Fan from Konan

Apart from Sun Yat-sen and others born in Guangdong, China's notable revolutionaries—Huang Xing, Cai E, Song Jiaoren, and their like—were all born in Hunan. This was surely due in part to the influence of Zeng Guofan and Zhang Zhidong. Yet to explain that influence, one must also reckon with the indomitable spirit of the Hunanese themselves. When I traveled through Hunan, I happened upon the small incident related below, an incident with something of the air of fiction about it. Perhaps it, too, may reveal something of the passionate character of the people of Hunan....

• • • • •

At about four in the afternoon on May 16, 1921, the Jiangmaru, on which I was traveling, drew alongside the wharf at Changsha.

A few minutes earlier I had been leaning against the rail, watching the provincial capital of Hunan creep nearer on the port side. Piled up against high mountains beneath an overcast sky, Changsha, with its white walls and tiled roofs, looked shabbier than I had expected. The cramped waterfront in particular—with new red-brick Western buildings and leafy willows showing here and there—was scarcely different from the Iida riverbank in Tokyo. By then I had been disillusioned with most cities along the Yangtze and had naturally resigned myself to finding nothing in Changsha but pigs. Even so, this drabness must have left me with something very close to disappointment.

As though submitting to fate, the Jiangmaru inched toward the wharf, while the strip of blue water in the Xiang River steadily narrowed. Suddenly a grimy Chinese man, a carrying basket or something of the sort dangling from his hand, sprang from directly below me onto the wharf. The feat was less human than grasshopper-like. Before I had recovered from my surprise, another man, balancing a shoulder pole, cleared the water just as neatly. Then two, five, eight followed—and in no time the space below me was filled with countless Chinese passengers leaping endlessly ashore. Then, before I knew it, the ship stood massively moored in front of the red-brick Western buildings and leafy willows.

At last I left the rail and began looking for Mr. B, who worked for the same newspaper company as I did. Having lived in Changsha for six years, he was supposed to have come specially to meet the Jiangmaru that day. But I could not readily spot anyone resembling him. What was more, only Chinese people, old and young, were going up and down the gangway. They shoved one another and raised a clamor in every direction. One elderly gentleman in particular kept turning as he descended and striking the coolie behind him. Having come upriver on the Yangtze, I found the sight by no means unusual; nor was it a sight for which I felt especially grateful to the Yangtze for having made me accustomed.

Growing impatient, I leaned on the rail once more and looked up and down the waterfront, where streams of people still came and went. Not only was the essential Mr. B nowhere to be seen; there was not a single Japanese person in sight. Beyond the wharf, however, beneath a thick-branched willow, I discovered a beautiful Chinese girl. She looked thoroughly childlike, dressed in pale blue summer clothes with a medal or something like one hanging at her breast. That alone might have been enough to draw my eye. But she was also looking up at the high deck, a smile on her deeply rouged lips, holding aloft a half-open fan as though signaling to someone....

“Hello there.”

I turned in surprise. Behind me, somehow without my noticing, stood a Chinese man in a gray dagua jacket, his whole face overflowing with good humor. For a moment I could not tell who he was. Then, in his face—and above all in his thin eyebrows—I suddenly recognized an old friend.

“Why, it's you! That's right—you were born in Hunan, weren't you?”

“Yes. I have my practice here.”

Tan Yongnian had been one of the most gifted foreign students who entered the University of Tokyo's medical school from First Higher School in my year.

“Are you here to meet someone today?”

“Yes, someone. Who do you suppose?”

“Surely not me?”

Tan pursed his lips and grinned like a comic mask.

“As it happens, I am here to meet you. Unfortunately, Mr. B has had malaria for the last five or six days.”

“So he asked you to come?”

“I meant to come even without being asked.”

I remembered how amiable he had always been. During our years in the dormitory, Tan had never given anyone cause to dislike him. If that had earned him any small measure of unpopularity among us, it was, as his roommate Kan Kikuchi once remarked, precisely because he had never given anyone any particular cause to dislike him at all....

