Chinese Cinderella (10 page)

One morning, on her way to school in her father’s chauffeur‐driven car, she saw me plodding along, carrying my heavy book bag. She asked her driver to stop, and offered me a lift. Though sorely tempted, I had no choice but to refuse, saying with a laugh that I enjoyed walking. Chun‐mei made nothing of it until two weeks later. It had been raining very hard and the streets were flooded. There were typhoon warnings and school had been let out early. Many of the girls were stranded, waiting to be picked up by their families. Chun‐mei had phoned her father, who came at once in his car to fetch her. On their way home they saw me sloshing through ankle‐deep water.

Wu Chun‐mei stopped the car and rolled down the window. ‘Who’s this lone small figure struggling along deserted Avenue Joffre braving the elements?’ her father asked. ‘How about a ride?’

‘No, no, thank you!’ I began, desperately clutching my book bag with one hand and my umbrella with the other. ‘It’s fun to walk in a storm like this . . .’ As I spoke, a gust of wind almost lifted me off the pavement. My umbrella turned inside out and I was blown sideways against a lamp‐post.

Suddenly, Dr Wu got out of his car into the pouring rain, looking almost angry. ‘Don’t you know it’s dangerous to walk in weather like this?’ he asked. Then he physically bundled me into the back seat. I was drenched through and through from head to toe. The water in my shoes made a puddle on the car mat. Rivulets of water dripped from my hair, which was plastered against my head. I had no raincoat. My uniform stuck to my frame, and I was shivering. I knew I looked awful but felt I must keep up appearances. So I smiled, and spoke of the storm as if it were a great adventure. At the entrance to my lane, I insisted on getting out and walking to my house because I was terrified of getting into trouble for having accepted a lift. I simply could not run the risk of having Niang see me being driven to the front door in a car. They must have thought I was mad when I stepped back into the storm.

Wu Chun‐mei and I became friends, and partnered each other when we played doubles in ping‐pong or badminton. She lent me her books, and I helped her with arithmetic. Though Chun‐mei excelled in English and spoke it without an accent, she was hopeless at maths, and often came under the teacher’s fire.

Though her chauffeured car invariably awaited her when school finished, she often chose to walk with me until we reached her house, with her driver trailing behind at snail’s pace. In the mornings, if she happened upon me trudging along, she would order her driver to stop, and would hop out and accompany me all the way.

In August 1945, when I was almost eight years old, America dropped the atom bomb on Japan. This ended the Second World War. America was the new conqueror.

At school, we were given surplus C‐rations for our lunch, left by China’s new heroes, the US marines. We ate hard biscuits, canned meats and chunks of bittersweet chocolate. After each meal, we prayed and thanked our American allies for winning the war.

Hollywood movies swept into Shanghai like a tidal wave. There was a craze for everything American. One day in September 1945, all the children in my school were bussed to the Bund to welcome the American soldiers. Along with my schoolmates, I cheered, waved welcoming flags, curtsied and presented bouquets. American minesweepers, cruisers and flagships clogged the muddy waters of the Huangpu River. Hotels and office buildings on the Bund were taken over by the US Navy and other American servicemen.

Photographs of American movie stars adorned billboards and magazine covers. Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Lana Turner and Errol Flynn became household names. One schoolmate two years ahead of us in Form 5 actually received an autographed photo from Clark Gable, sent all the way to Shanghai from Hollywood, California. She was surrounded by half the school at recess. We were borne on a frenzy of excitement at the sight of the picture of the handsome actor, each of us clamouring to hold him in our hands and gaze into his dreamy eyes – even if just for a few seconds.

