Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (18 page)

In the lab, I tried to convey to Karl the pride and elation carried over from my life at the Chinese Students’ Union. Karl would dampen my excessive zeal. ’I’ve lived through this patriotic nonsense in my own country during the Second World War. Believe me, reality is not like that. So everyone in China is now an angel because Mao Zedong has liberated the country! Overnight nobody is for himself any more. No more envy, hatred and malice. Only kindness, love and universal justice! Do you really believe that, you little fool?’

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One Lute, One Crane

H. H. Tien was a postgraduate student in applied mathematics at Imperial College. He was of medium height, slender, wore thick glasses and, although not considered handsome, possessed warmth and charm. Kind and generous to a fault, H. H. was a natural leader and seemed to embody all that was most hopeful for the future of China. We looked up to him, not because of his logic or persuasive arguments, but because of the magnetism of his personality. His wealthy banker father had married for love and had spurned mistresses or concubines, which was unusual among Chinese men. In the 19305, Mr Tien had been active in the Anti-Japanese Boycott Association and fought with the heroic Nineteenth Route Army in defence of Shanghai against Japan before joining the underground Communist Party. He welcomed the liberation of Shanghai in 1949 and wrote an eight-page letter to his son H. H. in London preaching the dawn of a new China. However, to hedge his bets, he pragmatically opened another bank in Hong Kong and moved there in 1951.

One evening, soon after the Hungarian uprising in 1956, I went out with H. H. to a concert at the Albert Hall. Earlier that week, Karl had been perturbed by reports on BBC radio that Russia had sent troops into Budapest. H. H. and I had a heated discussion, during which I echoed many of Karl’s

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misgivings. H. H. described Russia’s actions as the protective embrace of a big brother to prevent chaos within a branch of the same political family.

’How can you be sure that China will become a great country?’ I argued. ’If there was so much greed and corruption under Chiang Kai-shek, why should a mere change of government alter the nature of every Chinese?’

We had arrived at my hall of residence in Tavistock Square. Reluctant to end the evening, we walked round and round Campbell Hall. H. H. suddenly chuckled. ’Know what they call Chiang Kai-shek?’ he asked in English. ’Cash my cheque, Chiang Kai-shek.’ He reverted to the Shanghai dialect in which we usually conversed. ’Seriously, if leadership is corrupt and inept such traits will permeate downwards to the masses. Under Communism, China is entering a new era of radical reform. Mao and his generals have made great strides and brought China into the world arena. Instead of kowtowing to General MacArthur, they forced America into a ceasefire in Korea. As Chairman Mao said, ”China has finally stood up.”’

Under the dim street lights his eyes were bright with fervour and hope. How I admired him! It started to rain. I raised the collar of my coat against the blustery chill. H. H. took off his warm college scarf and wrapped it around my neck. It felt so safe and comfortable to be in his company. In dribs and drabs I had confided in him parts of my painful childhood: information seldom disclosed.

’I’m almost eight years older than you,’ H. H. was saying. ’Sometimes I wish you were older. There’s so much I want to tell you. You had such a rough time with your stepmother. You need someone like me to defend you and look after you for the rest of your life.’

’I have to get back now,’ I told him, suddenly flustered and confused. ’My brother Gregory said that a boy and a girl getting together is like taking a bus. You end up on a particular bus because the right number comes along at the right time. I’ve been thinking about that ever since.’

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I unlocked the front door and handed H. H. back his scarf. I watched him as he wound his way around the puddles. Before he turned the corner, he waved and shouted, ’Let me know, am I the right number? Are you ready to board the bus?’ Then he

was gone.

Inside the hall it was dark and warm. On my way up, I noticed there was a letter in my letterbox. It was from Karl.

Dear Adeline,

It would be nice, and perhaps more than that, if we could meet after your tutorial on Wednesday. But I agree with you that we should not risk messing things up. Naturally, because of your youth, your concerns compared with mine are more substantial: to do with parents, grades, face, Chinese friends, your future and China (now the Big Thing). I have merely been trying to identify another biophysical problem and am now attempting to solve it. Of course, there will be no rewards, perhaps not even a paper at the end; and yet the enterprise seems so important. Would I be able to keep my position at the university if my feelings for you were to become known? It would be so wonderful to have you on my team permanently, but that is quite out of the question, and you are only eighteen.

