White Tigress (15 page)

She stopped, clearly frustrated by his question. "What do you mean, how do we live? We live as people live. In houses. With our families."

"Families? What kind of families?"

"The normal kind! A mother, a father. Their children."

It was as he feared. His leaders were misinformed. But just to make sure, he leaned forward on his elbow, studying her face carefully for any type of deception. "But you live in colonies. Isn't that the word? A group of English people all living together."

She shook her head. "Not like a monkey colony! The very idea is preposterous!" She stepped forward. "We have separate houses. A colony is merely a group of families living in the same area. Each in their own little house."

He nodded. "Because you learned from the Chinese."

"No!" She was becoming more exasperated, her anger clearly vibrating through her. "I assure you, the English have been living in homes for many, many hundreds of years."

He frowned. "That cannot be possible. Surely some of you live like monkeys."

"We most certainly do not!"

"But the emperor has said—"

"Then he is wrong!" she spat.

"You are barbarians!" he returned, startled to realize his tone had risen along with hers.

"We most certainly are not! You are!"

"Don't be ridiculous." He was angry, but he made no effort to modulate his tone. "You English people came to us—to China—seeking our goods. We want nothing from you, and yet you come, begging for silk, for jade, for all our good things."

"We came seeking trade. To sell our goods to you in return for your things. Trade."

"But all of your things are of inferior quality. You have no silk, no ivory. You do not even posses the ability to lacquer wood. You are uneducated." He wasn't even sure why he was arguing with her. He knew the truth of his words. Perhaps he was merely being kind, giving her the truth.

Except she had no wish to understand. Instead, she turned and glared at him. "Our machinery is infinitely superior to yours. You have no clockworks similar to ours. Your culture is still rife with superstition. And worst of all..." She drew out her tone, obviously wishing to make her point excruciatingly clear. "We do not buy and sell people as if they were no better than cattle."

"Then do your poor starve when they have too many children?"

She opened her mouth, no doubt to argue with him, but she shut it with a snap. Eventually she sighed. "Every country has its poor. But we do not sell our children."

"Then you doom them to the same misery and torment the parents suffer. At least in the service of a great family, the child will be well cared for. Some even gain a degree of refinement and education."

She frowned and began to speak, but he had heard enough. "No more of this," he snapped. The English were indeed an inferior species. Though perhaps they were not as barbaric as he had at first supposed. "I wish to begin drawing out some of your yin."

Her expression was mutinous, but she slowly complied. "Do you treat all women this way? Or just your white slaves?"

He didn't think she expected an answer, but he gave her one anyway, his yang fire burning in his tone. "I have done everything I can to make you comfortable. I cannot afford silks and gold. My mother never had those things—why would I lavish them on you? You will have to make do with what a mere shopkeeper can afford."

She gaped at him, her jaw slack with astonishment. But not for long. Indeed, she apparently had more yang than he had previously guessed, because she spit back her answer with an equal amount of venom.

"I have never wished for silks or jewelry, nor do I expect them now. I am talking about something to do, Ru Shan. I have no books to read, no colors to paint with, and now you have taken away my sponge brush and teacher so I cannot even practice Chinese."

He frowned, completely stunned. It was as he'd suggested to Shi Po. "You wish for something to do? Something that occupies your mind?" He could not believe it. Not one of the ghost people he had ever met would want such a thing. Flashy jewelry, costly silks, that was all the foreign devils cared for.

"Of course, I do! Look about you, Ru Shan. Would you be content here?"

Of course not. But he was a well-educated Chinese. He understood the finer aspects of life. How could a ghost person—and a woman at that—ever enjoy such things? Or despair at their lack? And yet, looking at Li Dee, he realized that she did indeed wish for a way to occupy her mind.

He squinted at her; seeing once again her round flat eyes, her golden hair. She appeared to be as English as the most ghostlike of the other barbarians. And yet, she was nothing like he expected. "Do you have Chinese in your lineage?"

"Don't be ridiculous. It is becoming abundantly clear that your race despises mine. Even here in Shanghai, don't you live in entirely separate quarters?"

He nodded. There was indeed strict separation of the races, with large walls meant to keep the foreigners out. It was only because of his shop that he had any exposure to the ghost people at all. And Li Dee, of course.

And his mother, as well. But that was another topic altogether.

"Your mother did not meet a Chinese man somehow? Fall in love with him perhaps?"

"My mother married an English boy she met in the veterans hospital when she was barely eighteen. They married and lived happily together. She has never met a Chinese man nor does she ever wish to. Indeed, I wish I could say the same!"

He listened to her impassioned speech, seeing the flash of yang in her eyes, the anger in her tone. She certainly thought she spoke the truth. But for all that, he still could not believe her. She was too intelligent, too capable. To think that she was even learning Shanghainese from Fu De.

