Victory, Finally

The morning started just like the others - with air of Gloom and Doom

The sky was gray. The air was thick. 

Mid-afternoon, we heard lots of noises coming from the Russian Club which was right across the street from our Longtang's front gate, in the French Concession- the French Settlement.

"What is happening?" we wondered.
There had been little activities at the Russian Club since the Japanese soldiers marched into the Settlements in 1941.
There used to be a Russian Bakery close-by and they baked the most heavenly, mouth-watering breads and other goodies. Every afternoon around four, the wonderful smell of baking would permeate the area. We would go there and purchase a loaf or two, fresh out of the oven. Then, of course, with the rationing of everything, the Bakery stopped baking. 

August, 1945. (I believe it was August 15 in Shanghai) -
That day, on the street., the soldiers disappeared.
The stores began to close - boarding up their fronts.
There was More Fear in the air.
Fear of the unknown.
Fear of arson.
Fear of looting.
Fear of disorder - since there were no soldiers or policemen around.
We all wondered, "What was going on?"
Then, we heard the Russians singing, and saw them dancing - in the street. We smelt Vodka.
"The War was over," some people said.
"The Japanese surrendered," others echoed.
Some people with short-wave radio received the news of Victory for the Allies. America, England, French, and China defeated Germany and Japan.

News of Atomic Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not reach us until later. News of any details of Victory eventually did come to us. 

Shanghai went wild with joy.

Soon the American GIs marched into the city.
There was order in the city, but recovery was slow.
However, we scrounged up enough money to buy GI rations - Butter, Chocolate, Nylon stockings  . . . things we had not had for a long, long time.
The Blackout curtains came down.
We saw smiles on people's faces.
We still had to deal with shortages of many things - we did begin our journey of Recovery.

Peace, however, was short-lived.

A Diversion - "Not Three, Not Four"

Some say that writing memoirs is like baring your soul. 
Some say that it is like presenting yourself buck-naked in front of everyone, including your family and friends, warts and all.

Here I merely want to tell you my story, with as much sincerity as I know. So bear with me if there are mistakes that I make along the way - be it grammatical, typo, or anything-else.

Hey, I used to revert to speaking Chinese in the middle of my conversation in English with someone, especially if and when I became agitated.   
I came from Shanghai, so I speak Shanghainese. I lived and married a Chinese-British (or we would say British-Chinese - so, you see) from Hong Kong, so I speak Cantonese (not perfectly, but passable). Then there is Mandarin, which is the official language in China, not a dialect. So, even in Speaking In Chinese, there are problems.

No, I don't speak Manchurian - that is a totally different language in writing and speaking.

After being here so many years in this small Southwestern town in the U.S.,where there are few Chinese who speak my language - remember, we have many, many dialects in China plus One official language - even my Chinese is not up to par.
When I say "speaking my language", I mean it literally and otherwise. Got me?

The more I write about my past life, the more I remember about all the happenings. I, myself, am overwhelmed. Or should I say, I is overwhelm. (There are no tenses in Chinese language. We use another word to modify the verb to indicate the tenses. And word orders are different. Strange? Not to the Chinese. May be I will give a Lesson in Chinese Language sometime.) 

For years, or maybe forever, I don't "belong".
Let me explain.
I am Chinese-American. But, let's face it, I am neither totally Chinese, nor totally American.
For many years when I was in Hong Kong and in England, I belonged to no country. Officially, I was a resident of Hong Kong. But no passport was issued to me. I was a true Citizen of the World until I married and became British.

Anyway, I will tell you about all that later.

We have a saying in Chinese - Not Three, Not Four. May be that is me.

Japanese Teacher/Poet

We were told that we were to have classes in Japanese, in addition to our usual courses - Chinese, math, English, science, history, geography, music, and PE.
Most of the children in Shanghai private schools had to learn a second language, which was English, unless you were in a French school. Come to think of it, you still had to learn English in the French school.
You started your ABCs in the third grade. That, however, did not make you a learned person in English by the time you graduate from high school. English was taught by native Shanghai teachers who learned to speak the language with an accent; because, their teachers spoke the language with an accent. 
Now, if you happen to be taught by English priests, then you learned to speak English with a British accent.  
If you were taught by American nuns, then you learned to speak English with an American accent. And, there were the Portuguese teachers, and French teachers, and may be German teachers . . .      Have I confused you enough by now?
There were some exceptions, of course.
There were always some who watched plenty of Hollywood movies and learned to speak Hollywood English. Hollywood movies were Big. We had them except during World War II years. 
How do you think I ended up with the name of Loretta? Remember Loretta Young? Ah, may be you are too young . . . 
So, usually by the time you graduated from High School, you could read some English, write some English, but not necessarily speak much English. Besides, all the similes, inferences, colloquialism, metaphors, etc., were never explained to you, because your teacher probably never knew any of them himself or herself. Well, so much for that.

