred himself to produce an exceptionally good tiffin at a time when no one else thought of food. Street-cleaning coolies kept at work and swept up a lot of fragments of shrapnel.
No one had to be warned to leave Shanghai! It was only a question of providing ships for those who could get away, and arrangements were made hastily for several of the Dollar liners to shuttle back and forth like ferryboats between Shanghai and Manila, packed with refugees. British ships at the same time were taking British subjects to Hong Kong. Within a week more than five thousand British and American residents, mostly women and children, had packed hurriedly and scantily and had been evacuated.
This did not end the flight of the refugees. With each ship that sailed the official demands that those of us who remained go to a safer place became more insistent, for the death roll was mounting daily. And with each day that passed there was less need for American men to remain, for over the tragic week end our businesses had been destroyed and there was nothing for most of us to do. Those who remained without good reason only added needlessly to the heavy burden of responsibility carried by the American officials and made more inroads on a limited food supply. My wife and I waited almost a week, taking the third of the American refugee ships for Manila.
Leaving the servants was the most difficult problem we had to face for, in Chinese style, we had been adopted by them and were members of their family. While it was their duty to provide for our comfort, it was our duty to provide for them, and we were abandoning them to a fate which was certain to bring them hunger and privation and possibly death. With most of the foreign community leaving Shanghai there was no chance of their getting other work, and all their friends. and relatives were in the same predicament. My wife and I talked the matter over and decided that the only thing we could do was to give each of them a liberal cash present so that they would, at least, have no pressing financial worries for several months to come. But when I went to the bank to draw some money I ran into severe restrictions. It was not a new experience to me to be able to draw only a small amount of money because I had only a small amount on deposit, but it was a new and very disconcerting experience to have a comparatively large amount of much-needed money on deposit and be able to check out no more than a driblet. All I could get was enough to pay the current month’s wages. I could not even pay them for the extra month, which a servant in Shanghai usually receives when he is discharged. As our servants had been with us for from eight to twelve years they deserved much more than that.
In the absence of anything better we gave them things out of the house-kitchen utensils, china and glass, electric fans, furniture, and all the garden equipment. Ching, the houseboy, came into possession of many things, including one of the world’s most complete collections of safety razors. In the garden was a valuable stone lantern, but no one would take it because it was of a Japanese design. Even the avaricious coolie refused it. The things we gave them were of considerable value in ordinary times but not salable at any price in a city so distressed by war. A few bushels of rice, which I could not get for them, would have been of a great deal more value. It was the first time I had felt what it meant to be ashamed of poverty.
And they were so sorry for us! We were going away to strange places and who was going to take care of us? Who would wash missie’s silk stockings, answer telephone calls, and see that her house was spotless? Who would run my bath and lay out my clothes in the morning? Who would unlace my shoes and put on my slippers when I came in from a long walk? They were as worried and solicitous as a lot of affectionate children toward a pair of aged and helpless parents. We had planned to stay in our partially denuded house until the call came to board the refugee ship, but after half a day of it we gave up. The despondency and the unselfishness of the servants worked on our feelings so much we had to run away from it or get hysterical. So we fled to a friend’s house. The following morning Ching brought us a dollar’s worth of eggs because he had heard that there was a shortage and he was worried about my breakfast. He had paid for them out of his own pitifully small money and had walked four miles to deliver them.
The amah sent me a well-darned pair of socks which had been left behind.
As it was the vacation season, a great many Shanghailanders were away in Kuling, Mokanshan, Peitaiho, and other China coast resorts. Soon the local radio stations were loaded down with personal messages for these people who could not be reached in any other way. While thousands listened in, Steve assured Olga in Peitaiho that he was safe and that he was sending her some money by Bill. Henry broadcast to Mary in Tsingtao, asking her to go to Kobe as soon as possible and wait for him there. The Basque jai alai players of Shanghai assured their fellows in Tientsin that all were safe and well. The American consul general advised all Americans in Mokanshan to stay where they were for the present. The British consul general urged all Egyptian and Iraquian subjects to get in touch with the consular authorities and be ready for evacuation with a suitcase. Radio calls went out to Swedes, Danes, Dutch, Portuguese, and Italians, giving advice as to places of refuge, and particulars as to the sailing of ships. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals broadcast frequent appeals to refugees not to abandon their pets, and as a result dozens of beloved pedigreed dogs were sent to the veterinarians to have their lives ended as painlessly as possible.
