A Concubine for the Family: A Family Saga in China (45 page)

The Chinese’s early encounters with the unruly European sailors confirmed their opinion of foreigners as barbarians. Traditional Chinese esteem for the liberal arts and disdain for military matters further blinded them to the power of Western technology. They stubbornly refused to open the country to foreign trade. In 1860, England and France sent another expedition to Beijing to force the government to open North China and the Yangtze Valley to trade. The Chinese handled the delegates with brutality. The response was the invasion of the capital. The Emperor’s favorite residence, the Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan — Round Bright Garden) was burnt to the ground. England and France not only achieved their objectives, but received eight million dollars each from China for added indemnities. Russia pretended to mediate the conflict, and for its non-interference it received the confirmation of treaty advantages it had gained in Manchuria, including the Ussuri River territories. The Chinese town of Haishenwei became Vladivostok.

Japan defeated China in the war of 1894-1895. The treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands and to pay a huge indemnity, recognize Japan’s hegemony over Korea and allow Japanese industries in four treaty ports.

The ignorance and corruption of the Dowager Empress’s court fed upon the foreign intrusions, and engendered a hatred for foreigners that simmered, steamed, and finally boiled over into the court’s fatal support for the Boxers. The Boxers claimed to hold sufficient magic in their bodies to withstand bullets and guns. The court sanctioned the massacre of missionaries in late 189l. By June 1900, the Boxers’ siege of the legations brought on the punitive invasion of Beijing by twenty thousand troops representing eight foreign nations. In September 1900, the Forbidden City, the Emperor’s residence, was sacked. Chinese and Manchus alike, regardless of social rank or guilt, suffered looting, rape and other atrocities. Priceless national treasures were carted off to Europe, vandalized or destroyed.

At the turn of the century, the Japanese and European scramble for territorial concessions had reached its zenith. China was saved from dismemberment only through competition and jealousy for spoils among the invading powers.

Altogether, Chinese history in the early twentieth century was a study in national humiliation and defeat. Out of the chaos, stirred by internal strife and foreign aggression, rose Nationalism. Nationalists saw the need of a modern state to liberate China, not only from Manchu rule but also from foreign imperialism. Under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the first Republican government was born in 1911.

The Western democracies refused aid to the young revolutionary party. In the summer of 1918, the Soviet government announced that it was freely abandoning the privileges extracted under the Tsarist regime. It retained the territories in the Maritime provinces, but assisted the Chinese Nationalist party (Kuomintang) with money, training and military organization. The divisive interests of the workers and peasants on the one side, and the land-owning gentry, the businessmen, and the warlords on the other soon shattered the united purpose of the Nationalists. By 1930, the Kuomingtang, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), had begun large-scale campaigns to extirpate the Communists.

Both Japan and China helped the Allied causes during World War I. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, nonetheless, confirmed Japan’s claims to the Shangdong Province, which it was already occupying. Massive student demonstrations broke out in Beijing and Shanghai to protest against Japan, the Allies and the inept Chinese government. This was the unifying Nationalist May fourth movement.

Japan seized Manchuria in September 1931 and established the puppet regime of Manchukuo in 1932. It soon annexed Jehol and cultivated opium in almost all its arable land. Opium became so plentiful in China that the poorest coolie could buy a day’s supply for a few Chinese pennies.

Opium poisoned vital segments of Chinese society. Its government, industry, and economy were perverted by the addiction. Ambitious foreign elements wasted no opportunity to exploit the complicated struggle within the country. They played one power faction against another, supplying one warlord with arms, another with opium trade privileges, a third with ideologies. Communism, fascism, Nazism, Christianity, and democracy all claimed rival adherents.

The Communists and the Nationalists were nominally united after the Xian incident in December 1936. Faced with Japanese aggression and Communist unrest, Chiang had stated to Theodore White in an interview: “Japanese are a disease of the skin, and Communism a disease of the heart.”

This novel begins in 1937, when Japan proclaimed China its exclusive protectorate. In July of the same year, Japan invaded China openly and the stage was set for World War II.

A list of Chinese terms, idiomatic expressions and historical/political events referred to in the novel.
amahs
— Female servants.

“Arise, those who not be slaves”
— A patriotic song sung during the Second World War. It is now the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China.

become a vinegar bottle
— Become jealous.

bitter labor
— A literal translation of “coolie”. During the First World War, hundreds of thousands of Chinese “coolies” were sent to the European continent to dig trenches, build bunkers and clear minefields for the British and French armies.

bonsai
— The Japanese term for the ancient Chinese art of penjing, or the cultivation of plants in shallow pots. These miniature trees are living sculptures.

book-fragrant
— Learned.

bride price
— Gifts of food, furniture, bedding, fineries and sometimes cash that the groom’s family is expected to present to the bride’s family. The troth is confirmed when the bride’s family has accepted the gifts.

Brook-mei
— It is the polite way of addressing Comely Brook as a younger-sister.

brown dwarves of East Ocean
— The Japanese.

Bund
— The waterfront in downtown Shanghai, located in the British concession.

bureaucracy of the Chin Empire (1644-1911)
— The bureaucracy that for centuries, from one dynasty to the next, administered the Chinese government. Positions in the bureaucracy were acquired through competitive examinations. In theory, this was democratic, because the government consisted of people who have demonstrated cognitive skills and literary appreciation. In practice, however, the custom discouraged creativity and concentrated power among the rich who could afford the long years of study and cultivation of the mind.