Actually, I don't think that there were any government operated schools then. All schools were privately ran.You had to pay for your children to attend schools. Attending schools for children was not mandatory. I don't know if the school standards were regulated. I am sure there were some minimum requirements, but I am not clear on any of it. It seemed that most us Chinese took things for whatever they were. No questions asked. You don't want any Trouble.
There were schools ran by missionaries. There were schools ran by Foreign governments. There were a myriad number of different kinds of schools. You could take your pick - you sent your children to the best school that you could afford.
Our music lessons were usually consisting of singing some songs from the book called One Hundred And One Songs.
The teacher played the piano. The children sang - not too much off key. Surprise!. Or, sometimes, we would sing "O-sole-mia" or something like that. I loved the Italian songs - not that I knew any Italian.
PE would be some sort of jumping jack, or bending forward or backward, and flapping our arms, and yelling, One-Two-Three-Four, over and over again. May be a bit of running. Track! Oh Yes, we had volleyball, I almost forgot. May be a bit of badminton.
I sat out of most of them, because I had a note from my parents saying that I was not strong enough to take part in those strenuous exercises. I had a slight health problem - the doctor said that I had an enlarged-heart. (Now I am 85 and I don't take any medication!)
I was allowed to sit on the side and read a book. I usually would doodle. You see, I always liked to draw. And I did draw a lot on my own.
Until this day, exercises are not for me. The truth is, I don't like to sweat.
Art classes - non-exist. 
We did have to write our Chinese "characters" with brush and Chinese ink, made with grinding water in special inkwells with special ink-sticks. Most of us became fairly good in calligraphy.

Anyway, after the announcement of having Japanese lessons, every morning, for an hour or so,we found ourselves in the classroom with a fairly young Japanese man, a lot more refined-looking than the soldiers on the street corners. He drilled us with the Japanese alphabet and taught us a few sentences in Japanese. Wait, I should correct myself. He tried to teach us many sentences in Japanese, but we kids learned a "passive-aggressive" strategy and refused to learn. He allowed us to look at the books when he gave us tests and so on. He passed us all. 
Some days when he was totally stressed out by us, he would look straight pass us and recite poems in Japanese as if we were not in the classroom. He had a pretty musical voice, I remember.
We, of course, could not understand one word that he was saying. He had this faraway look on his face - I thought he was wishing that he was in Japan and did not have to be in our classroom. Sometimes, I felt a bit sorry for him. Then I would catch myself and made myself banish those thoughts.

So, after two years, I learned the alphabet (51 of them - I can still recite them), how to count to ten, and how to say,
"What is your name?"
"My name is ---."
"Thank you."
"Good-bye." - In Japanese.     
We all learned to say "Good-bye" very well. 

However, we did not say "good-bye" to him. He did not come to the school the day after War ended.

Fish The Spy and Black Market

For the most part, life quietly went on.

Bit by bit, we heard horror stories about the unimaginable torturing methods applied to innocent civilians; the looting and the arson; the raping of the old and the young; the killings, etc. We spoke in whispers, afraid to be heard. We made no comments on anything. Who knew who was friend or who was foe. Least you would be "reported" to the Authorities - the Conquerors, by your friends, or neighbors, or even relatives. You kept to yourself.    

