Daughter of Fortune (21 page)

“Take off your shirt, I will have to apply the bamboo and see if finally you understand, my son. How many times have I told you that the worst evils in China are gambling and brothels? In the former, men lose the product of their labors, and in the latter they lose their health and life. You will never be a good physician or a good poet if you have those vices.”

In 1839, when the Opium War between China and Great Britain broke out, Tao Chi'en was sixteen years old. At that point the country was overrun with beggars. Masses of humanity poured from the countryside and appeared with their tatters and pustules in the cities, where they were driven back, forced to wander the highways of the empire like packs of starving dogs. Bands of robbers and rebels fought an endless war of ambushes against the government troops. It was a period of destruction and pillage. The weakened imperial armies, under the command of corrupt officers receiving contradictory orders from Peking, could do nothing against the powerful and well-disciplined English fleet. They could not draw upon popular support because the peasants were so weary of seeing their paddies destroyed, their villages in flames, and their daughters raped by soldiers. At the end of almost four years of struggle, China had to accept a humiliating defeat and pay the equivalent of twenty-one million dollars to their British conquerors, yield Hong Kong to them, and grant them the right to establish “concessions,” residential enclaves protected by extraterritorial laws. There the foreigners lived with their own police, services, and government and laws, guarded by their own troops. The “concessions” were true foreign nations inside Chinese territory, from which the Europeans controlled trade, principally opium. They did not enter Canton until five years later, but after the acupuncture master witnessed the degrading defeat of his venerated emperor and saw the economy and morale of his nation sag, he decided there was no reason to go on living.

During the war years the aged
zhong yi'
s spirit visibly deteriorated and he lost the serenity so arduously won over the course of his lifetime. His withdrawal and inattention to material matters reached such a point that after his master had eaten nothing for days, Tao Chi'en had to spoon food into his mouth. The accounts became hopelessly entangled and creditors began to beat at the door, but his master dismissed them, for anything having to do with money seemed a repugnant burden from which sages were naturally immune. In the senile confusion of his last years, Tao's teacher forgot his good intentions in regard to adopting his apprentice and providing him with a wife; in truth, his mind was so cloudy that he often sat staring at Tao Chi'en with a perplexed expression, unable to remember his name or to place him in the labyrinth of faces and events that assailed him without order or harmony. But he had enough spirit still to direct the details of his burial, because for enlightened Chinese the most important event in life was one's funeral. The idea of putting an end to his depressing life by means of an elegant death had been with him for some time, but he awaited the outcome of the war with the secret and irrational hope of seeing the triumph of the armies of the celestial empire. The foreigners' arrogance was intolerable; he felt a great scorn for those brutal
fan wey
, white ghosts who seldom washed, who drank milk and alcohol, and who were ignorant of the elementary norms of good behavior and incapable of honoring their ancestors as custom demanded. To him, the commercial accords seemed a favor the emperor had granted the ingrate barbarians who, instead of bowing before him with praise and gratitude, kept demanding more. When the treaty of Nanking was signed, it was the final blow for the
zhong yi
. The emperor, and every citizen of China down to the most humble, was dishonored. How could one recover his dignity following such an affront?

The ancient sage poisoned himself by swallowing gold. When his disciple returned from one of his excursions into the country to gather plants, he found the
zhong yi
in the garden, lying on silk cushions and dressed in white as a sign of mourning for himself. By his side, his tea was still warm and the ink from his brush still fresh. On his small desk was an unfinished poem, and a dragonfly cast a shadow upon the smooth parchment. Tao Chi'en kissed the hands of this man who had given him so much, then paused in the crepuscular light for an instant to appreciate the tracery of the dragonfly's transparent wings, just as his master would have wished him to do.

An enormous crowd attended the sage's funeral, because during his long life he had helped thousands of persons live in good health and die without agony. Government officials and dignitaries filed by with the greatest solemnity, literati recited their best poems, and courtesans showed up in their finest silks. A seer determined the most favorable day for the burial and an artist who crafted funeral offerings visited the house of the deceased to copy his possessions. He went around the property slowly, without taking measurements or notes, although beneath his voluminous sleeves he was making marks in a wax tablet with his fingernail. Later he constructed paper miniatures of the rooms and furnishings of the house, including the dead man's favorite objects, to be burned with bundles of paper money. He must not in the other world be deprived of the things he had enjoyed in this one. The coffin, which was huge and decorated like an imperial carriage, passed through the streets of the city between two rows of soldiers in dress uniform preceded by horsemen attired in brilliant colors and a band of musicians playing cymbals, drums, flutes, bells, triangles, and a variety of stringed instruments. The noise was unbearable, befitting the importance of the deceased. Flowers, clothing, and food were heaped upon his grave; candles and incense were lighted; and, finally, the money and quantities of paper objects were burned. The ancestral gold-sheathed tablet engraved with the master's name was placed upon the grave to receive his spirit, while the body returned to the earth. It was the role of the eldest son to accept the tablet and install it in a place of honor in his home beside those of other male ancestors, but the physician had no one to carry out that duty. Tao Chi'en was only a servant and it would have been an unforgivable breach of etiquette for him to offer. He was genuinely moved; among the throng he was surely the only one whose tears and wailing represented true grief, but the ancestral tablet ended up in the hands of a distant nephew whose moral obligation it would be to bring offerings and pray before it every two weeks and on each anniversary.

