Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (28 page)

On social occasions, he became more and more withdrawn. During the annual Red Cross Ball hosted by Princess Grace, he refused to dance with anyone. At home, he sat for hours reading, or pretending to read, the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune. More often than not he dozed off.

Once, when driving along the winding roads of Monaco, he scraped the side of his Mercedes. When Niang questioned him about the dents he claimed that the mountainside had never

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been there before. As she ranted and raved about his hu tu (confusion), she was surprised to see that he had nodded off in the midst of her spirited harangue.

On his return to Hong Kong he stopped dyeing his hair. He had difficulty signing his name and practised for hours behind closed doors, trying to keep a steady hand. After his death, I found a stack of notebooks hidden underneath some towels. Every page was diligently filled with his signature. As I read his name over and over, I sensed his bewilderment and shame.

In the mornings he got up earlier and earlier. On golfing days he would summon his chauffeur at four to drive him to the club at Stanley. They would arrive in pitch darkness and snooze in the car, waiting for the gates to open at six.

In early 1977 I received a letter from Niang. A prominent Hong Kong physician had advised Father to go to Stanford University for medical consultation. I invited them to stay with us in our new home. Though I was deeply concerned about Father, I was thrilled that they had turned to me for assistance.

It was thus with a combination of dread and anticipation that Bob and I, both having taken the day off work, drove to the airport to meet them. I wept when I saw my Father, looking so frail and feeble, his hair completely white. There was a vacant, scared look in his eyes. We greeted each other formally with a handshake.

Bob had met my parents for the first time on a two-day visit to Monte Carlo three years earlier and was shocked at so drastic a change in their appearance. Though immaculately dressed in a mauve cashmere coat and wearing pearls and diamonds, Niang looked much older than her fifty-six years. Our housekeeper Ginger opened the front door when we arrived. Framed against the backdrop of tall bamboos in the airy atrium were our two children, Roger and Ann, running eagerly towards us to greet their grandparents.

Father crossed the threshold, stopped and gave a small gasp of pleasure at the glorious view of the harbour from our doorway through the soaring, bright, plant-laden foyer.

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Father’s look of pride was apparently too much for Niang. ’Go in and sit down, Joseph,’ she said irritably. ’What are you staring at? It’s only Adeline’s house.’

Bob and I flew up to San Francisco with them. We rented a car and checked into the local Holiday Inn before driving to the medical centre where Father was admitted. Various tests were performed, including a CAT scan. The four of us were then ushered into Professor Hanbury’s office where Father was to have a face-to-face evaluation. Father was able to answer all the routine questions until Professor Hanbury asked him to subtract seven from one hundred.

There was a short pause.

Finally, to my relief, Father replied,’Ninety-three.’ hm

’Please continue. What is seven from ninety-three?’

Father thought and thought. He started to sweat. His face turned red. He could not think of the answer. In desperation, he finally blurted out, ’Why is everything so difficult for me? These problems used to be so easy to solve. They are impossible now. Why, doctor? Why?’

I felt his fear and wished with all my heart that there was something I could do to reassure him. I glanced at Niang standing glumly next to me and tried to put a comforting arm around her but she moved away with a slight frown.

’I am afraid it is part of the process of growing old,’ Professor Hanbury replied. ’Leaving maths aside, Mr Yen, how many children do you have?’

Again Father hesitated. Twice he tried to answer but held back each time. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I could not bear it.

Bob took my hand and led me outside. He dried my tears with a tissue. ’Don’t cry. That’s a loaded question, the one about the number of children. Your poor father probably doesn’t know what the party line is just now. Do you count the disowned daughters or don’t you? Besides, the ones that were dispossessed yesterday may be in favour tomorrow.’

Father had further tests and stayed at the centre for a few

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days. Professor Hanbury was to inform us of his final diagnosis by post. We queued up at the business office for Father’s discharge papers. Because Father was a British citizen from Hong Kong and had no valid American medical insurance, we were told to settle his accounts immediately. When Niang was handed the statement, I could see she was startled by the amount. She was unaccustomed to American medical fees. Gently, I took the bills from her and wrote a personal cheque for the whole sum, promising her that Bob and I would meet all Father’s medical expenses in America.