My father's youngest sister was a beauty. I remembered her as being tall, slender, vivacious, and exotic-looking (even in my young eyes), and she was crowned Miss Tientien in Manchuria, before Japanese occupation of Manchuria. She was married with two adorable children, a boy and a girl. But for whatever reason, she and her husband divorced. We called her husband Fish, because his surname sounded like Fish in Chinese. Remember my nickname of Ant?
Uncle Fish was tall and handsome, he and my aunt made such a good-looking couple. Many envied them. Who would have thought that their marriage was unhappy? Did winning the beauty contest made Number three aunt feeling too superior, too cocky? Or, she simply wanted more and more out of her life than what she had?
My grandfather was furious and disowned her. Divorce was a disgrace to the family. It was not acceptable. Thereafter, he would not acknowledge that he ever had a third daughter. Number three aunt (that was what I called her), though beautiful, had no skills or ability to earn a living. After the divorce, the children went to live with their father, my Uncle Fish; and she was on her own, with no money and no job. Those days there was no such a thing as Alimony. She ended up being a Dance Hall Girl - which, of course, made my grandfather even more furious. 
Those days, there were many so called Dance Halls. There, they had women who had Dances For Hire. The man would pay a fee and then pick a dancing partner to do a dance or two. Chinese were big on ballroom dancing. Dance Hall Girls were looked down upon by the society. It was unspeakable to have a daughter being a Dance Hall Girl. My grandfather "lost face".
My grandmother would secretly try to help her out financially from time to time. But not long after, we learned that Number Three aunt died of diabetes and in utter poverty.   

After the Japanese occupied Shanghai, we heard that Uncle Fish was a spy and he was caught by the Japanese. He, bravely, refused to co-operate, and the Japanese plied off all his finger-nails. Oh, it gives me the shivers even to think about it. He, somehow, survived it all. We learned, later, he moved to Formosa with his two children. We lost touch with them completely.

Inflation was rampant. No one wanted currency. If we had any money, we would buy Chinese gold jewelry - Chinese gold was .995 pure, traded as money. Or, we bought and sold gold bars on the Black Market. Yes, I learned about Black Market very early in my life. Little gold bars were of one ounce each. They were the size of my little finger each. Big bars weighed ten ounces each - they were heavy and beautifully shiny. Or, we would buy commodities - a bolt of materials, cotton or wool, few skeins of wool yarn, or whatever people needed - towels, sheets, toothpaste, etc. etc. If you hold your item for a few months or even a few weeks, you could make money. 
Inflation was such, in the end, we had to take sackfuls of money simply to purchase a bag of rice. Rice was rationed, but the price was set by the merchants. And the unscrupulous ones would mix tiny gravels into the rice to make them weigh more than they actually did. My widowed maternal grandmother, who lived with us then, and I had the job of picking out the gravels from the rice. We spent many hours doing that.
Things got worse and worse everyday. We hoped that there would be light at the end of the tunnel. If there was one, we did not see it. We, however, did keep looking.

We lost control of almost every aspects of our lives, but we made the best of what we had and carried on.

Changes, Changes, Changes

Not too long after Shanghai was under Japanese Occupation, things changed quickly. 

My father was ordered to develop a sort of neighborhood watch system. Only it was not a regular neighborhood watch, but more like a civilian Sentinel. We were to have four sentry posts, one for each corner of our Longtang. All the able-bodied male age fourteen and up in the neighborhood had to take turns standing guard. Each person was to have a four-hour long duty. Father was to organize this and oversee the operation.
Well, since father had to go to work, mother became the real organizer and overseer. My brother, Fu, had to take his turn as a sentry. It kept my mother pretty busy. Sentry posts had to be filled no matter what. We did not want father to be charged for not following orders and suffer whatever consequences. Mother apparently did a good job. We had no troubles that I knew of. But I am sure mother had some terrible times trying to handle this unwelcome job. She had to do whatever to keep us safe. She had, at times, to stand in for the sentry, if there had a vacant spot to be filled. She had no choice.
So all over the city of Shanghai, we had civilian sentries.
Soon after, we had to have black curtains for our windows - we had blackouts because of fear of bombing.
There were no shelters for any of us. The best that my mother could do was to put some quilts on top of our very heavy rosewood tables downstairs, and we children would go under the table when the siren ran, warning us of possible bombing. The rest of the family took chances and hoped for the best.
I am sure mother knew that the quilts would not have helped us any if the bombs actually drop over our heads. It merely made her feel better knowing that she did the Best she could to protect us. 

