Chan-King, his mother and I went to Chinese cafés together and Madame Liang was pleased and amused to see that I not only used chopsticks with ease but had a real taste for Chinese food. We used to treat ourselves to all sorts of epicurean dishes: spiced chicken and duck, sharks' fins, bird's-nest soup with pigeon eggs (my favourite delicacy), seaweed and bamboo shoots, candied persimmons, lotus-seeds and millet pudding with almond tea.
Once, in a roof-garden café, where I was wearing American clothes, my use of chopsticks aroused considerable interest among neighbouring groups of diners, and stray comments reached us, for the Chinese are always pleased to see foreigners familiar with their customs. "No doubt she is a missionary lady," a young woman remarked in my husband's native dialect. Hearing and understanding, Mother immediately said, in clear, gracious tones, "My son, perhaps your wife would like to have some American food now." Chan-King translated for me both comment and suggestion, and I felt pleased to learn that, at any rate, my Chinese mother was not ashamed, in a public place, to acknowledge her American daughter.
Mother was fond of the drama and, since Shanghai had some excellent theatres, we made up several parties during her stay.
The great semicircular stage on which a famous old historical play that we saw was acted was hung with gorgeous embroideries, laid with a thick Peking rug of immense size and brilliantly lighted by electricity—as was the entire theatre. The actors wore the magnificent official and military robes of an early dynasty. As on the Elizabethan stage, women's parts were taken by men, who achieved by cleverly constructed shoes the effect of bound feet. I found the deafening drums and gongs a little trying, at moments, and the crude property makeshifts somewhat incongruous with the wonderfully elaborate hangings and costumes. But, being familiar with the story, I understood the action and so evidently enjoyed it that Mother was surprised anew, as Chan-King afterwards told me. We sat in our balcony box, above the vague tiers of lower seats packed with a restless audience of men, women and many children in the arms of their amahs. On the wide front rail of our box was the inevitable pot of tea, with room also for such fruits, sugar-cane, melon-seeds, or meat-and-rice dishes as we wished to purchase from the endless variety offered by eager boys in round caps and blue cotton gowns. Now and then an attendant came with a huge teakettle to refill our teapot, and once he offered us the usual steaming hot towels for sticky fingers. Chan-King waved these away energetically. "Awful custom," he said to me. "Unhygienic. How can they do it?" And he added something of the kind to his mother in Chinese. She regarded him with comprehension, a tiny gleam of superior wisdom in her eyes. But she made no reply.
She had taken a fancy to Wilfred, who by this time had a fair vocabulary of Chinese, which he always used in talking to his amah. He was a handsome child, typically Chinese, very charming in his manner, very fond of his amah and his indulgent grandmother. Madame Liang would take his chin in her hands and study his features intently, nodding her head with approval. Then she would stroke his round black poll and give him melon-seeds or almonds from her pocket. Wilfred used a weird mixture of dialects—a confusion of Mandarin and the Shanghai vernacular, with a dash of Cantonese from his amah. Madame Liang set out patiently to teach him her own dialect as well.
When her visit was ended, our mother said to Chan-King, "This is a Chinese house, with a Chinese wife in it. Everything is Chinese. I could never have believed it without seeing, for I thought your wife was a Western woman. I am happy." And she told him again that we must come and visit her, for she needed us.
Chan-King's father, a member of an old, established firm in the import and export trade in the Philippines, was away, looking after his business or exchanging visits with friends of his own age and rank. His home-comings were in the nature of a vacation. The management of the household depended on Madame Liang.
As she talked, I realized by her face, by Chan-King's answers, by all that I knew of Chinese family life, that we were a part of that clan and should be so always. A hint of the solidarity I now feel with my husband's family came to me. We were not separate from them; nor should we be.
After our mother was gone, Chan-King said something of this sort to me, quoting what she had said about my not being Western. "But I love you to be Western in this sense," he told me, "that you and I have companionship and freedom and equality in our love. That is what makes me happiest."