Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [94]
“Tenderhearted Mayling would be crying many tears as we reached the river. There was always one duck who seemed more special than the others. She would pick up the bird and stroke its feathers and whisper soothingly to it before setting it sadly with the rest on the yellow waters of the Yangtze.
“But worse was yet to come. Already exhausted from their long march, the ducks would then be forced to swim all the way to Nanking, one hundred miles. Both our eyes would be filled with tears as we watched them paddling frantically, trying to escape the big black junk sailing behind them forcing them on, and the men in sampans at each side keeping them together. The junk sailed almost faster than the ducks could paddle and they were allowed no rest. They were forced to keep going until nightfall, when they would be herded on shore. But at daybreak they would be back in the river again, paddling to Nanking and their doom.
“My father always went to Nanking alone. In all these years he had never even asked anyone to accompany him, but this time he told my sister that we were to go with him. I was nine years old and Mayling thirteen. She was pretty, like our mother, with long black hair to her waist, which she wore in the long pigtail of a child. Not until she was a woman could she put it up into a bun. She was still just a little girl and despite her hard life she was full of sparkle. She saw joy in the smallest of things; she was sweet-natured and tenderhearted, always laughing and teasing. She would laugh at the dogs chasing their tails in the courtyard; she would put a flower behind the water-buffalo’s ear and stroke it comfortingly after its hard day’s labor, and she would be filled with delight over a scrap of red yarn given to her by a kindly village woman to tie up her hair. Our smocks and trousers were of the very coarsest blue-and-white patterned cotton of the sort coolies wore, and to keep out the winter’s cold we covered ourselves with the worn padded jackets our brothers had grown out of.
“When we took the ducks to Nanking we did not travel in the junk with Ke Chungfen but in a little sampan, taking turns with the paddle and making sure to keep the ducks together, thus avoiding our father’s anger and a beating.
“There was much traffic on the Lower River and I was excited to see the huge white foreign steamers and the convoys of salt junks and the big wooden rafts where whole families lived. But Mayling’s eyes were red from crying for the poor little ducks.
“All we knew was our little village. We had never seen a city before and we were amazed by the hundreds of ships lined up along the river at Nanking, and frightened by the bustling traffic on the narrow cobbled streets and the crowds of pushing, hurrying people. Mulecarts loaded with bundles twice their own size lumbered past us as we nervously herded our flock of ducks to their final destination. Coolies with great baskets slung on bamboo poles pushed us aside and sedan chairs carrying lordly merchants trotted by, the bearers shouting us out of their way.
“Mayling stopped to stare at a grand lady. Her face was rouged and painted and her black hair decorated with jade ornaments. She wore a dress of yellow brocade with a padded satin jacket and we knew she must be a member of the Emperor’s family, for only they were allowed to wear the royal yellow. We gasped when we saw how tiny her bound feet were as she stepped from her chair and hobbled into a store selling bolts of expensive, colorful silks, emerald and indigo and scarlet and gold. And we jumped in fright as a man appeared around the corner beating a huge gong, while another man ran behind him. He was a thief and his arms were tied, and at each stroke of the gong another man struck his naked back with a bundle of thin bamboo rods, to punish him.
“We were stunned at the sight of stores spilling with foods such as we had never seen, bottles of sam-shu rice wine, pottery vessels of oil and aromatic spices and lotus-seed paste. And we stared awed at the temples painted in scarlet and jade, ornamented with