The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (33 page)

Yet one old man and his two teenaged charges hardly counted as a full-scale embassy. Mei-Hua knew that—behind their polite facades—the English were angry at what they perceived to be a slight by the Jiaquing Emperor. She knew the English did not trust her and her brother, let alone Tang Guozhi. She reciprocated the mistrust. Above all, she feared the intentions she felt everywhere signalled though by no one stated. The subcutaneous sensations of threat and suspicion neared the surface most forcefully in their interviews with officers at the Admiralty and at the East India Company, who claimed official responsibility for their well-being.

“This one is a blade of sternest steel,” thought Mei-Hua, watching Sir John Barrow spar verbally with Tang Guozhi, a duel between two wily, martial veterans (Tang Guozhi was the scion of a mighty Manchu clan, a captain in the Bordered Red Banner, reporting directly to the Grand Council; he had served with the general A-Kuei, victorious in The Ten Great Campaigns in the last century). They had met long ago, in Peking when Lord MacCartney represented King George III at the court of the previous emperor, the first embassy ever from Great Britain to the Middle Kingdom. She admitted that Sir John paid them the compliment of very intelligent questions. His appetite for detail was well informed and seemingly endless.

“So your two wards come from Tsinan Fu in Shantung Province?” said Sir John, pointing at Mei-Hua and Shaozu, who sat as far from the English as they could. Mei-Hua thought happily of her home city, the capital of the province, with its Five Dragon Pool and other natural springs, its plum rains in spring and summer, its markets filled with pears from Laiyang, apples from Yantai, eggplant and chickens from Dezhow. She missed steamed buns. The homesickness flooded in even as she listened to the terrible old men, filled her to bursting, the
suhsiang
that tried to drown her. She made of her face a plaster mold and refused the tears their outlet, while her heart screamed within her. Steamed buns! Sweet winter cabbage braised in vinegar! Hot peanut soup on the coldest days!

Tall, inscrutable men with close-cropped heads (government functionaries without queues running gracefully down their backs—Mei-Hua was astonished) hovered around Sir John, scribbling in notebooks, as he drilled on. He wanted to know everything about their journey: how Tang Guozhi had travelled down the Grand Canal from Peking to the lake by Suquian, where Mei-Hua and Shaozu met him after their own journey from Tsinan; how the three had continued together on the canal, through Pengcheng, Yangchow (Sir John probed specifically about the salt magazines of this city), Soochow, and finally to the port of Hangchow (Sir John wanted to know about the role of the many Muslim traders in this city); how, emboldened by the recent capture of a famous pirate, they had taken the quicker coastal route rather than the traditionally safer inland roads, sailing from Hangchow to Canton (Sir John pressed for details about Canton’s Thirteen Factories, the holdings of silver in the banks there, the volume of the opium trade). He seemed to know something of their trip from Canton to Cape Town, and was remarkably well apprised about their stay at the Cape and the final leg of their voyage from there to London.

Mei-Hua was half-amused, half-terrified as Sir John tried to badger Tang Guozhi, who blandly deflected the queries or calmly fabricated responses. She knew Tang Guozhi was furious, she could hear it in his voice even as he spoke in his polished English, and she was equally sure that Sir John knew this too, but neither man (nor anyone else in the room) acknowledged the ire or any other element of discord. Again, Mei-Hua noted the back-handed compliment that Sir John was paying to his guests (prisoners? hostages?) by allowing a smooth surface of tranquil harmony to prevail, even as the deep currents ran to turbulence.

Afterwards, Tang Guozhi was less restrained.

“Barbarians!” he said. “See, children, how they taunt us? While they pump us for information on our commerce and our industry, they share as little as possible with us about their own! They ask me to reveal the size and number of our garrisons on the Grand Canal, and how many troops we have at this city and that city, without the courtesy of telling the same about their own strength. Hah! They seek to borrow a pig from a tiger!”