Once these solemn funeral rites were realized, the creditors fell like jackals upon the master's possessions. They ravaged the sacred texts and the laboratory, pawed through the herbs, spoiled the medicinal preparations, destroyed his carefully crafted poems, carried off his furniture and art objects, trampled the beautiful garden, and auctioned off the ancient mansion. Only shortly before, Tao Chi'en had safely hidden the gold acupuncture needles, a case containing medical instruments and a few essential remedies, and a small amount of money he had been filching for the last three years, ever since his master had begun to lose his way in the barren landscape of senile dementia. It was not his intention to steal from the venerable
zhong yi
, whom he revered like a grandfather, but to use the money to feed him, because he saw the debts piling up and feared the future. The suicide had precipitated events, however, and Tao Chi'en found himself in possession of an unexpected bonanza. Taking those funds could cost him his head, for his would be a crime of inferior against superior, but he was sure that no one would know except the spirit of the deceased, who undoubtedly would have approved his action. Would he not prefer rewarding his faithful servant and disciple to paying one of the many debts he owed to ravenous creditors? With this modest treasure and a change of clean clothing, Tao Chi'en fled the city. It occurred to him, fleetingly, to return to the village of his birth, but he immediately discarded that plan. To his family, he would always be Fourth Son, he would owe submission and obedience to his older brothers. He would have to work for them, accept the wife they chose for him, and resign himself to lifelong poverty. Nothing called him in that direction, not even filial obligations to his father and his ancestors, which fell to his older brothers anyway. What he needed was to go somewhere far away, somewhere the long arm of Chinese justice could not reach. He was twenty years old, and he had one year left before he would have fulfilled the ten years of his servitude, and any one of the creditors could claim the right to use him as a slave for that time.

T
ao Chi'en took a sampan to Hong Kong with the intention of beginning a new life. Now he was a
zhong yi
, trained in traditional Chinese medicine by the finest master in Canton. He owed eternal gratitude to the spirits of his venerable ancestors, who had worked out his karma in such a glorious manner. The first thing he must do, he decided, was take a wife, for he was of an age, and more, to marry, and celibacy was too heavy a load. The absence of a wife was a sign of poverty that could not be hidden. He cherished the prospect of acquiring a delicate young woman with beautiful feet. Her “golden lilies” should not be more than three or four inches long, and should be plump and soft to the touch, like the feet of an infant of a few months. He was fascinated by the way a young girl walked on those minuscule feet, with short, very hesitant steps, as if she were always about to fall, hips thrown back and swaying like the reeds at the edge of the pond in his master's garden. He detested large, muscular, and cold feet like those of a peasant woman. In his village, from afar, he had seen girls with bound feet, the pride of their families, who undoubtedly would marry them well, but only when he visited the prostitutes in Canton had he held two of those golden lilies in his hands and swooned in ecstasy over the tiny embroidered slippers that always covered them—necessarily, because for years and years the destroyed bones seeped a foul-smelling substance. After he touched such feet, he realized that their elegance was the fruit of constant pain, and that made them even more valuable. Then he properly appreciated the books in his master's collection that were devoted to women's feet, describing the five classes and eighteen different styles of golden lilies. His wife must also be very young, for beauty lasted but a brief time: it began sometime around the twelfth year and ended shortly after the woman reached twenty. These things his master had explained to him. It was not for nothing that the most celebrated heroines of Chinese literature always died at the precise moment of their greatest charm. Fortunate were those who departed this world before they were ruined by age and could still be remembered in the fullness of their fresh beauty. There were also practical reasons to prefer a nubile girl: she would give him male children and it would be easy to tame her nature and make her truly submissive. Nothing as disagreeable as a shrieking woman; he had seen some who spit at their husbands and children and slapped them about, even in the street in front of the neighbors. Such humiliation at the hands of a woman was the worst shame for a man. In the sampan that slowly carried him the ninety miles between Canton and Hong Kong, leaving his past life farther behind by the minute, Tao Chi'en dreamed of that girl, of the pleasure and the sons she would give him. Again and again he counted the money in his pocket, as if with abstract calculations he could make it grow, but it was clear that it would not stretch far enough for a wife of the quality he desired. Nevertheless, he was not content, however great his urgency, to settle for less and live the rest of his days with a wife who had large feet and a strong character.

The island of Hong Kong appeared suddenly before his eyes, with its profile of mountains and green vegetation, emerging like a siren from the indigo waters of the China Sea. As soon as his light boat docked in the port, Tao Chi'en noted the presence of the despised foreigners. He had seen a few of them before, but at a distance; now he saw them so near that had he dared he could have touched them to test whether those huge, graceless creatures were truly human. With amazement, he discovered that many of the
fan wey
had red or yellow hair, pale eyes, and skin the color of boiled lobsters. He thought the women very ugly; they were wearing hats bedecked with feathers and flowers, perhaps trying to cover that diabolical hair. They were dressed in an extraordinary fashion, in stiff clothing that bound their bodies tightly. He supposed that was why they moved like automatons and did not greet each other with friendly bows; they passed by stiff as poles, not looking at anyone, suffering the summer heat in their uncomfortable clothing. There were a dozen European ships in the port, surrounded by thousands of Asian boats of all sizes and colors. In the streets he saw a few carriages driven by uniformed men, lost among the many vehicles propelled by humans: litters, palanquins, handbarrows, and porters simply carrying their fare on their backs. The smell of fish came like a slap, reminding him that he was hungry. First he must locate a place to eat, which he would know by its long strips of yellow silk.