Читать книгу Spider Eaters - Rae Yang - Страница 13

4

Nainai Failed Her Ancestors

Reflecting on the fact that I could not forget Nainai's stories no matter how hard I had tried, I realize that I am more attached to her than I once cared to admit. As I was her only granddaughter, she told me more stories about her life than she told my cousins.

To people who did not know her well, Nainai's life in the old society appeared carefree. Her forefathers had power and privileges, her father-in-law and husband had a great deal of money. Only I knew that Nainai's life was not as easy as others might have imagined. In a way it was extremely difficult, owing to the upheavals in China and the fact that she was a woman.

When Nainai was young, she had been to many places in China. Those were the good years in her life. At the beginning of the twentieth century the emperor granted her father an official position, not because the latter had any remarkable talent, but for the sake of his ancestors. At first Nainai's father was a local magistrate in Hunan, a province south of the Yangzi River. A few years later he was promoted to the position of niesi, also called nietai in Guizhou province. There he was the number-three official and, like his father, he was charged with the administration of justice.

His family, including his wife, Nainai, and a younger brother, went to these places with him. At first they traveled along the Grand Canal by official boats. Later they rode in covered wagons. On the way Nainai was deeply impressed by the beautiful spring on the Yuan River, the various dialects that Nainai's family could not understand, the distinct flavors of the local food (some were so spicy that they set fire to people's mouths, others were as cool and smooth as water from an ancient well), the minorities with their fantastic costumes and festivals, the hard life of the peasants, especially the women who in the south had to do the hardest physical labor as well as take care of the kids and housework . . .

Such experiences in her youth made Nainai different from her peers who were confined to the inner quarters of their fathers’ residences. “Never to come out the front gate, nor to walk across the second gate”—the Chinese saying testifies how far such young ladies were permitted to go in those days. The theory behind this was that if a young lady never sets eyes on strangers, her virtues and chastity would be preserved. To make sure that women would not go out and meet strangers, their feet were bound at the young age of five or six. From then on they would have to live like birds with broken wings.

Nainai was lucky, for she was spared this ordeal. The Manchus, though they had adopted many conventions of the Han people (the major nationality making up more than 90 percent of the Chinese population), were never crazy about “three-inch golden lilies.” Perhaps that was why many old Beijing residents said that Manchu women were on the whole much more sagacious than the men in their families. The most outstanding example of this was Dowager Empress Cixi, who for fifty years held the entire country under her thumb, along with two emperors who were her son and her nephew. During her reign, however, the Great Empire of Qing was like the setting sun. Quickly it dropped beyond the western hills.

In 1911 the revolution broke out. The Qing dynasty was overthrown. Nainai's father lost his official position, but the family made it back to Beijing unharmed. Once they settled down in the old capital, they found that nothing was the same. The great Qing dynasty was history. Gone with it were the power and privileges of the Manchus. For two hundred and sixty-seven years they had been the ruling class in China. Then almost overnight, they became a small, isolated minority, surrounded and hated by tens of millions of Han Chinese.

So in the years after the revolution, many Manchu families lived in fear and grief. Their money, now like a river without a source, quickly dried up. Many of them dared not think about the future, for the future was like a bottomless pit, waiting to engulf them. It was in those years that Nainai was married to my grandfather. As far as I know, Nainai had never told anyone about her feelings toward this marriage. People of her generation did not talk about such things. But the facts were obvious. First of all, my grandfather was a merchant and merchants were considered despicable throughout China. Second, he was not a Manchu. None of his ancestors had been members of the aristocracy. Instead he was born into a poor peasant's family in Zhucheng county, Shandong province. Both his parents died in a famine when he was in his teens. Unable to feed his mouth in his native village, he went away with others to Manchuria where there were more opportunities for a desperate young man like him.

In the northeast, the lucky star shone on him. First he got to know my great-grandfather, who was not his real father. He was not even a relative, but just another desperate man trying to make it in a frontier town. Next the two of them started a business together. In about ten years they made a fortune. What was the nature of their business? In my family this has been a riddle for more than seventy years. The two old men forbade people to talk about it. This made my father's generation even more curious, so they speculated and argued about it behind the old men's backs. But until my grandfather died in 1953, he never gave them a single clue.