Mei-Hua could not disagree, but she reminded herself that her guardian was a military officer and a Manchu (not a proper Han like herself, which mattered even after one hundred-seventy five years of Qing rule); his interests were not entirely hers. Her own memories of the journey in China—which seemed part of another life—centred on the well-ordered fields of white-flowering buckwheat and the plantations of dark, shiny, green lamp-oil camellia visible from their boat on the canal, on landings heaped with freshly dug sweet potatoes (steaming slightly in the early morning sun) awaiting transport to market, on azure-winged magpies exploding with loud calls and flashing tails from thickets as the canal-boat swept in too close to their nests. She remembered the Lingering Gardens in Soochow, and Soul’s Retreat and King Yue’s Temple by the willow-stroked waters of Hangchow’s West Lake (English pagoda copies were sad and stiff by comparison). She had thrilled to the close-knit singing and ribaldry of the imperial courier stations dotting the Grand Canal, where hierarchy was loosened and everyone participated in the telling of tales from all over China. The trip had seemed a grand adventure, like the Monkey King’s voyage to the West, or Li Po farewelling his friend at Yellow-Crane Tower, the blossomy haze off the river swallowing the distant glint of a sail, until nothing was left on the clear-green horizon “but a river flowing along the ramparts of heaven.”

Mei-Hua pulled back from these memories. She focused on her experiences of England, marvelling at how smoothly brazen the English were in refusing to divulge any information of real value to the Chinese delegation, how offhandedly devious their hosts were in delivering half-truths and misdirection, how subtle in the art of intimidation. All of London seemed drenched in a triumphalist vintage, its people tippling the wine of victory. Their hosts took special pains to point out Napoleon’s carriage, a trophy in the Egyptian Hall, and the tiger-mouthed brass cannons once belonging to the vanquished Tipu Sultan, now occupying a prominent place in the central courtyard of East India House on Leadenhall Street. They ensured close scrutiny of the large white-marble bas-relief above the fireplace in the entry courtroom of East India House, which depicted Britannia sitting on a globe, looking eastward, one hand lolling on her shield, the other grasping a trident, while a woman representing India bows down to her (offering a chest of jewels), and women portraying China and Africa likewise offer tribute, albeit while still standing. Admiralty officials were solemnly delighted to get the Chinese front-row seats at the reenactments of Trafalgar and the Battle of the Nile, staged in the artificial pond at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Their minders from the East India Company did the same with the revival at the just-opened Royal Coburg Theatre in Southwark of the comic opera
Ramah Droog
, with its ostensibly realistic staging of pitched battles between the army of the nefarious Indian usurper and the troops of the legitimate nawab (led by the English officers of the EIC), long lines of dancing girls, enormous painted scenes of rajahs on elephants, camel caravans and trains of buffalo. Mei-Hua, Shaozu ,and Tang Guozhi applauded (not unimpressed by the English ability to stage splendidly loud and ravishingly colourful spectacles), and never once missed the underlying point.

No one—neither the British nor the Chinese—mentioned a place called Yount. Mei-Hua guessed that Sir John, at least, knew of Yount, though her premonition had mostly to do with the way he looked at her whenever discussion at the Admiralty sessions came to the Cape and the Termuydens. Just when she thought he might be on the verge of broaching the subject, Sir John seemed to tack away, leaving Yount an unspoken cipher, a restless gap at the centre of the serpentine conversation. Tang Guozhi had forbidden Shaozu and Mei-Hua to raise the topic with the Admiralty or the EIC before they did. For their part, the Admiralty and the EIC contented themselves with making sure their guests saw several men-of-war in the Thames at a distance (but close enough to see all the guns on parade, protruding each from its port-hole)—they did not grant access to any of the shipyards, least of all to the Blackwall yard where construction of the
Indigo Pheasant
proceeded fitfully.

Mei-Hua might have borne well enough the diplomatic maneuvering and negotiation of nearly impenetrable social codes under other circumstances (she was, after all, the daughter of Tsinan Fu’s deputy salt tax inspector) but the sheer alienness of London pressed down upon her. Challenged by the cloacal smells, constant cold rain and winter’s short, mist-laden days, she felt they had sailed through a hole in the world and landed in the
guiyu shijie
, the domain of ghosts. Everywhere she went, legions of ghosts surrounded her, shockingly white, the colour of mourning. The ghosts stared at her, leered at her, touched her skin and especially her hair—they could not stop their desire to stroke her straight, glossy black hair. The ghosts did not have hair like hers or any Chinese. She feared they might cut it off, possess it. She thought them capable of seizing her spirit, embalming her on a tavern-sign, another trophy, like the images she saw when she passed The Saracen’s Head Inn in Aldgate or The Black Boy & Camel on Leadenhall Street.

