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- Herausgeber: Eland Publishing
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
In 1949, soon after the arrival of communism, David Kidd's Chinese fiancée, the daughter of an ancient Mandarin family, telephoned to say that her father was dying and that they must marry immediately. At first the couple were able to continue their privileged lifestyle, a remnant of an old and exquisite culture. But the new proletariat was rapidly suppressing the ancient traditions. Spies watched them from the roof, then confiscated their sets of mahjong; an aunt was sent on a mission to re-educate prostitutes; and the family's final magnificent party was invaded by the police. Eventually their entire way of life, and the thousand-year-old culture on which it was based, was destroyed by the totalitarian regime.
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Peking Story
DAVID KIDD
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This book is dedicated to the
memory of my patron
Dr John Leighton Stuart,
the American Ambassador to China
from 1946 to 1949
Contents
Introduction
Peking was my home from 1946 to 1950, two years before the Communist revolution and two years after. As the American half of an exchange between the University of Michigan, where I was a student of Chinese culture, and Peking’s Yenching University, I left for China immediately after graduation, arriving at Peking in the autumn of 1946, still two months short of my twentieth birthday.
Peking was everything I expected it to be—a great walled and moated medieval city enclosing some one million people in twenty-five square miles of palaces, mansions, gardens, shops, and temples, the centre of what once had been the world’s largest empire. I never met anyone who did not fall in love with the city, if not at first sight, at least after the first week. I could even speak some Chinese, thanks to the valiant efforts of Mr T’ien, my Chinese teacher at Michigan.
Peking’s immense outer walls were pierced by sixteen towered double gates, while at its heart another set of moats and walls enclosed the imperial palace, known as the Purple Forbidden City. This city-within-a-city had been the unmoving purple polestar, the heaven-and-earth-touching vertical axis, around which the whole earth turned. Seated in state on his elevated throne in the main hall of this vast complex of buildings, the emperor faced due south along the central horizontal axis of the city, arched over by a series of monumental gates, the sacrosanct meridian through which imperial power reached out to all of China and, from there, the world.
I could not have guessed during those early months that I would experience the last siege of the greatest walled city in the world or 5that I would marry into an old and aristocratic Peking family. Instead, I blissfully went about the business of sightseeing and making friends, first with my Chinese colleagues at Yenching University, where I studied Chinese poetry, and at nearby Tsinghwa University, where I taught English. Later, I began to make friends with that extraordinary group of international foreigners for whom Peking was home. The city invited us to stay, to settle down in a fine old house, to enjoy its cedar-shaded courtyards, to give parties to view the moon or gardens filled with snow. Peking had the power to touch, transform, and refine all those who lived within its ancient walls.
Only a few Westerners who once lived there are still alive today—no more than ten or twenty of us at most, scattered throughout the world. I used to hope that some bright young scholar on a research grant would write about us and our Chinese friends before it was too late and we were all dead and gone, folding back into darkness the wonder that had been our lives.
To this day, no such scholar has appeared, leaving me, as far as I know, the lone, first-hand chronicler of those extraordinary years that saw the end of old China, and the beginning of the the new.
David KiddKujoyama, Kyoto
Dragons, Pink Babies, and the Consular Service
Late in January of 1949, Peking surrendered gracefully to the ever victorious Communist Army, and one day soon after, my fiancée—a Chinese girl—telephoned me to say that her father, who had been ill for a long while, was dying. We must marry immediately, Aimee said, or face the prospect of waiting out at least a year of mourning, as Chinese custom demanded. It seemed unfeeling to hold a wedding at such a time, and there was no way of guessing what the Communist authorities would say to a marriage between the daughter of a ‘bureaucratic-capitalist’ Chinese and an American teacher, but the future was so uncertain that we decided we must go ahead. Aimee’s family, when consulted, agreed. However, since we could not be sure we were not bringing some sort of trouble on them, we planned to keep the marriage a secret, at least for a while.
