by Alexa Kang
“I’d stay home if I can cheer you up. I know everyone spoils me. I don’t actually deserve it. I’m not book smart like you or Jie. You’re out there, fighting your way into the world. Jie’s holding her own among all the British controlling this city. I don’t know how to do anything.”
“Don’t say that. Everyone knows you’re the most beautiful girl in all of Shanghai.”
Mei Mei smiled without owning up to the one trait for which everyone admired her. “Beauty fades. It doesn’t last. Anyway, it can’t save the world or bring peace.” She came closer to him. “So I try my best to make other people happy. Especially Ma. She gets very lonely. Ba works all the time. She doesn’t understand all the changes around her and she can’t keep up with everything you and Jie know. I do what I can to keep her company.”
“You’re a good daughter.” He watched her under the moonlight. “And a good sister,” he added. When did little Mei Mei become so mature, so considerate of everyone else? “You’ve grown up.”
“And one day, I’ll be a good wife. Like I said, I don’t excel at anything. I can only do my part with what I can give.” She put her hands in her pockets and bent her head. “I know you don’t like Zi-Hong.”
“I never said that.”
“You don’t have to. I can tell. But you know, I really like him. I know he feels the same way about me. He doesn’t show it to the world, but to him, I’m the most important thing in his life. He cares very much about me. He would do anything for me, and I’d do anything for him too. We Chinese don’t talk about love, but I’m sure my feelings for him are what the Westerners call love.”
“Mei Mei.”
“Ge, what I mean to say is, if someone tries to separate us, I’d never let them. When you love somebody, you can’t help yourself. Nothing in the world can replace that feeling. It is beautiful. When you have love, life has real meaning. It doesn’t matter if other people think the one who you love is not the ideal person. Jie doesn’t understand that. She’s never been in love.” She put her hand on his arm. “I think if you love Eden, you should go to her.”
“What? I—”
“Don’t deny it anymore. You’re in love with her. You’re different when she’s around. Happier. I think she likes you too. But you should find that out for yourself.”
“You heard what Ma said.”
“Yes. She’ll be disappointed. But look around. The world’s changing so fast. None of us today know what will happen tomorrow. We might as well grasp love when it comes to us. If we lose it, we might never find it again.”
Clark put his hand on hers. How could he have thought? Of all people, his little sister was the one who understood. Mei Mei cleared away all his confusion.
“If she feels the same way about you, then I’m sure, no one but you can make her happy too.”
Was that right? For all that stood in the way against them, could he be the one who would make Eden truly happy?
“It’s New Year’s Eve. Why don’t you go find her and show her what Chinese New Year’s Eve is like?”
Show her Chinese New Year. Show her how happy they could be.
“Go,” Mei Mei urged him. “It’s not too late yet.”
He looked at the sky, and checked his watch. Nine thirty. More than two hours until midnight. He gave his sister’s hand a light squeeze. “I’ll go.”
Mei Mei waved goodbye and watched him go. Her convincing smile gave him an exhilarating jolt of encouragement.
His mind opened, Clark raced to Eden’s home. Passing through streets filled with people and fireworks going off from every sidewalk, all he could think of was how much he wanted to see her face. He didn’t know if she’d be there. If she wasn’t, he’d wait. He’d wait for her all night. He’d wait as long as he had to until he could see her.
She might think he’d gone mad. If so, then mad he was. Unless she decided otherwise, nothing would stop him from starting off the new year with her.
In front of her building, a group of children lit a line of firecrackers on the ground and ran off in glee. Happy pedestrians swarmed past, some carrying home bouquets of orchids, peonies, and peach blossoms in hopes of inviting renewal and growth. Others made their way to the temples with baskets full of incense, red candles, and offerings of rice wine, meat, and sweets. The atmosphere of joy swelled all around, leaving no one untouched, including him.
At the apartment where the Levines lived, Clark rang the doorbell. Mrs. Levine opened the door.
“Happy New Year, Mrs. Levine,” he said before she greeted him.
