Last Boat Out of Shanghai

by Helen Zia

  As Ho’s education progressed, he became aware of the limitations of his school. A vocational school, he found, was intended to teach him a trade, not to prepare him for college. Neither he, nor his mother, nor the relative who had advised her to send him there had understood that. Ho thirsted for more scientific studies, but he continued without complaint, for he knew his mother had already paid dearly for his tuition. He was determined to learn everything the school could teach him about applied math and sciences, machine tooling, and mechanical devices.

  During his first year at the school, Ho tried to focus on his studies. His mother was only sixty miles away, but with the occupation of Shanghai and the horror of Nanjing, marauding Japanese troops were everywhere. Ho and his mother didn’t dare travel to see each other.

  Ho had promised to mind Big Sister Wanyu, and he did so without reservation, for she watched over and protected him. She warned him about many things, telling him to stay away from the bad boys who hopped onto the trolleys and buses, evading the fare to go to unfamiliar and possibly dangerous parts of Shanghai. To keep his promise, Ho resisted the urge to climb onto the double-decker buses that had been outfitted with coal-burning engines at their back ends—since the Japanese occupiers had taken the available gasoline for their soldiers. The buses filled the air with black smoke as they lurched forward. Ho hadn’t gone back to see the Bund since the day his boat had landed in Shanghai. Whenever he was tempted by a diversion, he forced himself to remember his singular purpose for being in the city. In short order, Ho rose to the head of his class, just as he had in Changshu.

  As the Japanese occupation of Shanghai dragged on, the enemy soldiers grew bolder and more aggressive toward the foreign concessions. Their special extraterritorial status turned the safe havens into magnets for agents, spies, and assassins of every nationality and political ideology. Japanese secret police, German Nazi agents, British Secret Intelligence Service/MI6, American military intelligence, and others kept tabs on one another while waging their own clandestine intrigues. The streets of Shanghai turned into arenas of terrorist violence between pro-Nationalist loyalists versus the Japanese invaders and their collaborators. Communists, who were hunted by all, stayed in the deep underground.

  In the early weeks of 1940, during Ho’s third year of secondary school, a local newspaper editor was decapitated, and his head was stuck on a lamppost in the French Concession. The victim had worked for Shen Bao, the most prominent Chinese-language newspaper in Shanghai, well known for its anti-Japanese stance. Wanyu told Ho to stay away from that part of the French Concession. When it was rumored that agents from Shanghai’s secret police were collaborating with the Japanese and based at 76 Jessfield Road, that area became off-limits as well. So did the border with the Chinese section a few blocks to the north that was barricaded with barbed wire and sandbags, patrolled by Japanese sentries armed with rifles and bayonets.

  Sequestered though he was, it was still hard for Ho to ignore the growing tensions all around him. Japanese soldiers couldn’t directly impose their military presence on the International Settlement since Japan wasn’t at war with Britain or the United States. But they had other ways of applying pressure. Chinese, rich or poor, had to bow down like slaves to the enemy whenever they crossed the soldiers’ paths—or face savage beatings. Food and fuel were increasingly hard to come by, especially with the Japanese military seizing crops and matériel to use in its war against China. The Japanese commanded Chinese to scavenge for scrap metal, from the smallest screws to the radiators and pipes of fine mansions, to be turned over to the occupiers. The scrap would be smelted into bombs and bullets to kill Chinese. The British, American, and French authorities, no match for the Japanese military that surrounded them, agreed to aid Japan by apprehending and handing over Chinese resisters.

  Ho did his best to block out the terror around him. He believed that he could contribute something despite the war and destruction. Maybe he’d be able to attend college one day. After dinner each evening, he went to his attic room and studied at a small table under the dim lightbulb suspended from the ceiling. Chiang, Hirohito, Mao—none of the armies or generals mattered to him. His only wish was to get through these harsh times with as little harm to his family as possible.

  Yet for all of his care to keep a wide berth from anything remotely dangerous, the devastation and turmoil were in the very air he breathed, ready to envelop him, his family, and all of China.