I had first met Aimee a year earlier one hot summer evening at a Peking opera theater in the South City. I had rented an open booth at the balcony railing where, in the heat, I indulged myself in the usual Chinese opera fan’s pastime of cracking salted watermelon seeds between my teeth and drinking cup after cup of tea from the pot, replenished from time to time by the waiters, on my table. I noticed that the booth to my left was still unoccupied, but knew that many opera buffs never arrived until after ten, when the best actors appeared. Tonight Hsiao Ts’ui-hua, an impersonator of 2 coquettish girls, would end the program. He was one of the last actors in China who could still perform in toe shoes, the better to emulate the bound feet and swaying gait of a high-caste woman.
A drama had just ended and a placard announcing Mr Hsiao as the last performer was already up when waiters began affixing red silk chairbacks and laying out tea pots and cups in the next booth. At the same moment, a sudden murmur in the audience caused me to look toward the end of the aisle. Flanked by two maids in pale blue, Aimee stood in a doorway between curtains that had just been parted. She wore a tight, high-collared, white silk dress, slit to the thighs, and carried an ivory fan in her hand on which shone a green jade ring. She looked overwhelmingly cool and beautiful in that hot, smoke-filled theater. If more were needed, the elaborate care with which the waiters unshered her to the booth next to mine was proof enough that she was a lady of distinction. As she seated herself, I noticed the tip of a white jade pin in her hair and detected the faint but refreshing scent of sandalwood and jasmine.
The performance was about to begin, and I beckoned to a waiter indicating that I wished another pot of tea. When he approached, Aimee stopped him and spoke quickly in Chinese. After he left, she turned to me and said in much slower Chinese, ‘The tea here is too poor. I have asked him to prepare for you the tea I brought from home.’ Then she said in English, ‘It is only an ordinary tea, but I hope you will like it.’ I mumbled my thanks in both English and Chinese.
In due course the last opera, a comedy, began with Mr Hsiao sailing across the stage, swaying gracefully on his famous, fluttering feet. The tea, when it came, was delicious. During the performance, Aimee and I, more often than not, laughed at the same time. I almost felt that I had come to the theater with her and wondered if she might be feeling the same. In any event, after the drama came to an end and Hsiao Ts’ui-hua had disappeared from the stage for good, Aimee introduced herself and asked, in careful Chinese again, if I cared to visit backstage and meet Mr Hsiao. I accepted with pleasure.
We found the actor in his dressing room before a mirror, removing his make-up with cold cream. Meanwhile attendants were 3 busy, first removing the rows of glittering coloured stones from his black wig, next the wig and its many separate pieces, and last the bands of starched white cotton placed at the hairline, which Aimee explained to me, when applied wet, tightened the actor’s face, creating the illusion of youth I had seen on stage. Seated before me now, his make-up, jewels, and starched bands removed, Mr Hsiao was an old and ordinary looking man. Amused at my surprise, Aimee wrote out her address and invited me to tea a few days later, where I learned that she could play the violin, had studied gypsy dancing—complete with tamborine—from White Russians in Peking, knew classical Chinese dance, and, to my surprise, had majored in chemistry at the university. I also discovered that she was the fourth daughter of the former Chief Justice of the Chinese Supreme Court.
I was to meet Aimee’s father only once. (Her mother was dead.) Even then, dressed in a padded blue silk gown and wearing a black silk cap, the elegant old man looked frail and ill, his skin appearing almost translucent. He received me in a building in the Yu mansion called the Eastern Study where he was occupied, at the time, in examining a pair of rare porcelain stem cups. When he let me handle them, I felt immensely honoured. Now he lay on his death bed.
Thus began the events that led to the unseemly haste of our wedding.
