White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  On the third day, Father Nicolás telephoned to say, “We will accept your donation.”

  He took Nina to their studios. There, in small, but brightly lit rooms smelling of paint, worked dozens of young Chinese artists. Only some of them were busy drawing saints. Most of them worked on signs for shops, menus for restaurants and posters for cinemas.

  Father Nicolás noticed Nina’s quizzical look. “It takes a lot of expenses to keep orphanages, schools and hospitals,” he said. “We have to earn money through all means Christians can.”

  Father Nicolás let Nina choose five artists. “They’ll work for you throughout the whole year without payment.”

  She nodded. “What about printing?”

  “We’ll arrange that, once we’ve signed a contract.”

  A short Chinese man with bent legs entered the studio. Nina at first thought he was a tutor, but he went to his easel and started working like all the others. She glanced at what he was painting—he had almost completed a Chinese general so lifelike that it looked as though the man would march off the canvas.

  “Who is this artist?” whispered Nina to Father Nicolás.

  “His name is Guo. He borrowed big sums of money from us and pledged his parent’s house. He has nothing to pay off the debt, so we find him work.”

  “Give him to me and we’ll be quits.”

  “Deal.”

  3.

  Finding models for calendars seemed the most difficult part. Nina was sure if she advertised in newspapers she would be inundated with unworthy candidates and just waste her time.

  Aulman had advised her to talk to an actress called Hua Binbin. “She frequents bohemian circles and knows many beautiful actresses, singers, dancers and so on.”

  Nina remembered the Chinese girl the calendar seller had pointed out to her.

  “I’ve seen her heading to your office,” Nina said. “Does she want to be in a Hollywood film?”

  Aulman shook his head. “She’s already signed a contract with a Chinese studio. Binbin is an old client of mine. I help her from time to time.”

  Tony told Nina that Binbin descended from a very wealthy family. Her father was a forward-looking man who sent Binbin to an expensive private school and taught her to talk different languages. But he died when she was sixteen. Her brother, the new head of the family, believed girls didn’t need to be educated and forced Binbin to marry a coalmine owner in the far north.

  This man already had two other wives who hated Binbin for her huge paws and the way she desperately missed her school and friends. Binbin just didn’t appreciate the meaning of a wife’s life—to serve her husband. She wept every time he brought her joy, staying in her quarters for the night.

  After a month, Binbin committed the most heinous crime: she ran back to Shanghai. Her brother refused to accept her; her mother screamed that she had shamed her family forever. The worst was Binbin’s husband sent her sinister telegrams: “If you don’t return, you’ll regret you were born.”

  Binbin stayed with an old relative. She scraped a living together by giving lessons and translating articles from foreign papers.

  “We’re here scurrying around our tiny foreign universe and don’t even notice what’s going on just in front of our eyes,” Aulman told Nina. “Here, in Shanghai, are gathered the intellectual crème de la crème of the Chinese nation. Take literature for example: there are amazing amounts of clubs and literary societies. We arrived in China, full of pride and arrogance, to teach sense to these ‘cavemen’—a five-thousand-year-old civilization. Our forefathers wore animal skins and dragged their wives along the ground by their hair when the Chinese were already wearing silks and composing poems.”

  The owner of the film studio White Star saw Binbin at a party and offered her a role in his new movie. In fact, there was no studio as such— just an empty storeroom, a director, a cameraman and a dozen amateur actors.

  Binbin was doubtful for a long time: the Chinese believed that entertaining for money was the lowest one could fall. But she needed cash and signed the contract. The success of the film turned out to be a curse for her. Binbin’s brother sued her: she’d tarnished the memory of their ancestors and brought shame on the whole family with her unfaithful behavior.

  If Aulman hadn’t defended her, Binbin would have been given back to her family for punishment.

  “A woman’s status in China is so low that her folks probably would have murdered her for disobeying their traditions,” Tony explained. “But we came to an agreement. Binbin changed her family name to Hua and swore never to mention her relations to her kin.”

  “Is she well-off now?” Nina asked.