“But I hate to impose on you. The truth is, I left even the arrangements for my lodging entirely to Mr. B....”

“I have spoken to the Japanese Club about a room. You can stay a fortnight or a month if you like.”

“A month? Don't be absurd. Three nights will be quite enough for me.”

Rather than looking surprised, Tan suddenly lost all his geniality.

“You're staying only three nights?”

“Well, if there were a bandit being beheaded or something for me to see, that might be another matter....”

As I answered, I expected inwardly to see Tan Yongnian, a native of Changsha, grimace. But his affable expression merely returned, and he replied without the least offense.

“Then you should have come a week earlier. You see that patch of open ground over there?”

It lay in front of the red-brick Western building—just where the thick-branched willow stood. The beautiful Chinese girl I had seen earlier had already vanished.

“Five men or so were beheaded there all at once the other day. Look—right where that dog is walking....”

“What a pity I missed it.”

“A beheading is one thing you can't see in Japan.”

Tan laughed loudly, then suddenly grew serious and changed the subject with casual ease.

“Shall we be going, then? I have a car waiting over there.”

• • • • •

On the afternoon of the eighteenth, two days later, I accepted Tan's insistent suggestion and crossed the Xiang River to Yuelu to see Lushan Temple and Aiwan Pavilion.

The motorboat carrying us sped along the Xiang River at about two o'clock, keeping to our left the sandbar that the resident Japanese called “Nakanoshima.” The clear May weather threw both banks into sharp relief. Even Changsha, extending along our right, looked less gloomy than it had the day before, now that its white walls and tiled roofs shone in the sun. Still more vivid was the long, stone-walled sandbar overgrown with citrus trees: here and there compact Western houses peeped through, and between them laundry hanging on lines flashed in the light.

Tan had stationed himself in the stern so that he could give orders to the young boatman. Yet he spent far more time talking to me than giving orders.

“That is the Japanese consulate.... Use these opera glasses.... The building on its right belongs to the Nisshin Steamship Company.”

With a cigar between my lips, I let one hand trail over the side and enjoyed the force of the Xiang River striking my fingertips from time to time. Tan's words reached my ears as one continuous strand of noise. Still, it was certainly not unpleasant to turn my eyes toward the scenery on either bank as he pointed things out.

“This sandbar is called Orange Isle....”

“Ah, I hear kites crying.”

“Kites? Yes, there are plenty of them. You know, when Zhang Jiyao and Tan Yan went to war some time ago, several bodies belonging to Zhang's men came floating down this river. Then two or three kites would settle on a single corpse....”

Just as Tan reached this point, our motorboat passed another at a distance of five or six ken. Besides a young man in Chinese dress, the other boat carried two or three magnificently attired Chinese beauties. Rather than the women, I watched the boat itself bound broadly over the waves. Tan, however, had no sooner caught sight of them midway through his story than he thrust the opera glasses at me in such haste that one might have thought he had encountered an enemy.

“Look at that woman—the one sitting in the stern.”

Whenever anyone hurried me, an inherited streak of obstinacy made me all the more inclined to balk. Besides, the wake of the other boat had washed against ours and soaked my hand all the way to the cuff.

“Why?”

“Never mind why. Just look at her.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“Yes, she is. She is.”

The motorboat carrying them was already some ten ken away. At last I twisted around and adjusted the opera glasses. At the same instant I had the sudden illusion that their boat lurched sharply backward. “The woman,” her face turned slightly to one side within the circular view, seemed to be listening to someone speak and now and then let a smile escape. Her square-chinned face struck me as nothing particularly beautiful apart from its large eyes. Yet the way her fringe and pale-yellow summer dress rippled in the river wind was undoubtedly lovely, even at that distance.

“Can you see her?”

“Yes, down to her eyelashes. But she isn't very beautiful.”

I turned again to Tan, who looked pleased with himself for some reason.

“What about her?”

