An Ocean Apart, a World Away Read online

  Eldest Brother noticed the man’s expression, and his lips tightened with anger. I suspected that he was already sorry he had suggested taking me.

  But our mood improved when we sat down and ordered food. Liang Baoshu did the ordering of the dishes. At first I was totally occupied by the novelty of dining in public and eating food presented by a stranger. After a while I began to ask Liang Baoshu about Shanghai, which he had apparently visited a number of times.

  “The most noticeable thing about Shanghai is its foreign influence,” he said. He added bitterly, “In fact, certain zoned areas in the city are under the control of Western powers.”

  “Is it true that a foreigner who commits a crime won’t be punished if it happens in the foreign sector?” I asked. “It’s like having our country occupied by alien conquerors!”

  “That’s exactly what it’s like,” said Eldest Brother, stabbing his chopsticks fiercely into a piece of pork. “Various parts of our country are being occupied.”

  “Well, it’s not the first time,” I said, sighing. “After all, the Mongols conquered us in the thirteenth century and set up the Yuan dynasty. Then we got conquered by the Manchus, who set up the Qing dynasty. We didn’t get rid of them until the revolution ten years ago.”

  Eldest Brother stiffened. I wondered if I had said something wrong. Then I glanced at Liang Baoshu and saw that his face was also stiff and expressionless. Silently, he helped himself to some stir-fried bean sprouts.

  Finally Eldest Brother broke the silence. “Well, at least being governed by the Manchus was better than being governed by a bunch of Westerners with big noses and straw-colored hair!”

  We finished our meal, which was on the simple side. But at least it filled us, and we returned to our compartment. Inside, we found that there was another occupant: a man with a big nose and straw-colored hair.

  He was stowing his luggage in the overhead rack, and when we entered, he smiled at us. “All right if I share the compartment?” he asked in English.

  I had studied English for several years at the MacIntosh School, and while I didn’t have the fluency of my friend Ailin, I could understand a fair amount. Eldest Brother and Liang Baoshu didn’t know any English, but the newcomer’s question was obvious.

  So we nodded. It was inconvenient to lose our privacy, but we had no claim to the extra space.

  As the newcomer finished stowing his luggage and sat down, Eldest Brother said softly, “What happens when these Big Noses catch a cold? They’d have to put a basin under their chin to catch all the catarrh.”

  I glanced nervously at the Westerner. He didn’t say anything, and merely smiled briefly at each of us in turn. Then he took out an English newspaper, crossed his legs, and began to read.

  Eldest Brother and Liang Baoshu started to discuss all the peculiarities of foreigners. Since they had contact with very few, the two of them simply repeated rumors they had heard.

  “Foreigners are physically incapable of speaking Chinese,” said Eldest Brother. “Something about the shape of their noses, perhaps.”

  “They can’t appreciate subtlety in art,” said Liang Baoshu. “Their eyes are set too deep, so they’re unable to see the fine shading in a brush painting. That’s why Western oil paintings are full of flat patches of bright color.”

  Eldest Brother and Liang Baoshu continued in that vein, commenting that foreigners needed to eat bloody meat at every meal, that they were so hairy they had to shave twice a day, that the women wore a small steel fence around their waist to keep it from expanding. . . .

  I began to feel uncomfortable. Although I had met very few foreign men, I did see foreign women every day in school, and none of them wore a steel fence. Again I glanced at the man sitting next to me. He seemed totally immersed in his newspaper.

  Finally I decided to change the subject. “Will I get to the docks in time to see Ailin off? When does the Empress of Canada sail, do you know?”

  “We’ll take a rickshaw as soon as the train arrives,” said Liang Baoshu. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there. We’ll get you to the ship in time.”

  “I’d give anything to go with Ailin to America,” I said wistfully. “It’s such a young country, and my teacher says that none of the cities in the western part is more than a hundred years old!”

  “The country is so new that in some parts there are still savages with red skin,” said Eldest Brother. “You’d better be careful, because they grab you by the hair and cut off your scalp!”

