A Time of Ghosts. Hok-Pang Tang
who had a knife to China’s throat and were watching the great country slowly bleed to death? Not only did his own ethics rebel, but his audience would inevitably see him as a collaborator.
His refusal was taken as a stinging insult by the Japanese. They threatened to close down the theater. This meant the entire company would be out of work in hard and perilous times. They appealed to Mei, pointing out to him that it would cost them their livelihood and would be the death of the theater. It put him in a terrible dilemma, but seeing the pleading faces all around changed his mind. He would go to the entertainment given by the invaders.
The party proved a chance for a Japanese officer moved by Mei’s remarkable personality to meet him privately. Like my uncle and his mistress, this very disciplined man from the Land of the Rising Sun had also become helplessly attracted to the stunning actor. Sitting close to Mei and talking with him intimately, he found the attraction growing even deeper. And Mei, listening to the gentle-voiced young Japanese, found it strangely difficult to maintain his own reserve. Though he tried to keep a firm wall of inner hatred between himself and the officer, it slowly crumbled as the handsome foreigner explained in a quiet, serious voice that he had deep misgivings about how the war was being waged. He was, it turned out, quite opposed to much that the Japanese army was doing in China – opposed certainly to the cruelty and slaughter inflicted on the Chinese people. Mei found that as his own hatred diminished, its place was taken by a certain wistful attraction. And as their eyes met, there was no mistaking the look that bound them suddenly together.
It was a most awkward situation. How could a famous star of the Peking Opera, a symbol of traditional China, be in love with a Japanese invader? He could not resist the leading of his heart, but felt desperately the need for some control. He was keenly aware of his responsibility to his own people.
As it happened, a sort of compromise was reached. Mei was jailed, and the theater company was given permission to continue. Thus Mei was publicly seen as a victim of the Japanese and a faithful son of China who had refused collaboration. On the other hand, his jailing permitted the officer to meet him privately, and so they carried on their affair away from the probing eyes of the world.
It may seem to some a great and peculiar weakness for the young Japanese officer to have fallen in love with what we now vulgarly term a female impersonator, but one never knows where a fork in the road of life will lead.
My father, to avoid any dealings with the puppet government, escaped to a region not occupied by the Japanese, and waited there until the war ended. My mother returned to my grandfather’s house, and there I was born in 1941. Soon after, Mother took up business and began buying and selling, though refusing to buy, deal in, or even use any Japanese products.
After the Japanese were defeated, Father returned to Tientsin and got a government job seizing and reselling country estates forfeited by collaborators, opportunists who had grown rich on China’s misfortune. Joined by his clever wife and her keen business sense, he soon made a great deal of money. My parents were now wealthy. Seeing that many around them were jealous of their success, they returned south to Canton, joining my grandparents in the old mansion on the Pearl River. Grandfather was still a very rich and powerful man with many contacts, even long after the collapse of the Ch’ing Dynasty.
My mother and father firmly believed the Chinese proverb, “Do not let people see your money.” Because of their secretiveness, they made property deals in the names of their children, so no one would see how much money they had. Their wealth had come quickly, but they knew it could go quickly too.
Mother immersed herself in business. She dealt freely in property, jewelry, foreign currency, gold and antiques, but steadfastly refused to make money from rice, oil, fabric, or medications, essentials for the poor. That was her way – never to profit from the necessities of life and to be ever willing to give to those in need.
We always had plenty of food in our house. Mother often ordered the servants to cook up huge pots of rice porridge to serve the poor, for whom she had a genuine compassion. But if she happened to see a young, strong beggar on the street, he was in trouble. She would go straight up to him and give him a severe tongue lashing and a long lecture on how he should be working. She could not tolerate parasites.
Father had become involved in law. At this time, the case of the Japanese officer who had fallen in love with Yen Gai Mei came before the court. My father – knowing the subtext of the matter – defended him fervently, pointing out his client’s opposition to the invasion and his release of Chinese prisoners. He won the case, and the officer was freed to return to Japan.
Because of his repeated success in such cases, Father was appointed by the court to defend collaborators. He rose quickly in the profession, became a partner in a legal firm, and hired another young lawyer to work for him.
I was curious why he defended not only Japanese, but even Chinese collaborators, considered beneath excrement. I asked him, “In order to survive, would you betray your country?”
He paused thoughtfully, then replied, “I am not in that position. Unless one is in that position, he should not answer. Humans will do what they must to survive, especially if wife and family are involved. Maybe it is just a lucky chance that I was not put in a position where I was tempted to betray my country.”
My father always had that disturbing way of answering my questions without really answering them. I did not understand him, and secretly wondered if he was a coward.
As he rose even higher and became a judge, he always emphasized educating prisoners, not just punishing them. It was an unpopular concept at the time.
My mother’s business dealings grew as well. Her way was not to adjust spending to income, but to adjust her income to what she wished to spend. She was the family financier, my father’s consultant and the decision maker. He trusted her judgment implicitly. She was a tough businesswoman, which made her lots of enemies, but because of my father’s high position they could do little more than hide their anger.
My parents worked together in disharmonious harmony. He was a connoisseur of old paintings, antiques and jade, but only for pleasure. He had no business sense. Mother, however, put his knowledge to practical use.
She had many connections among the last remnants of the old Ch’ing Dynasty, with whom she still conversed in Manchu. Under the old regime they were given lands and a pension, but were not allowed to do business. Now that the government had changed, the pension was gone and they had to sell their antiques to survive. These were not just old things, but genuine, rare and costly works of art, most originally from the palace collections. Many had been specially made for imperial use and came with detailed histories.
Among these were many fakes, and one had to be learned and experienced to recognize them. Father was accomplished in that skill, but being an important judge, he could not go to see the objects himself.
Mother knew nothing of art works, but she knew every family that owned them. She paid them not according to the value of the item, but according to their need. If the family was poor, she paid a great price; if it was rich, she paid little. So sometimes she overpaid, sometimes underpaid. My father chided her for this, but it all seemed to even out in the end, and he was, in any case, hopeless as an antique dealer. He felt that taking money showed disrespect for the art. He preferred to sell fine things at a low price to those who really understood and appreciated them rather than to make an immense profit from mere “collectors.” He seemed to regard each object as an orphan in need of a suitable family, or as a pretty bride for whom a worthy groom must be found. I could never understand why he preferred selling art objects to keeping them, given that money was not a concern to him. His interest seemed merely that they find a good home.
It can easily be seen that separately, each of my parents was incomplete, but together they made a formidable team. People flocked to hire them, knowing that they could handle wills and property matters as well as deal with art objects.
Father also arranged legal guardians for orphans and legal affairs for widows. Because of the latter, he was so