  “No. They never paid her royalties for the film.”

  “Then I’ll call her to pose for my calendars.”

  CHAPTER 38

  A CHINESE ACTRESS AND MODEL

  1.

  Nina couldn’t decide where to meet Binbin. She didn’t want to invite her to her house as it was still a mess after the police raid. What about a restaurant? No, she’ll make money first then spend it, not the other way round.

  They agreed to meet at the Bund.

  Nina arrived early; she was anxious and paced up and down the cars parked at the quay. She wondered how she should act to this woman. Should I treat her as an equal? Or would I lose the merit of being a white lady?

  It was absurd: Nina had lived in Shanghai for a year and a half and never talked to Chinese women, except to servants and shop girls.

  On the quay, coolies were unloading barrels, and workers at a construction site were driving in piles for the new customs building. The sun was merciless; Nina twiddled a big Chinese umbrella on her shoulder.

  “Hello,” she heard a woman’s voice behind her.

  Binbin wasn’t pretty by European standards, but the Chinese were throwing glances full of admiration towards her. Dockers were nudging each other, pointing at her. Binbin didn’t notice any of that. She wore a green dress with a band- collar fastened to the side. It looked like a traditional Chinese gown, but was made close-fitting in the European style. Her face was round with two black locks of hair arranged into swirls on her cheeks.

  Nina didn’t know whether she should stretch her hand or not. Maybe it’s not accepted? Aulman said the Chinese can’t stand the touch of foreign people.

  “Maybe we could go to the park and discuss our business?” Nina offered.

  Binbin looked at her in shock. “Don’t you know? Dogs and Chinese are not allowed in the Public Garden.”

  2.

  When Binbin turned four, her mother told her, “It’s time for you to grow up.”

  That morning, the women’s quarters were full of hustle and bustle as before some celebration. Maids looked at Binbin, smiling and saying, she’ll be a famous beauty. “You will marry a worthy man with lots of money and give birth to many sons, continuing the family line.”

  Binbin sat on a stone near a pond, throwing the leftovers of her rice cake to big-eyed carps. Her wet nurse held an umbrella above her, shading her little cheeks from the wretched sun.

  “It’s time,” Mother said, appearing on the door step.

  “Why’s it so dark?” asked Binbin as her wet nurse brought her inside. “All the windows are draped.” “Because that’s how it should be.”

  They went upstairs where a lot of women were gathered: Mother, her relatives and the servants. They combed Binbin’s hair, then put her on a high table and took off her shoes. An unfamiliar woman started stroking and kneading her feet. Mother was watching with her hands folded on her beautiful fat tummy. Again she said, “It’s time.”

  Suddenly the woman bent Binbin’s foot so tight that all little toes except the big one were almost touching the heel. She quickly bound it with a long ribbon.

  “Stop it!” screamed Binbin in pain. “Let me go! Let me go!”

  Strong hands held her, while she lay pinned, spread-eagle on a table.

  “Mommy! Help! Mommy!”

  Mother
was watching, smiling. “It’s okay, you need to hold for a little while. Or no one will marry you. The other foot now.”

  “Da-d-d-y-y!!!”

  The woman grabbed her other foot. The doors flew open and her father strode in, dressed in his silk robe. His face was red with rage as he roared, “Stop it now!”

  He shoved the unknown woman away and tore Binbin from the menacing hands.

  “Daddy, take me away! Take me away!” she cried.

  The women squealed and wailed as Father tore the long bandages off Binbin’s foot. He threw them into Mother’s face. “Savages!”

  Father took Binbin to his quarters and for a long time carried her in his hands, rocking her to sleep and whispering the tale about the Jade Emperor who defeated powerful demons and became the ruler of the Sky and the Earth.

  At night, when Mother came to Father’s room, Binbin heard her screeching: “You’ll ruin your daughter! If we don’t bind her feet now, it’ll be too late and for the rest of her life she’ll walk on fat, flat ugly paws like a tortoise!”