  OUTSIDE SUZHOU, LATE 1937

  At the rough wooden door of a one-room farmer’s cottage, a woman was speaking to an unexpected visitor. Hiding behind the woman, clinging to her long skirt, a small girl named Bing tried, unsuccessfully, to mute her squeal of surprise and delight. The visitor, a young man dressed in Western-style shirt and pants, had come to the small village outside of Suzhou to get her, to take her to Shanghai. Madame Hsu had sent for her!

  Bing hadn’t known happiness for so long that she had forgotten how buoyant she could feel. Her joy was mixed with relief: When the Japanese army seemed certain to turn their home in Suzhou into another battlefield, Mama Hsu, whom Bing called “Mama” even though she was not her mother, had sent her from the city with the Hsus’ maid to stay in this farming village, the servant’s hometown. Mama had said that Bing would be safer there and she’d send for her when the danger subsided. But these few months in the village had been interminable. It already seemed ages ago that everyone in Suzhou had turned frantic overnight as it became clear that the Japanese soldiers would head toward the capital of Nanjing—with their city directly in the army’s path. Bing had fretted constantly that Mama wouldn’t send for her. What if Mama had already been caught by the Japanese? What if Mama couldn’t reach her?

  Now she could forget her worries. The young man, a relative of Mama’s, was going to college in Shanghai, where Mama had found a place to take refuge among the foreigners. The college student said it was safer there now that the worst of the fighting was over. Bing was overjoyed that she hadn’t been left behind—again.

  * * *

  —

  THE HOURS-LONG TRAIN RIDE brought Bing to the big city of Shanghai for the first time, but all she could see from her seat was miles of scorched earth and piles of smoking rubble. The farm people were nowhere to be seen, though the young man assured her that the fighting was over. The small towns and hamlets the girl observed from her window were ruined and empty. Fierce-looking Japanese soldiers were everywhere, gruffly patrolling the railway cars and stations, poking and prodding anyone who didn’t move fast enough to obey their shouted commands.

  When they reached Shanghai North railway station, Bing stood close to the college boy, afraid that the fast-walking big-city people might mow her down. They took a pedicab past the tallest buildings she had ever seen, through a busy shopping area with foreign-looking three- and four-story residences that the student said was in the English section of the city. What a thrill to see Mama waiting for her in front of one of those big houses, smiling warmly at her. But in the formal way of Chinese families, Mama didn’t reach out to hug Bing in greeting. She simply took Bing’s hand and led her up two flights of stairs and into the room she had managed to rent with two women friends from Suzhou.

  Inside, Mama’s friends greeted Bing. Happily, she recognized them both. Auntie Fong was a doctor, and Auntie Rose had attended nursing school with Mama. Auntie Fong always dressed in a Western man’s suit with matching slacks and jacket, white shirt, and tie, while Auntie Rose wore a qipao, like Mama. To Bing, there was nothing remarkable about this threesome of modern, educated young women in their mid-twenties—independent, westernized, and comfortable in the huge metropolis. The little girl was simply glad to be reunited with Mama and her welcoming friends.

  The large, sparsely furnished room contained a small table, some wood chairs, and two narrow beds. Bing and Mama slept together. Bing noticed that Auntie Fong and Auntie Rose seemed especially devoted to
each other and they didn’t mind crowding into the other small bed. The shared kitchen was downstairs. There was no bathroom—they would bathe in a washbasin and use a ma tong or “horse bucket” for their toilet, just as they had in Suzhou. Each morning, the night-soil collector pushed his foul-smelling cart through the neighborhood and dumped each pot’s contents into his stinking vat, to be used as fertilizer on the fields.

  Mama said they would be safe in the apartment, that the Japanese soldiers wouldn’t come to this “Englishtown” settlement. Though their new place felt comfortable, even pleasant, when Bing lay down that night, she couldn’t sleep. An overwhelming sadness washed over her. She was thankful it was dark and hoped that Mama wouldn’t see the tears streaming down her face as she remembered the first time she had been left behind.