So I don’t expect to see you alone soon. However, if you feel there is a chance, remember that I can manage Wednesday almost any time. Maybe we might have something meaningful to say to each other. Or, we may just be happy together, as we were in the last few months, sometimes …

Do not be seduced by rhetoric. Communism appeals to men and women yearning for Utopia. It will not work. Conflict, envy and malice will always be in the breast of man no matter which government rules. It stands to reason. Don’t be lured into adopting a particular religion because you happen to like the priest.

My little girl! My femtne fatale\ I have written little of what I meant to say. Thinking of you fills me with disturbing emotions I hesitate to transcribe. Suffice it that you have erased from my heart a bleakness I was happy to discard. Though I know I should probably step aside, please remember that wherever you go, I shall be waiting for you here in my lab, at all times.

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The melting melody of his words! never went out again.

The Cold War was at its height during the 1950s and 1960s. A few of my most idealistic contemporaries were asked to leave Britain in 1961 by the immigration authorities for being ’undesirable’. Kim Philby had recently been revealed to be the third man behind Burgess and McClean: a circle of English spies spawned during their undergraduate years at Cambridge university in the 19305. British authorities charged that Beijing was infiltrating secret agents among Chinese student circles in London, turning us into fledgling Communists.

C. S. married a Singaporean Chinese girl. He took her back to Shanghai and then taught and did research at the Academy of Science in Beijing. They were to suffer greatly during the Cultural Revolution. By the time I next saw him and his wife in

1980, C. S. had lost his hair and his patriotism. He no longer talked about rebuilding China but asked if I could help him obtain a post-doctoral fellowship in America. What concerned him most were education plans for his children and a pleasant retirement spot for himself and his wife. Not once did he cornplain about his decision to return to China. He remained warm, generous, honest and kind.

Others were less fortunate. H. H. was thirty-three and still single when he was told to leave. He went back to mainland China in i96z, against the advice of his parents. Months went by. No one ever heard from him. Some of us wrote to the address he had given us before his departure. There was never any reply. He had simply vanished into the bowels of China, swallowed amongst 800 million Chinese.

His ’disappearance’ distressed and perplexed us. We knew that something was deeply wrong and suspected that events had not turned out well for him. For me personally, his silence shattered every fantasy of the glorious motherland and I never again seriously considered returning to work in the country of my birth.

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Years later, we heard that H. H. had been persecuted anc imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. His gaolers wen unable to believe that such an accomplished and highly edu cated young scientist would renounce his rich family in Hong Kong, his comfortable lifestyle in the West and his promising career in order to serve his country. They insisted that he had an ulterior motive and urged him to confess. H. H. refused anc committed suicide in 1967, leaving a note with four Chinese words yi qin yi he (one lute, one crane), meaning that he was incorruptible and upright unto death. He was thirty-eight years old.

Others thrown out of Britain in the purge of leftist Chinese students fared differently. S. T. Sun (Little Sun), a graduate in architecture, was enamoured of Rachel Yu, one of my classmates from Sacred Heart boarding school days. When Little Sun was ’asked to leave’, they were dating seriously. He returned to a Hong Kong in the throes of a building boom which went on for over thirty years and continues unabated. He soon started his own architectural firm and became rapidly embroiled in an economic miracle that transformed Hong Kong from a sleepy outpost on the edge of China to the vertical metropolis it is today. All thoughts of motherland faded with the advent of six-figure pay cheques. Away from London and Rachel, he went back to his childhood sweetheart. Later his whole family took up Canadian citizenship and now commute between Hong Kong and Vancouver.

