White Plum Blossoms
THE NEXT MORNING, August 14, we wake late to the sounds of movement, people, and animals outside our walls. We draw back the curtain and see streams of people passing the house. Are we curious about them? Not at all, because our minds are on how to get the most out of the one dollar we have to spend during the shopping expedition we’re planning. This isn’t some shallow thing. As beautiful girls, we require fashionable ensembles. May and I have done what we can to mix and match the Western outfits Old Man Louie left behind, but we need to keep current. We aren’t thinking about the new fall fashions, because the artists we work for are already creating calendars and advertisements for next spring. How will Western designers modify the dress in the new year? Will a button be added to a cuff, the hem shortened, the neckline lowered, the waist nipped? We decide to go to Nanking Road to look in the windows and try to imagine what the changes will be. Then we’ll stop by the notions department in the towering Wing On Department Store to buy ribbons, lace, and other trim to freshen our clothes.
May puts on a dress with a pattern of white plum blossoms against a robin’s egg blue background. I wear loose white linen trousers and a navy blue short-sleeved top. Then we pass the morning looking through what’s left in our closet. It’s in May’s nature to spend hours at her toilette, choosing the right scarf to tie at her throat or purse to match her shoes, so she tells me what we should look for and I write it down.
It’s late afternoon when we pin on hats and pick up our parasols to protect us from the summer sun. August, as I’ve said, is miserably hot and humid in Shanghai, the sky white and oppressive with heat and clouds. This day, however, is hot but clear. It might have even passed for pleasant if not for the thousands of people who crowd the streets. They carry baskets, chickens, clothes, food, and ancestor tablets. Grandmothers and mothers with bound feet are supported by sons and husbands. Brothers lug poles across their shoulders coolie-style. In the baskets at the ends are their little brothers and sisters. Wheelbarrows transport the aged, sick, and deformed. Those who can afford it have paid coolies to bear their suitcases, trunks, and boxes, but most of the people are poor and from the country. May and I are happy to get in a rickshaw and separate ourselves from them.
“Who are they?” May asks.
I have to think about it. That’s how disconnected I am from what’s happening around me. I mull over a word I’ve never before spoken aloud.
“They’re refugees.”
May frowns as she takes that in.
If I make this sound like this sudden turbulence has come out of nowhere, that’s because it has for us. May doesn’t pay much attention to the world, but I know a few things. Back in 1931, when I was fifteen, the dwarf bandits invaded Manchuria in the far north and installed a puppet government. Four months later, at the beginning of the new year, they crossed into the Chapei district across Soochow Creek right next to Hongkew, where we live. At first we thought it was fireworks. Baba took me to the end of North Szechuan Road, and we saw the truth. It was horrible to see the bombs exploding and worse still to see Shanghailanders in their evening clothes, drinking liquor from flasks, nibbling on sandwiches, smoking cigarettes, and laughing at the spectacle. With no help from the foreigners, who got rich off our city, the Chinese Nineteenth Route Army fought back. Japan didn’t agree to a cease-fire for another eleven weeks. Chapei was rebuilt, and we let the incident go out of our minds.
Then last month shots were fired on the Marco Polo Bridge in the capital. The official war began, but no one thought the dwarf bandits would come this far south so fast. Let them take Hopei, Shantung, Shansi, and a bit of Honan, the thinking went. The monkey people would need time to digest all that territory. Only after establishing control and snuffing out uprisings would they consider marching southward into the Yangtze delta. The sorry people who would live under foreign rule would be wang k’uo nu— lost-country slaves. We don’t grasp that the trail of refugees crossing the Garden Bridge with us extends for ten miles into the countryside. There is so much we don’t know.
We view the world very much as peasants in the countryside have for millennia. They’ve always said the mountains are high and the emperor is far away, meaning palace intrigues and imperial threats have no impact on their lives. They’ve acted as though they could do whatever they wanted without fear of retribution or consequence. In Shanghai, we also assume that what happens elsewhere in China will never touch us. After all, the rest of the country is big and backward, and we live in a treaty port governed by foreigners, so technically we aren’t even part of China. Besides, we believe, truly believe, that even if the Japanese reach Shanghai, our army will beat them back as they did five years ago. But Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has a different idea. He wants the fight with the Japanese to come to the delta, where he can arouse national pride and resistance, and at the same time consolidate feelings against the Communists, who have been talking about civil war.