He could not credit that the ghost people could spawn so capable a creature on their own.

"You must be thought a rare genius among your people." She frowned. "I am considered bright, but no more so than many others."

He shook his head, still confused. Sometimes his countrymen were not ashamed at having sexual relations with barbarian women. Perhaps that was how Li Dee came by her intelligence. Or perhaps she was just one of nature's rarest creatures.

"Was that why you came to China? Because you were not accepted at home?"

She huffed in disgust, dropping onto the edge of her bed in clear annoyance. "I came because Maxwell Slade—"

"Your fiancé. Yes, I remember." She turned, pinning him with her gaze. "Then why do you not return me to him?"

He smiled then. He did not know what prompted it, but he did not stop himself, because he liked the unaccustomed feeling of pride.

"I keep you, Li Dee, because you are mine." Then he tugged her around to face him, his hands already untying the belt of her robe. "No more talk now. It is time to release your yin."

From the letters of Mei Lan Cheng

2 July, 1873

Dearest Li Hua—

I have met him! I have met the ghost captain, and it is worse than I feared! He is as thin as a snake and has the hungry eyes of a starving mongoose. And he bellows at me! He thinks I do not understand him, and truthfully, I pretend this is so, but that makes him angry. He thinks if he yells louder, then I will suddenly understand his words. All it does is make me angry.

Sheng Fu is angry, too. I try to tell him this ghost person is evil, but he will not listen. He calls me stupid and superstitious and has sent me to a tutor—at my age!—to learn more English. Meanwhile, this terrible captain has gone away, taking only a few bolts of cloth at a very cheap price. Normally, Sheng Fu would not have sold the fabric so cheaply, but I think he is a little afraid of the Starving Mongoose Captain and wished to see him go away happy.

It is very bad, Li Hua, very bad to do business with the ghost people. But my family wants the ghost gold too much now for me to stop them.

Oh, I must go now. I have much work to do now before I go to my lesson!

—Mei Lan

P.S. I forgot to say that there is one good thing about my lessons. I must take Ru Shan with me. Sheng Fu hopes our son will soon be able to translate instead of me, so he lets me take him along. We have a lovely time, Ru Shan and I, walking to the mission and back. That is where we take our lessons, because no one speaks better English than the priests. But I am surprised by how wonderful my son is—attentive and fun as we walk. We laugh often and have the best of times, him and I. For that reason alone, I hope it takes a long, long time for me to learn English.

Sincerely, Mei Lan

You see! That is how the English sign their names. Looks ugly, doesn't it? Going side to side instead of up and down. And the shapes are all wrong. They don't even use a brush to write but little wooden logs with charcoal inside. But Ru Shan likes it, and he can make their writing look pretty. Even the English teacher says Ru Shan is very smart.

Oh! I really must go now. I must give more money to the monks today, in addition to my other tasks.

Li Bai when young did not show well in learning, and so he decided to give up his studies halfway. On the way home, he saw an old woman grinding an iron rod. In wonder, Li Bai asked her what she was doing. "Making a needle," she answered curtly. Feeling ashamed at his own lack of perseverance, Li Bai went back to learning and finally acquired great scholarship.

—Qian Que Lei Shu

~

Chapter 7

The Chinese were strange creatures, Lydia thought with a languid stretch. Or perhaps, more accurately, she should say Ru Shan was a strange creature. On the one hand, he thought nothing of buying her, locking her up in a ten-by-ten-foot room and then daily milking her for her yin. On the other hand, he had shown her unexpected kindness and respect. He still always bowed when he entered and left her presence, thanking her for their time together. He spoke honestly, and had even begun to give her sketching paper and painting supplies to fill the long hours between his visits. Sometimes she wondered if Maxwell would have done as much. Plus, Ru Shan had begun closing the door so that Fu De could not watch. And all because she told him she did not like the young man staring.

As best as she could understand, Ru Shan thought of her as a treasured pet—like a monkey or cow that one cared for, played with, even spoke secrets to, but would by no means release into the outside world. And, apparently, this was an attitude that was shared by most of his countrymen: that the white man was no more than an advanced monkey.

She wondered briefly what Maxwell would think of such an attitude. Probably he would scorn it as nonsense. Especially as he considered the Chinese were in turn, beneath him. He could no more imagine that they thought of him as a monkey than he could imagine being bested in a competition by a woman. Maxwell, like many of his friends, believed himself superior to all he surveyed.

And perhaps therein lay the problem, she realized as she stood to pace her tiny chamber. Not the difference between the English and the Chinese, but between men and women. Men thought themselves superior—over animals, over women, over other men. It made no difference whether the man was white or yellow or purple or green. Men believed themselves kings, and no amount of reason or logic would sway them.