Sometimes I even went so far as to imagine a bloody murder scene at midnight or an armed robbery of a gold mine, for otherwise why should the two old men refuse to let their own descendants know about their success story? But Third Aunt disagreed. She said it was probably nothing but a restaurant or a tailor shop, for she had noticed that my great-grandfather knew a great deal about cooking and making clothes. “Maybe they kept it a secret because in China these trades were considered low and degrading. If the servants, for example, knew that their masters had taken such jobs, they'd gossip about them behind their backs. Officials and other rich merchants in Beijing might refuse to associate with them.”

Whatever their business was originally, the fact remained that Nainai and my grandfather were not a match. The former was a well educated gentle lady, the latter a rough peasant who was illiterate. It could not be for anything but his money that Nainai was married to him.

In the years after 1911, during the golden age for Peking opera, my great-grandfather and grandfather owned a well-known theater in Beijing, named Jixiang (auspicious) that normally pulled in nine hundred silver dollars for them each month. Besides the theater, they also owned a large silk store in Wangfujing and some other businesses. Their property amounted to well over a million silver dollars.

Nainai's own family, in the meantime, had fallen into straitened circumstances. After the revolution her father no longer had any income. Yet old habits were difficult to kick. He still had to smoke opium. In fact now he had an even greater need for it. Besides he liked fine food, good wine, and operas. If he did not celebrate his birthday properly, he'd feel that he had lost face in front of his old friends. If there weren't a couple of servants in the house, it would be very inconvenient. . . Thus in a few years he had pledged all the properties his ancestors had left, and the valuables of the family all found their way into pawnshops. At last he had nothing left except his only daughter.

So he initiated Nainai into this loveless marriage. But perhaps I should not say so, for don't a lot of Chinese say, “Unlike the Westerners who first fall in love and then get married, we Chinese get married first and then fall in love"? This theory was to some extent true, especially in cases of old-time marriages. As the saying goes, “Married to a rooster, follow the rooster; married to a dog, follow the dog.” Many women learned to get along with their husbands because they had no alternative.

In Nainai's case, she had to put her filial duty before her personal feelings, for she knew that her father, mother, and younger brother depended on her. If she should fail to help them, soon they'd be in the street begging for food. Yet this must have made life doubly difficult for Nainai; for in her husband's home, everybody lived under the tyranny of my great-grandfather.

According to Father, Second Uncle, and Third Aunt, my greatgrandfather was a real despot in the family. All decisions, big or small, were made by him. He never consulted anybody when he made decisions about them. All the others had to ask his permission if they wanted to do anything.

“He thought everybody was indebted to him, because he was the one who made the money!” Years later, when Father said this to me, his voice still betrayed a great deal of anger. “The employees were all indebted to him, because he gave them jobs. Nainai was indebted to him, because if he hadn't sent her parents gifts of money, they'd have been drinking northwest wind for meals. I was indebted to him too, for I was his oldest grandson who would someday inherit his money and his business. I could never make him understand that I did not want his money and had no interest in taking over his business. I'd rather work to earn my own living and be free. Actually, I pitied him because he was such a slave of his money! Money possessed him and obsessed him! It ruined his life!”

Father also told me that because the old man thought he was everybody's creditor but no one was paying their debts back with due love and respect, he resented everyone in the family.

“His biggest hobby was to curse people. He had a large stock of poisonous words which, when he was in a bad mood, he would deal out to people around him generously. It was only when he was cursing others that he looked happy and satisfied!”

Nainai must have suffered a lot at his hands, or perhaps I should say, at his tongue. Being a daughter-in-law, tradition required her to obey the old tyrant completely and be respectful all the time. Her filial duty said that she should never talk back to him or complain about him to anyone. So she put up with all the insults from her father-in-law. In the meantime, while the old man was feared, shunned, and hated more and more by members of his own family, Nainai quietly won everybody's heart.

She was not only loved and admired by her husband and children, but also by other relatives and even servants because of her kindness and generosity. Although she was the mistress of the house, she rarely voiced her opinions. She always listened to others with patience and sympathy. Yet sooner or later, people realized that she was not a fool or a person who could be manipulated. She knew her mind as well as what was going on around her. There is an old saying: “Great wisdom appears dull-witted.” It is similar to “Still waters run deep.” Nainai seemed to exemplify such sayings.

