But as I said, back then all those tastes were just everyday foods, like the cereal you buy at the store. Anyway, because it was summer-August by your calendar-we did not have an appet.i.te to eat very much.
I remember something else about that breakfast. Hulan was eating one red bean at a time, very slowly, like this. She would pluck one from the plate, then wave it in the air as if it were the body of a fly, zigzagging into her mouth. By then she had grown quite fat, and the dress she was wearing, made from the peach-colored cloth I had given her, was too small across her chest.
"When I was a young girl," she said, "I was the only one in my village who could pick up one hundred of these beans, one at a time, never dropping any." She dropped another bean into her mouth.
Of course, I knew what she was talking about, the old silly custom of showing in front of prospective mothers-in-law how delicate, how elegant your manners. You were supposed to use your most slippery chopsticks to pick up the smallest bits of food-without making a big mess. "In your village," I teased her, "women had no other work than to count how many beans went into their mouth?"
"You don"t believe this?" she said. She picked up another bean, swallowed it.
"I am not saying I don"t believe you," I said. "Only that maybe there was no time to count how many you actually ate. Maybe it was only fifty-"
"I tell you, it was one hundred!" She ate another bean, then another and another, as if this would prove her right.
Auntie Du scolded us both. "What kind of nonsense are you two arguing about now? Maybe it was two hundred. In any case, why measure a girl"s value by how many beans she can balance between her chopsticks?"
At that moment we heard a quick knock at our door. And then before we could even put our chopsticks down, the knock came again, this time harder and faster. A man burst into our house, a pilot, from the third cla.s.s. He was grinning big, shouting, "It"s over! It"s over!" And even with this, we did not imagine-because we were told so many times not to expect this news for at least another year-we could not believe our ears when he said China had won the war, pushed the j.a.panese imperialists out forever!
Everyone was crying with joy-Hulan, Auntie Du, the cook, even our husbands. You should have seen the happy tears and heard the shouts. We could not sit down, we could not stand still. We were stamping our feet, jumping up and down. Hulan threw her arms in the air to thank the G.o.ds above, and of course, that"s when she tore her dress, under both arms, although she didn"t know it at the time. In a few moments, another pilot came into our house, and after him, another, and then another. Each time someone ran in the door, we made the first pilot repeat how he heard the news-who told him, how he couldn"t believe it was true, how he finally came to believe it was true.
So you see, everyone was talking at once-except for me. I was laughing and crying as well, pretending to listen to all this good talk. But really, my heart was beating fast, my mind was dizzy, my feet were ready to run. Because I was remembering what it was like to dream again. I was thinking, Now I have a choice. I can go back to Shanghai. I would write a letter right away to my father. I would ask my uncle or Old Aunt or Peanut. Someone would help me, I was sure. And soon I could leave this marriage and start a new life.
By the afternoon everything was decided. We would leave Kunming immediately, the next morning. We would not spend even one extra day trying to sell our furniture. Better to dump everything! You see how excited we were? For seven years we had been stuck in Kunming. For eight years I had been stuck in my marriage.
And so that day we began to pack our things, sorting out belongings, what would stay, what would go, as quickly as saying, "This, not that." Danru was already five years old. Oh, how he cried when I said we could not take the little woven-hemp bed he had grown up with.
"Stop crying!" Wen Fu shouted. And Danru, so scared of his father, became quiet immediately. But Wen Fu was in such a good mood. This time he did not scold Danru anymore. He said, "In Shanghai, I will buy you a better bed, and not just a bed, but a little car made out of wood. Now smile." And Danru stretched his lips as wide as he could. Poor little Danru!
The next morning we left Kunming. This time we did not have to sit in the back of a truck. We got into a bus with Hulan and Jiaguo, along with other pilots. By then, only a few pilots were left in Kunming, so the bus was not too crowded. Wen Fu and I had our own bench to sit on. I sat by the window with Danru on my lap. And this time, we had brought with us many suitcases and boxes, not just the one trunk allowed us when we first arrived. We even had our own quilts with oilcloth bottoms, just in case we needed to spend the night in a place without proper bedding.
As the bus moved down the road, everyone but me looked back at our house one last time. Why would I want to see the place where I had lost my hopes? I was twenty-seven years old and I already wanted to forget everything that had happened in my life. I looked only ahead.