About then, Wu Chun‐mei lent me a book entitled
A Little Princess
, translated from English into Chinese. She told me it was one of her favourites and had been written by an English author named Frances Hodgson Burnett. This fairy‐tale of seven‐year‐old motherless Sara Crewe, who started life as an heiress, turned overnight into a penniless servant girl and eventually changed her life through her own efforts, gripped my imagination as no other book had ever done before. I read it again and again, suffered Sara’s humiliation, cried over her despair, mourned the loss of her father and savoured her final triumph. I kept it so long that Wu Chun‐mei became impatient, and demanded its return. Coming from a secure and happy home, Wu Chun‐mei could not grasp the impact this message of hope had upon me. For the first time, I realised adults could be wrong in their judgement of a child. If I tried hard enough to become a princess inside like Sara Crewe, perhaps I, too, might one day reverse everyone’s poor opinion of me.

Reluctant to relinquish my new‐found treasure, I begged to keep it for another two weeks. Laboriously and doggedly, I copied the book word for word into two exercise books during this grace period, committed parts of it to memory, and slept with it under my pillow until the manuscript became tattered.

Though Wu Chun‐mei and I spent numerous school hours together, not once did I mention my family or hint at the presence of a stepmother. In many ways, I envied my friend. As much as possible, in front of her, I pretended that I had loving parents too. It was simply too painful to admit the truth because then the dream would vanish forever.

During the spring term of 1946, when I was eight years old and in the third grade, Father took Niang, Big Sister, Fourth Brother and Little Sister north to reclaim his Tianjin properties. They stayed away for three months.

It was a glorious spring and early summer. Though outwardly everything remained the same while my parents were away, in reality nothing was. The four of us left behind stepped back through time into a cheerful, buoyant and light‐hearted era which we had almost forgotten.

My two oldest brothers started staying late after school to play with their friends. They refused to submit to any more head shaves, insisting on crew cuts as a compromise. They raided the refrigerator at will and ate whatever they fancied. They started taking an interest in girls, whistling after pretty ones the way the American boys did in Hollywood movies.

One Sunday morning at breakfast, Big Brother pushed aside his usual congee and preserved vegetables and told the maid his palate needed a change.

‘Seeing it’s Sunday, how about a nice, hard‐boiled, salted duck egg?’ the maid suggested.

‘What does Sunday have to do with anything? I’m tired of preserved vegetables and salted duck eggs. Bring me a big omelette, made with lots of chicken eggs! Put some ham in it! That’s what I feel like eating.’

‘Young Master (Shao Ye
)! You know that chicken eggs are not allowed. Cook has orders from above. You’ll get us all in trouble.’

‘If you’re too cowardly to talk to Cook, I’ll tackle the brute myself!’ Big Brother sprang up and stomped into the kitchen. Relishing his new role as young master of the house in the absence of Father, he ordered Cook to make him the ‘biggest omelette of his life’ with loads of ham and plenty of scallions. A battle ensued.

‘We have specific instructions from your mother that chicken eggs are intended only for those on the first floor,’ announced Cook haughtily, his whole posture oozing righteous indignation. ‘Besides, there are not enough eggs on hand to make such an omelette as you have in mind.’

‘Not enough eggs, eh?’ challenged Big Brother. ‘We shall see about that!’ He started a systematic search, beginning with the refrigerator and ending in the larder, retrieving every egg he could find. He then methodically broke them one by one into a giant bowl.

Meanwhile, offended by Big Brother’s trespass on his domain and violation of his ‘orders from above’, Cook was saying frostily, ‘I’ll have to report this egghunt of yours. Just as I am going to mention to your parents about your “airmail letters”.’

He was referring to messages sent to two pretty sisters who lived immediately behind us. Their second‐floor bedroom window faced the rear window of my brothers’ room, separated only by an alley‐way. The boys amused themselves by wrapping scribbled notes around hard candies, then using rubber‐band slings to catapult them across. The day before, an errant missile had unfortunately landed on the bald head of our neighbours’ cook, who had rushed over to our house to complain loudly to his counterpart.

