All the Flowers in Shanghai (2 page)

“One day maybe you can come out with me. Perhaps those large flat feet of yours can learn to dance?” Sister laughed to herself, then looked up into the mirror and over her shoulder at me. “What would you say, Feng Feng? What would we make you wear? I think you might look funny.”

She laughed out loud and wagged her head from side to side playfully, pulling a face by blowing out her cheeks and glaring widely, so that her eyes looked huge and her pupils shone with a dark fire.

But my only trips out were to school and back, though occasionally Grandfather would meet me to walk me home and we would take the alleyways through Shanghai’s Old Town. We would look in the shops together at food being prepared, dresses being made, and people selling cheap items. I would linger to watch people make
jiaozi,
fried dumplings, which would explode when I bit into the soft white dough, the beautiful oily sauce staining my lips and dripping down my chin. These shops were all very narrow, some of them just gaps in the masonry.

The Old Town had been constructed over several centuries as increasing numbers of peasants and immigrants settled there from the countryside. The buildings were mostly two-story, of rough, deep brown wood with tile roofs with narrow alleys running between them. People made their lives in these slivers of space—a hole in the floor with a fire beneath or a big oven, a
kang,
to heat the living area in the cold Shanghai winter evenings.

We would pass hundreds of peasants lining the walls and everyone would have to duck when a woman or a man walked along with a pole slung across their shoulders, carrying goods or food for delivery. At that moment we would all stop and crouch against the walls. Suddenly, I would find myself next to a peasant and their family. I would stare at them and their desperate smiles, parting cut and cracked lips to reveal broken teeth; their shabby clothes so worn that the colors and shapes blended into a dark mass of waxy material, with head, hands, and feet projecting outward. I held Grandfather’s hand tight then, as it seemed one of them might reach out and grab me, yet I could see that many of them were too weak to stand and barely strong enough to keep hold of their few belongings.

“Why do these people stay here?” I tried to whisper into Grandfather’s ear.

“There are many people in China. Fortune has blessed our family but she cannot bless everyone, so those who have been unlucky come here to sell what little things they can and to beg for money and food.” He bent forward slightly as we walked, to speak quietly to me. “They are here to remind us to give thanks to the gods of fortune. You should remember that when New Year comes.”

“Should we give them some money then?”

“Well, you can buy something from them, but don’t tell Ma and your sister because then they will be angry with me for bringing you here . . . and extremely angry that you have spoken to these people. We should be careful. If anyone should see you here they might tell other people, and this is not the sort of place our family should visit.” He sounded a little anxious.

I looked at the faces of the poor people around us; rouge would not be enough to fix them; vanity and beauty were luxuries beyond their understanding. These people had worked and suffered so long that they had gone past hope and felt nothing more than empty resignation and exhaustion. I did not realize that the country was full of such people: hungry and, to Sister, seemingly worthless but whose bellies were filling with anger.

As we came out of the Old Town and joined the pavement of the main streets, I was confused and needed to question him further.

“If I should not go to the Old Town, why do you take me?”

“Because I would like you to see the things that are important. Things so many in these changing times don’t care about.” He looked down at me, his face very serious, then he smiled and gave me a wink and said, “It would have been easier if you had been a boy, of course. What a pretty grandson you would have made!”

When we walked into the house, Sister was standing in the entrance hall and saw the sugarcane snake I was eating.

“Where did you buy that?” she yelled, and snatched it from me.

“I bought it from one of those old vendors who travel the city. Give it back.”

“Are you stupid?”

“No.”

“Well, I think you must be. Because if someone had seen you buying this they would say our family associates with beggars and street vendors.” She scowled at Grandfather. “You should have stopped her.”

Grandfather muttered something in reply then said aloud, “I told her so.”

Sister looked back at me.

“Xiao Feng, you should know better. Ma will be very angry with you. Are you intent on ruining everything?”

She wasn’t expecting an answer from me. It was just a lull before she gave vent to her anger.

“You will never understand, so you simply need to remember that everything you do brings shame on our family. I don’t understand why you would even associate with such people anyway.”