Peking had, of course, just been through a siege of over a month. I had been cut off from the National Tsinghwa University, some six miles outside the city, where I taught English, and had been living in a small house in Peking that I had previously rented for use on weekends and holidays. I liked the address—Bean Curd Puddle Lane. During the siege, Aimee used to bring me tureens of fatty pork cooked with aniseed, and invite me to unbelievable banquets for two in her family’s enormous house. Her source of supply was a secret, and I had never asked her about it; I only know that without her, and it, I would have had little besides watered rice to eat.
Now, though the siege was over, foreigners were forbidden to leave the city, so I was still unable to get back to my classes. Communist troops were quartered in the front courtyards of 4 Aimee’s home, and their horses were tethered in the garden, where they ate venerable and valuable chrysanthemum roots and became as much the subject of the family’s complaints as the soldiers themselves. The family—Aimee’s two brothers and eight sisters, plus wives, husbands, children, aunts and uncles, about twenty-five people in all—spent most of its time complaining. The Communists were using a relatively light hand at the moment, but the men in the buildings around the front courtyards were taking up space, using precious water and electricity, and causing unrest among the servants.
Aimee’s people had lived in the old mansion for generations. Surrounded, along with its outbuildings and its large garden, which must have been close to fifty thousand square feet in area, by a wall, it contained more than a hundred rooms, as well as a labyrinth of corridors and courts. It sprawled over several acres, and all the rooms were at one time warmed by radiant heat—that is, by charcoal fires kept burning under the tile floors—but after the revolution of 1911 the cost had become too great and coal stoves were installed. Although normally there were at least twenty servants, at the time of the siege there were fewer than ten, and afterward, under the influence of the Communists, these grew insolent and lazy. Fires were made carelessly or not at all, and meals were late and unappetizing. One servant, laying a fire in the old man’s sickroom, was heard telling the invalid—even then too ill to speak—that it was only a matter of time before they would see who would make whose fires.
The servant was discharged, and spent the next two days wailing at the main gate, arousing deep sympathy among the soldiers. They were already suspicious of people living in so large a house, and now they became so surly and sullen that the family stopped using the main gate, coming and going instead by a small one that opened on a back alley. All in all, the situation was far from propitious for a wedding.
Some time before matters were brought to a head in this way, I had enquired at the American consulate about making my prospective marriage to a Chinese lawful in America. In essence, a Chinese marriage is simple. Two families make out a certificate, a 5 number of friends witness the document in the presence of a respected friend of the two families, and that’s all there is to it. Although divorce is rare, it is even easier. Both families simply agree to tear up the certificate. Nothing is made a matter of official record; the certificate form—a paper bordered with pictures of writhing pink babies and strings of gold coins—can be bought at any stationer’s and filled in by the parties concerned.
The American government, I was told at the consulate, looks upon a Chinese wedding—which is a civil and personal, but not a religious, ceremony—as scarcely a matrimonial bond at all, recognising a marriage with a Chinese only when it is recorded in sacred archives, after a ceremony conducted by someone of religious authority. The consulate also insisted that it must have a representative at the ceremony—although I am told this is not a State Department regulation—and that the consulate be paid a marriage-registration fee of one dollar.
When Aimee and I began hastily making our plans, her family said that they wanted whatever ceremony we had to be Chinese. Though religion has no part in a Chinese wedding, Aimee and I were sure we could persuade a Buddhist priest to preside at the ceremony, acting in place of the family friend and thus satisfying both the family and the consulate. This would be perhaps the first Chinese Buddhist wedding in history, and we were rather excited about it.
A day or two after I had informed the consulate of our intentions, a vice-consul named Kepler telephoned me to say that a Buddhist wedding wouldn’t be legal in the eyes of the American government, any more than, say, a Taoist or Muslem wedding. Apparently these were all considered fly-by-night, unreliable religions, and the consulate, without quite saying so, excluded all but Christian ceremonies from their sanction. There was evidently nothing for it but to try to have a Christian ceremony that would seem as Chinese as possible. Mr Kepler said he would see what he could do about finding us a Christian priest or minister, and I went to Aimee’s house in the hope of breaking the news diplomatically.