Of course, we have no inkling of that as we cross the Garden Bridge and enter the International Settlement. The refugees drop their loads, lie on sidewalks, sit on the steps of the big banks, and crowd onto the wharves. Sightseers gather in clusters to watch our planes try to drop bombs on the Japanese flagship, the Idzumo, and the destroyers, mine sweepers, and cruisers that surround it. Foreign businessmen and shoppers determinedly step around what’s at their feet and ignore what’s happening in the air, as though things like this go on every day. The mood is at once desperate, festive, and indifferent. If anything, the bombings are an entertainment, because again the International Settlement—as a British port—isn’t under any threat from the Japanese.
Our puller stops at the corner of Nanking Road. We pay the agreed-upon price and join the throng. Each plane that sweeps overhead brings whoops of encouragement and applause, but when every single bomb misses its target and falls harmlessly into the Whangpoo, cheers turn to boos. Somehow it all seems a funny game and eventually a dull one.
May and I stroll up Nanking Road, avoiding the refugees and eyeing Shanghainese and Shanghailanders to see what they’re wearing. Outside the Cathay Hotel we run into Tommy Hu. He wears a white duck suit and a straw hat tilted back on his head. He seems thrilled to see May, and she melts into her flirtatious mode. I can’t help wondering if they arranged to meet.
I cross the street, leaving May and Tommy with their heads together and hands gently touching. I’m just in front of the Palace Hotel when I hear a loud rat-a-tat coming from behind me. I don’t know what it is, but I duck instinctively. Around me, others fall to the ground or run for doorways. I look back toward the Bund and see a silver plane flying low. It’s one of ours. Antiaircraft fire sprouts from one of the Japanese ships. At first, it seems like the dwarf bandits missed their target, and a few people cheer. Then we see smoke spiral out of the plane.
Crippled by the antiaircraft fire, the plane veers over Nanking Road. The pilot must know he’s going to crash, because suddenly he lets the two bombs attached to the wing drop. They seem to take a very long time to fall. I hear whistling and then feel a sickening lurch accompanied by a shattering explosion as the first bomb lands in front of the Cathay Hotel. My eyes go white, my eardrums go silent, and my lungs stop working, as if the explosion has punched out my body’s knowledge of how to operate. A second later, another bomb goes through the roof of the Palace Hotel and explodes. Debris—glass, paper, bits of flesh, and body parts—hurtles down on me.
It’s said that the worst part of the bombing experience is the seconds of total paralysis and silence that immediately follow the initial concussion. It’s as though—and I think this is an expression used in every culture—time stands still. That’s how it is for me. I’m frozen in place. Smoke and plaster dust billow. Eventually I hear the tinkle of glass falling from the hotel’s windows. Someone moans. Someone else screams. And then total panic engulfs the street as another bomber wobbles through the air above us. A minute or two later, we hear and feel the impact of two more bombs. They land, I find out later, in the intersection of Avenue Edouard VII and Thibet Road near the racecourse, where many refugees have gathered to receive free rice and tea. Altogether the four bombs wound, maim, or kill thousands of people.
My immediate thought is for May. I have to find her. I stumble across a couple of mangled bodies. Their clothes have been ripped, shredded, and bloodied. I can’t tell if they were refugees, Shanghainese, or Shanghailanders. Severed arms and legs litter the street. A stampede of hotel guests and staff pushes and shoves through the Palace’s doors and pours out onto the street. Most of them are screaming, many of them bleeding.
People run over the injured and the dead. I join the panicked scramble, needing to make my way back to where I left May and Tommy. I can’t see anything. I rub my eyes, trying without success to rid them of dust and terror. I find what’s left of Tommy. His hat is gone and so is his head, but I still recognize the white of his suit. May isn’t with him, thank God, but where is she?