With all the rations, we started having a few chickens in our courtyard, so that we could have a chicken for a meal once in a while. We city children thought it was fun, since we had no previous experiences in raising chicken. My brothers and I thought of the chickens as pets more than food. How ignorant we were?
We also had to keep coal in a heap in one corner of the courtyard. Mother would eyeball the heap to make sure that we had enough coal to last us through winter. It barely did.
I also remember that we would only have one electric light on downstairs and one electric light on upstairs in the evenings. We all huddled together in one room if we needed to have light, or we would have to be in the dark. 
We had a radio, but short-waved radio was not allowed. Newspapers did not tell us what was gong on in the city or in the world. Somehow, we, managed to hear something over the radio - not really enough information as how the war was getting on.

The Chinese government had moved its capital to the interior - the wartime capital of Chungking. The allies were aiding us. 

Survival was the foremost idea on everyone's mind. Laughter disappeared from every household. There was a constant sense of fear. 

One day mother said that she had to go to some place some miles away from home. She at first did not tell us what she had to do. Later on, we learned that she was ordered to move her father's grave and relocate the coffin to some place other than the cemetery, because the Japanese was going to build an airfield where the cemetery was. Mother had to ride a hired-rickshaw for the journey, which was long and rough. Mother was exhausted and utterly worn after the difficult journey, and later, she complained about her backache for a long while. She, however, never uttered a word about the ordeal.

So life went on  . . .

A Hushed City

Mid-morning during school, The teacher told us to gather up our books and other belongs.
"Now, I want all of you to be very good and behave. Don't go anywhere-else. Go straight home," our teacher said. Then she dismissed us.
So we all put on our coats, gathered our belongings, and marched out of the class-room. We went pass the schoolyard and filed out through the gate. Onto the street.

The air was crisp and the wind was kicking up.The outside was unusually quiet..
There were no cars, no rickshaws, no bicycles, no vendors, nor policemen. Except for an eerie Hush.
At each street corner, there was a short and bowlegged person in a soldier's uniform holding a rifle with a bayonet standing guard. 

My heart was in my throat. I knew something was wrong but I did not know What.

I lowed my head, hugged my books closer, took a deep breadth and hurried towards home. 
Most of the shops were boarded up. I wondered why.
Why were there so few people on the street? Where were the cars? Where were the Sikhs?
"Where is everybody," I wondered.
I wanted my mother. I wanted my Amah,
I walked briskly home, as fast as I could.
Mother was home. As a matter of fact, everyone was home even my father.
Mother and Amah were so happy to see me, they hugged me close for a long while.
I looked at my mother for answers.
My parents said in a hushed voice, "The Japanese are here."

In a few days, somehow life went on as usual. I went to school everyday. My father went back to the office everyday. The vendors were on street corners again. The shop doors were open . . .

However, nothing was the same again. 

Every evening, there were barricades at intersections after seven o'clock. There were curfews every night. You needed a pass if you wanted to go some place after hours. You bowed to the soldiers or you suffered from the bayonets. We did not venture out of the house if there was no need to. I, being a young girl, did not go anywhere after hours.
Then, the Rations came. Rice was rationed. Cooking oil was rationed. Sugar was rationed. Then, coal, electricity, materials for clothes . . .
Then, came the Shortages - food and everything-else.
The currency devalued every so many months, then every so many weeks. Inflation was unstoppable. People walked around with their heads lowered, mouth closed, and eyebrows knitted. 

Amah and her son, and all the other servants stayed with us because things were much worse in the country. For a long time, I am sure Amah lost contact with her husband. But she and the others went on with their jobs as diligently as ever. I don't know if my father paid them the same wages or not - but they did have a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, and clothes on their backs. None of them complained ever.

My father was in the Import and Export business, dealing with machineries and such. His partner, who was my grandfather's associate in Manchuria, was German. Their Business carried on as usual. It seemed that we always had enough to eat and enough to live on. Father provided for all of us through thick or thin.

I do remember, however, that our life in every way was scaled down.We had to be very careful as to how much cooking oil we could use or how much coal we could burn for heating.
Shanghai could be very cold in the Winter. So, sometimes, the temperature in the house, even with the potbelly stoves burning could be icy cold. We had a big house. Two little potbelly stoves, one for upstairs and one for downstairs, were not enough to keep us warm. The servants huddled in the kitchen in the evenings, where the cooking fire was still burning.
We piled layers of clothing on us. I remember the fingerless gloves. We, oftentimes, wore them inside the house.