Two days later, Mr Kepler called me again. The Anglicans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Salvation Army had all been 6 sounded out, and none of them was willing to give an interracial marriage its blessing without written consent from the parents of both bride and groom. I had received no mail from abroad since before the siege. I was not sure that letters were getting to America even yet, and it was unlikely that my mother would give her consent. Anyway, I couldn’t write to her and get a reply in time.
I went to the consulate to canvass the possibility of being married in two ceremonies—a Chinese one immediately, and a Christian one when it could be arranged, for the benefit of the consulate and the sake of American legality. While I was discussing all this with Mr Kepler, a Chinese porter, who was waxing the hall floor, stopped at the open office door. He introduced himself hesitantly and said perhaps he could help. ‘My brother is a Christian minister,’ he told us.
‘Well, now, really?’ said Mr Kepler. ‘I didn’t know that. What denomination? What is the name of his church?’
The porter said he didn’t know, because he wasn’t a Christian himself, and didn’t particularly like his brother. But after all, he said, a brother is a brother, and if he could direct a little business his way, that was only proper. I asked him to send his brother to Aimee’s house that evening, and said she and I would meet him there.
The minister came at seven o’clock. Aimee and I talked to him in a building called the Hall of Ancient Pines, which was in the garden and had been the favourite retreat of Aimee’s father. It had become our own retreat from the endless complaints and histrionics of the rest of the family, which was feeling the uncertainties of a swiftly changing society, and especially the strain of playing host to the squatter troops in their house. ‘I am Reverend Joseph Feng,’ the minister told us. We soon discovered that this was all he could say in English. Even his Mandarin was poor, thickened by a heavy Cantonese accent, and Aimee had almost as much trouble understanding him as I did. He was the first Christian minister ever to set foot in that house. He was wearing a tattered brown tweed topcoat and pearl-grey spats, and, twisted about his neck, its ends hanging elegantly front and back, a once white silk scarf. He carried a carved cane, which, when he had sat down, he 7 kept clutched between his knees. Aimee asked what denomination he belonged to, and he produced a worn piece of paper on which was written, above many seals and signatures, ‘Reverend Joseph Feng is an ordained clergyman of the Assemblies of God’.
I had never heard of the Assemblies of God, but we were not inclined to question him too closely, being more than happy to accept him if the American consulate was satisfied. We knew that Aimee’s family was indifferent to the religious aspects of the occasion, and was concerned only that the simple Chinese ceremony be included. As I have said, the signing of the certificate is the core of it; beyond that, there may be some slight additional ceremony, though this is not necessary. Both bride and bridegroom are sponsored by a relative or close friend, rings are exchanged, and the presiding friend—in this case the Reverend Mr Feng—wishes the couple long life and many babies.
The Reverend Mr Feng, probably briefed by his brother, quickly understood what was wanted, and I made an appointment to meet him in Mr Kepler’s office the next morning.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Kepler when, with Mr Feng beside me, I explained that we had found a suitable minister. ‘The Assemblies of God. That’s fine! Fine! And when will the wedding be? I’m attending as the consular witness, you know.’
Trying not to show the relief I felt, I told him the wedding would take place at Aimee’s house two days later, at eight o’clock in the evening. I then explained that we were trying to keep our marriage a secret, particularly from the troops occupying the front courtyards of the house, since we didn’t know what the reaction of the Communist authorities would be, and that we would tell anyone who might be curious about people coming and going that night that we were having a small private party. For some reason, the secrecy seemed to appeal to Mr Kepler, and he said heartily, ‘You can depend on me!’