  He was grinning as he said this, so I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not about those red-skinned savages. Actually, I probably knew as much about America as Eldest Brother—maybe more. But before I could say anything, the train began to slow. We were about to arrive.

  By the time the train was nearing the station, we had gathered our belongings and were ready to get off. The Westerner had his luggage in hand, and just before he went out to the corridor, he turned to us. “By the way,” he said in excellent Chinese, “you don’t have to worry about those red-skinned natives cutting off your scalp. And their skin isn’t really red. It’s—well—not that different in color from yours.”

  We stared at him, and the three of us were the ones with red skin. I felt wave after wave of heat pass over my face. I didn’t know where to look at first, and finally raised my eyes to look at the two boys.

  Eldest Brother was biting his lower lip in mortification, and even Liang Baoshu had lost his usual self-possession. Somehow he looked more human that way, and I liked him better. He was the first to recover. “I’m sorry,” he said to the Westerner. “I didn’t know you could understand us—although that’s no excuse for our rudeness, of course.”

  “That’s all right,” said the Westerner. His blue eyes were bright with laughter as he surveyed the three of us.

  We still had a few minutes before we could get off, and to fill in the awkward interval, I asked the man where in China he was staying. “My wife and I have been living in Nanjing this past year, but we’re going back to the States in a couple of months. You’re all from Nanjing, aren’t you?”

  When we said yes, his expression became thoughtful. Putting his hand into the breast pocket of his suit, he took out a calling card and handed it to Liang Baoshu. “This is my address in Nanjing. Back in America, I live in a small town in upstate New York. It’s called Ithaca, and if you’re ever there, look me up.”

  We finally arrived, and after stepping down onto the platform of the station, we saw the figure of the Westerner disappear. “I don’t think I’ll have any use for this,” muttered Liang Baoshu after reading the name card. He was probably still smarting from having made a fool of himself with the American.

  I took the card from him. “Wait, I want to find out what his name is. I’m curious about him.” I peered at the small white card and saw that one side was in English and the other side in Chinese. “His name is George Pettigrew,” I said, reading the card. “And he is a professor of Oriental history at Cornell University, whatever that is. Apparently it’s in the city of Ithaca, in NewYork.”

  I slipped the card into my pocket, although, like Liang Baoshu, I didn’t see that I would ever have any use for it.

  CHAPTER 2

  We did get to the docks before the Empress of Canada sailed, but without much time to spare. The ship looked immense, almost like a small city. I had taken trips up the Yangtze River with my parents, but we had been in wooden boats accommodating fewer than forty people. This iron ship in front of me seemed to hold hundreds of people. How could I ever hope to find Ailin among the passengers?

  I anxiously scanned the faces of the people who were standing at the railing waving to friends below. Suddenly I saw her! Ailin was standing there alone, looking so forlorn that my heart went out to her. I shouted, and she started to wave. She had seen me too!

  “I’m going aboard to talk to Ailin,” I said to Eldest Brother. “Can you wait for me here?”

  He nodded, and I began to thrust my way up
the gangplank. By the time I reached the top, Ailin was right there, waiting for me. Tears streamed down our faces, and we couldn’t speak at first because our throats felt too thick.

  “You’ve cut your hair,” Ailin finally said.

  “Is that all you can say?” I demanded. “After all the trouble I took to see you?”

  “How did you know I was going abroad?” asked Ailin.

  “I heard the news from Miss Gilbertson,” I said. Ailin had been the star pupil in our English class, and the teacher, Miss Gilbertson, had kept in touch with her after Ailin dropped out of school two years ago.

  “The Warners wanted me to go with them and help with the children,” said Ailin. “After years of living in China, they may have some trouble adjusting to American schools.”

  Ailin was slim and willowy, and she looked like the sort of frail beauty I read about in novels. It took courage for her to break ties with her family and go to work for a foreign missionary family. This trip to America was not a vacation, but was part of her work as a nanny. It was a wonderful treat, but she had worked hard to earn it.