I saw that the streets were very crowded, filled with buses and trucks and people carrying their loads balanced on a stick. And then we were at the outskirts of the city, beyond the city wall, going past little villages, then climbing into the mountains. My heart was pounding, filled with a hurry-up anxiousness. It was the same kind of feeling I had when I thought the j.a.panese would catch up with us. Only this time I was scared that if we did not leave fast enough, someone would suddenly say, "This is a mistake. The war is not over. We must go back."
And then one of the pilots did shout, "Stop!" and ran down the aisle to give further instructions to the driver, pointing to the side of the road. Sure enough, the bus gave a big groan and stopped. I bit my hand to stop myself from crying out loud. Three pilots rushed out the door. I thought we were being attacked. I stood up and looked out the window. And I let out such a big laugh when I saw what they were really doing-taking pictures with a camera!
One of them was standing in a rather silly pose, proudly pointing to the sky-as if the sky here were different from everywhere else. I wanted to laugh. And then I too looked at that sky. And I remember I had a very strange feeling, the way you feel when you are coming out of a confusing dream. It was as if I had never seen Kunming before. Because what I saw was not just an ordinary sky, ordinary clouds. The color of the sky was shocking to the eye, such a bright blue, like a sapphire. And the clouds-three of them, one right after the other-were shaped just so, like gigantic cushions for the G.o.ds of the heavens. And then I saw a bird, a large bird, the color of its wings underneath like a rainbow. I saw green hills covered with trees, their arms sweeping down, brushing the ground. And running along the ground were flowers, so many different kinds, bursting wild from the earth. And beyond that I could see the old city itself, the peaceful winding streets, the whitewashed walls, now looking clean-bright from a distance.
I saw all this for the first time, and I was not happy to see it. I was bitter-that I had never felt this kind of beauty until now, too late.
Along the way to Wuchang, I saw what the war had done. In almost every village, it seemed, were rows of one-story clay houses, with their middles crushed in, or their roofs torn off, or the walls on one side all fallen down. Some houses were already fixed, holes patched here and there with the broken top of a table, or straw matting from a bed, or the door of a wrecked car. I once looked down into the mouth of a green valley. And scattered here and there in the tall wild gra.s.s were black clumps, a dozen or so. From that distance they looked like broken rounds of coal carelessly tossed away. I did not realize until after we had almost pa.s.sed by that this had once been a village, and those black lumps had been small houses, burned down several years ago with no one left to build them back.
But mostly what I saw were poor and hungry faces, so many, many faces along the road, young and old, all wearing the same dry look of too much grief. They were poking through rubble, placing sc.r.a.ps in thin bags. And when their ears caught the sound of our bus, they dropped their bags, and their hands formed meager begging bowls. "Little Miss, look at our misery! Give us your pity!" their voices wailed, and then faded, as our bus kept driving, pushing all that misery to the side of the road. My stomach ached to see them.
Those of us in the bus had our own worries as well. We had heard that many poor people had become bandits and now roamed wild throughout China, especially in the mountain regions. And when we had to take a boat across Tungting Lake, we were warned that pirates had already seized many boats and would not hesitate to slice our throats. The Kuomintang insisted it was the Communists who were doing these crimes. And Auntie Du secretly told us this was not true. Her daughter had written her and told her Communists were now blamed for everything bad in China. So you see, the end of the war did not stop all the fights.
It was not until we safely reached Wuchang-where we would stay in a hotel only one night-that Hulan and I realized we would not see each other anymore. From here she and Auntie Du would go far north to Harbin, where Jiaguo was being sent to make sure j.a.panese troops and officials surrendered to the Kuomintang and not to the Communists. And Wen Fu, Danru, and I would go east by train to Nanking, where we would take a boat to Shanghai.
It"s true that Hulan and I had had many fights, many disagreements those past eight years. But now we were sad to let each other go. That last night at the hotel, we talked for many hours, until our eyes could not stay open. The next morning we ate our breakfast slowly, the same kind of simple meal as I have described before: the same rice porridge, the small red beans. And after we ate, we exchanged addresses. I wrote down my father"s, as well as Uncle"s on the island. She copied the address in Harbin that Jiaguo had written for her. And then we both went to our rooms to search in our trunks so we could give each other a farewell gift.
Hulan handed me two good pairs of knitting needles, one for big st.i.tches, one for small. I gave her my best sweater, a blue one with a clever design I had knitted myself. And we both laughed to think we had given each other the same thought, one the tools to knit, the other the result of the same tools. Jiaguo gave Wen Fu a fountain pen. Wen Fu gave him a bottle of American whiskey.