Quite unlike his usual talkative self, Tan leisurely lit a cigarette, then answered me with a question of his own.

“Yesterday I told you, didn't I, that five bandits or so had been beheaded on the open ground by the wharf?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“The leader of the gang was called Huang Liuyi. Oh, yes—he was beheaded too. He was a notorious villain even by Hunan standards: a rifle in his right hand, a pistol in his left, and two men shot dead at once....”

Tan abruptly launched into the evil deeds of Huang Liuyi's life. Most of his account appeared to be secondhand newspaper copy. Fortunately, however, it was rich in romantic color rather than merely in blood: how smugglers habitually addressed Huang as Master Huang; how he robbed a Xiangtan merchant of three thousand yuan; how he swam across Lulintan with a lieutenant named Fan Aqi, who had been shot in the thigh, on his shoulders; how he gunned down twelve infantrymen on a mountain road near Yuezhou. Tan went on recounting such episodes with such fervor that I almost wondered if he worshiped Huang Liuyi.

“After all, the fellow was responsible for a hundred and seventeen murders.”

From time to time he inserted comments of this kind. Naturally, I had nothing against bandits so long as they caused me no personal injury. But I was beginning to tire a little of hearing one tale of valor after another, all much alike.

“And what does all this have to do with that woman?”

At last Tan gave a smirking reply not very different from what I had expected.

“She was Huang's mistress.”

I could not oblige him with the astonishment he had ordered. Yet it seemed unkind merely to keep my cigar between my lips and look glum.

“Hm. Your bandits have style.”

“Huang was nothing remarkable. Toward the end of the old Qing dynasty, there was a robber named Cai whose monthly income exceeded ten thousand yuan. He maintained a splendid Western mansion outside the Shanghai concession. A wife, of course, and even concubines....”

“Then is that woman a courtesan or something?”

“Yes. A courtesan named Yulan. While Huang was alive, she wielded quite a bit of influence herself....”

Tan fell silent for a while, as if something had occurred to him, with only a faint smile on his lips. Presently he tossed away his cigarette and made the following earnest proposal.

“There is a school at Yuelu called the Xiangnan Industrial School. Why don't we visit that first?”

“I don't mind seeing it.”

My answer was noncommittal. Only the previous morning I had gone to visit a girls' school and had been made uncomfortable by an unexpectedly intense anti-Japanese atmosphere. But the boat carrying us paid no heed to my feelings. Sweeping widely around the tip of Nakanoshima, it continued straight toward Yuelu over the same bright water....

• • • • •

That same evening, I climbed the stairs of a brothel with Tan.

The upstairs room through which we passed—with its table in the center, chairs, spittoons, and wardrobe—looked almost no different from rooms in the brothels of Shanghai or Hankou. In one corner of the ceiling, however, a wire birdcage hung beside a glass window. Inside it, two squirrels climbed silently up and down their perches. Together with the red printed cloths hanging over the windows and doorway, they were certainly an unusual sight. To my eyes, at least, they were also an uncanny one.

We were received in this room by a plump madam. The moment Tan saw her, he began speaking volubly. She responded with smooth, unfailing cordiality. Yet I could not understand a single word they said. (This was, of course, because I knew no Chinese. Still, the Changsha dialect is apparently by no means easy to understand even for ears accustomed to Beijing Mandarin.)

After speaking with the madam, Tan sat opposite me at the large rosewood table. Then he began writing the courtesans' names on a printed house card she had brought: Zhang Xiang'e, Wang Qiaoyun, Hanfang, Zuiyulou, Ai Yuanyuan. To a traveler like me, every one of them sounded fit for the heroine of a Chinese novel.

“Shall we call Yulan too?”

I might have answered, but just then I was lighting a cigarette from the match the madam held for me. Tan merely glanced across the table at my face and seemed to move his brush with unconcern.

