The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China Read Online Free PDF

they were bad business, I’m sure she would not have been a willing accomplice. She’s a good girl.” Madame Lu seemed to wear fewer jewels nowadays, with the fighting so close, and she was dressed for this solemn occasion with elegant simplicity. Only three rings encircled her fingers; each was a treasure: a tiny museum there on her hands. “I don’t think we should worry. If the secret police come to bother you, we’ll all write letters attesting to your good character.”
    My aunt looked at me anxiously: “Ling-ling, have you done anything else, you know, anything else illegal apart from what you told us this morning?”
    â€œNo.” I squeezed the word out.
    â€œI’m sure you are telling the truth.”
    â€œIt’s the truth.” I tried to conceal my rising agitation beneath a toneless voice, but I couldn’t fool my aunt.
    â€œDon’t be impatient,” she admonished. “You are young and impractical. I know you believe all this nonsense about fighting for a better future, lifting up the people and so on and so forth. But you must forget about all that. Believe me when I tell you that just now the most important thing for you is to survive.”
    â€œYour idealistic notions may cost us a lot of money. If the secret police got hold of you, we would have to buythem off,” my uncle grumbled. “And just at this moment I am hard up for ready cash.”
    â€œWe will pool together what we have. No problem,” the banker Mr. Chang reassured him.
    To everybody’s surprise, I stood up, turned to my uncle, and said in a cold voice, “Uncle, you can use the money that my mother left me to bribe the police.” I had never spoken to my uncle and aunt like that before. I spoke with a brutality I hadn’t seen in myself before, and it hurt them deeply.
    â€œYou are overreacting,” interposed Lily, that gracious little beauty. She gently pressed my forearm in a sisterly way, and looked questioningly at my aunt.
    My aunt motioned us away. She thought that she could not have found a more suitable person than Lily to put me in the right frame of mind, and in a way she was right. It was hard for me to be angry with Lily with her face like a Chinese Botticelli beauty come to life. I also just liked her. Two years older than I but a poor student, she was in my class and we had struck up a friendship. At times she seemed to be my affectionate, frivolous twin, but another side of me was often critical of her.
    Like many of my schoolmates at St. Ursula’s she was a quintessential product of cosmopolitan Shanghai—even to preferring an English name. She was a dull student but a bright young lady with great expectations. Our parents hired tutors to give us all the social graces considered necessary at that time for a well-brought-up young lady. We learned to tinkle tunes on the piano, to dance and paint. We could read the classics and write neat characters on rice-paper greeting cards from the famous Yung Bao Tsai Studio. We learned to serve tea, dress well, and chatter politely; to smile, walk, and act in a pleasant and graceful way. We were trained to be manhunters, and were being groomed for success in this avocation. Our ordained role was to flirt subtly and tastefully and then move in for the kill. We were successful if we “made a good marriage” and consolidated our positions by bearing heirs and bringing up our daughters the way we had been brought up. We failed if we “got into trouble” or otherwise made fools ofourselves, frittering away our chances by marrying some struggling writer or impecunious student. Lily, perhaps in her own way the smartest of us all, was sure to be a success. It was natural that my aunt should look to her to help me see the light.
    Lily took me to the other side of the room. We sat side by side on the long piano bench.
    â€œLing-ling, how on earth did you come to get mixed up with the