Chagrined but defiant, Big Brother blithely whipped up all the eggs, added ham and scallions, and made himself a king‐sized sixteen‐egg omelette. ‘You can inform on me all you want! But first I’m going to treat myself to a decent breakfast for once, whether
they
approve or not! As for your buddy, the thump to his head will probably stimulate his conk to sprout a full head of hair again! He should thank me for doing him the favour!’ With that, he sailed into the dining‐room with his omelette and emptied his plate with relish.

Aunt Baba, who had been working full time as a bank teller, felt freer during this period to spend most evenings and weekends after work playing mah‐jong with her friends. Ye Ye grew close to Third Brother and me, and often escorted the two of us to picnics at Du Mei Gardens, a public park one tram‐stop from home.

Cook would prepare wonderful sandwiches for us, inserting thick layers of eggs flavoured with mushrooms and ham into loaves of fresh, crusty French baguettes. I used to chase Third Brother along the winding paths of the meticulously manicured arbour, hide behind giant sycamore trees, and roll across lush green lawns which spread out as far as my eyes could see. Happy and relaxed, I’d watch Third Brother imitate Ye Ye in his Tai‐chi exercises; stand on tiptoe and crane my neck to catch a glimpse of famous players competing in Chinese chess; and listen to professional storytellers spinning yarns about kung‐fu heroes. Sometimes, if we were lucky, a band would be playing music from the domed pavilion in the centre of the park.

We’d play for hours, pretending to be characters from Chinese folklore, taking turns as the hero or villain. When Third Brother was away from our two oldest brothers and Big Sister, he seemed to turn into a different person.

‘I like you much better when I play only with you,’ I confided one day. ‘You don’t order me around or make me be the bad person all the time when we play “Three Countries War”. You are fair while the others despise me.’

‘It all stems from our mama dying when you were born. Big Sister and our two older brothers knew her better than I did. I only remember her a little. Things were much nicer when she was alive. You made her go away.’

‘We all live in our big house and it’s full of people but it’s a lonely place,’ I said. ‘I can’t wait to grow up and get away. I’ll take Ye Ye and Aunt Baba with me. You can come too if you like. It’s not only Niang. Big Sister and Second Brother are always picking on me too. They
hate
it when I top my class and Father praises me. Then they’re specially mean. They think I don’t know but I do.’

‘It’s pretty bad for me too, sharing a room with our two big brothers. When things don’t go well, they take it out on me. Big Brother yells at me and Second Brother beats me up and grabs my stuff.’

‘How were things different when our own mama was still alive? Do you sometimes think of her too?’

‘Of course! When she was with us, everything was just nicer and I remember feeling safe all the time. Wouldn’t it be splendid if we could go visit her where she is now? Away from our real home where I have to be careful not to say the wrong thing.’

‘But we
can
go visit her!’ I said. ‘All you have to do is close your eyes and imagine it. I have seen her place before. It’s so real I find it hard to tell whether I saw it or dreamed it. She lives in a magic garden high up in the clouds. Nothing in Shanghai can compare. It’s full of trees, flowers, rocks and birds. All children are welcome. If no one knows about her place and we keep it a secret, then they can never find us. I wrote it all down once and showed it to Big Sister. I asked her what our mama looked like, because I couldn’t picture her face. Big Sister said she didn’t remember.’

‘
Big Sister!
How can you confide your real feelings to Big Sister! How stupid you are! If you want to know about our mama, why don’t you ask Aunt Baba? As for Big Sister, don’t trust her! Don’t trust anyone!
Be a cold fish, just like me
. Never get involved. That’s my motto. I hurt no one. And no one can hurt me.’

I thought over his advice. That evening, I broached the subject with my aunt. ‘Tell me what my real mama looked like. I have this key in my head which enables me to enter the secret kingdom where she lives, but I would like to see her photograph. I can’t picture her face.’

‘Your father has instructed me not to talk to you children about your dead mother . . .’ It seemed hard for Aunt Baba to utter the words ‘your dead mother’. ‘But I suppose you’re old enough now to understand, there
are
no photographs of her. Shortly after your grandmother’s funeral three years ago, your father ordered all her photographs destroyed.’