I turn back toward the Palace Hotel, believing I missed her in my rush. Nanking Road is carpeted with the dead and dying. A few badly injured men lurch drunkenly down the middle of the street. Several cars burn, while others have had their windows blown out. Inside them are more injured and dead. Cars, rickshaws, trams, wheelbarrows, and the people inside them have been pitted by shrapnel. Buildings, billboards, and fences are spattered with flecks of humanity. The sidewalk is slippery with clotted blood and flesh. Shattered glass glitters on the street like so many diamonds. The stench in the August heat burns my eyes and clogs my throat.
“May!” I call and take a few steps. I keep shouting her name, trying to hear her response through the panic that whirls around me. I stop to examine every injured or dead body. With so many dead, how can she have survived? She’s so delicate and easily hurt.
And then, amid all the blood and gore, I see through the crowd a patch of robin’s egg blue with a white plum blossom pattern. I run forward and find my sister. She’s partially buried in plaster and other debris. She’s either unconscious or dead.
“May! May!”
She doesn’t move. Fear grips my heart. I kneel beside her. I don’t see any wounds, but blood has soaked into her dress from a gruesomely injured woman lying next to her. I brush the debris from May’s dress and lean down close to her face. Her skin is as white as candle wax. “May,” I say softly. “Wake up. Come on, May, wake up.”
She stirs. I coax her again. Her eyes blink open, she groans, and closes her eyes again.
I pelt her with questions. “Are you hurt? Do you feel pain? Can you move?”
When she answers with a question of her own, my whole body relaxes in relief.
“What happened?”
“There was a bomb. I couldn’t find you. Tell me you’re all right.”
She twists first one shoulder and then the other. She winces, but not in agony.
“Help me up,” she says.
I put a hand behind her neck and pull her into a sitting position. When I let go, my hand is sticky with blood.
All around us people moan from their injuries. Some cry for help. Some gurgle final, tortured gasps for life. Some scream from the horror of seeing a loved one in pieces. But I’ve been on this street many times, and there’s an underlying silence that’s chilling, as if the dead are sucking sound into their dark emptiness.
I put my arms around May and get her to her feet. She sways, and I worry she’ll lose consciousness again. With my arm around her waist, we take a few steps. But where are we going? Ambulances haven’t arrived yet. We can’t even hear them in the distance, but from neighboring streets come people—unhurt and in surprisingly clean clothes. They rush from corpse to corpse, from injured to injured.
“Tommy?” May asks. When I shake my head, she says, “Take me to him.”
I don’t think that’s a good idea, but she insists. When we reach his body, May’s knees crumple. We sit on the curb. May’s hair is white with plaster dust. She looks like a ghost spirit. I probably look the same.
“I need to make sure you aren’t hurt,” I say, partly to take May’s attention away from Tommy’s body. “Let me take a look.”
May turns her back to me and away from Tommy. Her hair’s matted with already clotting blood, which I take to be a good sign. I carefully part the curls until I find a gash on the back of her head. I’m not a doctor, but it doesn’t look like it needs stitches. Still, she’s been knocked out. I want someone to tell me it’s safe to take her home. We wait and wait, but even after the ambulances come no one helps us. Too many others need immediate attention. As dusk settles, I decide we should go home, but May won’t leave Tommy.
“We’ve known him our entire lives. What would Mama say if we left him here? And his mother …” She trembles, but she doesn’t cry. Her shock is too deep for that.
Just as furniture vans arrive to take away the dead, we feel the concussion of bombs being dropped and hear the rattle of machine guns in the distance. None of us in the street has any illusions about what this means. The dwarf bandits are attacking. They won’t bomb the International Settlement or any of the foreign concessions, but Chapei, Hongkew, the Old Chinese City, and the outlying Chinese areas have to be under fire. People scream and cry, but May and I fight our fear and stay with Tommy’s body until it’s loaded onto a stretcher and put in the back of one of the vans.
“I want to go home now,” May says as the van pulls away. “Mama and Baba will be worried. And I don’t want to be out when the Generalissimo puts more of our planes back in the air.”