“Clark! Happy New Year. What are you doing here? It’s almost ten thirty.”
“Is Eden home?”
Eden peeked out from behind. “I’m here.”
“Eden.” No words could express the elation he felt to find her home. “I know it’s late. But it’s Chinese New Year. Would you come with me? Please? I want to show you something.”
Eden looked at her mother. From the hallway, he could see Dr. Levine stretching his neck to see what was happening at the door.
“It’s Chinese New Year. You have to come out and see how we celebrate,” Clark said. “I promise you won’t want to miss this.”
Looking perplexed, Eden said, “All right. Let me put on my coat and my shoes.” She smiled at him and returned inside. Clark slid his hands inside his coat, his nervous heart pumping as he waited.
With a puzzled look on her face, Mrs. Levine watched the two of them. He smiled and tried not to appear too anxious in case it made her worried.
“Is it safe outside?” Mrs. Levine asked. She gazed cautiously toward her apartment window. “I’ve never seen so many fireworks.”
“Yes, ma’am. People are celebrating, but I assure you it’s safe. I think Eden will really enjoy seeing what Chinese New Year’s Eve is like.”
Eden reentered into the living room with Isaac behind her. He took one look at Clark but didn’t greet him. “Where are you off to?” he asked Eden. “It’s late. It’s loud and rowdy outside. I wouldn’t go out if I were you.”
“I’ll be fine.” She wrapped her scarf around her neck. “Clark won’t take me anywhere dangerous.” She put on her gloves and came to the door.
“I’ll bring her home safe. I promise,” he said to Mrs. Levine.
“You better,” Mrs. Levine teased and closed the door.
Alone with Eden in the hallway, Clark said, “Thanks for coming out.”
“You said I won’t want to miss this, right?” She raised her head and met his gaze. Her brown eyes were as deep and soulful as the first time he saw her.
Outside, Clark could barely hold his excitement as he waved down a taxi in the busy New Year’s Eve traffic.
“Where are we going?” Eden asked with her hands over her ears.
“The Old City. The Yu Garden. We’ll welcome the new year from there.”
“What?” she shouted. Loud booms exploded all around them. Soon, all they would hear would be cracks and explosions of fireworks as flurries of their red debris piled up and covered the streets.
A taxi stopped and he opened the door. “Come on! I bet you’ve never seen anything like this.”
“No. I haven’t.” She climbed inside.
The taxi took them to the famous garden which had seen the rise and fall of all those who had ruled this city since the Ming Dynasty days. Hundreds of red lanterns, round with gold trim and tassels, illuminated the way as masses of people shuffled through the many lanes leading to the main garden grounds.
“This way.” Clark tapped Eden lightly on the back toward one of the garden’s entrances. His own happiness surged as he watched her follow in awe the revelers crowding stall after stall selling sweet rice cakes, powder-sugared lotus seeds, caramel peanut brittle, glazed kumquats, and deep-fried sesame seed balls, as well as black and red melon seeds, coconut flakes, and dried peanuts. Pots of mandarin orange trees with red money envelopes hanging on their branches stood on the counter of every store where vendors peddled stu
ffed toys and figurines, all made in the images of oxen and cows.
Eden pulled Clark by the arm. “I didn’t know so many people would be out here!”
“There’s more. Look. Over there.” He pointed to a shop owner lighting ropes of red and gold firecrackers hung before the store entrance. The flame set off rapid bursts of crackles and pops that went on and on. Flying sparks ignited and ripped upward from the ropes’ tails, blazing into dancing snaps of brilliant lights.
Overwhelmed by the earsplitting chorus of explosions, Eden cried out.
“Are you okay?” Clark asked.
“Yes!” She broke into an exhilarated laughter as smoke carried the festive fumes through the air, enshrouding them in the drifts of excitement flooding through the garden.
“Let’s go this way.” He pushed past the people and led her toward the garden’s grand pavilion, to the corridor over the pond where the shine of lanterns above reflected brightly off the surface of the water below.