  * * *

  —

  BEFORE BING WENT TO live with Mama Hsu, her home had been a two-room cottage with dirt floors, the house where she had been born. There, she was known only as Little Sister—not as Bing or some nickname. The outer room was dominated by a large earthen wood-burning stove, leaving just enough space for a table and some hard chairs. The stove heated the kang, a big hard bed fashioned from mud that filled the other room. Little Sister had her own small stool, which she dragged with her everywhere, inside and out. Little Sister was the second child, a girl sandwiched between two boys, and it was her job to look after her brothers when her mother was busy working. Their village, surrounded by wide green fields of rice and cotton, was located in the prefecture-level city of Changzhou, 120 miles northwest of Shanghai. In the distance, Little Sister occasionally spied the tall triangular sails of junks gliding through the rich network of waterways in the Yangtze River Delta, cutting through the flat plain like serrated blades against the sky. At night, the parents and three children slept together on the kang. If one person turned, everyone did.

  Bing’s childhood routine was broken up by her father’s periodic visits. He wasn’t home most days since he worked several miles away on a landowner’s large compound. Bing missed his playful teasing and cheerful attention because her mother was too busy with her brothers to notice her. Whenever she saw her father approaching on foot in the distance, she’d squeal and run toward him shouting,“Baba! Baba!” as he held his arms out for her. He would hoist her onto his back, and she’d laugh with glee as she rode her baba like a water buffalo all the way back to the house.

  If she was very lucky, her father would slip her a piece of sesame candy bought from the peddler who went from village to village, clacking his wooden blocks to announce his arrival. Baba would whisper, “Don’t tell Ma,” and she’d nod, knowing that Ma would scold him for such extravagance.

  Treats of candy, like meat on the table, were infrequent luxuries. The adults often complained that their lives had grown harsher and scarce goods scarcer after the Japanese attacked Shanghai the first time on January 28, 1932. The “1-2-8 invasion” was a painful reminder of what a war could do to towns like Little Sister’s. Any place spared from the devastation of battle faced the chaos of their own Chinese armies in retreat. No one could forget how soldiers seized crops and women for themselves and men as conscripts for labor or armies, driving the lives of the poor farm families deeper into crisis. By 1935, when Little Sister was six, China was gearing up for war again. The demands of the Nationalist armies left the countryside with so little that many families were forced to make impossible choices, deciding who would eat. And who would starve.

  One night during those especially lean times, Little Sister lay on the kang, trying to go to sleep. She heard her mother and father talking. In her dreamy fog, she thought her mother said something about giving her away.

  Startled, she cried out, “Ma, Ba—don’t give me away!”

  “Hush, Little Sister,” Baba answered. “You’re just having a bad dream.” His words quieted her, and she soon fell into a sound sleep.

  Not long after that nightmare, Baba announced that he would take her on a train ride to Suzhou, sixty miles away toward Shanghai. She remembered every moment of that journey, for she had been giddy that Baba had chosen her, not one of her brothers. She sat on her father’s lap, her eyes glued to the window, mesmerized by the neat rice fields and towns just like hers sweeping by in a blur. When they arrived in Suzhou, she was surprised at how much bigger and busier it was than quiet Changzhou. Men and women dressed in fine silk fabrics and even foreign outfits, unlike her mother and father, who wore roughly woven traditional dress. Big posters showed pretty ladies with curly black hair wearing tight qipaos, promoting cigarettes, mosquito coils, and rat poison.

  When they left the train station, Baba flagged down the driver of a wooden moon-wheeled cart. She clung to her father’s arm while perched on the roughhewn plank alongside the wooden wheel. The gnarly driver weaved his way through the mazelike streets and lanes. After a twisting, bumpy ride over arched stone bridges and canals lined by weeping willows, they finally came to a stop at a small store. Inside, her father spoke to the shopkeepers in a low voice while she stood waiting by the door, looking out at the parade of vendors and hawkers on the street. There was so much more to see here than in her town.

