My Several Worlds (47 page)

The Chinese Communists now, therefore, had cleverly made full use of Chiang’s internal policy, and as they had capitalized upon the peasants’ hatred of landlords they next proceeded to capitalize upon the hatred of the Chinese people for the Japanese aggressors. They adopted as their new watchword, “Chinese do not fight Chinese,” meaning that they were willing to be unified with the Nationalists in order to fight the common enemy and knowing, I am sure, all the while that the Nationalists would not yield to them.

It was tragic in those days to watch the decay of the new government, but it was impossible not to see it, for while the nation was torn in dissension and struggle, the people bewildered and angry at what was going on, the intellectuals and party members were still only quarreling among themselves over such paper work as a constitution and new laws and what form labor unions should take, all good concerns but irrelevant in the face of immediate and tragic danger. It was, in its way, a manner of fiddling while Rome burned, and yet our young men were not Neros, but very earnest and well-meaning ignoramuses. Meanwhile Chiang Kai-shek, also irritated and desperate, was trying to establish some sort of order, not only among his own government officials, but among rebellious war lords whom he could not actually conquer and with whom therefore he had to bargain, and they were not men of honor, for as they saw his position weakening they demanded new bargains. Dissidence had risen to such a point that the wild and wilful man, Feng Yü-hsiang, still the most spectacular among the war lords, had in 1930 withdrawn from all bargaining, and had set up a rival government in Peking, further to confound the agitated President.

While I was in Peking, then, two years later, it became clear that unless I wanted to spend my life in a turmoil which I could neither prevent nor help, I would have to change my country, and with it my world. I dreaded the change, for I deeply loved China, and her people to me were as my own. I remember how long I pondered in those days of the Peking spring. The dust storms of the northern deserts blew down over the city, and the winds were cold and dry, and yet I spent my afternoons, when my morning’s work was done in the excellent National Library, in wandering about the city and renewing my knowledge of the past. It was a good place in which to make the decision of whether I should leave China, for nowhere is China greater and more manifest in beauty than in Peking. I felt the nobility of the wide streets, designed for a princely people, and the palaces and tombs remained as splendid monuments. Yet the monuments were falling into decay, and I remember my sadness one day when I visited the very palace where the Old Empress had liked best to live. It was under guard, for the new government, as we still called it, was conscious of its national treasures and the great imperial buildings of the past were all under military guard.

On this day I had lingered long in The Forbidden City, the idle soldiers staring at me curiously, and at last one of them beckoned me to follow him around the corner of a palace. Thinking that he wanted to show me something I had not yet seen, I followed. But when I reached the place where he stood, he put up his hand and pulled down a magnificent porcelain tile from the edge of a low roof, a tile of the old imperial yellow, stamped with a dragon.

“One silver dollar,” he said in Chinese.

I shook my head, trying to decide whether I would accuse him or be silent and go away. I went away. What use was it to make the accusation? He did not feel the idealism which alone would have made him perform his duty. Idealism? There was the weakness. The new government never gave its people an idealism to live by, and the Chinese, like all of us, cannot live on bread alone. Mere nationalism was not enough. There had to be something to live for. There had, above all, to be a leader whom they could reverence. The judgments of people are often cruel, and perhaps no man could have been strong enough or great enough to organize China in time to save her from her troubles. Be that as it may, Chiang Kai-shek was not strong enough nor great enough and now the people knew it. Others have pointed out that the Chinese do not object to a dictator, if he is strong enough as a man to command their respect. It is true that their conception of democracy is totally different from that of the Americans, for their conception of a nation is different. The head of the Chinese government, whether emperor or president or Communist dictator, stands in the position of the father of the people. As a father he must be worthy of their honor and obedience, a brave figure, wise, inflexible and yet reasonable, strong to command and to enforce his commands, yet just and free from pettiness of temper tantrums and hostilities. If in addition to all else he has also a sense of humor, then his hold is absolute, but always by the will of the people. If he fails in these qualities, they desert him and seek another. He must also be a good provider as the father of his people, for the Chinese proverb has it, “When the price of rice is beyond the ability of the common man to pay, then Heaven decrees a change of rulers.”

