Escape from Shanghai (11 page)

I used to sit and watch him weave. He would stand a five-foot section of bamboo on end, then split it down the middle. With his stubby sharp knife he’d cut one-sixteenth-of-an-inch thick strips down the length of the yellow fiber. Once he had a stack of these long strips, he’d sit down on his stool and begin weaving.

The thin bamboo strips would slide along his callused hands at high speed. His fingers moved so quickly that it was difficult to see exactly what he was doing to make the fibers take shape. In a
matter of minutes, the base of a basket was done. Then he folded the loose ends upward and began weaving the side. He alternated the vertical bamboo with the horizontal ones, and again, in a matter of minutes, the small basket was all but finished. He took a pair of clippers and clipped the excess ends, then he wove a band across the top to hide the clipped ends. During this entire procedure, he would not speak. He produced a lot of baskets in one day.

There was a zen-like quality to his work. He had the ability to sit there, all day, everyday and weave baskets—he could clear his mind of all other thoughts but the routine of weaving one bamboo strip over or under another. It never seemed to bother him that he was doing the same movements over and over. What seemed important to him was that these repetitious movements were done correctly and precisely. His focus was so intense that I don’t recall seeing him make a mistake. What fascinated me and what kept me watching him work was the anticipation of his making a mistake. But he never made one. He was a perfect human machine. In his mind, it would have been an embarrassment for him had he made a mistake. And in my presence, a mistake would have meant more than an embarrassment, but a loss of face.

The way he worked reminded me of Mr. Wu and his crew. They all had the same ability to make an infinite number of repetitive moves without letup or mental fatigue.

Interestingly, not once did grandpa Huang try to teach me how to weave the bamboo. He knew that he was teaching me by keeping me captivated with what he was doing. I suspect that had I stayed there long enough, I would have learned how simply by watching him work. At the very least, I remember enough of his work to describe it. So I did learn something, probably more than I realized.

Mom enrolled me at the nearby kindergarten to give both of us something productive to do while we were waiting for Governor Li to contact us. She volunteered to help with the children. And it wasn’t long before Governor Li summoned her for an interview.

Mom’s appointment with the governor took almost all day. The interview itself took only twenty minutes. Uncle Jin had already presented her credentials to the Governor. The meeting itself was a mere formality. She did, however, spend most of the day going to and from the Governor’s secret headquarters.

She had left on a sampan in the morning, and was expected to return by late afternoon.

After school that day, I went directly to the public landing to wait for her. When I got there, I saw three men at the landing. They were intently watching the fourth man lead a steer down the riverbank onto the clean, wet cobblestones.

Two of the older children in my group knew what was about to happen. They looked on in awestruck silence. The younger children huddled behind them for protection. Something important was about to happen.

The man leading the steer swung his right leg up and climbed onto the animal’s back. The steer flicked its tail and its flank twitched.

The man riding the steer slid a short, thick metal spike out of his tool pouch. He held it reverently in the palm of his left hand. Then he reached behind his back and withdrew a large heavy hammer from his belt. Carefully, almost gently he put the spike squarely in the center of the steer’s skull. The hammer swung through the air and smacked against the iron spike. A hollow “thonk” shattered the silence. The steer’s legs folded and the man jumped off its back as the stunned beast rolled onto its side. A second man rushed over to the fallen animal with a
bucket and a knife. With one well placed cut, he severed the steer’s neck artery.

The men used their buckets to collect the blood.

The butchers went about their work as if they were celebrating a harvest. They knew that for the next week or so, the entire village would feast on beef. But more than that, they would make a nice profit from selling the meat.

When Mom arrived at the landing, the butchers had the cut meat stacked neatly on large rectangular bamboo carrying trays. Even the bones of the large animal had been saved.

She saw me sitting on the edge of the cobblestone square, smiling and waving excitedly at her. She stepped gingerly ashore, trying to avoid the blood on the stone steps. She waved as she took in the sight.

Unable to contain my excitement, I told her what I had just seen.

I learned how to clean, skin and butcher a deer because of what I saw that day.

There were about thirty children ranging from kindergarten and younger to the sixth grade at the school. A teacher and her assistant ran the one room schoolhouse. The best thing about the facility was
its playground. There were the usual swings and seesaws, but what made the place unusual was that a roof covered it. This was a building without any walls, just huge posts that supported the roof. During the rainy season, there was a place for the kids to play. This covered space also served as the town’s meeting place and parade ground. Touring operas, acrobats, magicians, strongman and other attractions held performances here.

One day, there was a commotion by the parade ground. A big black Buick drove onto the grounds. Instantly, the teacher had the students stand, and in drill-sergeant fashion, marched the class out of the room.