I learned to knit. Knitting kept us busy. We did not have money to buy new yarns, nor there were much new yarns offered by the shops. So, we would unravel our old sweaters, washed and boiled the yarn, straightened them, and knitted new sweaters for ourselves. 
My mother's cousin, Big Aunt, taught me how to knit. Though my mother was an excellent knitter, she thought it best to have Big Aunt teach me instead of her. Wise woman. 
I learned to do intricate stitches and patterns. We would compete to see who could come up with the best patterns. We women knitted and knitted throughout those long cold winter days. Both my mother and Big Aunt were so good at knitting, they could knit plain stitches with their eyes closed literally. 
As a matter of fact, my mother knitted during her later years in life while she was practically blind, and turned out beautiful garments.

The Takeover in the Settlements was peaceful. There were no street fights, no bombing, no killings in most parts (at least we did not see any bloodshed). Many of the foreigners were interned, although we did not know any of those who were. 

So with blinders over our eyes, life went on.

Grandfather, the Opera Singer

My father used to tell me that I had to be mindful as how I present myself to the outside world.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because your grandfather is well-known and you are his oldest granddaughter. Your appearance matters. You have to be well-groomed, well-dressed, and well-behaved at all times, or you would bring shame to him."

My grandfather loved and collected paintings, porcelains, and antiques besides being an amateur opera singer. We had most of his collections which he brought from Manchuria to Shanghai. Then, of course, we left all of them in Shanghai when we fled to Hong Kong years later.       
I have no memory of him on his private stage in Manchuria, but I do remember his many elaborate and dazzling costumes that he had. For whatever reason, the costumes that he brought to Shanghai ended at our house instead of at his own house. Maybe my grandma would not have them at their house.
Anyway, my mother, not my grandmother, was the one being assigned to take care of the costumes. Oh, those beautiful headdresses, I was mesmerized by them. Their colors and their brilliance would blind you in the sun.
Every year, in the spring, mother would oversee the task of taking the gold-thread embroidered robes and the massive head-gears out to air and to clean.
"Careful! Careful! We can't have molds on them."
"Don't drop them!"She would say.
At the same time, she grumbled about this annual task and wondering why my grandfather hung on to all this, as he was not likely ever to wear them again. 
How I would have liked to have one of those beautiful costumes today.  

Grandfather had a stroke sometime during the late 1930's. He lived with us for a time before he passed away.
He could not talk or move most parts of his body. 
But, I saw him, a somewhat shriveled figure, half lying and half sitting in a chair. I would see his good hand beating the arm of the chair at regular intervals. It appeared to me that he was silently singing his beloved arias to himself. And when he saw me peering at him, he would give me a half-lopsided smile. I would smile back. 
He left me with some records, which I had played over and over again on our hand-cranked record player to entertain myself during those years under Japanese occupation. I even learned to sing along with the records though I could hardly understand any of what was sung since they were in classical poetry form. However, I did know the stories. It mattered not whether I understood the words or not. I understand the emotion. It was the music that enchanted me and it lived with me throughout many of my childhood years and much later. 

Grandfather died in October of 1941, at the age of sixty. The Japanese had already occupied the areas outside the Settlements. But those of us living in the French Settlement or the International Settlement were not directly affected at that time. We heard horror stories of the looting, the raping, the killings. But we did not see anything of the sort in the Settlements. We would hear bombings and gunshots. Believe it or not, we would go up to our rooftop terrace to watch the bombings. The planes were far away and they looked like birds. We had no idea that we could very well have put ourselves in harm's way. We thought that those of us living in the Settlements were untouchables.
Grandfather's funeral was a grand event. His body laid in the Funeral Parlor for three days for people to come and pay their respects. For three days, all the family members, his friends and acquaintances, his former business partners and associates, and his employees came. There were a lot of people we had to feed and keep entertained. All this may sound strange, but that was the custom. So, people ate, drank, smoked, played games, etc. 
The monks and nuns chanted. 
The Taoist priests danced.
The visitors bowed. 
The women cried.
All the immediate family members had to take turns staying with the body - including me. At 12, I had never seen a dead body before and was very much afraid when my turn for the "wake" came upon me. Although the body was covered with a sheet, but the flickering candle lights at either end of the body made the atmosphere eerier than ever. Mother had nanny's son, our houseboy, stay with me. Evan so, it was the longest few hours of my life. 
I was never afraid of grandfather when he was alive. But the strange-looking heap under the thin sheet conjure up unspeakable images in my young mind. I could not sleep for nights afterwards. But I did not cry. 