In short, the Chinese people do not at all mind the role of voluntary subject if their ruler is a man whose powers they respect and admire, but they will not follow a lesser man, and especially one who cannot keep order in his own party. Twenty years ago, alas, the Chinese people began to reject Chiang Kai-shek, not suddenly nor spectacularly, but none the less absolutely. The failure to recognize this fact was the primary failure of later American policy. Had we recognized it in time we might have prevented the appearance of a Communist leader who was able to seize power because he was comparatively unknown, or at least untried. The whole process was in accord with the tradition of Chinese history. A decaying dynasty fell with the inadequacy of the rulers and new rulers arose to whom the people gave allegiance until it was proved that they too were unworthy. Corruption and dissolution began when it was apparent that Chiang could not hold the people. This corruption was not the cause of the people’s defection nor even of the downfall of the Nationalists, although it has often been said that it was. The truth is that any declining government falls into corruption, and the very fact is a proof of its approaching end. There was no idealism left, no hope of a better life for the people, and this despair gave China to the Communists. All other causes were lesser and concomitant.

This became plain to me that spring in Peking, when the Japanese were threatening every major port in North and Central China, and yet never had I loved China so well. I moved among my friends with renewed pleasure, visiting some I had not known before, and others whom I had always known. Thus I remember a notable luncheon party in the home of Owen Lattimore, who had just returned from a long journey into Mongolia and Manchuria and from whom I earnestly wished to hear of the effects of Japanese conquest. He and his wife and small son were living in a charming Chinese house, where that day we dined with his Mongol friends upon Mongol meats, eaten from a low table while we sat on the floor. The Mongols and our host, too, smelled stoutly of goat’s meat and milk curds, and I remember finding the aroma difficult, in spite of my admiration for the tall Mongol men and my enjoyment of their rollicking hearty laughter and ready wit. Owen Lattimore spoke their language fluently but he translated as easily and I was able to share in the conversation through English, for the Mongols did not speak Chinese, either. My interest in Mongols has continued to this day, for they are a brave and handsome people, and I have come to understand something more of their nature through my friendship with the Dilowa Hutukhtu, or the Living Buddha, a man of high place in the Tibetan religion, whom Owen Lattimore saved a few years ago from being killed in his own country by the invading Communists. The Dilowa, being a man of his own mind and of invincible spirit, had refused to obey the Communists when they came, and he was thrown in prison. Only the devotion of his people compelled the Communists to free him, but on the threat that if he opposed them again they would kill him. Owen Lattimore helped him to come to the United States, and with him brought two young Mongol princes and their families, also endangered by the Communists as reactionaries. Here the three Mongols have lived safely if not always happily, for prejudice from Americans ignorant of their race has occasionally made them uncomfortable. They overlook this with characteristic grace, however, and are only grateful for hospitality.

And one of my happiest days in Peking was spent with the great Chinese actor and female impersonator, Mei Lan-fang, in his beautiful house. He talked of many matters, and he sang and played upon his lute for me, and showed me his priceless collection of musical instruments. And his cook, one of the most famous in Peking, prepared delicious Mongol sweets for us, and dainty Chinese pastries, and Mei Lan-fang ate them with conscience-smitten enjoyment, for he was already getting plump, and the willowy heroines he impersonated were essential to the ancient Chinese opera. During the war with Japan he went to Shanghai, I heard, and there he refused to act or sing and even grew a beard and moustache, in order to make it impossible for him to play the part of a beautiful woman, and so be compelled to perform for the conquerors. When the war was over he returned to Peking and his great house and he shaved off his whiskers and once more began to delight audiences in his ageless fashion. Now he heads the actors’ organization under the Communists, I am told, and I wonder if he, too, like other great dramatic and literary figures, is compelled to play the Communist party line. We have no more communication now, and I dare to write this about him only because he is great enough, I believe, to hold his own under any government. And by now he must be really old, but still beautiful upon the stage, I am sure, for his beauty was of inner grace.