Governor-General Li, dressed in his green-tinted khaki uniform, had appeared to inspect the school. The teachers bowed respectfully a number of times, obviously honored and delighted by the Governor’s visit. The head teacher introduced the governor to the assembled children. “Good-morning, governor,” the children chimed in unison.

The smiling general walked down the line of children and inspected us. He complimented the teacher on a job well done, whispered something to her then turned and walked to his car.

The teacher marched the kids to the covered playground then dismissed the class. But she took me aside and told me to go to the general’s car. I had
never been up close to a Buick before, so I ran to get a closer look. I stopped when the uniformed chauffeur opened the back door. Sitting in the back seat were Madame Li and her two young daughters. The girls were about my age.

Mrs. Li smiled and said: “It’s all right. Don’t be afraid. Come closer so that I can get a good look at you.”

I obeyed when I saw the smile on Mom’s face.

“How old are you?”

“Six.”

“How would you like to go to school with my daughters?”

I looked at Mom, saw the hint of a nod so I said: “Ho ah,” which is the Cantonese equivalent of OK.

“You think you’ll get along with them?” Mrs. Li asked as her hand swept majestically in the direction of her girls.

I nodded.

“Good,” she said. “Go on now. Go play,” she commanded.

I walked away; glancing backwards, more interested in the car than seeing the two mothers talking.

A few minutes later, the big black Buick roared away.

Mom had just been officially hired to work for the governor.

(
A car in China was a big deal in those days. Very few people had them, especially out here in the remote farming districts. What’s more interesting was the fact that the name Buick stuck in my mind. It’s probably as close to a Chinese word as any English word could be. Buick rolls off the Chinese tongue. Today, the Buick brand is as popular with the wealthy Chinese as it was then.)

A few days later, we left Grandfather Huang’s house. It wasn’t difficult to say goodbye. We were four people in one family divided by a regional dialect and a socio-economic chasm. Multiply this dysfunction across a country of 540 million people and you get an idea of the barrier to progress that faced China throughout her history.

About a year later, Grandpa Huang died. The governor was good enough to have his driver take us in the Buick to the funeral. Grandpa was buried on top of a hill overlooking the ruins of an ancient temple. His coffin was lowered into his own farmland so that he could be with his property forever. And he faced the temple ruins so that he could join the ancients in worship.

Grandma Huang moved in with her eldest son, a colonel in the Chinese Army. Colonel Huang was under the command of Governor-General Li. My uncle was ten years older than my father, but he
didn’t do as well in school. Much of the family savings went to my father’s education, especially his sojourn at Yenching University and then Michigan. Had Dad returned to China with a PhD in philosophy from an American university, then he would have garnered enough prestige to be appointed to a high-level position in the Chinese bureaucracy. Assuming that he would pass some more civil service exams, of course.

Education and knowledge were the most valued assets that a person could acquire in life. These assets would move the family out of the country farm and into the world of the ruling elite. That was the Confucian dream: Let the smartest people rule the land.

Governor Li was a small frail-looking man. He looked years older than forty-seven. He was balding, which was unusual for a Chinese his age. His green-tinted khaki uniform always looked just a bit big on him. The material did not sit well on his small-boned frame. But he seemed to be a nice, affable man. The first time we met, he took me aside for a brief chat. I think he felt obligated to get to know his private secretary/translator’s son.

“You have to speak up,” he said, “I am nearly deaf in one ear, so I can’t hear. An artillery shell landed near me and burst my eardrum. I was in the front lines with my troops,” he told me. He probably said more, but this is what I remembered. Impressed, I told Mom about it.

“He is very proud of being on the front lines. He told me the same story,” she said.

Madame Li was just a few inches shorter than her husband and quite a bit younger. She was thirty-two, only two years older than my mother. Today, we would probably call her a trophy wife. She always wore expensive, well-tailored silk cheongsams with slits that reached three-quarters of the way up her thighs. She had one daughter who was eight and another who was six, both of whom I had met when they visited my school. She knew that Mom had been educated in America and that her maiden name was Sun. She also believed that Mom was a relative of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the George Washington of China, because they both have the same surname. Naturally, this bit of information gave Madame Li “Face.” Clearly, she was in a position to hire an important person which further elevated her status. So, she perpetuated and even encouraged this little bit of talk in her social gatherings.

Rumor also began to circulate that my mother had attended the same American university as Madame
Chiang Kai-shek. Michigan is far from Wellesley, but no matter, Mom said.

Mom actually delighted in sharing Madame Li’s foibles with me. At the time, it seemed quaint and harmless.