And I, having learned my lesson of silence, could only go away feeling more sorry for the young man on the machine than for the people, because the people were strong and he was not and in the end I never doubted that the people would win. Later I put the making of the new city into a short story called “The New Road,” and the touching and earnest young man and all the thousands like him went into another entitled “Shanghai Scene.”
In these days, too, a strange change was taking place upon the flank of our beautiful Purple Mountain. From my distant attic window I could see what looked like a white scar daily growing larger among the pines and the bamboos. It was the tomb of Sun Yat-sen, for the new government had decided that Sun’s embalmed body was to be brought from the North and laid to rest in the southern capital. The cornerstone had been laid on the first anniversary of his death. I went out to look at the mausoleum now and then during the years of its making, and watched it progress from a dislocation of rocks and earth to a monument so hybrid that people did not know whether to repudiate it as something foreign, or be proud of it because it was partly Chinese. A gatehouse, or sort of p’ailou, stood at the foot, and from there a vast flight of white marble steps led up to the mountain. I climbed those steps so many times during the next decade that I thought I could never forget how many there are, yet I have forgotten, for my feet since then have carried me to many other countries and to far places. At the top of the marble flight was the memorial hall and behind it the tomb itself. The blue-tiled roof curved upward in the old temple style and the marble terrace in front of the building was impressive, for from the balustrades one could look over many miles of countryside. To the right was the winding city wall and within it were the roofs of houses, laid closely together.
The climax of that building was on a hot summer’s day — the day of Sun Yat-sen’s funeral, in 1929, four years after his death. Preparations had been going on for months, and among the more difficult was the necessary, if temporary, reconciliation between Madame Sun Yat-sen, the widow, and the rest of her family, which now included Chiang Kai-shek himself, for Madame Sun was pro-Communist, as she believed her husband had been. Would she come to the funeral or would she not? She did come, and everybody was relieved. To bury The Leader without having his wife present to honor the occasion would have been unthinkable. Yet even so there were many stories among the people and rumors that though she came, she would not speak to any of the family. Nevertheless, the preparations went on.
And my two guests during those days of the pomp of Sun Yat-sen’s funeral were Dr. Alfred Sze, the Chinese Ambassador in Washington and father of Mai-mai Sze, who has become well known in the United States, and Dr. Taylor, the missionary physician who had embalmed the body of Sun Yat-sen.
Dr. Sze was a tall handsome man, polished in the cultures of East and West alike, and he could scarcely conceal his dismay at the discomforts of Nanking. I had been asked to entertain him because our house was more comfortable than some, and yet we, too, had no electricity or running water or any of the modern conveniences to which Dr. Sze had become so used in his years abroad. The glimpses he gave me of my own country were extremely enlightening and entertaining, and I in turn tried to modify his discouragement about his own. But what I remember most clearly was a brisk after-dinner conversation between me and the unquenchable Li Sau-tse, still managing our household in spite of her relatively reduced position as kitchen help.
“It is a pity,” she said in her loud practical voice, “that so pretty a man as this guest of ours was fed too many chicken feet when he was little.”
“How do you know he was fed chicken feet?” I inquired.
She was cleaning up in the kitchen as usual, the cook, after the manner of overlords, having departed, leaving the dirty work to her.
“Don’t you see how his hands tremble all the time?” she inquired.
“True,” I replied. Dr. Sze’s hands did tremble in a slight nervous palsy.
“That,” Li Sau-tse declared, “is because he was fed too many chicken feet when he was little.”
“Indeed,” I observed. I knew better than to contradict her. She would cheerfully spend hours to prove that I was wrong, did I disagree, and the time was late.
As for Dr. Taylor, I remember only his anxiety lest Sun Yat-sen’s embalmed body might not hold together in the June heat. There was much consternation because the people wanted to see their dead hero, and this meant that the coffin had to be open for a matter of hours. Could the sacred body endure the ravages of the air? Nevertheless, in spite of Dr. Taylor’s agitation, the coffin was opened for a few hours and Sun Yat-sen did hold together except for his hands, but gloves were put on those, and so all went well.
My own memories of the funeral itself are from the modest viewpoint of a bystander, but that, after all, is perhaps the most interesting. I stood among the crowd which gathered for miles along the road upon which the cortège was to pass, and was pressed on one side by an odoriferous beggar and on the other by a stout and lively country housewife. I peered between clustered heads in front and was pushed by unknown persons from behind while the stately procession passed. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in uniform, exhausted with waiting, the sweat running down their faces, students and young people, representatives from all organizations, soldiers and bands, the endless procession went on. Finally I saw the dignitaries from other countries, the handsome and impeccably garbed British, looking cool in spite of their morning clothes and tall silk hats, the Europeans with their brightly striped ribbons and honors across their bosoms, the tall turbaned men from India, the small Japanese men in Western clothes too big for them, the businesslike Americans looking more like clerks than officials. They passed in silence and order and last of all the great casket, draped in flags and silks, passed in slow pomp, followed by the family and the Chinese honoraries.
We had stood for hours, and now we got what conveyance we could and drove outside the city wall to stand again through the funeral. The rather small mausoleum was crowded with dignitaries, and again I chose my place at the foot of the marble steps among the vast crowd. I do not remember what the program was, except that there were speeches in various languages, presentations of wreaths, singing of songs, all conveyed to us through loud-speakers, the first I had ever seen. What I do remember is that the program broke down somewhere about the middle, and we waited and waited. I wondered what had happened, and in spite of all, I fell into my old habit of identification with the Chinese and worried lest some mistake should spoil the occasion before the foreigners. As though my thoughts were premonition, over the loudspeakers came a Chinese whisper, loud and urgent and perfectly audible.
“Hurry up — hurry up — the foreigners must not laugh at us!”
Whoever was delaying matters hurried, and in a few minutes the program went on again. Meanwhile I did not look at any Chinese, pretending that I had not understood the whisper. I suppose most foreigners did not understand, since most of them spoke little or no Chinese.
When the program was over and nearly all the people had gone away, I climbed the marble steps and went into the reception room of the mausoleum. At that moment Chiang Kai-shek came out of an inner chamber. He wore the Nationalist uniform, upon his breast a row of honors and medals, and, his eyes straight ahead, he strode across the marble floor and stood in the wide doorway, looking out over the valleys. I stood near, watching his face, so strangely like that of a tiger, the high forehead sloping, the ears flaring backward, the wide mouth seeming always ready to smile and yet always cruel. But his eyes were the most arresting feature. They were large, intensely black, and utterly fearless. It was not the fearlessness of composure or of intelligence, but the fearlessness, again, of the tiger, who sees no reason to be afraid of any other beast because of its own power.