I watched her shout and bare her teeth behind her perfectly red lips. My mind wandered to the hard, sore lips of the people I had seen earlier, crouching against the walls. Sister’s lips were like perfect fruit and her skin like pale silk, but her voice was far more rude than anything those ragged people would ever say.

Sister always seemed much older than I have ever been: instinctively aware of how adults live and what adults want. She was right: I did not understand yet. And even now, after all these years, I realize her understanding of life, how to win at it, had always surpassed mine. She was always more conscious of her direction; of where she was and how she would advance to her next objective. My childhood simply seemed to continue as it had started. It was not for me to be concerned with the niceties of afternoon tea parties and noisy evening dances. I spent my time with flowers and grass, running to school and eating noodles on the street. I was not required to know anything more than what I learned from Grandfather and Ba. I had not been chosen to fulfill anyone’s hopes and dreams. Instead Grandfather had showed me how to mirror Nature’s quiet acceptance; not to scheme and plan and get my own way. I had not understood or felt desire, nor were there any high parental aspirations for me to live up to.

Ma heard Sister’s shouting and arrived from the kitchen across the other side of the courtyard.

“What is it? Why are you shouting? People may hear us.”

“I’m scolding her for spending time in the Old Town and speaking to the people there.”

Ma looked at me.

“How did you get there?”

“I go there often, but this time I took Grandfather. He told me not to enter the alleys but I think it’s safe.”

“
You
think it’s safe? Who are you to decide? I heard your sister call you stupid and I was coming to reprimand her, but you
are
stupid. Those lanes are full of people who carry disease and could steal you away to some village in a distant province. You would never survive. Those aren’t the sort of people this family wants to know.”

She waited for a few seconds to see if I had anything to say in reply but I at least knew when to be quiet, to say nothing and act dumb.

“Do not go there again! What do you say, Feng?”

“I understand. I won’t go there again.”

Grandfather shuffled his feet behind me. Ma turned and went back across the courtyard and into the kitchen. I wanted to cry and shout but knew that I must obey. Sister looked past me to Grandfather and then turned to the maid who had been standing watching at the side of the room.

Sister held out the sugarcane stick in front of the maid. “Please take this away. You can finish it if you want—and if you see Feng with another one then you will tell me immediately.”

Sister was actually only five years older than me, but I think by the time I had been born Ma had already started molding her into the likeness of a grown woman, one who would care for little other than the things she would be instructed to love and pursue. Sister was generally unkind to me but I could not hate her for that because she always seemed so far above me, living a life of such complexity and sophistication I could only marvel at her. She was like a visitor from another family: unrelated to my shyness, beyond Ma’s belief in crude traditions and repetitive tribulations, far removed from Ba’s and Grandfather’s naïve belief in the teachings of Confucius. I did not love her, either, and she did nothing to make me love her, yet every day I still liked to see her and was glad of the touch of glamour she brought to my life.

She had always excluded me from mixing with her friends, not directly but subtly, as she shrugged aside anyone who was too quiet or too slow to keep pace with her own delicious charm and relentless activity. Encouraged by Ma’s ambitions for her, she had been quick to create a life for herself that made no concessions to helping out anyone unable to keep up. I was quiet by nature and, like a lame child, would always be left behind in the race to follow her. I never envied her or sought to be like her, knowing that would be impossible. At the time, I believed that Grandfather’s stories and wisdom were all I needed to know.

On certain days, at half past six in the evening, as I sat eating my supper of rice and vegetables with Grandfather, I would see Sister standing with Ba near the front door. We would be sitting in the kitchen on the opposite side of the courtyard, which lay at the center of the house. She would leave her bedroom on the upper floor. Grandfather and I would watch her walk alone beside the balcony rail then appear at the bottom of the steps that ended by the kitchen. We would watch her cross the courtyard then enter the sitting room and, because the maids would leave open all the inner doors to the courtyard unless it was very cold, we could then see Sister again, standing in the entrance hall with Ba. She would wait there patiently to be collected by her current suitor, who would always arrive at a quarter to seven accompanied by his father.

