Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China Read Online Free PDF Page A

and roses of Sharon in pots in the courtyard, where she also cultivated dwarf trees.  Her other consolation in her gilded cage was a cat.
     
    She was allowed to visit her parents, but even this was frowned upon, and she was not permitted to stay the night with them.  Although they were the only people she could talk to, she found visiting them a trial.  Her father had been promoted to deputy chief of the local police because of his connection to General Xue, and had acquired land and property.  Every time she opened her mouth about how miserable she was, her father would start lecturing her, telling her that a virtuous woman should suppress her emotions and not desire anything beyond her duty to her husband.  It was all right to miss her husband, that was virtuous, but a woman was not supposed to complain.  In fact, a good woman was not supposed to have a point of view at all, and if she did, she certainly should not be so brazen as to talk about it.  He would quote the Chinese saying, "If you are married to a chicken, obey the chicken; if you are married to a dog, obey the dog."
     
    Six years passed.  To begin with, there were a few letters, then total silence.  Unable to burn off her nervous energy and sexual frustration, unable even to pace the floor with a full stride because of her bound feet, my grandmother was reduced to mincing around the house.  At first, she hoped for some message, going over and over again in her mind her brief life with the general.  Even her physical and psychological submission was mulled over nostalgically.
     
    She missed him very much, though she knew that she was only one of his many concubines, probably dotted around China, and she had never imagined that she would spend the rest of her life with him.  Still she longed for him, as he represented her only chance to live a sort of life.
     
    But as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, her longing became dulled.  She came to realize that for him she was a mere plaything, to be picked up again only when it was convenient for him. Her restlessness now had no object on which to focus.  It became forced into a straitjacket.  When occasionally it stretched its limbs she felt so agitated she did not know what to do with herself.  Sometimes, she would fall to the floor unconscious She was to have blackouts like these for the rest of her life.
     
    Then one day, six years after he had walked casually out of the door, her 'husband' reappeared.  The meeting was very unlike what she had dreamed of at the beginning of their separation.  Then she had fantasized that she would give herself totally and passionately to him, but now all she could find in herself was restrained dutifulness.  She was also racked with anxiety in case she might have offended one of the servants, or that they might invent stories to ingratiate themselves with the general and ruin her life.
     
    But everything went smoothly.  The general, now past fifty, seemed m have mellowed, and did not look nearly as majestic as before.  As she expected, he did not say a word about where he had been, why he had left so suddenly, or why he was back, and she did not ask.  Quite apart from not wanting to be scolded for being inquisitive, she did not care.
     
    In fact, all this time the general had not been far away at all.  He had been leading the quiet life of a wealthy retired dignitary, dividing his time between his house in Tianjin and his country mansion near Lulong.  The world in which he had flourished was becoming a thing of the past.  The warlord and their fief system had collapsed and most of China was now controlled by a force, the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, headed by Chiang Kai-shek.
     
    To mark the break with the chaotic past, and to try to give the appearance of a new start and of stability, the Kuomintang moved the capital from Peking ("Northern Capital') to Nanjing ("Southern Capital').  In 19z8, the ruler of Manchuria, Chang