I pointed out that the Reverend Mr Feng knew no English and that therefore the marriage ceremony would be entirely in Chinese. Mr Kepler was sympathetic; he appeared to believe that conducting the Christian ceremony in Chinese had something to do with keeping the wedding a secret. 8
The Reverend Mr Feng returned with me to Aimee’s, where she and I spent some time haggling with him about his fee. There were many paper currencies in use in Peking then, and the stability of all of them was doubtful. When people discussed the price of anything more valuable than a pack of cigarettes, they talked in terms of silver or gold dollars, or perhaps pounds of millet or bolts of cloth. The Reverend Mr Feng wanted silver—twenty Mexican dollars’ worth. Five dollars Mex. would have paid a servant’s wages for a month. We finally agreed on nine dollars Mex. It was high, but the Reverend—again, no doubt, briefed by his brother—was well aware of his value to us. We told him we were trying to keep the wedding as simple and as Chinese as possible, and asked for his cooperation. He promised to do his best.
Aimee and I had two days to get ourselves ready. Since I had no ring to give her, and no money to buy one, she gave me a diamond ring to put on her finger during the ceremony. I was not allowed to see her costume before the wedding, but she had already prepared mine—a sky blue gown of fine Tibetan felt, and a vest-like jacket of patterned black silk to be worn over it. I was also to wear black silk shoes and white socks. Though details differ, this is a fairly standard formal wedding costume for men. Aimee didn’t care for the garish red of the traditional Chinese wedding dress and would say only that she would wear a self-designed adaptation of it.
All the other details were left to friends and servants. I had been told not to appear before eight o’clock on the night of the wedding. It was decided to use the main gate again, for that night only; it was lacquered red and had a great, sweeping roof, and so would be much easier for our guests to find than the small one opening on to the back alley. There was an entrance court just inside the gate, and behind it lay the courtyards where the Communist soldiers were quartered.
The night of the wedding was cold, and when I arrived at the gate I found a group of soldiers warming themselves around a wood fire there. They seemed rather nervous and hostile—perhaps because of the sudden traffic that evening through the gate they had come to consider exclusively theirs. Off to the left, a little door in the wall of the entrance court opened on a corner of the garden, and I 9 found a servant waiting beside the gate to lead the guests there. From inside the garden door, a line of paper lanterns hanging overhead marked out a way along stone and pebble paths, through rock grottoes, under a wisteria arbour, past faintly reeking, quietly chomping horses, through groves of rustling bamboo, to the Hall of Ancient Pines, where the wedding was to take place.
Ancient Pines was an imposing room, where many great men of China had been entertained by Aimee’s father. Except for a few sofas and overstuffed chairs, it was furnished in Chinese style. The floors were of polished black tile and were covered with Chinese carpets. Six hexagonal lanterns of glass and carved wood hung in a row from the ceiling, and from the corners of each hung long red silk tassels. Potted flowering plants and orange and lime trees were scattered about the room, and Chinese landscape paintings decorated the walls, except for the north one, which was panelled with mirrors. When I arrived, about twenty guests were already there, and servants were carrying immense quantities of food and drink to various sideboards and tables. The windows had been covered with rice paper to shield us from the eyes of wandering soldiers.
Mr Kepler was there, I saw, sitting directly under a lantern and talking, with visible enjoyment, to one of Aimee’s attractive younger sisters. In a few minutes, Hetta Crouse, a mutual friend, came in with her husband, William Empson. Hetta is South African, and a sculptress; William is a British poet and critic, who was at that time teaching in Peking University. Hetta was to sponsor me, and I asked her if she had brought her seal.
I should explain that everyone in China has a seal. It is the equivalent of a signature, which is not valid there, the Chinese being convinced that a signature can easily be copied but that no two seals are ever alike. Even children have to use seals when they register in school or sign receipts for their supplies.
‘I brought a whole bloody sackful,’ Hetta said, dumping a collection of seals of all sizes from her handbag onto a table. ‘Some of them are mine, and some are William’s, and some are the ones the children use, and I don’t know where we got the others. But we must use all of them on your certificate. They’ll look very important.’ 10
In a short while, the Reverend Mr Feng came in. He was dressed as before, with the dingy scarf hanging fore and aft, and his cane in hand. He carefully removed his coat, though not the scarf, switching the cane from one hand to the other as he did so, and, after shaking hands with me, joined Mr Kepler. Servants continued to bring delicacies to the tables and sideboards until they could hold no more, and it became evident that both the food and the guests were ready. Then Mme Hu, Aimee’s godmother, who was to give her away, entered with a flourish and, speaking in English in deference to the foreigners present, announced, ‘The matrimony begins!’