  Father motioned to Mother’s tiny feet, the golden lilies, and pointed at the stick she needed to walk with. “Is that the fate you want for Binbin?”

  “And what fate do you want for her? She’ll be a shame of the family: she’ll be an outcast!”

  Mother proved to be right. They had to pay a double fee to the matchmaker who would accept a big-footed girl as her customer. Binbin remembered how upset the woman was: “Look at her face, look at her white body and look at these horrible flaws in her feet!” Mother listened to her, wincing with shame. Binbin was a tree which wouldn’t bare good fruits.

  “No lice,” said the matchmaker after scrabbling in Binbin’s hair. “Open your mouth, love. All right, teeth are clean. Breasts are small and supple—they won’t grow out like a cow’s udder. Give me your hands.”

  The matchmaker examined Binbin’s palms for a long while.

  “What? What is said there?” Mother asked anxiously.

  The matchmaker sighed, heavily. “It’s difficult to marry such a girl. Too much yin—she won’t bear sons. But, we’ll see, maybe some honorable man who already has sons would agree to take her for her pretty looks?”

  “I curse the day I gave birth to you,” Mother said to Binbin as they left in their palanquin.

  Father told Binbin that in the olden days they didn’t bind women’s feet. At that time, women were doing great deeds like the girl-warrior Hua Mulan, who joined an army and defeated all her enemies. Later Binbin took her surname as a stage name. She read books and found out that in different countries girls could choose their husbands themselves. If they were smart, they would be respected and have a greater purpose in life than just producing sons. For a long time, Binbin hated her big feet: they were the reason

  Mother gave up on her. She was ready to endure pain, even to bind her feet herself to make them into golden lilies, but it was too late: her feet wouldn’t bend anymore.

  A pastor from St. Mary’s school said that it was impossible to earn the love of a person who wasn’t ready to let it into his soul. But God’s love was a totally different matter: His heart was always open and He loved his children regardless if they were Chinese or white, with big feet or with golden lilies.

  “Observance of a custom is not always a good thing,” the pastor preached. “Some customs are filled with cruelty and it’s a Christian’s task to amend them, to console the afflicted, enlighten the ignorant, and call for justice.”

  Binbin didn’t convert into Christianity, but she remembered the pastor’s words about the changing of cruel traditions. Before her film was out, Binbin was sure a story of a simple girl suffering from family tyranny wouldn’t be successful: this kind of story happened in every house. But she was mistaken. On screen, people saw themselves in the characters. Those who never felt sorry for others started to realize how horrible it was to be an object, an item with a beating heart. People wept, applauded and came outside with illuminated faces.

  “Unkindness is an inability to place oneself in someone else’s shoes,” Binbin would say during the meetings of literary societies. “From century to century, they taught us to observe customs, but they didn’t teach us to understand somebody else’s pain. And without understanding this, you cannot talk about an improvement of morals. Art is the only thing that will make a tyrant see the world through his victim’s eyes and start doubting his own righteousness.”

  Binbin wanted to shoot a new film herself—about a girl who was promised to a man from a neighboring village. He died, but his parents still demanded the bride join their family. The girl was wed with a commemoration plaque with the dead man’s name written on it. Till the end of her days she remained a widow of a person she’d never met.

  Binbin needed money. She asked all her friends to help, but cinema was an unreliable investment: today the film was a success, tomorrow a failure. Movie theater owners didn’t believe in profitable Chinese films. For them, Hollywood was the only dependable source of income, and even though Binbin’s first film was lucrative, this didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was beginner’s luck?

  Nina Kupina was a white woman who resembled the demon that Binbin’s wet nurse scared her with when she was a child—a light-eyed spirit with hair curling up like snakes. Nina couldn’t be trusted, but white people always had money. Besides, the idea of printing calendars with beautiful Chinese girls interested Binbin. A colorful calendar was the only decoration in a poor man’s house, and how many of those poor people lived in Shanghai?