And then I saw Auntie Du playing with Danru. She had been like a grandmother to my son. I went back to my trunk, trying to find something special for her as well. And I remembered how much she admired the blue perfume bottle I sometimes let Danru play with. I held that bottle up once more to the light, and then I walked back and gave it to her. Auntie Du protested very loudly, saying, "Why would I want such a thing?" So I pressed it into her hand and she began to cry, telling me how much it embarra.s.sed her to take it. "I have nothing to give you in return," she said.
So I told her, "What I give you is nothing also, just a color to look at, so you can remember a foolish woman and her son."
Before we left, Hulan and I held hands. I wanted to apologize for all our fights, but I did not know how. So I said, "I think it must have been one hundred red beans exactly." And right away, she knew I was talking about the last argument we had had, just before we left Kunming.
Hulan shook her head, crying and laughing at the same time. "No, you were probably right. Only fifty, no more."
"One hundred," I insisted.
"Fifty, maybe even less," she said firmly. And then she added, shyly now, "Our family was so very poor back then. I had to count that small mound of beans every morning, dividing them between my sister and me, one for her, one for me, one for her, one for me. So you see, I only wished there had been one hundred."
When we reached the Shanghai harbor, we did not go to see Wen Fu"s parents right away. That would have been proper. But when the j.a.panese first occupied Shanghai, his parents had moved inland, and now it would take us another day by train to reach them. So Wen Fu insisted we should go to my father"s house first. I think he was also dreaming we could live in that fancy house. And he had big ideas that he could do a better business in Shanghai than on the island or in little inland villages. What kind of business, he didn"t say and I didn"t ask.
"Of course, your father will want you to live with him, his own daughter," he said. He was wearing his air force uniform, and I suppose he thought everyone would be glad to see him, one of the great victors of the war.
I did not argue with him. I also wanted to see my father first. And I was not just thinking of his help. I was hoping my father would be glad to see me.
From the harbor, we hired a car to take us directly. Along the way, Wen Fu was humming a happy little song to himself. Danru was busy looking out the car window, his head turning in different directions to catch the sights of this strange, big city.
"Mama, look!" he cried, and I saw him pointing at an Indian man in a red turban, waving for cars to stop and go. When I was a child, I used to cry seeing these Indian traffic policemen. This was because one of my father"s wives had told me that if I was disobedient, she would hand me over to the "red hats" and they would poke me with their sharp beards.
"Don"t be scared," I told Danru. "You see that hat on top of his head? That"s only laundry piled up to dry." Danru tried to get up on the car seat to see better.
"Don"t feed the boy nonsense," said Wen Fu. And Danru sat back down.
The city was noisy and crowded in a wonderful way, as if nothing had been damaged, nothing had changed-at least not on the main roads. Cars and taxis honked, bicycles darted in between, and all along the sidewalks was every combination of life: rich merchants in their tailored suits, peasants pushing vegetable carts, schoolgirls walking arm in arm, and modern women wearing the latest hats, the highest shoes. They knew everyone was watching them, envying them. And of course, the foreigners were still there, although not as many as I remembered, very few, in fact. And those I saw seemed less proud, less sure in their walk, more cautious when they crossed the road, knowing now the world would not stop for them.
As we drove closer to my father"s house, I tried to think how I would tell him about my marriage, why I needed to leave.
I forced myself to remember once again what happened to Yiku. "Father," I would cry, "he said that if she died, he wouldn"t care. He let her die!" I thought about how Wen Fu had gambled away almost all my dowry money: "When there was no more money to steal from me, he used my own body like a gambling chip, laughing and telling the men they could sleep with me if he lost!" I remembered the many nights he used my body after he had already been with another woman: "He even brought a woman right to our bed and forced me to watch. Of course, I did not, but I could not shut my ears."
The more I thought about those things, the faster my breath came, filling my lungs with so much hate. How could my father refuse to help me? Of course he would help! What family would want such a terrible son-in-law?-no feelings, no morals, no shame. Those were my thoughts as we drove up to my father"s house, the place on Julu Road. But I had not considered this: If my life had changed so much in eight years, then perhaps so had my father"s.
As I pa.s.sed through the archway of the gate, I saw immediately how strangely quiet the house looked. The outside shutters were closed on every window, as if the house had been shut down for the winter. But this was only September, and the weather that day was still quite warm.
"What a big house," Danru said. "Who lives here?"
"Quiet," Wen Fu said.