At San Francisco airport, sitting with a snack in a coffee shop while we waited for our flight to Los Angeles, Niang wandered off looking for postcards. Father was relieved, almost cheerful, at the completion of his examination. To take his mind away from his illness, I asked him about his past. When was the happiest time of his life?

He thought for a while. ’When I was a young man in Tianjin,’ he replied, ’and you were all very small. I had started my own company and it was doing well. I began to export walnuts and drove from field to field inspecting the quality of the kernels. I used to start off at dawn and, before I knew it, it was dark again and time to hurry home for supper. I would be famished and suddenly realize I had eaten nothing all day. That was a very happy time for me.’

’Tell me about Adeline,’ Bob said. ’What was she like as a little girl?’

’She was a bookworm who excelled in her studies,’ Father answered with a smile. ’I got so used to her being top of the class that when she came in second, I would reproach her.’ His chest swelled with pride as my eyes filled with tears. ’I remember once she even won a writing competition open to all the Englishspeaking schools in the world …’

His voice trailed off. An expression of uneasiness crossed his face as he stared past us. Bob and I looked around to see Niang standing directly behind me. We had been so engrossed that no one had heard her approaching.

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’Well!’ she said sharply. ’What are you talking about?’

None of us knew what to say. We did not wish to displease her. ’Joseph!’ she exclaimed irritably. ’Has the cat got your tongue?’

Father remained mute but suddenly looked deflated. As we filed into the plane, I thought that over the years, his silence had become his armour.

Back at home in Huntington Beach, Father’s spirits revived sufficiently for us to suggest that James should join us for a short holiday.

Shortly after James’s arrival, the letter from Professor Hanbury finally arrived. Niang had been forewarned by the physician in Hong Kong, and the confirmation of her fears came almost as an anticlimax. Father was suffering from generalized brain atrophy due to Alzheimer’s disease. CAT scans revealed that his brain had already shrunk to two thirds of its normal size. His was a hopeless diagnosis, forecasting the steady, irreversible deterioration of his mental faculty into that of a human vegetable. Otherwise he was healthy and would not suffer any physical pain. There was no known treatment except for general supportive measures.

My mouth felt dry as I read the letter over James’s shoulder. I glanced at Niang sitting next to James, and wondered if she understood the tragic connotation of such an affliction. She suddenly stood up and went to her room, murmuring that she was at the end of her tether and needed a rest. James and I were left alone.

We talked of many things that afternoon, as the implication of Father’s growing senility and Niang’s eventual control of his business empire dawned on us. I advised him, once again, to make his own way in life. ’I can’t leave them now,’ he said, ’not while they are being si mian chu ge (besieged by hostile forces on all sides). There is no one else.’ I reluctantly nodded my agreement. ’Besides,’ he confessed, ’the Old Lady is mellowing. Yesterday, she said something rather curious. ’Your father had so many children, she told me, ’yet,

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when it comes down to it, we can only count on you and Adeline.’ There is a lot of truth in that statement, don’t you think?’

’Only you can put up with Niang!’ I exclaimed admiringly. ’Anyone else would have left a long time ago.’

My personal relationship with Niang improved dramatically after this visit. She even asked me to help them buy a house close to our home where they could come and spend their summers instead of Monte Carlo. The fact that we had shouldered all Father’s medical bills, amounting to around 50,000 US dollars, may have touched her. As a doctor, I was only too aware of the strains caused by Father’s illness and had genuine sympathy for her.

The result of her rapprochement with me was her deliberate exclusion of Edgar. Later that year, she held a gala seventieth birthday celebration party for Father in Hong Kong. Gregory and Matilda flew over from Canada with their two children. Bob and I attended with our Roger and Ann. James, Louise } and their brood were also there. Besides our immediate family, j she also invited a dozen other guests. Edgar was never informed and only found out much later.

