Lisa See - Shanghai Girls

FATHER LOUIE CONTINUES sending money to his home village by wiring funds to Hong Kong and then hiring someone to walk the money into the People’s Republic of China and on to Wah Hong Village. Sam warns him against this. “Maybe the Communists will confiscate it. Maybe this will be bad for the family in the village.”

I have different fears. “Maybe the American government will call us Communists. That’s why most families aren’t sending home remittances anymore.”

And it’s true. Many people in Chinatowns across the country have stopped sending money home because everyone is afraid and perplexed. The letters we receive from China confuse us even further.

“We are happy with the new government,” writes my father-in-law’s cousin twice removed. “Everyone is equal now. The landlord has been made to share his wealth with the people.”

If they’re so happy, we ask ourselves, then why are so many trying to get out? These are men, like Uncle Charley, who went back to China with their savings. Here in America, they’d suffered and been humiliated as low and unworthy of citizenship, but they’d withstood it, believing that great happiness, prosperity, and respect awaited them in the country of their birth, only to discover bitter fates upon their return to China, which treats them as dreaded landlords, capitalists, and running dogs of imperialism. The unlucky ones die in the fields or in the village squares. The fortunate ones escape to Hong Kong, where they die broken and broke. A few lucky ones come home to America. Uncle Charley is one of these.

“Did the Commies take everything from you?” Vern asks from his bed.

“They didn’t have a chance,” Uncle Charley answers, rubbing his swollen eyes and scratching his eczema. “When I got there, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists were still in power. They asked everyone to exchange their gold and foreign currency for government certificates. They printed billions of Chinese yuan , but it wasn’t worth anything. A sack of rice, which once cost twelve yuan , soon cost sixty-three million yuan . People took their money in wheelbarrows to go shopping. You wanted to buy a postage stamp? It cost the equivalent of six thousand U.S. dollars.”

“Are you saying bad things about the Generalissimo?” Vern asks nervously. “You better not do that.”

“All I’m saying is that by the time the Communist soldiers came, I had nothing left.”

All those years of labor with the promise of returning to China a Gold Mountain man, and now he’s back where he started-working as a glass washer for the Louie family.

I regain my strength and go to work with Sam, which is wonderful in many ways. I get to see my husband, but I also get to be with May every day until five, when I go home to make dinner and she goes to General Lee’s or Soochow, which have moved to New Chinatown, to meet with casting directors and the like. Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re sisters at all. I cling to memories of our home in Shanghai; May clings to memories of being a beautiful girl. I wear my greasy apron and little paper hat; she wears beautiful dresses made from fabrics the colors of the earth-sienna, amethyst, celadon, and mountain lake blue.

I feel bad about how I look until the day my old friend Betsy-who, now that China ’s closed, is on her way east to be with her parents-walks through the door of the coffee shop. We’re the same age, thirty-three, but she looks twenty years older. She’s thin, almost skeletal, and her hair has gone gray. I don’t know if this is from her time spent in the Japanese camp or from the hardships of recent months.

“Our Shanghai is gone,” she says when I take her to May’s office at the back of Pearl ’s so the three of us can share a pot of tea. “It will never again be what it was. Shanghai was my home, but I’ll never see it again. None of us will.”

My sister and I exchange glances. We had dark moments when we thought we’d never be able to go home because of the Japanese. After the war ended, we had our hopes revived that one day we might go back for a visit, but this feels different. It feels permanent.

IT’S ALMOST NOON on the second Saturday in November 1950. I don’t have much time before I need to pick up Joy and her friend Hazel Yee at the new Chinese United Methodist Church, where they attend Chinese-language classes. I rush downstairs, get the mail, and then hurry back up to the apartment. I quickly sort through the bills and pull out two letters. One has a postmark from Washington, D.C. I recognize Betsy’s handwriting on the envelope and tuck it in my pocket. The other letter is addressed to Father Louie, and it’s from China. I leave it and the bills on the table in the main room for him to look at when he gets home tonight. Then I grab my shopping bag and a sweater, go back downstairs, and walk to the church, where I wait outside for Joy and Hazel.

When Joy was little, I wanted her to learn proper written and spoken Chinese. The only place to do it-and you have to admit the missionaries were clever about this-was at one of the missions in Chinatown. It wasn’t enough that we had to pay a dollar a month for Joy’s lessons five and a half days a week or that she had to go to Sunday school, but one of her parents also had to attend Sunday services, which I’ve done regularly for the last seven years. Although many parents grumble about this rule, it seems like a fair exchange to me. And sometimes I rather like listening to the sermons, which remind me of those I heard as a girl in Shanghai.

I open Betsy’s letter. It’s been thirteen months since Mao took power in China and four and a half months since North Korea -with help from China ’s People’s Liberation Army-invaded South Korea. Only five years ago China and the United States were allies. Now, seemingly overnight, Communist China has become-after Russia -the second most hated enemy of the United States. These last couple of months, Betsy has written several times to tell me that her loyalty has been questioned because she stayed in China so long and that her father is one of many people at the State Department accused of being a Communist and an old China hand. Back in Shanghai, calling someone an old China hand was a compliment; now, in Washington, it’s like calling someone a baby killer. Betsy writes:

My father’s in real hot water. How can they blame him for things he wrote twenty years ago criticizing Chiang Kai-shek and ’what he was doing to China? They’re calling Dad a Communist sympathizer, and they reproach him for helping to “lose China.” Mom and I are hoping he’ll be able to keep his job. If they end up pushing him out, I hope they let him keep his pension. Luckily, he still has friends at the State Department ‘who know the truth about him.

As I fold the letter and put it back in its envelope, I wonder what I should write back. I don’t think it will help Betsy to say that we’re all frightened.

Joy and Hazel burst out onto the street. They’re twelve years old and have been in sixth grade for all of seven weeks. They think they’re practically grown up, but they’re Chinese girls and still completely undeveloped physically. I follow behind them as they swing down the street, holding hands and whispering conspiratorially on our way to Pearl ’s. We make a quick stop at a butcher shop on Broadway to pick up two pounds of fresh char siu , the fragrant barbecued pork that’s the secret ingredient in Sam’s chow mein. The shop is crowded today, and everyone is fearful, as they have been since this new war started. Some people have retreated into silence. Some have sunk into depression. And some, like the butcher, are angry.

“Why don’t they just leave us alone?” he demands in Sze Yup of no one in particular. “You think it’s my fault that Mao wants to spread Communism? That has nothing to do with me!”