Shanghai (60 page)

Jiang's practised eyes counted the money and quickly calculated the twelve and a half percent that would be paid to her house no matter who won the game. She considered raising the house's percentage, then thought of her last conversation with her French counterpart, Anais Colombe. Business was falling off in both of their houses. The novelty of European whores had worn off long ago for the established Chinese comprador class, and Jiang knew that although the European community—who often frequented her houses—continued to grow, there were still not enough of them to make up for the escalating costs she faced. First-rank courtesans were becoming rare, and they were demanding finer clothes, personal servants, and private carriages. Gas fixtures and indoor plumbing were also far from cheap. But it was the protection money demanded by Gangster Tu, now that Jiang had arranged for the French authorities to stop “protecting” them, that was driving Jiang's need to generate new business.

Jiang knew that immigrants to Shanghai were not preponderantly European or American or Japanese any more—they were Chinese, often educated Chinese.

She knew that this was a vital new source of income for her house, and she needed to figure out how to lure more of them away from the French houses and into hers. She accepted the curiosity of Chinese men that drove them to sleep with Caucasian women. But she also knew and understood why that curiosity often ended after the first or second visit. Jiang had just as many Caucasian men fulfilling their curiosity with her girls, so that was not a problem. The problem was how to entice the newly arrived and educated Chinese men into her houses after their initial fling with the
Fan Kuei
—and then keep them coming back week after week, and then year after year.

A gasp from the crowd watching the Go match snapped her back to the present. The old man had, with three quick moves, completely upended the balance of the game. Turning to his younger opponent, he asked magnanimously, “Is there any reason to play out the last of the pieces?”

The younger man stared at the board, openly shocked. “I was winning …”

“You thought you were winning,” the older Go player corrected him.

“But I was …”

“I allowed you to play the role of the conqueror, which you played very well. So well you saw the movements on the board through the haze of the image of yourself.”

Suddenly the younger man slashed his arm across the board and the pieces tinkled to the hardwood floor. “You speak nonsense, old man!”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” the old Go player said, ignoring the younger man's outburst as he reached for the money on the side of the table and counted out Jiang's share.

Usually Jiang would have sent one of the girls over to get the money, it being beneath her dignity to be
seen handling cash, but this time she signalled for the old Go player to follow her into a private room.

Upon entering Jiang's private quarters, the old man said, with a chuckle, “I'm too old for you to use sex to coerce me. Your percentage is twelve and a half and that is that. Not a jot more will I hand over to you, even if you put both your hands upon my jade spear.”

Jiang chuckled back, “Now be honest, grandfather, what would that do?”

“Nothing. The twelve and a half percent is yours, and not a jot more,” he repeated, then added, “even if you should use your tongue or your jade gate.”

“Now, now, grandfather, would I do something as coarse as that simply to get more money from my favourite Go player?”

The old man thought for a moment, then said, “Absolutely.”

“Absolutely not.”

The two smiled at each other and Jiang poured some tea for him. He took a sip and sighed. “Annam tea, how kind of you.”

Jiang moved to a wall hanging depicting several Peking Opera characters—one the Princess of the East from her famous aunt's
Journey to the West
—and straightened its seam. Then she turned to him.

He saw the quizzical look on her face and chose to ignore it. Instead he swallowed the rest of the tea and, as if Jiang were his servant, held out the cup for more. Jiang, much to her surprise, immediately fell into the role he had assigned her and began to fill his cup. Then she stopped herself. She was no serving girl! She was about to say as much when the old man reached forward and grabbed some paper off her desk and began to read as he leaned back in his chair. He continued to ignore
Jiang, although he did look into his half-filled cup and harrumphed. Again Jiang had the impulse to fill his cup. Then she understood something.

She took the teapot and tapped the old Go player lightly on the forehead with the hot thing.

“Ouch,” he said, and turned to her.

Immediately he returned to being just an old Go player and she to being a madam of a great and powerful house. Order had been restored. She looked at him. “Hold out your cup, old man,” she said. She filled it, this time as Jiang, the madam, not Jiang, the servant. “What exactly did you mean when you said to that young man that you ‘allowed him to play the role of the conqueror'?”

“Ah,” the old Go player said. “You want my secrets, hence the good tea and fine surroundings. But they will cost you far more than that. I have earned my secrets one painful mistake at a time, and now you wish me to give them away like a peasant girl offers up her virginity for twenty
taels?
I think my secrets are worth more than a country girl's knot.” He smiled. He was missing two teeth on the left side of his mouth. “Don't you?”

Jiang readily paid for prime girls, for music lessons for the best of her girls, for clothing for the girls, for the cleaning of her houses, but paying for this old man's secrets—that was something she'd never considered.

The old Go player finished his tea and stood. “Thank you for your hospitality.” He put down the cup and headed toward the door.

“I'll forgo your charges in my house for a year.”

The old Go player stopped. “No girls?”

“Absolutely no girls.”

“This is not a good bargain for me since I can easily pay the charges. Yet you wish me to give you something of great value, my life's secrets.”

Jiang balked at this, then said, “Two years—no girls.”

“Still makes no sense to me, since the fees you charge me are both fair and easily within my financial reach. But my life's secrets—that's something else.”

“Name your price, old man.”

The old Go player smiled, and he and Jiang sat down to serious bargaining.

The price they arrived at was high by any system of valuation and consisted of free access to the house and “use” of one of the young girls once a month. Jiang knew that the old man wouldn't have sex with the girl and would probably just want her warmth beside him in the bed. Jiang also knew that the old Go player would probably be asleep by ten at night, at which time the girl could slip out of the bed and return to her duties.

“Fine,” Jiang said, “I agree to your terms. Now tell me how you beat that young man. Was he a good player?”