The woman who swept boldly into the room wore slender gold-rimmed spectacles and had a round, healthy-colored face. She was a courtesan dressed in white summer clothes and sparkling with several diamonds. Moreover, she had the physique of a tennis player or swimmer. The sight of her aroused in me, more than any sense of beauty or ugliness, liking or dislike, an oddly acute feeling of contradiction. She plainly did not belong with the atmosphere of this room—and least of all with the squirrels in the cage.

After no more than a slight bow, she moved as if dancing to Tan's side. Sitting beside him, she laid one hand on his knee and began chattering in a sweet, warbling voice. Tan—Tan, of course—answered with self-satisfied repetitions of “Yes, yes.”

“This is one of the courtesans here. Her name is Lin Dajiao,” Tan told me.

At that, I naturally remembered that he was the son of one of the few wealthy families in Changsha.

About ten minutes later, still sitting opposite each other, we had begun a Sichuanese dinner rich in mushrooms, chicken, and cabbage. By then a great many courtesans besides Lin Dajiao surrounded us. Behind them stood five or six men in shooting caps and the like, holding huqin fiddles. Now and then, without rising from their seats, the women began singing in high voices, as though their songs were being drawn out by the sound of the fiddles. It was not entirely devoid of interest even to me. Yet I was far more interested in the courtesan seated on my left than in the Peking-opera airs of “Dang Ma” or “Fen River Bay.”

The woman on my left was the Chinese beauty whom I had glimpsed from the Jiangmaru two days before. The same medal still hung at the breast of her pale-blue summer dress. Seen close at hand, however, she was unexpectedly lacking in innocence, despite her sickly frailty. Watching her profile, I found myself thinking of a small bulb raised in earth that never saw the sun.

“The woman sitting next to you, you know—”

Tan suddenly called to me across a plate heaped with prawns, a friendly smile on his face, which was flushed with shaoxing wine.

“Her name is Hanfang.”

When I looked at Tan, for some reason I lost all inclination to tell him about what had happened two days earlier.

“She speaks beautifully. Even her R sounds French.”

“Yes, she was born in Beijing.”

Hanfang herself seemed to realize that she had become the subject of our conversation. Darting quick glances at my face, she began a rapid exchange with Tan. But, as speechless as a mute, I could do nothing more than compare their expressions, as usual.

“She asked when you came to Changsha. When I told her you had arrived only the day before yesterday, she said she too had gone to the wharf that day to meet someone.”

After interpreting this much, Tan addressed Hanfang again. But she only smiled and shook her head like a child saying no.

“Hm, she absolutely refuses to confess. I am asking whom she went to meet....”

Suddenly Lin Dajiao pointed at Hanfang with the cigarette in her hand and flung out something in a taunting tone. Hanfang clearly started and made a sudden movement as if to grasp my knee. At last she managed a smile, then immediately shot back a remark. Naturally, I could not help feeling curiosity about this little drama—or about the unexpectedly deep hostility that seemed to lie behind it.

“What did she say?”

“She said this woman wasn't there to meet anyone; she went to meet her mother. The lady here had suggested it must have been to meet some Changsha actor named so-and-so.” (Unfortunately, that was the one name I could not manage to put down in my notes.)

“Her mother?”

“Her foster mother. In other words, the madam of the house that owns her and Yulan.”

Having disposed of my question, Tan drained a cup of shaoxing wine and abruptly launched into a torrent of speech. Apart from an occasional “this, this,” I could not understand a word. But from the rapt attention of the courtesans and the madam, it appeared to be a story of some interest. And since they glanced at me from time to time, it seemed that at least some part of it concerned me. Outwardly I continued to smoke my cigarette with perfect composure, but inside I was becoming increasingly irritated.

“Idiot! What are you talking about?”

“Oh, I am telling them how we met Yulan today on our way to Yuelu. And then...”

Licking his upper lip, Tan added in still better humor than before:

“And then I am telling them that you want to see a beheading.”

“What nonsense.”

Even after hearing this explanation, I felt no particular pity for Yulan, who had yet to show her face, or for her friend Hanfang. But when I looked at Hanfang, I understood her feelings quite clearly in an intellectual way. Her earrings trembling, she tied and untied a handkerchief on her lap beneath the table.