The Reverend Mr Feng jumped to his feet and, scarf flowing, strode to the centre of the room just as Aimee appeared at the door, flanked by two of her sisters. Her dress, which went from neck to ankle, was scarlet, gold, and black. Enormous gold butterflies, and phoenixes dripping jewels and mounted on springs, trembled on her head. Coiled gold dragons hung from her ears. She was wearing the high-platformed shoes of the Manchu nobility, which had gone out of fashion more than a generation earlier, and, tottering into the room, she looked like something out of Chinese opera.
No one spoke. Aimee made her unsteady way to the side of the room opposite me, and immediately all the guests and participants except the Reverend Mr Feng hurried to take their places with one or the other of us—Aimee’s family and friends grouped behind her, and my party, which included Mr Kepler but was decidedly outnumbered, behind me. Hetta stood at my elbow facing Mme Hu and Aimee. The Reverend Mr Feng was alone in the middle of the room, facing the south end, balancing himself lightly on his cane. After a moment, Aimee and I stepped in front of him, and I could see Aimee, her eyes demurely cast down, and the Reverend Mr Feng’s scarf reflected waveringly in the mellow old mirror panels of the north wall.
The Reverend Mr Feng rolled his eyes upward and opened his mouth. No one was prepared for the volume of his voice. Aimee swayed visibly on her platforms. The reverberations of his first sentence faded, and he started again, softly, slowly, with agony in his voice, which increased in volume until he reached a new fortissimo. Again there was silence. We were steeling ourselves for a third outburst when he began a rhythmic chant that rose and fell. I was sure he had 11 passed into a trance. Nothing he said was intelligible to me, but it certainly didn’t sound like a marriage ceremony. Just what, I wondered, were the Assemblies of God, and what had we let ourselves in for?
I could see Hetta’s frozen face in a corner of the mirror. I wondered what she was thinking—what they all were thinking. I hoped Mr Kepler was satisfied with his Christian ceremony; this was all his fault. I looked directly at him, but his eyes were closed and his face expressionless. The food is cold, I thought. What can we do? Can’t someone stop him?
I was suddenly aware that the Reverend Mr Feng had stopped, and was looking at me. For a startled moment, I thought he had been reading my mind, and then I realized that I was missing a cue. I nodded my head slowly. I wasn’t sure, but I supposed he had said the equivalent of ‘Do you take this woman…’ He turned to Aimee and said something, and she nodded, too, so I knew I must have been right.
Aimee held out her left hand and I put the diamond ring on it; then I held out mine and she put an alexandrite ring on it. We bowed to the Reverend Mr Feng, then to each other, and finally to the guests. The wedding was over. What had seemed like hours had been, as the Reverend had promised it would be, only a few minutes. The food had not even begun to cool.
We put all of Hetta’s seals, as well as our own and those of the other witnesses, on the Chinese marriage certificate. We ate all the food and drank all the drink. The Reverend Mr Feng got his nine dollars Mex., and Mr Kepler had, by his own testimony, ‘a most interesting evening.’ But because, marriage or not, Aimee’s father was still dying, and the soldiers, who were not to know there had been a wedding, were still in the house, I went home with the Empsons and played three-handed bridge until morning. And then I went to the consulate and paid my dollar, and subsequently locked among my most valuable documents a piece of stiff white paper with ‘US Consular Service Marriage Certificate’ printed in bold black type across the top. Typewritten underneath, making Aimee and me lawfully married in the eyes of the government of the United States, are the words ‘Revd Joseph Feng of the Assemblies of God officiating.’