“Very good, a better player than I am. He has more knowledge of the game, and his mathematical calculations are first-rate, and usually that would be enough to win at a simple game like Go.”

“Go is simple?” Jiang asked.

“Extremely simple. Each player has the same number of stones and can place them anywhere he wants on the board. My turn, his turn, my turn, his turn. Until one of us captures more space than the other. Very few rules. Every piece has the same value. No luck whatsoever. A completely even playing field. A very simple game.”

“But you beat him.”

“I slaughtered him.” The old man chuckled.

“How?”

“I have already told you. I made him play the role of the conqueror so that he saw the world, or the game in this case, through the eyes of one who had already won.”

“You made him play a role?”

“I induced him into playing a role.”

“I see that, but how did you do that?”

“We all have dreams for ourselves. I simply grease the hinges of the door to their dreams. Oftentimes all a person needs is to be pointed toward the door. On rare occasions he needs a push, but as I said, not often. Find the dream image the person has of himself, the person he wants to be, the thing he thinks he should have become—a great warrior, a great lover, a great scholar—and the person can be manipulated. But only by those who do not enter a dream themselves.”

Jiang understood this. The best of lovers never entered what Suzanne Colombe used to call the
folie à deux
—the dream of being loved. The best lover keeps a cool dispassion, to allow herself to service the one in the folly—in the role of being loved.

Jiang thanked the old man and walked him to the door of her office, her arm through his. As she did, she noticed him fall into the role of the new lover of the house madam, a role she allowed him to play for only the first five or six seconds out of her private quarters.

* * *

A WEEK LATER, as was now her custom, Jiang was promenading with her finest courtesans (by name Yin Bao and Mai Bao, her daughters), and she bought a copy of the newest edition of Yao Xie's one hundred and eight poems, called
Travelling in the Bitter Sea
. The poems were a guide to Shanghai's world of prostitution. After
the usual warnings about lust and its attendant evils, the book laid out the basic rules for those wishing to avail themselves of the services of the women of the Flower World. It was in direct competition with two classics that dealt with the same issues,
Miscellaneous Notes on Shanghai Flowers
and
He Who Gives Directions to Those Who Don't Know Their Way Around
. Jiang ignored the latter and paid the bookseller for the former. As she did, she noted a large stack of a newly printed version of an old favourite of hers,
The Dream of the Red Chamber
. Before she could reach for a copy, two clearly wealthy young men bought copies of the book. Jiang looked at the bookseller and asked, “
The Dream
is selling again?”

“I can't keep enough copies. Every morning I demand more and more, and by evening they are gone.”

“Could I have one, please?”

The bookseller took one from the bottom of the pile and held it out to Jiang.

That night Jiang sat in her private study with her eldest daughter.

“Have you read this?” she asked, holding up her new copy of
The Dream of the Red Chamber
.

Her daughter nodded.

Jiang looked at her already married daughter and wondered if she would present her with a grandchild before too long. As was the custom in her family, the eldest daughter did not work in the business or enter the Ivory Compact but rather married into the strong Zhong family and made her living from one of the arts. This daughter was not a History Teller but an accomplished seamstress—the girl could do anything with cloth. Jiang's two younger daughters, Yin Bao and Mai Bao, were already practised courtesans and were waiting—
one patiently and one impatiently—in the next room as their mother had requested. For a moment Jiang thought of them. Upon which would she bestow the name Jiang, give ownership of her businesses, and force the obligation of the Ivory Compact? She hadn't decided yet.

The younger of the two, Yin Bao, had taken the extraordinary step of having her feet bound when she was twelve. She was extremely popular with men and could have conducted herself in almost any way she wanted, but she chose to be extremely modern, making herself available to anyone with enough money to pay for her services. Jiang's middle daughter, Mai Bao, was much more traditional. She met with men only when she had been properly introduced and appropriate gifts had been exchanged. Then, and only then, would she accept invitations to dinner. Her suitor would provide banquets for upwards of twenty of his friends, and she would deign to arrive and stay for sometimes as little as ten minutes. She often attended eight such parties in an evening. She had sex with very few of her suitors, and even then only after exhaustive efforts were made on his part. Often it would take over two years for the liaison to come to its culmination. While this was proceeding, just as in the old days, Mai Bao followed the ancient tradition of giving her heart to a lowly scholar—in this case, a young man with an unsightly wine-stain birthmark on his face.

Jiang respected the choices of both as to how to live their courtesan lives. One because she followed the old ways, one because she had so fully adapted to the new. Which daughter should be given the name Jiang and inducted into the Ivory Compact? Time was moving, she could feel it, and she had to make a decision while she was in full control of her faculties. She shrugged off that
thought. None of her three daughters could out-think her yet.

“Mother?” her eldest prompted.

“Yes, sorry. What is your opinion of this book? This
Dream of the Red Chamber
?”

“I think it's brilliant.”

“Yes. But can you see why it is now so popular?”

“Because it posits a way of behaving that is ancient, formal, and respected.”

Jiang nodded, wondered what the word
posit
meant, then asked, “But it's a book about sex?”

“Absolutely—and power and money and honour—very old ideas. But very deep in our culture, Mother.”

A dream idea,
Jiang thought.
A vision that is common to many. Not a hard dream to induce men into.
“Would you reread the book for me, daughter?”

“Surely, Mother.”

“And design some clothing for the girls of our house to wear that would make them seem as though they are playing parts in the book?”

“Surely. I would enjoy that.”

“Good.”

Jiang's eldest was about to leave when the two younger daughters came into the room.

“I asked you …” Jiang began.

“Yes, Mother,” the youngest, Yin Bao, said, “but we lost patience. Isn't that awful of us?”