  Soon Baba called for her and told her to stand still beside him. The shopkeepers looked into her mouth and squeezed her thin arms. When they were finished poking and prodding her, one of them took her hand and led her toward another room. As she turned to look for her father, she saw his back as he headed out the door.

  “Baba! Baba!” she had shouted after him. He didn’t turn around. “Baba, come back!” she cried. How could he leave without her? The stranger gently pushed her into a small, dank storeroom and locked the door. Alone and terrified of what might lurk in the darkness, at first she could only whimper. Then she steeled herself and called for her father as hard as she could until she grew hoarse and couldn’t shout anymore. Exhausted, she sobbed herself to sleep. When the little girl awakened on the musty dirt floor, she thought she had had a terrible nightmare. But when she tried to open the door, it wouldn’t budge. She could see the glare of daylight around the cracks. Once again, she screamed for her father. Baba never came.

  * * *

  —

  IT SEEMED FOREVER BEFORE she was let out of the storeroom. Blinking from the sudden brightness of daylight, she twisted around, looking for her father as the shopkeeper gripped her arm. But instead of finding Baba this time, she saw a beautiful lady standing nearby, watching and staring intently, as if to study her.

  Frightened, Little Sister looked toward the door. Maybe Baba was outside, waiting. But the shopkeeper tightened his hold, keeping her in front of the lady.

  “She’s a pretty one, but so small and thin,” the woman had murmured, her voice not unkind. “Are you sure she’s six?”

  The shopkeeper nodded, uttering some reassuring words. Apprehensive, Little Sister watched in silence. This woman was nothing like her mother or the other women in her village in Changzhou. This woman seemed soft and delicate, yet she was in charge, letting the shopkeeper know what she wanted. Her smooth, clear skin was not toughened by the sun, like Ma’s, and her pretty flowered qipao—so different from the dark loose clothing that Ma wore—showed off her figure.

  Seemingly satisfied, the lady told Little Sister to come along with her into a pedicab. The girl followed as if in a trance. They stopped at a building that was damp and steamy inside, with rooms that contained big wooden tubs. An attendant removed Little Sister’s thin clothes and prepared to immerse her in a tub filled with hot water. At first, Little Sister recoiled in fear. Were they going to cook her?

  “This is a bathhouse,” said the lady. Little Sister couldn’t remember ever having a bath in a big tub before. Then the attendant began scrubbing her from her head to her toes with a soap that smelled like the incense her family lit for Buddha at the start of the New Year. After her bath, the attendant combed her wet hair and dressed her in c
lothes that the beautiful woman had brought. They were softer and finer than anything Little Sister had ever worn. Her old clothes had disappeared.

  The beautiful lady examined her closely. “Good,” she said, sounding pleased.

  “My name is Madame Hsu,” the woman told her. “From now on you may call me Mama.”

  As they left the bathhouse and climbed into a pedicab, Little Sister saw a shadowy figure of a man not far away. “Baba!” she called out in a panic. Had he come to take her home? Tears filled her eyes.

  Madame Hsu quieted her. “Your new home is with me. I am now your mother, and my husband will be your baba. You will have a new name too. I will call you Bing.”

  She explained that the new name was from a famous saying, “ping shui xiang feng”—“leaves on water graze” and two strangers meet by chance.

  “Do you understand, Bing?” she asked.

  “Bing” had no words. She could only nod in assent.

  But she didn’t understand. What was happening? Where was Baba? How would she find her family now? Where was this pretty lady taking her? So many impossible questions swirled around, each sending shock waves through her body. This must be how the chickens feel when farmers clip their wings and take them to market, she thought. She had seen chickens flap and squawk, desperately trying to escape before their necks were broken. And even after their heads hung limp, they continued to flail in protest. Perhaps she should follow their example and scream out in desperation. She tried, but she couldn’t even squawk like a chicken. She was too stunned to cry.