My opinion of Nainai was actually not my own. It reflected Aunty's opinion of her, which in its turn was influenced by the opinion of her aunt. Aunty's aunt was an old servant in my grandfather's house, who knew a great deal about her masters and mistresses. In 1950 she recommended Aunty to Nainai to take care of me. For that I am very grateful to her, although I cannot recall what she looked like.

Seven years after Nainai married, her father died. Her mother soon followed him into the nether world. Now it was Nainai's responsibility to help her younger brother. Her brother in his youth had also studied with tutors. So he could read and write. Some said he was pretty good at calligraphy and flower-and-bird painting. But as he grew up, the idea that someday he would have to work to make a living had never crossed his mind. He wouldn't have needed to work, if the emperor had continued in power. The latter would have granted him an official position as the previous emperors did his forefathers.

With or without an official position, he wouldn't have needed to worry about his livelihood. During the Qing dynasty all Manchu men received monthly qianliang (money and grain). Theoretically they were all in the army, so no one was supposed to have another job. This qianliang the Han people in Beijing jokingly called “crops that grow on iron stalks,” because the “harvest” of such was always guaranteed. For many decades it had enabled its recipients to idle around teahouses, wineshops, bird markets, antique stores, and opera theaters. Some of them became artists and writers. Others wasted their time. Nainai's brother grew up expecting such an easy life. After the revolution uprooted the magic crops, he was at a loss.

Nainai tried to help him out, and providing him with a job seemed to be the most fundamental way. Of course this was not easy. On the one hand, her younger brother was not fit for any of the existing jobs in the family business. On the other hand, her father-in-law had made it clear that he'd never put any relative on the payroll unless he was really needed. So what was Nainai to do?

Finally she came up with an idea. She persuaded my grandfather that the theater needed a reliable person to watch over it during the night and her brother was the right one to do it. All he needed to do was to sleep in the theater after the performance was over. By day he could still enjoy himself in the teahouses and wineshops. In the evening he could see as many operas as he liked. Each month he'd receive a salary, which of course would be called a gift. However, soon the brother proved that he could not deal with even a job like that. One night he caught a severe cold sleeping in the theater. A couple of months later, he joined his parents in the yellow earth.

His death made Nainai heartbroken, for she loved her little brother. In the past the two of them had traveled in the same wagon and played on the same boat. They had studied with the same tutors and Nainai had spent many hours writing characters and memorizing ancient poems with him. When the weather changed or when he was ill, she would help her mother take care of him and over the years he had become dependent on her.

Yet even this was not the real reason why Nainai was so sad when her brother died. The real reason was that he was the only male descendant in her family. When he died without issue, the once powerful and prominent Manchu family was extinct by Chinese standards. Nainai's children did not count in this case, for a daughter's children belonged to her husband's family.

Nainai's own ancestors had no more offspring. After a hundred years, who would offer them delicious meals when the festivals came around? Who would repair and sweep their graves at qingming, the special day in April on which dutiful descendants visit their ancestors? Who would burn paper money and send cash into the nether world for them to spend? Who would burn incense and chant Buddhist scriptures to expiate the sins they had committed and beseech blessings for them? . . .

Nainai's ancestors would be cold and hungry for eternity, hanging like dry leaves on a dead tree, shivering in the chilly wind of the Yin. They'd be weeping and their tears would flow out like a bitter river. But river or rain, nothing could revive this family. It was too late. Henceforth sunshine, full moon, spring wind, peaceful years, and bumper harvest, all good things belonged to other families. Nainai's ancestors were beyond help. Their relation with the human world was cut off once and for all. People would soon forget them. Their memorial tablets would be thrown out by strangers.

That was why in China families had to have sons. The more sons the better, for the ancestors would feel safer and happier. If a man failed to produce sons, he did his ancestors a great wrong. That was why Mencius said, “There are three ways in which one fails his filial duties. Not having a son is the biggest among them.” The ancestors, I guess, could not care less about daughters whose children would take the husbands’ surnames and carry on the family lines for other families.