by Helen Zia
Standing outside his father’s study as his mother spoke into the phone, Benny gleaned that his grandfather had been in his home when the bombs fell—just two blocks from his house. Had the bombs fallen a few minutes later, Grandfather would have been walking to his favorite social club, right across from the worst carnage, where a few thousand people now lay maimed or killed. Grandfather was shaken and had suffered some minor bruises from falling debris but was otherwise unharmed. Benny’s father was on his way to the bomb site to assist with relief efforts.
When his mother got off the phone, she shared what she had heard with Amah, who had been minding the babies: The planes they had seen were part of China’s fledgling air force. The Chinese pilots had intended to surprise the Japanese fleet moored in the Huangpu River along the Bund by bombing the Idzumo, the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Somehow the Chinese pilots had miscalculated terribly, missing the ships and instead dropping their bombs on the International Settlement. “How unthinkable!” his mother exclaimed. The streets had been mobbed with thousands of refugees from the previous day’s battle, all seeking safety in the foreign concessions. The first two bombs blew up by Nanjing Road, between the Palace and Cathay Hotels on the Bund, where crowds of refugees had congregated and wealthy foreign shoppers scurried by. One hit the top floors of the Cathay Hotel. Another two bombs exploded over Avenue Edward VII and Tibet Road, just as a few thousand refugees were queuing up for food dispensed by a local charity. Nearly all those civilians must have perished.
Mother’s voice grew more indignant as she told them what she’d learned. Not even the Japanese had dared to harm Shanghai’s protected foreign concessions. And now this—from their own Chinese pilots! Mother and Amah shook their heads, sputtering their dismay and disbelief. “How can such an army overcome the Japanese?” they repeated. The Pans’ superstitious cook banged the pots in disgust as she readied the evening meal, all the while clucking, “Bad omen for Chinese people. Very bad.”
* * *
—
AFTER IT BECAME CLEAR that the bombing sortie was over, Benny quietly made his way back up to the roof. Looking over the tops of buildings in the French Concession toward the Bund, he traced the tall smoke trails down to the Great World in the vicinity of Grandfather’s mansion. That was Benny’s first home, where his father and mother had lived after they were married. That was where he was born and had learned to walk and talk, where he would sit on Grandfather’s lap and peer out the upstairs windows to watch crowds gather for the horse races at the British-run Shanghai Race Club. He still spent his summers there. Benny wanted to rush to his grandfather’s side after the news of his close call, but his mother said that it was too dangerous; they would have to wait until the wreckage was cleared.
Benny knew he was his grandfather’s favorite—and with good reason. After all, he was the first male born of his generation: the first great-grandson, first grandson, and Number One Son. It was an exalted position in any extended Chinese family. Benny’s formal Chinese name, Yongyi Pan, meant longevity and good fortune. It would be recorded in the Pan family’s book of names, where all Pan males for more than a hundred generations were listed. His sisters wouldn’t be named in the book—no females were. Benny’s formal name would dominate his entire generation, because every Pan boy born after him would have to use the “yong” character from his name in their names. His privileged position also came with great responsibility: The Number One Son was expected to care for his ancestors and elders and to maintain the family’s traditions and honor.
Just beyond the columns of smoke from the Cathay Hotel was the old Cantonese section of the city, north of the Bund in Hongkou. The original Pan family compound had been built there by Benny’s great-grandfather, off Haining Road, after he grew wealthy in Shanghai’s boom times in the late 1800s. Hongkou sat on the northern banks of the Suzhou Creek and Huangpu River, and many Cantonese such as his great-grandfather had settled there.
From his earliest memory, Benny had always greeted the first day of the Lunar New Year with a visit to that Pan family compound to pay his respects to his ancestors. His great-grandfather had passed away long before he was born, but Great-Grandmother was still living. She had been in her nineties when Benny was born and reigned as the Pan family matriarch. It was Great-Grandmother who had given him his dragon nickname, Long-Long. But he was hardly brave in her presence. As a toddler, he had been required to approach his wizened great-grandmother to show his respect. Dressed in ceremonial silk robes, young Benny had refused to move toward her until his father gave him a stern push. Upon reaching her throne-like chair, he had to prostrate himself on the cool parquet floor, just as his father and other elder males had, bowing three times at the small embroidered silk slippers covering her tiny bound feet. When Great-Grandmother beckoned him to come closer, he stared at her fingernails—so long that they curled into spiral claws. She’d look him over carefully and pat his head, nails dangerously near his face. When she dismissed him, after handing over a lucky red envelope containing a New Year’s gift of money, Benny would run back to his father in relief.