He waved for her to come closer to the rail. “You know why this place is called the Yu Garden?”
“No.”
“It’s a play on words. ‘Yu,’ as written, means to prepare. But it’s also pronounced the same as another word, ‘yu,’ meaning happiness. To most people, this is the Garden of Happiness.”
“And you brought me here to wish for happiness for the year to come?” she asked, her voice amused and confused.
“Yes. I want the year to start off fresh. Anew. Happy.”
She gazed at him. He felt so foolish. Was that all he could say?
He wanted her to know that right now, this moment, he wanted to be with her. He wanted to shed and leave behind all that had held him back this past year, and enter the new year with her.
Until now, everyone had always thought he would marry the one his parents had chosen for him. He had never gone after a girl before. Where to begin?
Without words, they watched the reflections of lights waver in the water. Beneath the noise, he said, “I broke off my engagement.”
Startled, she turned toward him.
“My engagement was something my parents arranged before I was born. It’s not something I ever wanted. When the new year begins, I won’t let anyone or anything decide who I should live my life with. Not my family, not my race, not society. Only me. I learned that from you. To stay true to myself, no matter what everyone else thinks. I want you to know that.”
For a long while, they stared at each other. Midnight was approaching. With the deafening pops and cracks now raging around them, he couldn’t tell her anything else, and there was so much more he wanted to say to her.
But perhaps, she already understood. Lowering her eyes, she looked away. A sweet tender smile came to her face.
To begin anew. This time, he wanted to do things right. He moved closer to her. “In two weeks, the American Commerce Alliance will be hosting its annual Winter Ball. If you’re free, would you come as my guest?”
Her eyes brightened up. Brightening up his life.
“Yes. I’d like that very much.”
A long whistle shot into the sky. Another one followed. And another one, over each other and above the thunderous booms that followed. Their noises fused until they filled every inch of space. Magnificent flames flared high above like a starburst, sending a thousand streams of red, yellow, and green flashing across the heavens.
On the ground, the sounds of fireworks soon gave way to the growing booms of drums and jouncy clangs of cymbals and gongs. A vibrantly painted serpentine dragon emerged, its head and sinewy body held up by a long line of acrobats carrying poles. In harmony, the acrobats wielded the poles, moving the creature to emulate a dragon weaving and spiraling through the clouds.
Beside the dragon, two lions trotted out. Each maneuvered by a martial artist working the head and another one working the tail, they hopped and pranced around the lion like vigorous pups. They lifted and wagged their large, colorful heads, all the while batting their eyelids and flapping their mouths. Their bodies, made of a layer of fabric trimmed full of fur, wiggled left and right. A performer in a giant grinning monk mask walked alongside them. Waving a palm fan, he baited the dragons to jump, crouch, and pounce.
“What are they doing?” Eden asked in amazement.
“It’s the lion and dragon dance,” Clark said behind her. “They’re bringing us prosperity and good luck.”
Closer and closer, the lion and dragons approached.
The new year had arrived.
A new page had begun. This time, the words on the page would be all his own.
— To be continued.
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Coming Soon: Shanghai Dreams
Book Two of the Shanghai Story Trilogy
Target Release Date: September 20, 2018
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Afterword
If you subscribe to my mailing list, you might remember that I had shared with you my reservations about writing Shanghai Story. For genre fiction, authors like me are under a lot of pressure to "write to the market." Conventional wisdom tells us not to diverge from what has proven to sell, and sales are the primary indication of what readers want.
Shanghai Story is the opposite of writing to the market. For one thing, WWII fiction tends to be stories set in Europe and the West. A search on Amazon brought up very few English novels set in China or Asia. I don’t know whether this is because readers' interest in WWII stories set in China and Asia is low, or whether writers find it too daunting to introduce the complicated history of WWII in the East to an English reading audience. Perhaps it is a bit of both. The Allies did not send as many soldiers to East Asia. Fewer readers today have a personal connection to the history of that part of the world through relatives who had fought in the war.