  Artist Guo told Binbin that ten years ago somebody had already tried to sell calendars with Chinese ladies drawn to European standards, but it didn’t work out. Buyers were ashamed to even look at them. He didn’t believe in Nina Kupina’s project.

  “Times change,” Binbin disagreed. “For the first showing of my film, they had to entice people for free, promising to provide wet towels with ice during the heat of the day. Even when the Shen Bao newspaper wrote a good review, the first half of the film was still given for free. The projectionist used to stop the showing in the middle and the manager would announce that only those with tickets could see the remaining half. All the audience always wanted to watch till the end and paid us money. We had no reputation, no one had done anything like this before, but we tried and we succeeded.”

  Nina Kupina rented a small house for her office and art studio with an extension where she hoped to store the printed calendars. Binbin invited her friends, poor actresses like herself. Together with Nina, they started making outfits, deciding on the right clothes and make-up.

  As Guo worked on Binbin’s portrait, he remembered how, a long time ago, he had drawn miniature paintings on jewelry boxes that didn’t sell particularly well. Then he started making ads for pearl face cream and portraits of honorable gentlemen who wanted to furnish their homes in the European style. This business didn’t work out either, because he got involved with a prostitute from the House of Fairytale Dreams, a notorious enterprise with bedbugs. Rumors started to spread about his dishonesty and he lost his job and board. To make the ends meet, Guo did anything—from labels for faked aspirin to barber’s shop signs, and soon he stooped as low as selling himself to the Jesuits.

  Nina Kupina couldn’t stop admiring his work. “I can’t believe you taught yourself to paint like this just by looking at the European artists you love.”

  Binbin translated to Guo their mistress’s compliments.

  “Tell her that I only like dead European artists,” Guo grumbled in reply. He sympathized with the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and hated the white occupiers. After work, he went to the Zhabei District where young people gathered in a factory basement to learn the ancient martial art of wushu from an old monk. They believed that one day they would fight against the foreign devils.

  Nina asked her artists to hurry up. Calendar distributors usually gathered in Shanghai every November. They would get together in the Green Lotus T
ea House, examine the drafts and set prices based on sales figures from the previous year.

  Nina would come to the studio, look at the sketches and frown. “Binbin, you pose like you’re in a church. At least put your hands behind your head.”

  “It’s not a good idea,” Binbin disagreed. “If I do that, only drunk soldiers will buy your calendars. It’s very important to keep everything decent. If the pose is too vulgar, all will be lost.”

  “Hands behind head is vulgar?”

  “Of course. It’s an inviting gesture.”

  Nina sighed, “Okay, do what you think is best.”

  For the Mid-Autumn Festival Binbin brought her mooncakes with lotus seed paste filling. Nina looked at them apprehensively. “What are they?”

  “Tonight you should go outside, eat a cake and admire the full moon,” Binbin said. “It’s meant to be done with family, but you and I don’t have any family…”

  “I have a daughter.”

  Binbin couldn’t believe her mistress had adopted a Chinese girl.

  “Do you want to meet her?” asked Nina.

  That evening, Binbin visited Nina’s house. The streets were crowded; drums sounded as paper dragons with glistening scales writhed and wriggled, carried by young fellows. Children ran everywhere waving colorful lanterns on sticks.

  Binbin was amazed by Nina’s big mansion: she’d never been inside a European house before. A nanny, a tall Russian woman named Valentina, told Nina that the little girl was already asleep. Nina quietly opened the door to her child’s room and beckoned Binbin in whispering, “Come here.”

  Binbin looked into the cot—it was so strange seeing a Chinese child dressed up in a European nightgown!

  “What’s her name?”

  Nina answered with a tremor in her voice, so Binbin couldn’t hear what she said.

  “Kitty?”

  “Yes. Let it be Kitty.”

  Nina told the maid to take a couple of armchairs into the garden. The moon was hanging high above the city. Little bright lights moved over the tops of dark trees: the neighbors were sending paper lanterns with tiny candles into the night sky. Binbin explained to Nina that the flame heats the air inside the lanterns and they slowly fly up. It was a beautiful spectacle.