Benny had no such fears of his adoring grandfather. They loved to stroll through Grandfather’s garden together, the boy’s little hands clasped behind his back just like the old man’s. His grandfather would point out his favorite lotus blossoms and new buds on the magnolia trees. He taught Long-Long to recite classic Tang dynasty poems. They rode together in his old but pristine Packard with a white-gloved chauffeur behind the wheel. Sometimes they stopped at the Public Garden across from the British consulate, in the triangle bordered by the narrow and meandering Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River. Grandfather would tell Benny about the infamous sign that was long gone but had become a legend that every Chinese knew and could not forget: “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed.” Some foreigners claimed that there had never been such a sign, but they couldn’t deny that Chinese had been barred from that park and many other places. It wasn’t until 1929, the year after Benny was born, that the Nationalist government had succeeded in forcing the British and French to allow Chinese in the parks.
Sitting on a once-forbidden bench, Benny and his grandfather studied the junks, barges, and sampans weaving between the huge oceangoing ships. With a certain fondness, Grandfather would regularly point out the docks and godowns—warehouses—of Jardine Matheson, the generous employer of three generations of Pans—Great-Grandfather, Grandfather, and Big Uncle, Benny’s father’s elder brother. They often ended their excursions at the immaculate grounds of Le Cercle Sportif Français, the elegant French country club, where Grandfather would sip a cup of tea while Benny devoured a dish of Hazelwood ice cream.
When Grandfather grew tired, they’d return to the big house on Tibet Road to rest. Benny spent many contented hours lying next to his grandfather on the hard divan in his cool, darkened smoking room. The old man would suck on his opium pipe and regale his eldest grandson with family lore. By the time Benny was old enough to attend school, he’d heard the tale of his great-grandfather Pan’s arrival in Shanghai so many times that he could recite his grandfather’s rendition of the story by heart:
Nearly one hundred years ago, the rulers of China’s great civilization were weak and corrupt. The long-nosed foreign devils came in with their gunboats and forced the emperor to allow them to conduct trade in Shanghai and other cities that had previously been closed to the foreigners. Enterprising young men from all over China came to find work in these port cities. The hardest working of all came from faraway Guangdong Province in the south, where drought and famine drove them out in search of a livelihood. My father, your great-grandfather, was one of those young Cantonese. He stowed away on a cargo ship headed to Shanghai with no more than a cloth bag and the thin rags on his back. An umbrella protected him against ruffians more than rain. It was a terrible journey of twelve hundred miles. Lesser men didn’t survive, but your great-grandfather Pan was strong and sma
rt. Cantonese like him already knew the ways of the pale-faced Anglos and could even speak some English. In Shanghai, Great-Grandfather sought out the number one English trading company: Jardine Matheson. He was hired to work as a coolie, doing backbreaking labor on their docks. But his clever mind never rested. He learned more skills and improved his English. Gradually, he rose to become one of the few Chinese that Jardine Matheson entrusted with the title of comprador—the highest position a Chinese could reach under the foreign taipans. It fell on the compradors to negotiate with Chinese government officials and manage the Chinese workers. The Chinese compradors were paid well, though they were always considered beneath the foreigners. Nevertheless, thanks to your great-grandfather Pan’s intelligence, courage, and industry, the Pan family has prospered in Shanghai.
His grandfather would end his reminiscences by saying,“You must never forget our family’s humble beginnings. When you drink the water, you must remember the spring.”
Even after Benny’s parents moved out of his grandfather’s home, the boy often stayed there overnight. His visits were happy, magical times, spent in the sweet-perfumed haze of the opium pipe, enriched by Grandfather’s tales. Sometimes Grandfather quizzed him on the lessons of those stories. Benny liked to please him by recounting his lessons smartly: honor his ancestors; bring respect to the Pan family name; strive to improve himself. Most of all, remember the sacrifices of Great-Grandfather, the stowaway who brought good luck and prosperity to subsequent generations of Pans.
Young Benny didn’t always understand his grandfather’s languid ruminations. Sometimes after a few opium pipes, Grandfather murmured his disappointment in his second son, Benny’s father. Although Pan Zhijie hadn’t followed the family trajectory to become a comprador, he had started out on a business track by studying accounting at St. John’s University, an American missionary school that taught classes in English and imbued its Chinese students with the ways of the Western elite. Benny was also expected to go there one day. But in 1925, his father’s last year of college, he had veered off course by taking part in national uprisings known as the May Thirtieth Movement, named for the date that student demonstrators were shot and killed by the British-run police force in the International Settlement. Inflamed with patriotic fervor, students all over China had risen up against foreigners, the “imperialists” who stole the wealth of China while crushing the Chinese people. Tensions were so high that missionaries and other foreigners feared for their lives in a possible reprise of earlier violent rebellions.
A confident six-year-old Benny Pan (center) poses with sisters (left to right) Annie, Doreen, and Cecilia.
As student protestors at St. John’s University, Benny’s father and others demanded that the Chinese flag be raised alongside the Stars and Stripes as a show of equal respect. And it was Benny’s father, the Boy Scout vice-master in charge of raising the American flag over the campus, who presented the demand to the university president. Benny’s grandfather always winced at this recollection. When the Episcopal missionary refused the students’ demands, hundreds at St. John’s rebelled and boycotted classes, Pan Zhijie among them, almost shuttering the school permanently. The university survived, but Benny’s father was changed. After he left St. John’s, he refused to work for the foreign company where his grandfather, father, and elder brother had become compradors. Instead, he set up his own accounting practice with an office in Grandfather’s big house. Benny and his elder sister, Annie, were born there.