Ah, when I think of Peking, my heart still dissolves, for the very soul of the Chinese people was there and it is no wonder that many a foreigner went to visit and stayed to live, and, now driven forth, is forever exiled. My joy was not in the cosmopolitan life of foreigners, however, although they were kind enough to me. My joy was to wander the streets alone, to linger in the palaces and the gardens, and sometimes to ride outside the city among the bare mountains and gaze at the Summer Palace, deserted and empty. My joy was to listen to the people talk, in that purest of Chinese Mandarin, the aristocrat of languages, and to watch them as they came and went, the proudest race upon the earth.

And as I write I do remember one thing more. That spring a little dramatic group among the foreigners gave a play for the English-speaking community. It was
The Barretts of Wimpole Street.
I do not remember the other actors but only the little frail creature, whose name I have forgotten, but who played the part of Elizabeth Barrett. She was a missionary, I was told, a shy virginal woman, not young, not old, whom nobody knew. But she had great dark sad eyes and a small olive-skinned face and heavy dark hair, and a soft stealing footstep. Upon the stage she became Elizabeth herself, the beloved of a poet, and before our amazed eyes she gave a performance so passionate, so true, so utterly astounding in the perfection of its sensitive comprehension of a poetic love, that I have never forgotten it. And indeed when later I saw our own great Katharine Cornell play the same part in a revival, I felt the little missionary had surpassed even her performance. Yet when the play was over that small creature shrank away again, and when she was tried in another play was quite mediocre, I was told. Something in that play and in that one character fitted, I suppose, the emotional need of her own life at the moment. Years later I wove the incident into a short story.

I did not decide quickly or easily to leave China, and in fact the decision was not final for two years. We had a sabbatical year in 1932 and were spending it in the United States, and those months, I felt, would give me time to know what the future should be. I seem not to remember much about the departure, but I did return from Peking to the house in Nanking and it was put in order for my absence, and farewells were said to all the Chinese friends and the faithful servants. I was detached enough not to grieve as I might have done in earlier years, and besides I had the joyful expectation of seeing my elder child, from whom I had been absent for nearly three years. She, too, would have her part in my decision to stay in the United States. I do not even remember the journey across the Pacific Ocean, except that my chief concern was a brief case containing my completed translation of
Shui Hu Chüan
together with the photographed copies of hundreds of illustrations from a very ancient text in Peking. I did not then know the difficulties and the cost of illustrations in books, and I hoped to use all the pictures, making the English translation as nearly as possible like the best Chinese version. Two or three times the precious brief case was mislaid in the various changes of the journey, and every time all else was stopped until it was found again.

I had been told that upon this visit to the United States I would find another world awaiting me and different from the one I had known so casually before, but such remarks had made no special impression upon me, since I could not imagine that future. My American publisher met my train in Montreal with a car and a list of questions to be decided, and it was not long before I saw that the year I had thought of as somewhat idle and certainly very free was to be neither. But it is of no interest even to myself to recall the events which are almost standardized for the author of a best seller, as
The Good Earth
had proved to be. The dinners, the cocktail parties, the invitations to see and be seen, to lecture, to give opinions on everything, were mildly interesting in themselves, but what deeply I searched for was not to be found in such activities. I wanted first of all to know my own people, for until I did, I knew that I could not put down roots in my country, and second, I hoped to find a circle of congenial friends in my own field of the arts.

To change countries is an overwhelming and it may be a crushing experience. I have accomplished it during the years that have passed since I left China, and my respect for all immigrants and my understanding of them have grown steadily. To move from an old established society, and the Chinese were that and have remained so in spite of the upheavals of revolution and temporary governments, into an effervescent and a fluid new society, such as the American still is and must remain for many future decades or perhaps centuries, is to do more than change countries—it is to change worlds and epochs. Moreover, I did not then understand what later I found to be true, that the naturally changing quality of our American culture, compelled by scientific discovery and invention to move so rapidly from a pioneer stage to high industrialism, was violently shaken by the First World War. The effect of that war is not yet fully comprehended or assessed, either materially or psychologically, but we are not only a changing people in the normal course of our national life, we are a changed people as a result of the World Wars.