Mei-Hua knew that her brother and Tang Guozhi suffered as well; she was profoundly grateful to be together with them in facing the wrenching mysteries of life in England. In all of London were no more than perhaps two hundred Chinese—the only others were sailors barracked by the East India Company in Shadwell, besides a rumoured handful of shipjumpers thought to be living clandestinely further east in Pennyfield and Limehouse Causeway. (The EIC allowed no contact with the sailors, who in turn had no idea that their Emperor had sent an embassy to Great Britain.) Mei-Hua and her companions had expected—if not viscerally understood—that England would lack many familiar foods, soaps, and medicines, but had not grasped that the linguistic categories for many of what they considered the most essential domestic items would be incommensurate with or altogether absent from English thinking. For example, they were stymied seeking remedies for stomach distresses and blocked sinuses, for colds and headaches. London’s physics and apothecaries, even those employed by the East India Company, could not understand what the Chinese meant by
longgu
(which translated to “dragon bone,” serving only to further baffle the English) or
yuyuliang
or
lurong
. Even when the English could translate the elements of the words, the Chinese concepts did not fit English taxonomies. Mei-Hua’s sinuses stayed blocked, Shaozu’s stomach remained upset, Tang Guozhi’s arthritic knee continued to plague him.

Mei-Hua suffered uniquely. She was the only Chinese woman in all of Great Britain. While in London that winter, she had her first period. Her brother and her guardian—so valuable as allies in the daily struggle with London’s unrelenting foreignness—were useless in this context. This was women’s business, not a topic one discussed with men; Mei-Hua was not even sure what words one used for the occasion (let alone what words the English might use). With effort and artifice, she hid her menstruation from Shaozu and Tang Guozhi, and missed her mother and her aunts more than she could say.

The one warm, harmonious note sounding for the Chinese in London emanated from the McDoons. Mei-Hua, Shaozu, and Tang Guozhi were relieved and happy to attach themselves to the McDoons, and soon became (despite sporadic efforts by Sir John to block them) regular visitors to the house on Mincing Lane with the blue trim and the dolphin door-knocker. Here they found at least one place in London where the stove-god held sway.

“Sadness dwells here too,” thought Mei-Hua. “Sadness, disappointment, envy. Under the eaves, a tang of bitterness like the taste of oleander that we import from Yunnan.” She paused, thinking that Yunnan once seemed as far away to her as the Jade Emperor’s mountain.

At the house on Mincing Lane, Mei-Hua found others who understood what she felt, having themselves felt it:
hsiangnien
,
chuanlien
, which is the home-sickness for a home one has never seen, the hopeful longing for a place that might not exist.

Sally—the sad one, a grey spirit eclipsing unto itself—nodded wearily and said, “Yes, we know that. Forlorn hoping.
Sehnsucht
the Germans (our neighbours across the narrow straits, in case you do not know of them, for they do not send many ships to China) call it.”

Mei-Hua said, “‘Crows call at early moon-rise by the river-bridge. I hear a far-away bell ringing, as the fishermen light the lamps on their returning boats.’ That’s how I feel most of the time, like Chang Chi in this poem.”

“Hmmm, yes,” said Sally, nodding again.

“But now that I have come so far from my own home, I am not sure I really want to keep feeling this,” said Mei-Hua. “The sickness for my own home—my own home with my parents in Tsinan Fu, by the Tsi River with its cheerful kingfishers—is enough for me. The awful strangeness of your London, and of Cape Town before that, is more than I can bear.”

“We know all about that too,” said Sally. “Believe me, the longing tricks you, makes a beggar of all your hopes. Best never to leave. Turn back now while you still can. Don’t listen to all the voices in your heart.”

Maggie put her tea-cup down so hard the spoon rattled off the saucer onto the table.

“Stop it,” she said, loudly enough to startle Yikes by the fire and Charicules perched on the mantlepiece by the clock. “Both of you, now.”

Mei-Hua thought, “This one is an osprey-princess. She is the ghost-killer, Zhong Kui, in a woman’s body. Her eyes daunt me.”

Maggie said, “We are none of us come yet to the jubilee-home, so we stay true to the track until we arrive there.
Chi di
, no choice in the matter for any of us. Of course, Hope mocks us, and perhaps some more than others. As Mr. Sanford likes to say, we are all things out of place and order, and that disorder needs to be repaired. No one else can do the task to which we have all been called. But we are women: we are as strong as elephants. And even if we wanted to just hive off and turn around, stay home, or wherever you might think is safest, there is the Owl, the filthy old
akakpo
, waiting to deny us all and everything.”