“by cultivating oneself”
— The popular quotation taken from “
Ta Hsueh”
(Great Learning), a chapter of the
Li Chi
(Book of Rites). It was attributed to Tseng Tzu, a disciple of Confucius.

catties
— A standard of Chinese measurement, about 1.3 lbs.

cheongsam
— A lady’s straight sheath with a high mandarin collar, and a slit on each side reaching the knee to facilitate movement. The hemline of the sheath followed the fashions of the time. In the 1930s, it fell to just above the feet. Cheongsam is translated from the Cantonese dialect because it is the form popularly known in the States. In mandarin, the official dialect, it is called a chi pou.

chi
— Breath, or the life-giving energy. The Chinese consider it the dominant principle of health.

Chiang Ching-kuo
(1910 - 1988) — Son of Chiang Kai-shek by his first wife. Ching-kuo was sent to study in Moscow in 1925, when his father was the head of the Soviet-trained Kuomingtang army. He twice denounced his father’s anti-Communist activities while in Soviet Russia. He returned to China in 1937 with a Russian wife, shortly after the Xian Incident, to help negotiate the integration of the Chinese Communists into the Nationalists’ anti-Japanese effort. In later years he claimed that he had been detained in Russia, and forced to denounce his father. He was the president of the Republic of China in Taiwan from 1975 until his death in January of 1988.

Chiang Kai-shek
(1887-1975) — Ruler of China from 1928 to 1949. He remained president of the Chinese government in exile on Taiwan until his death. He was popularly referred to as the “Generalissimo.

Chou En-lai (1898-1976)
— A prominent revolutionary who became a communist during the twenties while studying in France. He later served as the premier and foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China.

concubine
— In the old days, it was customary for Chinese men to have several wives. The first wife held a position of power while the other wives or concubines owed her services and deference. This is no longer legal in China.

cow eyes
— Round eyes.

Chungking
— the capital of the Republic of China during WWII.

cut off his pigtail
— This act symbolized republican aspiration and rebellion against the Manchu emperor of the Chin Dynasty (1644-1911). The Manchu are a Chinese minority race that came from Manchuria. Throughout the Chin Dynasty, the majority “Han” people were required to follow Manchu custom and wear a pigtail to indicate their subjugation to the Manchus.

dim sum
— Literally, “to dot” (dim) “the heart” (sum). It is an idiomatic expression referring to a meal of dumplings and small delicacies, eaten in the mornings or late evenings, before bedtime. Again, the Cantonese pronunciation is used here because it is popularly known in United States. In Mandarin, it would be pronounced “dian shin”.

don’t place sadness in your heart
— Don’t dwell on your sorrows.

double good fortune
— A description of a woman who is both pregnant and has gained weight.

dragon eye
— A fruit similar to a leechi nut. It is mustard colored, round and has a smooth skin.

Dragon Well tea
— A green tea produced near Hangzhou. The top grade of this tea is considered the finest in aroma and flavor. Connoisseurs recommend that the tea be brewed with clear water that is several degrees below the boiling point. Steeping it for too long affects the delicate color and turns the infusion bitter.

drink vinegar
—Be jealous.

dumb egg
— Stupid person.

East Ocean Devils
— The Japanese.

first moon
— The first month of the lunar calendar, popularly used in China. In the third book, Righteous Virtue dates his letter to his wife at the end, according to Chinese custom and the lunar calendar, but in his English letter to his daughters, he writes the date at the beginning according to the Western solar calendar.

Five Classics and the Four Books
— These are the books of Confucian scholarship. The five classics are the
Book of Song
,
Book of History
,
Book of Change
,
Book of Rites
and the
Spring and Autumn Annals
. The Four Books are the
Analects of Confucius
,
Mencius
,
The Great Learning
and
The Doctrine of the Mean
.

foreign concessions
— Chinese territories held by foreign powers. In the nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries, the West acquired a taste for tea, silk, porcelain, lacquerware, and other fineries of China. Smug and unable to appreciate the advantages of Western technology, China did not want to buy anything from the Western powers. Britain shipped opium to sell in China, in defiance of Chinese imperial prohibition. China went to war in October 1839 and lost. Hong Kong became a British colony. There followed one unequal treaty after another, until the major powers — Russia, Germany, Japan, France, Portugal and Britain — all held Chinese territories as “concessions.”. Colonialism gave the western nations economic advantages in trade, political and military power to protect their interests and religious opportunities to proselytize. Until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Japan did not consider itself at war with the Europeans. Therefore, the inhabitants in the foreign concessions enjoyed the rights of non-belligerents.

Fragrant harbor
— Hong Kong.

gas car
— Automobile.

go down
— Warehouse.

Golden Rule of the Mean
—
Chung Yung
, one of the four books of Confucian learning. In it, Confucius taught a humanism that exalted the paramount virtues of filial piety, moderation (the golden rule of the mean), compromise, patience, tolerance, pacifism, and reverence for the aged, learning, experience, and ancestors. These are considered essential traits of gentlemanly behavior.

Greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere
— A Japanese proposal set forth in 1938 to induce Chinese co-operation in creating a new economic order based upon Japanese technological know how, and Chinese labor / resources. The plan proposed to expel European influences and left no room for Chinese independence. The “co-prosperity sphere” was a well-known slogan in Japanese occupied China during World War II.