A Time of Ghosts. Hok-Pang Tang
he received the nickname “Sweet Dumpling,” a food favored by women. It was a good name, reflecting his soft personality and how much people liked him. But in spite of all the feminine company, he never took advantage of the situation, and consequently was teased mercilessly by his cronies, who joked that he was afraid of his wife.
My mother, by contrast, was nicknamed “The Lady Tiger” for her authoritative business attitude and protectiveness of her family. She was closely involved with my father’s legal profession, and clients soon found that when they came to negotiate with my father, they ended up negotiating with my mother. Without her approval there was no agreement. She made his appointments, and soon earned another nickname – “The Lawyer’s Grandmother” – meaning she was the real power in the office. People said that she could “save you or kill you.” She had her own special interest in real estate dealings, and because of her close involvement in legal matters, she knew right away when property was coming on the market. Then she was like a tiger smelling a deer, very excited and enthusiastic.
She was a clever businesswoman and never lost a single penny. That earned her a reputation as an extremely tough opponent. It was rumored that “she will eat you alive and chew up the bones.”
She was certainly nothing like the image of “Mother” that most people have from childhood. She abhorred time-wasting. I remember watching her feed my little brother with one hand as she nursed a baby on her lap while working on legal documents with the other hand.
There was no need for her to work so hard. We had servants. It was her choice. She was intolerant of weakness in others and seemed to fear any trace of it in herself. So firm was her struggle against it that when she became ill, which was seldom, rather than going to bed she would chop wood, mop the floor, or do a heavy laundry, not bothering to call a doctor.
No servant dared be lazy when she was about. She had them out of bed at five in the morning and did not permit anyone to take a break during the day. Those who met her high standards were given little rewards.
If we, the members of her own family, were ill, she wanted us to get up and walk around instead of lying in bed. It was not that she did not care about us. It was just that because she was so immensely strong, she could not comprehend weakness in others. While I never heard her fight with my father about anything, I could find no kindness nor gentleness in her in those days.
I well remember one instance when she was screaming and fighting with the military police. My father had not been part of the government collaboration during the Japanese invasion, so when it ended he was assigned to assist in recovering property taken over by the puppet government. He had the power to release boycotted goods, and that got him into trouble. People would come to him in distress, claiming that if goods were not released, their families would starve. He could not openly help them, but carelessly and intentionally left his official seal in an unlocked drawer. His secretary then covertly used it to stamp release documents, perhaps getting some under-the-table cash in return.
Inevitably word of this came to the federal government, and there was an investigation. The secret police came to our home to arrest my father. My mother, tipped off ahead of time, concealed him in the house.
Before the police arrived, my mother found the investigation had been instigated by a supposed friend of my father. She telephoned him and managed to convince him to come, though unwillingly, to our house. Once she had him inside, she began raving at him, shrieking, “Do you want me to become a widow? Do you want these children to be orphans? Where have you taken my husband?”
The police, who came in just at that moment to arrest my father, heard her screaming and assumed, of course, that my father had already been arrested. Why else would my mother be so obviously beside herself, screaming that her husband had been taken?
On top of that, Mother had telephoned all of my father’s good and powerful friends, and they began arriving at our house in the middle of the uproar, adding even more to the general chaos. My mother, still pretending that Father was gone, was pushing to have the arrest warrant canceled.
The uncertain official backed off, but did not cancel the warrant. He placed a guard in front of our home for three days, but Mother managed to buy off the man assigned to search, and used the influence of friends to have the guard removed. Then she slipped my father out of the house and off to Hong Kong. Once he was gone, she applied her money and power to political games. Within two months she had the case cleared up, and my father returned from Hong Kong a free man. Years later when I was a young man, he confessed to me that without my mother he simply could not have survived.
Her influence caused my father to take the case that made him famous. The distraught client in that matter was a mailman accused of stealing a letter containing an American-born Chinese man’s cashier’s check in the amount of five thousand dollars, which in those days was worth much more. The mailman received the blame because the check was addressed to a stop on his route.
The poor man, faced with disaster, could not afford a lawyer. His terrified relations came to my mother in tears. They had sold their belongings to scrape together a small sum of money that they offered Mother, begging my father, through her, to accept the case.
Because of my mother he took it. He lost the first round, but did not give up. By careful investigation he discovered that between the time the letter containing the check arrived at the post office and the time the mailman picked it up for delivery, there was a gap of five minutes. That could only mean that the postmaster had used that brief interim to open the letter and remove the check. Father appealed. His suspicions concerning the postmaster proved correct, and he won the case.
He became an instant celebrity to members of the Mailman’s Association. They gave him a huge and elaborate banquet, and from that day on, any letter sent to my father from anywhere in China needed no address beyond just his name to be correctly delivered.
When I heard my parents conversing in Beijing dialect or in Manchu so that I could not understand, I always knew some new business venture or other important matter was afoot.
Those years after the Japanese invasion ended were an amazing time of wealth and luxury for us. A fortuneteller once told my father that, like a phoenix, his luck was always in fire and war – that he would be illumined by the same conflagration that destroyed others. My father wondered at those words, which seemed so paradoxical to one whose nature was gentle, peaceful and scholarly.
CHAPTER THREE
LEARNING
As a child I was a spoiled, arrogant little despot. I knew I was born to wealth and power and took full advantage of the fact. Servants tended all my needs. They bathed me, clothed me, and one even pre-chewed my food so that it would be easy on my young digestive system. I disliked being awakened from my nap, and any servant unlucky enough to have this task met the full force of my wrath. I broke a considerable amount of china by throwing it at the heads of offenders who were then scolded for not watching me.
In any contest I always had to win or I became very angry. One day a friend of my father brought his son over to play a game with me. The little boy managed to beat me. I was furious, and made a tremendous fuss. The other child was not used to such behavior and became angry. His father came hurrying to see what was the matter. When he found how things stood he scolded his son severely. “What are you doing!” he shouted at the boy. “Who do you think you are? His position is different than yours. He can do whatever he wants! But not you!”
I found through many such experiences that position and power made me different from everyone else. I was not subject to the same rules. And though at first I had some pangs of conscience about it, I soon surmised that I had the right to hurt others, whether with words or thrown scissors. I was superior to them, and never in the wrong. Where did I learn all this? From my dear old two-faced granny.
My grandmother was a typical old-fashioned Chinese woman of the upper class. To this day I cannot see one of those colorful, formal portraits known as “ancestor paintings” without thinking of