The funeral procession was blocks long. It consisted of the hearse; the immediate family members on foot, in rough unbleached muslin; the monks with their gongs, bells, and their chantings; the Taoist priests with their hand-held lotus-shaped candles, flutes, and their dances; the Western (European) marching band; and the long line of people in cars and on foot, mostly men with their black arm- bands on their left arms. The long procession ended at the funeral home, The burial was to be forty-nine days later, after the seven-week ceremonies. 
My grandfather was gone. 
But Life went on with a vengeance as the Japanese marched into the Settlements two months later. December 1941. 
World War II. 

I did not cry.

Before the Japanese Came

We had a few years of relative peace and calm in the City. It was a different story in the countryside, I learned later. There were fights all the time. Almost constantly. But, those of us in the City were not particularly worried. I guess China went through too many wars, we became callous . . or, rather, we were constantly on the lookout for any disasters, and we were at ready and be prepared to flee anytime. Were we really prepared for anything at all?

I went to a school not too far from our home. In the beginning, our houseboy would take me and my younger brother, Henry, in our rickshaw. Yes, by then I had a younger brother.  As a matter of fact, I had a number of siblings. 

My mother had thirteen children altogether. I was the fourth born child, but the two babies between my brother, Fu, and me did not survive infancy, Therefore, I am the second child - the first girl. There were a couple of babies between Henry and me. They did not survive either. So, when Henry came along, he became the Apple of our mother's eye. Henry was been pampered in every way. Henry could do no wrong.
Out of the thirteen of us, six lived to maturity. Four boys, Fu, Henry. Chong, and Michael, and two girls, Winnie and me. Winnie is the baby, fifteen years younger than I am. So I was the only girl in the family for fifteen years.Yes, I guess I was spoiled, by my father particularly. He doted on me.
Back to schooldays. Henry went to kindergarten at my school. Later he had to go to a boys' school, since my school was for girls only. When my mother thought I was old enough to walk to school by myself, that's what I did - I walked the several blocks to and back from school everyday. 

We lived in a kind of walled-in housing area called Longtong, or Longtang. Longtang houses were native products of Shanghai soon after the city was forced to be opened to the West as a treaty port. At the beginning, Chinese were not allowed to live in the foreign concessions. Later on the British found that relying on the small number of Western residents would not be able to tap the big potentiality of Shanghai becoming a metropolis. At the same time, incessant civil wars in China made a large number of wealthy Chinese refugees request to move into the foreign concessions. The authorities agreed to it. For the sake of management, large number of collective dwellings were built in designated areas enclosed by walls. The house, similar in design as the English terrace houses, but built to suit the Chinese were surrounded by house-walls including a courtyard at front. Most of them had two stories. They were arranged in line like barracks, row after row and can be easily accessed by sub-lanes connected to the main-lane, while only the main-lane could lead to the city road outside through a gate. (The lanes were wide enough for automobiles to go through.) This later became the main and typical type of housing in Shanghai. (Of course, there were individual homes, villas and mansions, and such for the very rich.)
Longtang was a neighborhood
Instead of a wall to surround the neighborhood, around the perimeter, attached commercial buildings were erected. And the storefronts faced the roads. It so happened our gate was on the far-side of the longtang. And in order for me to shorten my walk, I would ask one of the shopkeeper to let me go through the shop's backdoor to enter the longtang. It saved me about a 5-minutes walk.

You will never guess what kind of shop that I went through for the shortcut. A coffin-maker's shop! Yes, I was very uneasy at first, then I got used to it. I would rush by the coffins with my eyes half-closed so I would not see them in the semi-dark backrooms. 
Actually, since there were no corpses, I needed not have worried about it.