Because I did not know my father"s house that well, I did not notice any other changes, the ones that were later pointed out to me: that the front gate had been smashed in and repaired in a clumsy way. That statues in the courtyard had been knocked down, then hauled away. That the walls on the lower part of the house had been quickly repainted in a color that did not match the rest of the house. That all the lower windows behind those shutters had been broken and not yet replaced.
After a long delay, a servant answered the door. She eyed us suspiciously until I told her who we were, Jiang Sao-yen"s daughter, his son-in-law and grandson.
"Aiyi," I said, using the polite name for "Auntie," since I did not know this servant"s position in the house. "I have come to see my father." She was a small, plump woman, rather old, and wearing plain working clothes. She was not at all like a servant who would answer the door of an important house. She looked more like someone who cleaned things when no one was looking.
"Anh!" she said. "Come in. Come in."
But she did not call to a head servant who could greet us properly. She led me herself to where my father was, sitting in his dark study, staring at nothing.
My father turned around in his armchair. He looked past me, past Danru, toward Wen Fu. Right away, one of his eyebrows flew up, not with delight, but with fear, like a man who had been caught. He rose quickly from his chair, and I saw that his back was curved. Oh, he had grown so old in these past eight years! I waited for him to greet us, but he said nothing. He only stared at Wen Fu.
"Father," I finally said. I gave Danru a little nudge and he stepped forward, whispering, "Grandfather, how are you?"
My father looked quickly at Danru, then at me, then at Wen Fu, then back at me. His eyebrow went back down. Relief poured over his face, and he sat down again, letting his body drop heavily back into the chair.
"Did you receive the letters I sent you? This is your grandson, already five years old." My father covered his face with one hand and said nothing. I was too scared to say anything else. But I was wondering to myself, Has somebody died? Where are the others?
But now the servant was calling us softly, "Come, come. Your father needs his rest." As soon as we left the room, she talked in a loud, friendly way that comforted me. "You must be tired to death yourself. Come in here, have some tea." She turned to Danru. "How about you, little boy? Is your belly hungry for a little something to eat?"
We went into the large sitting room. It was the same room I had sat in when Old Aunt and New Aunt came to ask permission for my marriage to Wen Fu. Only now the sofa cushions and curtains were worn-looking, papers were scattered everywhere, dust had gathered in every corner. The servant must have seen the shock on my face, Wen Fu"s frown. She rushed ahead and swatted a sofa pillow, sending clouds of dust into the air. "I"ve been busy with so many other things," she said with a little laugh. She swept the hem of her sleeve across a dirty table.
"Don"t worry, don"t worry," I said. "After all, we suffered from the same war. Things are different, we know this."
The servant looked grateful. "Yes, yes, this is so, isn"t it?" We all stared again at the messy room.
"Where are the others?" Wen Fu finally asked.
"How are they?" I said. "San Ma, Wu Ma-their health is good?"
"Good, very good," the servant said with a big smile. "Very healthy. Only now they are away, visiting friends." And then she looked at Wen Fu and became very nervous. "Although I cannot say where they have gone, exactly," she quickly explained. "That is, I don"t know. That is, I am a stupid old woman, unable to keep anything in my head anymore." And she began to laugh, hoping we would join her.
So you see, our homecoming was very strange. And that first day I knew nothing of what had happened. I only a.s.sumed it was the war that had caused my father to become as broken as the house he lived in. It was not until the next morning, after Wen Fu had left to visit friends, that I learned about our family"s new circ.u.mstances, and why my father was so scared to see Wen Fu in his Kuomintang uniform.
What the servant said was true: Our house had suffered from the war. But it was not bombs or bullets that had caused the damage. It was my father"s weak will. This was a side of my father I had never known. He was always a person who controlled others with his strength. Even talking about it today, I find it hard to believe that he could have had such great opposites in his character. But I suppose these are things that come out in people during a war. That"s what San Ma said when she came home and explained what had happened. And she was still angry when she told me.
"You see, after the war began, your father"s factories began to do very poorly," she said. "This was the case with everybody, you know. One thing led to another, you had no control. One thing b.u.mped into another and made the next thing fall down. Families lost their money and could no longer buy things. Stores that once sold fancy dresses closed their doors. So they did not buy cloth from us anymore. Overseas boats no longer went in and out of Shanghai. So your father could no longer ship his goods overseas.