  There was a loud toot. It was time for the ship to leave. Suddenly I felt very wistful. “I’d better get off the ship, or I might wind up going with you to America.”

  Ailin smiled. “Well, why not?”

  I wanted to trade places with Ailin, despite all her hardships. “How I envy you! You’re embarking on a great adventure!”

  Another loud toot, and I turned toward the gangplank. Then I remembered something. “I almost forgot! In fact, this was one of the reasons for coming.” I took out a bag of money her uncle had given me to hand over to Ailin.

  She stared. “You saw Big Uncle? You actually went to his den? That took courage!”

  I laughed. “And I survived the experience—barely.”

  Ailin looked silently at the bag of money. Her uncle was the one who had refused to pay her school fees, and he was the reason she had left home. “Why did he give me the money?” she murmured, almost to herself.

  “I guess he wanted to make sure that a daughter of the Tao family would have suitable accommodations,” I said. I took one last look at my friend, and again I felt tears welling up. “Please don’t forget to write to me, Ailin,” I begged, and squeezed her hand hard.

  The two boys and I watched the ship pull away from the docks. I couldn’t bear to tear myself away as long as I could still see Ailin standing at the railing. But when the ship changed direction and I could no longer see her, I turned to leave. Eldest Brother looked impatient, and I remembered that Liang Baoshu had to meet some people and attend to other business in Shanghai.

  We looked for a rickshaw to take us to our hotel but discovered that they had all been taken already by people seeing off their friends. We decided to walk toward the center of the city, where our chances of finding a free rickshaw would be better.

  I was looking forward to the prospect of staying at a Western-style hotel. In Nanjing I had gone to one such modern hotel with my parents to visit a friend of Father’s from England. That was several years ago, and my English had been too poor at the time for me to understand much. This time I would be spending the night at a hotel, and in my very own room! I almost shivered with excitement.

  Thinking about the hotel, I didn’t pay much attention at first to the street where we were walking. Then I heard Eldest Brother muttering, “Maybe it was a mistake to go this way.”

  I peered around at the street and saw that it was filthy. On both sides were beggars huddled against the walls. We had beggars in Nanjing, too, but I didn’t often visit the parts of town where they were to be found. I saw that some of these beggars were disfigured and covered with sores. Would it help heal the sores to rub the skin with something containing alcohol? I wondered. I stopped in front of one beggar to throw him some coins and to have a closer look at a huge open sore on his nose.

  Eldest Brother pulled me after him. “There’s no time for that! We have to hurry.”

  We turned abruptly into an alley. “Too late!” said Liang Baoshu.

  I followed his glance and saw that at the end of the alley, blocking our way, stood several figures. Behind me, Eldest Brother grunted, and I turned to see that more figures had appeared behind us. We were completely cut off.

  “Well, well, what have we here?” said one of the men in front of us. He opened his mouth in a wide grin, and I saw that almost all of his front teeth were broken. “Which one of you young gentlemen owns this juicy little morsel?”

  Some of the other men laughed, and I guessed that the man with the broken teeth was their leader. On his fractured mouth his grin widened. “Do you mind if we borrow her for a while this evening?”

  Then I realized that I was the juicy little morsel he was referring to. It made me so furious that I forgot to be frightened. I glanced at Eldest Brother and saw that his face was rigid with anger. He took a deep breath and began to roll up his sleeves. I realized then that he expected to fight. That was when I began to be afraid.

  I turned to look at Liang Baoshu and saw that he had already rolled up his sleeves. His eyes were narrowed, but otherwise he looked the way he usually did.

  “Oh, my,” said the man with the broken teeth. “I see that these two young gentlemen want a scuffle. We don’t want to disappoint them, now, do we?”

  “Flatten yourself against the wall,” Liang Baoshu whispered to me. “You can help us best by not moving a finger.”

  I swallowed and nodded, although I wanted to roll up my sleeves too, just to show these hoodlums that I was not afraid of them.