Early Years

Before I was old enough to know what was going on around me, Shanghai went through the big Stock Market Crash and the Depression, just like people in the U.S. Yes, there was a lot of poverty.
If there were soup lines, I did not know. You see, most Chinese were poor and most of them were poor for a long time, especially people who lived in the country. There were often natural disasters of one kind or another - floods, earthquakes, etc. There was often famine. And there were wars, big and small - a lot of wars throughout our five thousand years. Lot of people died. Lot of them somehow managed to survive. 
But for the people in Shanghai, life was different.
Shanghai people made money, whether the economy was bad or not, whether there was war or not . . .      My father used to say that some people will always make money regardless of the Times. 
Anyway, my first recollection of my very early childhood was uneventful. I grew up in an upper middle class family. Since I am a girl, I was utterly sheltered. My Amah took care of me, she fed me. she dressed me, she bathed me, and she entertained me. In other words, she babied me until I was way beyond a toddler  - actually, she bathed me until I was almost a teenager.
My Amah came from the country and when her son was old enough to work, he came to our household and became our houseboy. When he grew up, he was our rickshaw boy as well - we had a black rickshaw with shining brass lanterns, I remember.
Amah and her son stayed with us for many years, through Japanese Occupation and WWII. I am sure she had a husband but I was not smart enough to question her. To me, She was like my surrogate mother because my own mother had the job of managing the household and being the Lady of the house. No, my mother did not neglect me at all - I simply did not see her a lot of the times. That was the way it was. 
I never set foot in places not comparable to ours, only better for most of the time. I don't remember ever visiting the Old China City.
When I was older, I would visit my grandparents and my mother's Number Three uncle (Number Three was like my other grandfather - more about him later) and his family.  

Of course, things changed when the Japanese came.

Farewell Manchuria

For years, Manchuria was shadowed by the constant fear of being attacked by either the Russians or the Japanese, or by both. 

My grandfather decided to move the family to Shanghai, the largest and most cosmopolitan, coastal city in China, named The Paris or The Pearl of The Orient. So, at the age of around six-month, I was on a ship sailing from Manchuria to Shanghai. My mother told me that the Yellow Sea was so rough that I was seasick all through the journey. I believe that I would have been seasick even the ocean had been calm. Because, as of today, I get seasick on the wharf.
My older brother, Fu, who is 3 years older than I, and me, together with our parents landed in Shanghai in the summer of 1929.

I believe, in the beginning, the whole family lived together in a great big house - my grandparents, my parents, my brother and I, my father's two younger brothers and three younger sisters. I don't have much recollection of my first home in Shanghai. I remember vaguely the huge four-story brick home, with a walled-in garden. I remember vaguely a lily-pad filled pound, and a separate house behind the main house for the cook, maid, nanny, and other servants. I remember vaguely playing in the garden.
One day I sensed that something was wrong. I was too young to really understand what was going on. My nanny did not allow me to go out to the garden. She kept telling me to be quiet when I was restless and fussy. There were a lot of people going in and out of the house.
A lot of commotion was going on. After that day, nanny kept me close to her more than usual.
Years later, mother told me that was the day my brother, Fu, was been kidnapped.
It was total chaos in the household. Somehow, the police managed to get Fu back home unharmed. Fu must be only four or five years old at that time. It probably was terribly traumatic for him. After the kidnapping incident, grandpa hired bodyguards for us. We were somewhat restricted in our outings.

We eventually moved out of my grandparents' home into a two story brick house in the International Settlement.

Part of Shanghai was "leased" to Britain, France, Germany, America, and other countries after the second Opium War. Those parts of Shanghai became what we called Settlements. The Chinese government had no jurisdiction over people who lived in the Settlements. Even policemen were mostly Sikhs from India. The Sikhs were tall, imposing-looking, with their turbans on their heads, and, most of them had bushy beards.They patrolled the city on equally imposing-looking horses.
Outside the Settlements, people who lived there were under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government.
My grandparents eventually moved into a house in the French Settlement, which was next to the International Settlement. 

Grandfather still had part of his business in Mukden. He spent part of the year living in Mukden and part of the year in Shanghai. 

My mother told me, years later, that my grandfather had a mistress, but we never knew for sure. At that time, it was not totally uncommon for a man to have concubines - but I guess my grandmother would not allow it. Therefore, the mistress. However, everyone in the family acted like there was no such happening.

Unlike my grandfather, my mother's Number Four Uncle had a mistress. We all knew where she lived. As a matter of fact, she lived in the same vicinity as my family. When I was a bit older, my younger brother and I would walk over to where Number Four Granduncle's mistress' house was and spy on them. If we saw Granduncle's car parked close-by, we would run home and tell our mother. We thought it was fun. Kids.