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Coarse Tea and Plain Rice

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping became deputy chairman and began a series of liberal reforms, including the opening of China to tourism. In 1979, we were asked by American friends to join them on an organized tour visiting Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing.

In December 1979 we embarked on a journey which would have been unthinkable three years earlier. I was overwhelmed by the thought of seeing my Aunt Baba again when I wrote to her of our impending visit. Our sporadic correspondence, perennially frowned upon by Niang, had been halted by the Chinese government since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. My aunt replied immediately. The sight of her handwriting filled me with nostalgia. She had been living in a room at a neighbour’s house in the same lane since

1966 and I should look for her there. She was full of joyful expectation at our imminent reunion.

In Hong Kong, our tour group was lodged at the Hilton Hotel (pulled down in 1995), a mere ten-minute taxi ride from Magnolia Mansions. We travelled from the airport in Kowloon to Hong Kong via the newly constructed cross-harbour tunnel instead of the time-consuming vehicular ferry. I had not visited Hong Kong since 1978 and marvelled afresh at the colony’s meteoric development as the island’s breathtaking skyline exploded into view.

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Niang had written that Father could no longer control his bladder functions. We brought from California several large cartons of adult-sized diapers when we visited them. James and Louise were already there when we arrived. Father appeared much worse. After greeting us with a feeble smile, he did not say one word during the meal and seemed incapable of comprehending any of the conversation around him.

After dinner, we retired to the livingroom while Father was escorted away by his night nurse. Below us, the lights of Hong Kong and Kowloon beckoned to each other across the harbour. Father used to rhapsodize over the magnificent view from their balcony, lit up each night as if on perpetual electrical parade.

Niang handed a cigar to James and lit a cigarette for herself. This was their nightly ritual whenever James dined with Niang. James had confided to me many times that he loathed those cigars; but it never stopped him from accepting and smoking them.

As she puffed away, she launched into a diatribe against Aunt Baba. Whatever my aunt might have us believe, Niang exhorted, she was keeping up with Aunt Baba’s monthly allowance and ’giving her everything she could possibly want’. Then she began to rage against Lydia, warning us that my sister would probably try to enlist our help in getting her children out of China. ’Do nothing of the sort!’ she instructed. ’If only your Father could speak for himself, he would tell you that the whole Sung family is poison. I want you to know that Samuel and Lydia blackmailed your Father when they first returned to Tianjin in 1950. To your face they’ll flatter you, and behind your back they’ll plot against you. Once you start helping one family member, all the others will demand a handout and eventually they will all land on your doorstep. They will turn your life topsy-turvy. No one will be grateful.

’Adeline, take my advice!’ she continued. ’Life has been good to you. Why do you need to get embroiled with the likes of Lydia and Samuel? I’m warning you, if you associate with snakes you will be bitten. Tell Lydia that your Father and I

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forbid you to lift a finger to help them. Let them rot in their misery! They deserve it!’ Niang’s voice was becoming increasingly shrill.

We left as soon as we decently could. James and Louise drove us back to the Hilton.

’The Old Lady is vindictive,’ James commented in the car. ’Aunt Baba must have offended her in the past. Niang hates her and always will.’

’Do you think I should help Lydia if she asks me?’ ’Have you written to her about your trip to China?’ ’No, I haven’t. The only person I want to see is Aunt Baba.’

’Then why not leave things as they are? Suan le!’

Our tour group of forty people made the train journey from Hong Kong to Guangzhou on Christmas Day 1979. We were shepherded into the thirty-three-storey Baiyun (White Cloud) Hotel. Even though it was only two years old, the rooms and furnishing already seemed frayed and worn. Tips were not allowed and the hotel staff appeared surly. Breakfast was served promptly at seven forty-five. Forty fried eggs appeared on forty plates laid out at four separate round tables, ten to a table. Most of our group were still asleep in their beds while their eggs awaited them, rapidly congealing. Metal teapots were banged on to the tables, together with eighty pieces of toast, twenty per table. At nine sharp, breakfast was over. Eggs, toast and tea were whisked away by put-upon waitresses within five minutes. This was our introduction to life in Communist China.