Sister would be dressed in a cheongsam, the red-and-gold flower-embroidered silk furled around her body so gracefully that it appeared like a beautiful scroll, and about her shoulders she would drape an elegant short fur stole that Ba had given her. As Grandfather watched, he would whisper to me, “Xiao Feng, I do not think the gods could have picked more perfect colors for your sister.” He would chuckle to himself. “You and I spend so much time together in the gardens, yet the most beautiful creature Nature could ever conceive is right here, heh?”

He would give me a little wink. It was true. Sister’s hair was beautifully set and gently waved, like white women’s hair, and she would wear the fur stole nestled around her neck, and carry a small bag. She always smelled of Florida Water, the perfume of the time, and whenever she walked past Grandfather and me the scent would hang heavily in the air, always just long enough for it to linger in our imagination.

“Your grandmother would be so proud of you,” Grandfather would shout out to Sister as she waited. She would smile in acknowledgment, but not with gratitude.

“Next time you must remind me to give you your grandmother’s old cheongsams. I think they would fit you perfectly.”

“I think Grandmother was a little fatter than me and those patterns are no longer fashionable. They’re too old for me, Grandfather,” she replied quickly, eyes fixed on the door while she spoke to him.

“Just like me, I suppose.” It was Grandfather’s turn to smile now but Sister did not see.

He mumbled something to himself and looked up briefly at me.

“Your sister is more radiant than Grandmother, isn’t she?”

I did not know, as she had died long before I was born.

D
uring those few years I saw a succession of very different young men appear at the house to court Sister. Many were headstrong and foolish, living off family businesses and the hard work of others. Sometimes the same man would reappear a few times, his parents bringing Ma gifts and perhaps a big box of foreign cigarettes for Ba. Although our family was not rich or well-known, Sister was considered a woman worth marrying—beautiful, well-bred, educated, and thoroughly schooled. Not all her suitors were polite, though—one or two did not show Ba the proper respect. They did not give him face, merely sent a servant into the house to collect Sister, who would then be led to the car where the suitor of the day and his father sat waiting.

People knew that my parents were looking for a good match for her, and it was widely known that they had made the appropriate preparations to achieve this. Ba had saved a large dowry for her, and both he and Ma had ensured that Sister knew every aspect of etiquette, from table manners to Western dancing. She had been raised to put her husband first, but until she found the right man she saw every other woman as a rival, and was ruthless in her desire to surpass them all.

Some suitors came in sheepishly, like poor relations looking to borrow money, bowing and kowtowing so their fat backsides stuck out. The best of them came dressed in Western clothes, dapper suits and finely made fedoras, and the more traditional in beautiful black silk
ma qua
. In the summer, the fat ones would be dripping sweat from the brims of their felt hats, embarrassed and apologizing to Sister for the constant need to mop themselves with an already soaking handkerchief or, worse still, the sleeve of their disheveled suits. The handsome ones would stand like the Western movie stars I used to see on the film posters, striking poses and glancing over regularly to catch a glimpse of themselves in a window or mirror. I loved to watch them when occasionally they had to wait for Sister and Ba.

Ma had her favorites, though I suspect Ba liked none of them. She would rank them according to family background, their job, and family business. A big family business, like shipping, trading, or banking, was what she preferred; professions were acceptable, but Ma was practical and considered capital preferable to intellect.

I liked certain suitors for their smiles and eyes. Some of them had warm brown eyes that greeted me welcomingly, without suspicion or disdain, and smiles that immediately disarmed me. I never went to speak to them, but sometimes I was there when they entered and would stand quietly by. I realized I looked awkward in my ill-fitting clothes but some of them were so handsome that I would forget myself. I would just stand and look at them, and sometimes if they noticed me they would smile, which made me look away in confusion and slowly retreat from the entrance hall back into the courtyard and the kitchen. Their looks were less important to Ma, but she did like height and Chineseness: she wanted wide eyes, black hair, and smooth skin. She did not want anyone too thin or with a dark complexion.