“Then perhaps you find this nonsense too?”

Tan received a small paper packet from the madam behind him and began unfolding it with great satisfaction. Inside the paper lay a strange object about the size of a rice cracker, shriveled to the color of chocolate.

“What is that?”

“This? Only a biscuit.... You remember the bandit chief Huang Liuyi I mentioned? It is soaked in blood from Huang's severed neck. Now this is something you could never see in Japan.”

“And what are you supposed to do with such a thing?”

“What else would you do? Eat it. People around here still believe that eating one will keep them free from illness and harm.”

Still smiling radiantly, Tan greeted two or three courtesans who happened to leave the table just then. But when Hanfang started to rise, he laughed and spoke to her almost as though pleading for mercy. At last he even raised one hand and pointed across the table at me. After a moment's hesitation, Hanfang finally managed another smile and sat down again. I had grown quite fond of her, so I quietly held her hand where the others could not see.

“Superstitions like this are a national disgrace. As a physician I lecture people about them often enough, but...”

“That is only because you still have beheadings here. People swallow powdered, charred brains even in Japan.”

“Surely not.”

“Oh, yes. I swallowed some myself—though I was only a child at the time....”

During this conversation I had noticed Yulan arrive. After exchanging a few words with the madam, she sat down beside Hanfang.

As soon as he saw her, Tan left me out again and began lavishing his charm on her. She was certainly somewhat prettier than she had appeared in daylight. At least, whenever she smiled, her teeth flashed as brilliantly as enamel. Yet the row of them naturally reminded me of the squirrels. The two animals still slipped smoothly up and down inside the birdcage by the glass window hung with red printed cloth.

“Well, will you try some of this?”

Tan broke the biscuit in two to show us. Its interior was the same color as its surface.

“Don't be an idiot.”

Naturally I shook my head. Tan laughed loudly, then offered a piece of the biscuit to Lin Dajiao beside him. She grimaced and pushed his hand away. He repeated the same joke with several of the courtesans. Before long, however, still wearing his amiable expression, he had thrust the brown fragment in front of Yulan, who had not moved at all.

For a moment I felt tempted merely to smell the biscuit.

“Here, let me see it.”

“There is still half of it over here.”

Almost as though left-handed, Tan tossed me the remaining piece. I picked it up from among the small plates and chopsticks. But once I had it in my hand, I suddenly lost even the desire to smell it and silently dropped it beneath the table.

Yulan stared at Tan's face and exchanged two or three remarks with him. Then, after accepting the biscuit, she addressed the assembled company in rapid speech.

“Shall I interpret?”

Propping his cheek on one hand, Tan spoke to me with a tongue that was beginning to slur.

“Yes, interpret.”

“All right? Word for word: Gladly shall I taste the blood of the man I love... Master Huang....”

I felt a body tremble. It was Hanfang's hand, resting on my knee, that trembled.

“May all of you, too, as I do... the one you love...”

Before Tan had finished speaking, Yulan was already biting the piece of biscuit with her beautiful teeth....

• • • • •

As planned, after three nights in Changsha, I was again leaning against the rail of the Jiangmaru at about five in the afternoon on May 19. Changsha, its white walls and tiled roofs piled one above another, now seemed sinister to me. No doubt it was the effect of the deepening twilight. With a cigar between my lips, I recalled again and again the genial face of Tan Yongnian. Yet, for whatever reason, Tan had not come to see me off.

The Jiangmaru left Changsha at seven or half past, if I remember correctly. After dinner, beneath the electric light in my dim cabin, I began calculating the expenses of my stay. On the narrow desk before me lay a fan, its pink tassel hanging over the edge. Someone had left it there before I came aboard. As I moved my pencil, I found myself thinking from time to time of Tan's face. I could not clearly understand why he had tormented Yulan. My expenses, however—I remember them to this day—came to exactly twelve yen and fifty sen in Japanese currency.