The years went by. I attended many weddings, feeling increasingly empty and forlorn. Those of my friends who were not already married seemed poised on the brink whilst I floundered in a relationship leading nowhere. Though I had been successful in keeping my emotional bondage to Karl secret, I had lost out in the larger sense because I was unable to form a simultaneous attachment to anyone else. The basic neurosis of our affair fed upon itself. While believing that our mutual feelings were irreplaceable, Karl was also convinced that it would be

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disastrous for us to marry. He persisted in encouraging me to go out with Chinese boys my age. Sometimes he even came along to vet my escorts. One evening, when I was sitting between a would-be suitor and Karl in a dark cinema, he suddenly reached over and caressed my hand.

After my graduation and internship I spent two years working and studying for postgraduate degrees in Edinburgh, perhaps in an attempt to escape from Karl. I passed my boards in internal medicine, becoming MRCP (Member of the Royal College of Physicians) London and MRCP Edinburgh. In that gloomy, wet, cold and windy city, I finally accepted that I had to leave England. So many times I had tried to break free from this impossible entanglement. None of the conflicts would ever be resolved. Towards the end, on a rare day when Karl had been particularly loving, he told me he was so happy he wanted to die. Then he added sadly, ’We are all wrong for each other. It is easier to die for you than to live with you.’

The parting, when it came, was wrenchmgly hard. In a way, I never got over it. Karl was my teacher, my mentor, my first love, my larger-than-life surrogate father. But, no matter how I rationalized it, he had rejected me and the relationship had failed. In a moment of shattering anguish, I destroyed all his letters.

Soon afterwards, in 1963, I left England for Hong Kong.

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My Grand Aunt was also known as Gong Gong (”Grand Uncle”) because of the respect granted her as president of the Shanghai Women’s Bank, which she founded in 1914. As a child of three, she refused to have her feet bound. She attended a missionary school founded by American Methodists and was fluent in English. Her bank at 480 Nanjing Lu in Shanghai is still in operation.

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My brothers and sisters. Back row, from left: Gregory, James, Edgar. Front row, from left: Lydia with baby half-sister Susan, and Adeline. This picture was taken in Tianjin in 1942. before the death of our grandmother. We were all fashionably dressed in Western clothes and had stylish haircuts.

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The boom days of Tianjin provided economic opportunities for Ye Ye, my grandfather, on right; his son, my father, at left; and K. C. Li, at the center. K. C. was one of the first Chinese graduates of the London School of Economics and the founder of Hwa Chong Hong, a highly successful import/export firm. Both my grandfather and my father worked for him.

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My brothers and sisters a few years later. Back row, from left: James, Edgar, Gregory, Lydia. Front row, from left: Susan, Franklin, Adeline, and the dog, Jackie. This picture was taken in 1946, about the time we were given a little duckling as a pet.

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My stepmother, Niang (”Mother”), and my father with Ye Ye (middle) in the 1940s. Ye Ye was a devout Buddhist. He always shaved his head, wore a skullcap in winter, and dressed in Chinese robes.

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Niang, Franklin, and my father in the early 1940s. My halfbrother, Franklin, was their favorite child. Niang bought his clothes at the best children’s boutiques on Avenue Joffre. She had his hair cut in the latest styles at the most fashionable children’s hair stylists.

—Ť

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Ye Ye and my baby half-sister, Susan. The picture was taken soon after their arrival in Shanghai from Tianjin in October 1943.

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Jeanne Prosper! was seventeen when she met my recently widowed father We called our stepmother Ntang (”Mother”) after she married my father. She had a French father and a Chinese mother and was a strikingly beautiful woman Though she was fluent in English, French, Mandarin, and the Shanghai dialect, she never learned to read and write Chinese or to speak Cantonese.

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Aunt Ba Ba never ceased to nurture me as a child, praising my accomplishments in school, checking my homework, and sharing her pedicabs with me. She never married and was financially dependent on my father and stepmother all her life. She was gentle, patient, and wise. I loved her very much.

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My two half-siblings, Franklin and Susan, with their tutor/ nanny, Miss Chien. Ours was a family with two systems: We stepchildren were the lower-class citizens; Franklin and Susan received preferential treatment from birth.

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