  The leader turned to a hulking man standing next to him, who still kept the prerevolutionary hairstyle of a shaved forehead and long pigtail. “You’re impatient, aren’t you? Why don’t you go first?”

  The pigtailed man nodded and walked forward. For such a big man he moved very lightly, and I could tell that he had had some martial arts training. I opened my mouth and then realized that of course Liang Baoshu didn’t need my warning.

  The attack came much faster than I expected, but not too fast for me to follow the sequence of moves. The pigtailed man struck out at Liang Baoshu with his right fist. It was a feint, and at the last moment he swiveled and swung out with his left fist.

  Liang Baoshu seemed to melt. He sank below the other man’s fist and pivoted on one leg. Then he kicked his other leg right into his attacker’s chest, which was left open when the man swung his arm. The pigtailed man gave a huge whoosh and collapsed against the wall.

  For a moment there was silence in the narrow alley except for the pigtailed man’s gasps. Then I heard a rustle behind me and saw that one of the men at my end of the alley was rushing at Eldest Brother.

  Again I had to stifle the urge to shout a warning. My role was to stay out of the way and not do anything distracting.

  My warning would have been unnecessary, in any case. Eldest Brother was fully alert to the danger. He began to move with dreamlike slowness, and I wanted to yell to him to hurry up. But he had all the time he needed to meet the attack. He dodged under a kick aimed at his neck, and while his attacker was still off balance, he seized the man by the collar and slammed him against the wall.

  The attacker’s two companions turned and ran. Eldest Brother and I exchanged a quick, grim smile. The danger at this end of the alley was over.

  I looked over at the other end and saw that Liang Baoshu was having little difficulty dealing with his second opponent. Then I glanced at the leader of the pack, the man with the broken teeth. He was smaller in build than his followers. Did that mean he was a much more highly trained fighter? Then I saw his hand reach under his jacket and take something out.

  “He’s got a gun!” I yelled.

  I was not the first to see the gun—not even the second. Before the words were out of my mouth, Eldest Brother had already rushed forward in a low crouch toward the other end of the alley. But he was too late to affect the outcome.

  Liang Baoshu had picked up his
opponent and thrown him straight at the leader just as the gun went off. This was the first time I had heard a gun at such close quarters, and the loud bang was deafening and left me stunned.

  When I was finally able to look around, I saw that the shot had gone wild. The leader of the pack picked himself up from the ground, opened and closed his mouth a few times, then suddenly turned and ran. His followers stumbled after him.

  The two boys rolled down their sleeves and straightened their clothes. Eldest Brother gave me a faint smile. That was his way of expressing approval for my not giving in to panic and getting in their way. It was true that even when things looked ugly, I hadn’t been frightened—well, not truly frightened.

  I turned to Liang Baoshu. “When the man with the pigtail attacked you, you used the Shandong style to counter him, didn’t you?”

  His mouth dropped open in surprise. I felt a spurt of pleasure at startling someone as self-possessed as he was. Then he recovered. “You know about the various styles of boxing?”

  I would have liked to pretend to be a real expert, but with Eldest Brother looking on, it wouldn’t have worked. “I like to eavesdrop on my brothers when they talk about their martial arts lessons,” I confessed. “In fact, I’d love to take lessons myself.”

  Liang Baoshu’s eyes widened, and I saw admiration in them. “You weren’t frightened, were you? You even had time to notice my fighting style! With your spirit, you can certainly take lessons in the martial arts. I know some women who have become quite formidable.”

  He admired my spirit! It made me happier than if he had admired my looks. I had to turn my head away to hide my wide grin.

  We reached the end of the alley and found ourselves in a street. Coming toward us were four policemen, all Westerners.

  “I heard a shot!” the officer barked at us. “What were you doing in that alley?”

  From his accent, I realized that we were in the district of Shanghai controlled by the British. The English I learned at the MacIntosh School was American, but it was close enough to the British variety for me to understand the officer.