"Still, we had plenty of money, so in the beginning none of us worried too much. But then the war continued one year into the next. And the turnipheads began to take over more and more businesses."
"Turnipheads?" I asked.
"Turnipheads!" said San Ma. "That"s what we called the j.a.panese. Because you saw them everywhere-always eating their pickled turnips-then bbbbbttt!-leaving behind their long-lasting stink!
"Anyway, they would go to different businesses, pretending to do a safety check or a sanitary inspection. Hnh! Everyone knew they wanted to see if there was anything worth taking. And we knew that if a person did not cooperate, if a person raised any kind of objection, the j.a.panese would find a reason to take everything away, including one"s own life! Everyone was very careful, of course, not to cause unnecessary trouble. But every now and then you heard about someone who had grown weak and had given in to the j.a.panese-flown to their side in exchange for holding onto their business with the hands of a traitor. They signed oaths of new patriotism to the turnipheads, and this made everyone suffer, because the j.a.panese only grew stronger. So people spit when they heard the names of those traitors. At night, they secretly went to the traitor families" cemeteries and destroyed their generations of graves.
"One day-this was perhaps 1941 or so, summer-a j.a.panese officer and several a.s.sistants came to our house. When the servant opened the door, she screamed, then fainted. The j.a.panese soldiers wanted to talk to Jiang Sao-yen. They went into his study. The other servants would not come out of the kitchen to serve the tea. So I had to do it, serve the j.a.panese officers tea, lukewarm and weak, of course.
"The officer admired your father"s furniture, praising this and that for its antiquity and value. And then he turned to your father-as if he was eyeing another possession he wanted. He said, "Jiang Sao-yen, I like your manners, your good sense. You know how to handle this new situation in Shanghai, how to help the city go back to normal."
"Your father said nothing. He sat in his chair, very powerful, never moving one inch. The j.a.panese officer continued walking around the room, running his hand along your father"s magistrate table, the backbones of great books, the scroll paintings on the walls. He hinted he would like to have valuables like these hanging in his own house.
" "Jiang Sao-yen," the j.a.panese said, "we need your good sense to bring others to their senses, to behave in the same manner. Correct-thinking people like yourself can put an end to the war more quickly. This would be good for China. This would be patriotic. In this way, fewer families and businesses will have to suffer. Everything can stay intact." And the officer swept his hand out toward the four scroll paintings on the wall. "Like these," he said.
"At this point, your father stood up and threw his cup of tea against one of those paintings! It"s the truth. Those four paintings were over two hundred years old, and he ruined one of them with the toss of a cup!
"I was so proud of what he did.
"So I don"t know what happened in that room. When I left, your father had just thrown tea on a painting as if to tell the j.a.panese, "I would rather destroy my things than give them to you."
"The next day, he looked worried. But I thought it was because we were now going to lose the house. Before I married, I had come from a poor family. So I was preparing myself to go back to my old way of life. I accepted this.
"And then, two days later, a banner went up along the front wall facing the street, and a big poster was nailed to the front gate. Both proclaimed that Jiang Sao-yen, owner of this house and the Five Phoenixes Textile Trading Companies, supported the new government in China, that of the Imperial Emperor Hirohito. This same news was announced in all the local newspapers as well. And in the article, it said that Jiang Sao-yen urged others to begin a new China, united with the j.a.panese in fighting off foreign imperialist influences.
"Almost all our servants left. So did my sons and their families. Wu Ma"s sons and their wives and children stayed, but they have always been like chickens pecking the ground. They don"t look up to see who"s throwing the grain. Anyway, I tried to ask your father why he had done this. He would not answer. And then I shouted at him-the first time I ever did that! And afterward n.o.body was speaking to anyone.
"In a matter of weeks, the factories were operating full-time, they began to export textiles overseas, and this renewed business success was announced in the newspapers as well.
"Again I shouted at your father-"So this is why you became a traitor! For this all our family graves have been turned upside down. For this we will boil in a vat of oil for eternity." Your father was shouting back, ready to strike me down. He tried to swing his arm out, but it dangled at his side like the wrung neck of a duck. And then he collapsed into his chair, unable to speak. He had suffered a stroke.
"After many months, he could move his arms and legs almost the same as before. There was no lasting damage there. But he still could not speak-although I always suspected this was because he did not want to talk about what he had done. He could still move one side of his mouth. But it was as if his face was divided in half, a different expression on each side. One side was the face he had always shown to the world. The other was the face he had lost and could no longer hide.
