I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking. Thus to establish again my Nanking house and garden took solid months. I am not a perfectionist, I do not like floors that cannot be walked upon or books that cannot be left about, or untouchable tables and chairs. But a strong sense of design, and a love of ordered beauty are essentials of life not only for my family, as a duty, but for myself as a background. I cannot live anyhow. In one room, if it is all I have, I am compelled as instinctively as a bee to create order and produce a home. I cannot settle myself to writing books unless I have first made this background of life as complete as I can. The necessity is a curse and a blessing, separately and together, but so it is.
Before I could look about me, then, to see what was happening, I had to settle my house and establish the routines. My father came back to his own rooms, my children were happy in their nurseries, the kitchen was in order, the servants re-engaged, all except the incorrigible gardener who went with the Communists, and to all appearances my life was as it had been before, except that it was not and never could be again. We were living in another world, not the old world of our war lord and our ancient city. As soon as I bestirred myself to go out of my house I saw that a government was here which was like none I had known. It was the Nationalist government of China, and its head was Chiang Kai-shek, a spruce sharply straight figure whom we seldom saw. But he was already a presence in the city, a force, a personality. I heard him talked about on the streets as well as in the homes of my friends. Once, for example, there was to be a procession for a visiting prince from Europe, and vast preparations were made, even to the extent of tearing down hundreds of the mat huts in which the beggars lived along the foot of the city wall, clustered together like wasps’ nests. But the old shops and slums could not be torn down and so walls of mats, thirty feet high, were built to hide the worst of the ancient buildings from the eyes of the foreign prince. Oh, how ashamed the young Chinese Western-trained men and women were, in those days, of their country and the people whom they loved so much, and how touching and pitiful was this shame! Well, on the morning of the day of the procession I went out early to escape the crowd. I needed a length of raw silk to make a curtain for the dining room. The common people were already gathering for the show, and on my way back I was caught in the crowd and had to stand until they moved. Next to me was a vendor of small bread loaves. He held his basket on his arm, and over the loaves was the usual filthy grey rag to keep the dust and flies away. As usual, too, he talked. Everybody always talked to anybody on the streets, and it was one of the delights of living in China.
“This old Chiang Kai-shek,” the vendor declared, “he is winning all the battles with bandit war lords. As soon as the foreign prince is gone he will fight in the North.”
“Will he win?” I inquired.
“It depends on the weather,” the vendor replied judiciously. He was an ancient man, a few sparse white hairs stood out on his withered chin and his eyes were rheumy with trachoma.
“The weather?” I repeated.
“Certainly the weather,” he replied. “This Chiang is a river-god, reincarnated in a human body. How do I know? He was born by a river in Fukien. Before he was born that river flooded every year. Since he was born it has not flooded once. Therefore if the sun shines he always loses in battles. If it is a rainy day, he always wins. We shall have to wait and see what Heaven decrees.”
Chiang Kai-shek had already become a legend, then! There were more legends and stories every day, not only about him but about his new young wife, too. The people of Nanking, like other Chinese, were lively in humor and curiosity, and they were well aware of the problems which a Chinese military man, who had never visited the West and who was still essentially old-fashioned in his outlook, would have with a spirited and beautiful young woman who, because she had lived in America since she was nine years old, was considered a foreigner by her countrymen. She could not speak good Chinese and she did not know Chinese history. She was Western in her habits and in the way she looked and moved. Worst of all, in Chinese opinion, she was dominating and outspoken, and their sympathy was therefore with her husband. Servants from inside the Presidential Mansion described incidents exciting and amusing, and the whole city relished the situation of a strong man, old-fashioned, married to a strong woman, new-fashioned. Bets were made as to who would win on anticipated occasions. Would the lady be allowed to attend the sessions of the executives in the government? Bets were almost even and only slightly in Chiang’s favor. The guards had been ordered not to admit the lady but when the final moment came and she stood face to face with them would they dare to refuse her? She would be too clever to arrive with her husband. She would come later, when he was busy, and then, unsupported, would they have the courage to tell her what he had commanded? Which did they fear the more, the male or the female tiger?
It was impossible not to be amused, and in this particular incident it would not be fair to conceal the outcome. Those who bet on Chiang Kai-shek won. After that, the bets were always in his favor. He lost once again, however, years later, when the lady wanted to visit the United States. An eyewitness, whose name cannot matter, told me that one day the great man came out of his personal rooms looking pettish.
“Such trouble,” he said in effect. “Every day it is the same thing. She wants to go to America.”
My friend looked sympathetic but said nothing. One does not interfere between tigers.
That morning, the great man went on, she had produced a new argument. The President of the United States, she told him, allowed Mrs. Roosevelt to go anywhere she pleased. This was because the President of the United States was a modern man. At this very moment, she said, Mrs. Roosevelt was disporting herself in England, having a wonderful time. Whereas she, surely no less low in position than Mrs. Roosevelt as the First Lady of another great republic, could not go anywhere abroad to have a good time! The great man then told her to go, but he made more than one word out of it.
My friend ended his story with relish. The great man, he said, had afterwards been astounded at the regal tour of his lady, especially when she was even invited to address the Congress of the United States, since he had supposed she meant only to make of it a pleasure trip and shopping tour. But it may be that even a queen is only a woman in the chamber she shares with the king. Who knows?
My fears for the new government came one day to a climax. We had heard much talk of the new city that was to be made from our old Southern Capital. We were proud that Nanking had been chosen as the capital of the new government, in spite of the grumbling of the foreign legations who had been so long and comfortably established in Peking, the seat of Empire. A clear break with the past was good, we felt. Moreover, the last true Chinese dynasty, the Ming, had made its capital in Nanking and outside the city there still stood the ancient stone monuments. It was true that later in their dynasty the Ming rulers had moved the capital to Peking, but this only provided a precedent for Chiang Kai-shek when he had conquered all the war lords who still lingered in various parts of the northern country, if he should after all decide upon Peking. Meanwhile Nanking, we were told, was to be made into a modern city with wide streets and electricity and telephones and automobiles and great department stores. New public buildings would be built, and motion picture theaters and government houses, and there was even to be a modern sanitation system and city water. We listened and wondered. Our city was as old-fashioned as ancient Jerusalem. Its cobbled streets were narrow and winding and if a riksha and a sedan chair had to pass, the people were obliged to flatten themselves against the walls of the houses. Gutters ran on both sides of the cobbles and into them the householders poured the waste water of kitchen and washtubs. A faint reek of urine usually hung in the air, particularly in rainy season, for while the women and girls used decent wooden buckets in the privacy of their bedrooms the common man stepped lightheartedly out of his front door and stood against the wall, and babies were held over the gutters at regular intervals. And what about the shops? The heaps of vegetables and fruits and fish and meats were piled to the very edge of the streets and any space left was taken by the tables of fortunetellers and secondhand booksellers’ stalls. What was to happen to all these necessary aspects of daily life? We did not know.