For authors, records of the war in China are harder to find. The Chinese government and military during WWII lacked the technology and resources to fully document the war the way the Western Allies did. A lot of records and primary sources that did exist were lost. Also, the war was fought and won by the Chinese Nationalist Party. When the Communist Party took power in the late 1940s, they had little interest in honoring the victory of their political opponent, let alone preserving and archiving information about it. Suppression of creative writing during the Cultural Revolution under Mao Ze Dong and Communist censorship lasting till even today are also the reasons why WWII fiction written in Chinese, too, is rare. With less information available, authors might find it tough to write a convincing story.
Regardless of reasons, writing Shanghai Story presented a risk because WWII fiction set in China is an untested market, and that gave me doubts.
Another risk I have taken on is having an Asian male protagonist. Looking at the English book market today other than foreign translated books, an Asian male main character is rare. Except in the genre of wuxia martial arts fantasies and graphic novels, the choice of a male main character is not a mainstream choice. Of the few English novels I found which are set in China during WWII, the Chinese protagonists are generally female. If writing to the market is the key to success, then for me, having an Asian male as the main character is probably a novelist’s equivalent to box office poison.
As if these risks aren’t enough, Shanghai Story has a romance subplot between Clark and Eden, who is Jewish. In all medium of entertainment, we don’t typically see the romantic pairing of an Asian man with a white woman. Those who find this problematic can lament the injustice of it all and call for diversity in fiction. For me, the issues are not about fair representation. I can only write what inspires my imagination at the moment. I cannot write a diverse character, or any character, only for the sake of writing one. I also have concerns about cost. In choosing an Asian male character, I am stepping into uncharted territory, and possibly a cold market. Producing a novel—a trilogy—is expensive. Writing a novel demands a lot of my time, energy, and emotional investment. G
rappling with the history of WWII China is as daunting a task for me as it would be for any other author. I had to decide whether writing Shanghai Story was a good idea at all.
In the end, Clark won. His character slowly grew in my head. As I got to know him, I liked him more and more. I came to love him as much as I love Anthony Ardley and Jesse Garland in Rose of Anzio, and Ed Ferris in Eternal Flame. Like all the male protagonists in my previous stories, he demanded that his story be told.
Once I made the decision, it was clear to me that Shanghai Story would have to be grand in scope. When I searched for WWII novels set in China, what I found were stories contained within the main characters’ personal hardships. I wanted to write something different than that. I love writing big, epic sagas. I wanted to bring the Shanghai Story to a wider audience who are interested in WWII history, not just readers who enjoy books involving a foreign culture. I didn’t want to shy away from tackling the complexity of politics, societal changes, battles, and warfare. It wasn’t easy. At one point, I sent out my own S.O.S to my editor. I was at lost how I could ever present the humungous mess of Chinese history during this era in a digestible form through fiction. How do I show readers the growing civil war in China, the corruption within the KMT, the festering threat of a Japanese invasion, the rivalries among the different nations within Shanghai, the clashes of traditions against modernity and progress, and the changes of social mores and attitudes between generations? To be honest, even now, I still don’t know how it all finally came together. I’m only glad and relieved that it did.
Eden came to me differently than Clark as a main character. Most people do not know that Shanghai had a large Jewish population before the Communist takeover. I was very surprised myself when I first learned about it. The Jews initially settled in Shanghai in the mid-1800s. At that time, most of them had come from Britain or the Middle East. They were very successful businessmen and were instrumental in making Shanghai into a cosmopolitan city. Later on, more Jews entered the city due to the Russian pogrom. When the Nazis took power in Germany, Jewish refugees arrived in droves because China did not have a visa requirement or an immigration quota. Many of them came to Shanghai to join the city's close-knit Jewish community. With Shanghai Story, I wanted very much to share this piece of history with my readers. I hope this trilogy will offer readers interested in the Jewish experience during WWII a satisfying glimpse of what life was like for Jews in Shanghai at that time.