"When the war ended-well, you can guess what happened. Kuomintang soldiers marched to the houses and businesses of those who had collaborated with the j.a.panese. Our factories were immediately shut down, until it could be determined what should be done with this traitor to China. And then many people came with their anger and sacks of rocks. They painted slogans and smeared dirty things on the outside of our walls and the house: "He who pats the horse"s a.s.s deserves the dung of a donkey."
"Soon after that, the Kuomintang came to our house. Your father could say nothing, of course. So I explained what had happened. I told them your father hated the j.a.panese with all his heart. But he had already had a stroke when the j.a.panese took over his businesses. He was in no condition to fight back-as we all knew he would have. He was helpless, unable to speak, as they could now see. And I said Jiang Sao-yen had done what he could to denounce the j.a.panese. I showed them the painting with tea splashed across it.
"The Kuomintang said it was still not a good excuse, because the public would always believe he had been a traitor. But for now, they would leave him be, they would not shoot him like the others. Later they would decide what kind of punishment he deserved."
"What a good person you are," I told San Ma.
Upstairs in my mother"s old room, I thought about San Ma"s story. I wondered what had caused my father to change his mind. Was it fear? Was it a bribe of riches? Was it a mistaken idea that he would have peace of mind?
But it did not matter what his reasons were. To other people, there was no good reason. What my father had done was wrong, a big mistake. And in my mind, I knew that he had done the worst possible thing, throwing away honor, protecting himself by becoming a traitor.
But then I thought to myself, How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently? How can you think everyone can be a hero, choosing death, when it is part of our nature to let go of brave thoughts at the last moment and cling to hope and life?
When I said this, I was not excusing him. I was forgiving him with my heart, feeling the same sorrow as when you believe you truly have no choice. Because if I blamed my father, then I would have to blame my mother for what she did as well, for leaving me so she could find her own life. And later I would have to blame myself, for all the choices I made, so I could do the same.
At first Wen Fu acted very angry when he learned what my father had done. A collaborator with the j.a.panese! A traitor to Han people! As if Wen Fu himself were not as bad. Didn"t he turn his plane around, scared of being shot down by the j.a.panese? Didn"t he save himself when other pilots were dying?
You should have seen Wen Fu, cursing my father as he sat silently in his chair. "I should turn you over to the Kuomintang myself!"
My father"s right eye grew round with fear. The other stared back without expression, without care.
And then Wen Fu said, "But you"re lucky your daughter married such a good-hearted person."
Right away I looked at Wen Fu. I was immediately suspicious. "Your father needs my help now," he said to me. "Your father is in trouble with the Kuomintang. I am a Kuomintang hero. I can protect him."
I wanted to shout, "Father! Don"t listen to him! He is all lies." But my father was already looking up at Wen Fu with half a grateful smile.
My father was so weak in his mind by then, he believed what Wen Fu said to him later that day, that his troubles would disappear if he allowed his son-in-law to take care of all the finances. Let me tell you, what disappeared was my father"s money!
Right away we moved into my father"s house, along with Wen Fu"s mother and father and some of their relatives. A few of our old servants returned, but Wen Tai-tai hired new ones as well. San Ma and Wu Ma were not happy with this new arrangement. Because now Wen Fu"s mother was in charge of the house, and she turned everything upside down.
She made the man who knew only how to garden beat rugs. She made the woman who knew only how to cook do laundry. She made the woman who emptied our chamber pots chop vegetables. She would give out an order, then contradict herself with the next. And when the servants were too confused to know what to do, she would fly into a terrible rage, threatening that she would cut off their heads and feed their bodies to the flies! So you see, maybe that mother pa.s.sed her bad temper onto her son. After a short while, most of the servants left.
I think Wen Fu learned how to spend money fast from his mother as well. I have never known anyone so greedy. By this, I mean she not only knew how to buy fur coats and jewelry, but also knew how to keep her fist closed tight so that not even one extra coin rolled into someone else"s pocket. I once saw her give something like a hundred-yuan note to a servant to buy some food. By then, a hundred yuan wasn"t worth very much, maybe only a few dollars in today"s money. And when the servant came back from the market, Wen Tai-tai made her list everything she had bought: "How much for this? Are you sure? How much for that? Are you sure?" She made the servant count over and over again, the amount spent, the amount to be returned, then questioned her for many minutes when she thought ten fen were missing-not even a tenth of a penny! That servant, who had been with my father"s family for nearly forty years, left forever within the hour.