Hour by hour these sad announcements droned out, and in between times the radio station played phonograph records. With very good judgment the managers of the stations threw away their sad records and we listened to “Happy Days” and “The Wooden Soldier” and other gay tunes. Between the sudden blasts of trench mortars and the thunder of heavy field guns we heard a lilting voice, urging us to “pack up our troubles.” Music written to entertain gay and carefree audiences now performed a more useful function. “Old Kentucky Home” or any other plaintive melody would have been too much for over-strained nerves. Fortunately it was not until several days later that the Japanese conceived the idea of adding to the confusion and terror of the city by deliberately drowning out all the local radio broadcasts by changing their more powerful stations to the same wave length. This senseless cruelty set the pattern which the Japanese have continued to follow in dealing with foreigners in China.
All about us was tragedy of growing intensity, but still the agenda of life were not forgotten. A ricksha coolie, frightened by shrapnel bursting overhead, dashed past a traffic signal. A Sikh policeman ran after him and would have arrested him but for the fact that the shrapnel crushed his skull and his dead body lurched against the coolie. Within five minutes the body of the dead policeman had been removed and another was on duty in his place. From the roof of the American Club some members were watching a woman hanging out washing to dry on a neighboring roof when they saw her crumple and fall to her death on the street. Even death itself became a routine and we became calloused to the sight of mangled and unburied bodies.
Fires broke out all over the city and the fire department followed their regular routine procedure in going to them and making reports as to the loss. Ladies who were planning to leave by the next boat made frantic and indignant demands on tailors to finish up the clothes they were making. A New York newspaper correspondent got married. The wedding date had been set for some time, and Mars could not interfere with romance. A few bridge dates at the Columbia Country Club were canceled, but not many. A Cuban vice-consul was highly indignant when an American boat, threatened by shell fire, sailed for Havana without securing the usual formal visa. A great deal of whisky was consumed. A few drinks were necessary to ste
ady one’s nerves, and in exciting times like these it was extremely difficult to draw the dividing line between just enough and too much. Liquor had a new effect on people. Among the steady drinkers some went groggy on two or three drinks, while others drank steadily all day long with no more effect than would have come from an intemperate consumption of water. There was consternation in the Shanghai Club when the Japanese seized the only British brewery.
There were compensations which made us forget danger. I can imagine nothing quite so thrilling as the sight of battles in the air which we watched daily. The big Chinese bombers would emerge from the heights and the slower Japanese amphibians would hurry away to safety or hide behind a cloud. Then would come the sharp incisive “rat-tat-tat” of the anti-aircraft guns with the shrapnel bursting and forming little balls of smoke which floated in the sky. There followed the thunderous boom of a huge bomb as it dropped and exploded. To watch these flights of bombers from any point was dangerous, but still we watched them. Even after shrapnel hit my house I could not resist the temptation to go out into the yard and crane my neck when planes were overhead, though I got unreasonably angry at the amah for doing the same thing.
It was not the danger of bursting shrapnel or falling bombs that broke our morale and stupefied our senses, for we invited these dangers and found in them a relief from tension. But our hearts were strained to the breaking point at the sight of the poor Chinese refugees with their pitiful bundles, endlessly walking, escaping from old dangers and miseries, only to encounter new ones - a sad pilgrimage with no certain destination. Helpless, defenseless, hopeless, they remained calm with the resignation of those to whom poverty and hunger are common experiences.
Our adventures were not over when we reached the jetty. An arrangement had been made with the Chinese authorities that they would not launch an attack during the hour that we should be on tenders taking us to the President Hoover, anchored about ten miles down the river. There was delay in getting away, and at nine-thirty, when we should have been safely out of danger, a squadron of Chinese bombers appeared over the jetty where we were still parked waiting to go aboard the tender. Shrapnel burst in the sky, and in a gentle breeze the little balls of smoke became long streamers of gray, which changed colors in the sunlight, a beautiful spectacle. It is customary for the Chinese to speed departing friends by a fusillade of fire-crackers, and we pretended this was what was being done. It was, in fact, little more than that, for no bombs were dropped and there were no casualties. A few shrapnel fragments fell among us, but no one was hurt.
