Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

On the day after the Chinese Communists withdrew from Jinzhou, a new army entered the city the fourth in as many months. This army had clean uniforms and gleaming new American weapons. It was the Kuomintang. People ran out of their houses and gathered in the narrow mud streets, clapping and cheering. My mother squeezed her way to the front of the excited crowd. Suddenly she found she was waving her arms and cheering loudly. These soldiers really look like the army which beat the Japanese, she thought to herself. She ran home in a state of high excitement to tell her parents about the smart new soldiers.

There was a festival atmosphere in Jinzhou. People competed to invite troops to stay in their homes. One officer came to live with the Xias. He behaved extremely respectfully, and the family all liked him. My grandmother and Dr. Xia felt that the Kuomintang would maintain law and order and ensure peace at last.

But the goodwill people had felt toward the Kuomintang soon turned to bitter disappointment. Most of the officials came from other parts of China, and talked down to the local people, addressing them as Wang-guo-nu ("Slaves who have no country of your own') and lecturing them about how they ought to be grateful to the Kuomintang for liberating them from the Japanese. One evening there was a party at my mother's school for the students and Kuomintang officers. The three-year-old daughter of one official recited a speech which began: "We, the Kuomintang, have been fighting the Japanese for eight years and have now saved you, who were the slaves of Japan… My mother and her friends walked out.

My mother was also disgusted by the way the Kuomintang rushed to grab concubines. By early 1946 Jinzhou was filling up with troops. My mother's school was the only girls' school in town, and officers and officials descended on it in droves in search of concubines or, occasionally, wives. Some of the girls got married willingly, while others were unable to say no to their families, who thought that marrying an officer would give them a good start in life.

At fifteen, my mother was highly marriageable. She had grown into a very attractive and popular young woman, and she was the star pupil at her school. Several officers had already proposed, but she told her parents she did not want any of them. One, who was chief of staff of a general, threatened to send a sedan chair to carry her off after his gold bars had been refused. My mother was eavesdropping outside the door as he put this proposal to her parents.

She burst in and told him to his face that she would kill herself in the sedan chair. Fortunately, not long afterward his unit was ordered out of the city.

My mother had made up her mind to choose her own husband. She was disenchanted with the treatment of women, and hated the whole system of concubinage. Her parents supported her, but they were harassed by offers, and had to deploy intricate, nerve-racking diplomacy to find ways of saying no without unleashing reprisals.

One of my mother's teachers was a young woman called Miss Liu, who liked her very much. In China, if people are fond of you, they often try to make you an honor an member of their family. At this time, although they were not so segregated as in my grandmother's days, there were not many opportunities for boys and girls to mix, so being introduced to the brother or sister of a friend was a common way for young people who did not like the idea of arranged marriages to get to know each other. Miss Liu introduced my mother to her brother. But first Mr. and Mrs. Liu had to approve the relationship.

Early in 1946, my mother was invited to spend the Chinese New Year at the Lius' house, which was quite grand. Mr. Liu was one of the biggest shop owners in Jinzhou. The son, who was about nineteen, seemed to be a man of the world; he was wearing a dark-green suit with a handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket, which was tremendously sophisticated and dashing for a provincial town like Jinzhou. He was enrolled in a university in Peking, where he was reading Russian language and literature. My mother was very impressed with him, and his family approved of her. They soon sent a go-between to Dr. Xia to ask for her hand, without, of course, saying a word to her.

Dr. Xia was more liberal than most men of his time, and asked my mother how she felt about the matter. She agreed to be a 'friend' to young Mr. Liu. At that time, if a boy and a girl were seen talking to each other in public, they had to be engaged, at the minimum. My mother was longing to have some fun and freedom, and to be able to make friends with men without committing herself to marriage.

Dr. Xia and my grandmother, knowing my mother, were cautious with the Lius, and declined all the customary presents. In the Chinese tradition, a woman's family often did not consent to a marriage proposal immediately,-as they should not appear too keen. If they accepted presents, this implicitly indicated consent. Dr. Xia and my grandmother were worried about a misunderstanding.

x xo "Slaves Who Have No Country of Your Own'

My mother went out with young Liu for a while. She was rather taken with his urbanity, and all her relatives, friends, and neighbors said she had made a good match. Dr. Xia and my grandmother thought they were a handsome couple, and had privately settled on him as their son-inlaw. But my mother felt he was shallow. She noticed that he never went to Peking, but lounged around at home enjoying the life of a dilettante. One day she discovered he had not even read The Dream of the Red Chamber, the famous eighteenth-century Chinese classic, with which every literate Chinese was familiar. When she showed how disappointed she felt, young Liu said airily that the Chinese classics were not his forte, and that what he actually liked most was foreign literature. To try to reassert his superiority, he added: "Now, have you read Madame Bovary? That's my all-time favorite. I consider it the greatest of Maupassant's works."

My mother had read Madame Bovary and she knew it was by Flaubert, not Maupassant. This vain sally put her off Liu in a big way, but she refrained from confronting him there and then to do so would have been considered 'shrewish."

Liu loved gambling, particularly mahjongg, which bored my mother to death. One evening soon afterward, in the middle of a game, a female servant came in and asked: "Which maid would Master Liu like to serve him in bed?" In a very casual way, Liu said "So-and-so." My mother was shaking with anger, but all Liu did was to raise his eyebrow as though he was surprised at her reaction.

Then he said in a supercilious way: "This is a perfectly common custom in Japan. Everybody does it. It's called si-qin ("bed with service")." He was trying to make my mother feel she was being provincial and jealous, which was traditionally regarded in China as one of the worst vices in a woman, and grounds for a husband to disown his wife. Once again my mother said nothing, even though she was boiling with rage inside.

My mother decided she could not be happy with a husband who regarded flirtations and extramarital sex as essential aspects of 'being a man." She wanted someone who loved her, who would not want to hurt her by doing this sort of thing. That evening she made up her mind to end the relationship.

A few days later Mr. Liu senior suddenly died. In those days a spectacular funeral was very important, particularly if the dead person had been the head of the family. A funeral which failed to meet the expectations of the relatives and of society would bring disapproval on the family.

The Lius wanted an elaborate ceremony, not simply a procession from the house to the cemetery. Monks were brought in to read the Buddhist sutra of' putting the head down' in the presence of the whole family. Immediately after this, the family members burst out crying. From then to the day of the burial, on the forty-ninth day after the death, the sound of weeping and wailing was supposed to be heard nonstop from early morning until midnight, accompanied by the constant burning of artificial money for the deceased to use in the other world. Many families could not keep up this marathon, and hired professionals to do the job for them. The Lius were too filial to do this, and did all the keening themselves, with the help of relatives, of whom there were many.