In his opium haze, Grandfather would bridle at the choices made by his second son. “Your father never complained about the prosperity our Pan family achieved from the foreign imperialists,” he’d say to Benny. “If he so disliked the foreign taipans, why does he now work with the British police? To make the police more Chinese? Or to become more like the foreigners?” Benny would wait silently for the answers that never came to his grandfather’s rhetorical questions. The old man’s eyelids would inevitably flicker from such weighty thoughts as he nodded off to sleep. But not before he advised his grandson: “Do not follow your father’s path. Police and politics will only lead to trouble.”
Benny would listen patiently to the mumbled words that were warmed by his grandfather’s affection for him. He paid no mind to the opium-laced criticisms of his father, for Benny was most proud of his father’s service in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. His father had risen to a position of leadership of the all-Chinese “C” Company of the Volunteers, which, along with more than a dozen foreign companies, provided critical backup to the British police. From the time he was a small boy, Benny watched, mesmerized, as his father transformed from an accountant in a Western business suit into a Shanghai Volunteer corpsman, with shiny brass buttons on his uniform and spit-polished leather boots. His father’s broad shoulders and muscular arms, developed from his years as a wushu-style martial arts champion, bulged through his uniform. Most impressive to Benny was the police-issue Colt .45 cradled in a fine-grained leather holster on his father’s belt.
Each day after work and every weekend, his father left their house in his starched uniform, looking to Benny like a hero. Other boys might have fathers who were rich industrialists or compradors like his grandfather, great-grandfather, and uncle, but his father protected the International Settlement. On occasion, Benny accompanied him on his evening rounds. Shop owners in western suits, mobsters in long silk gowns, street vendors, and labor-gang bosses all greeted his father with respect. Even the British officers of the Shanghai Municipal Police exchanged pleasantries with his father, who could converse with the foreign bobbies in the perfect English he’d honed at St. John’s.
Once, on his father’s rounds, a merchant placed a fat envelope on his shop’s counter. Benny saw his father pick it up and casually tuck it into his uniform jacket without looking inside. “A small appreciation in return for a favor,” his father told him. “The merchant will lose face if I don’t accept. It’s the Shanghai way.”
Benny thought nothing of it, especially when his father’s colleagues patted him on the head and crooned, “Listen to your old man. If you’re lucky, you’ll be a big shot like him one day.”
* * *
—
THAT NIGHT, SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, Pan Zhijie returned home much later than usual, missing dinner. Bounding down the stairs, Benny came to a sudden halt at the sight of his father: His impeccable uniform was streaked with dark bloodstains, from his khaki epaulets to his fine leather boots. His eyes were cold and hard, a look Benny hadn’t known before. A servant helped him out of his stiff, reeking clothes and into a robe. As a hot bath was prepared for him, his father told Benny’s mother of the horror on Avenue Edward VII near the racecourse. “The center of Shanghai is a sea of human blood, overflowing the gutters.”
Benny’s father had spent hours sifting through the rubble for survivors. The rumors that thousands of people had been killed or injured near the racetrack were all too true. The first bomb had blown open a huge crater, followed by another that had exploded in the air just above ground level. Limbs, heads, and other body parts had flown in all directions. The chauffeur-driven cars of foreigners had exploded, incinerating their passengers. On Nanjing Road by the Bund, in an intersection packed with wealthy hotel guests as well as refugees from the fighting, the blast was so strong that the body of a boy no older than Benny was flattened high against the building’s side, a ghastly sight.
To Benny’s ear, his father’s voice seemed flat, without emotion, as he recounted the details of the bombings. Two of the inexperienced Chinese pilots, just out of American Claire Chennault’s Central Aviation School, had been hit by Japanese antiaircraft fire and tried to drop their payloads on the racetrack, while the other fliers attempted to bomb the Idzumo. They had all failed, with terrible results. The clock at the Cathay Hotel had stopped at 4:27 P.M., the time the first bombs struck.
“The war has begun,” Benny’s father said. “If this is the be
st our Chinese forces can do, we are surely lost.”
His mother conveyed what she had heard from her friends. “Some people say that Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government are planning to leave Nanjing, Shanghai, and the coastal provinces for the interior of China. Should we think about moving inland too?” she asked.
“Japan’s fight is with China, not Europe or America,” his father replied. “Better to take our chances here and stay in the concessions with the foreigners.”
“What if your company in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps is ordered to fight against the Japanese? You’re too old to be a soldier,” his mother fretted.
“Japanese bombs or Chinese bombs, best to get out of the way. I will not become cannon fodder for a losing cause.”
His father glanced in Benny’s direction and suddenly seemed to notice him. “This is grown-up talk, Son. Go to bed. Everything will be back to normal soon.”
Benny climbed back up to the third floor where all the children stayed. He quickly fell asleep, comforted by his father’s words.
