Life and Death in Shanghai

An English friend, a frequent visitor to my home in Shanghai, once called it ‘an oasis of comfort and elegance in the midst of the city’s drabness’. Indeed, my house was not a mansion, and by western standards, it was modest. But I had spent time and thought to make it a home and a haven for my daughter and myself so that we could continue to enjoy good taste while the rest of the city was being taken over by proletarian realism.

Not many private people in Shanghai lived as we did, seventeen years after the Communist Party took over China. In the city of ten million, perhaps only a dozen or so families managed to preserve their old lifestyle: maintaining their original homes and employing a staff of servants. The Party did not decree how the people should live. In fact, in 1949, when the Communist Army entered Shanghai, we were forbidden to discharge our domestic staff to aggravate the unemployment problem. But the political campaigns that periodically convulsed the country rendered many formerly wealthy people poor. When they became victims, they were forced to pay large fines or had their income drastically reduced. And many industrialists were relocated inland with their families when their factories were removed from Shanghai. I did not voluntarily change my way of life not only because I had the means to maintain my standard of living but also because the Shanghai Municipal Government treated me with courtesy and consideration through its United Front Organization. However, my daughter and I lived quietly with circumspection. Believing the Communist Revolution a historical inevitability for China, we were prepared to go along with it.

The reason I am so often carried back to those few hours before midnight on 3 July 1966 is not only because I look back upon my old life with my daughter with nostalgia but mainly because they were the last few hours of normal life I was to enjoy for many years. The heat lay like a heavy weight on the city even at night. No breeze came through the open windows. My face and arms were damp with perspiration and my blouse was clammy on my back as I bent over the newspapers spread on my desk reading the articles of vehement denunciation that always preceded action at the beginning of a political movement. The propaganda effort was supposed to create a suitable atmosphere of tension and to mobilize the public. Often careful reading of those articles, written by activists selected by Party officials, yielded hints as to the purpose of the movement and its possible victims. Because I had never been involved in a political movement before, I had no premonition of impending personal disaster. But as was always the case, the violent language used in the propaganda articles made me uneasy.

My servant Lao Chao had left a thermos of iced tea for me on a tray on the coffee table. As I drank the refreshing tea, my eyes strayed to a photograph of my late husband. Nearly nine years had passed since he died but the void his death left in my heart remained. I always felt abandoned and alone whenever I was uneasy about the political situation, as I felt the need for his support.

I had met my husband when he was working for his Ph D degree in London in 1935. After we were married and returned to Chungking, China’s wartime capital, in 1939, he became a diplomatic officer of the Kuomintang Government. In 1949, when the Communist Army entered Shanghai, he was director of the Shanghai office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kuomintang Government. When the Communist representative, Chang Han-fu, took over his office, Chang invited him to remain with the new government during the transitional period as foreign affairs adviser to the newly appointed Mayor of Shanghai, Marshal Chen Yi. In the following year, he was allowed to leave the People’s Government and accept the offer from Shell International Petroleum Company to become the general manager of its Shanghai office. Shell was one of the few British firms of international standing – such as the Imperial Chemical Industries, Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation and Jardines – that tried to maintain an office in Shanghai. Because Shell was the only major oil company in the world wishing to remain in mainland China, the Party officials who favoured trade with the West treated the company and ourselves with courtesy.

In 1957, my husband died of cancer. A British general manager was appointed to succeed him. I was asked by Shell to become his assistant with the title of adviser to management. I worked in that capacity until 1966.

Successive British general managers depended on me to steer the company clear of the many pitfalls that often surrounded a capitalist enterprise maintaining an office in Maoist China. It was up to me to find ways to resolve the problems we had to face without either sacrificing the dignity of Shell or causing the Chinese officials to lose face. My job was to manage the staff, act as liaison between the general manager and the Shell Labour Union, analysing the union demands and working out compromises. I drafted the more important correspondence the company had with the Chinese government agencies which had to be in the Chinese language. Whenever the general manager went on home leave or to Peking for talks with Chinese government corporations, I acted as general manager. I thought myself fortunate to have a job I could do well and enjoyed the distinction of being the only woman in Shanghai occupying a senior position in a company of world renown.

In the spring of 1966, Shell closed its Shanghai office after negotiating with a Chinese government agency which signed an ‘Assets Against Liability Agreement’ with the company. We handed over our assets in China and the Chinese government agency took over our staff with the commitment to give them employment and provide retirement pensions. As a member of management, I was not included in the agreement; its scope was limited to our staff who belonged to the Shell Labour Union, a branch of the Shanghai Labour Union, which is a government organization for the control of industrial and office workers.

When the agreement was signed, my daughter, a young actress of the Shanghai Film Studio, was performing with her unit in North China. I thought I would make a trip to Hong Kong when she came back. But while I was waiting for her return, the Cultural Revolution was launched. My daughter’s group was hastily summoned back to Shanghai by the Film Studio to enable its members to take part in the Cultural Revolution. Since I knew that during a political movement government officials were reluctant to make decisions and that work in government departments generally slowed down, if not came to a complete standstill, I decided not to apply for a travel permit to Hong Kong and risk a refusal. A refusal would go into the personal dossier which the police kept on everyone. It might make future application difficult. So I remained in Shanghai, believing the Cultural Revolution would last no longer than a year, the usual length of time for a political campaign.

The tea cooled me somewhat. I got up to go into my bedroom next door, had a shower and lay down on my bed. In spite of the heat, I dropped off to sleep. The next thing I knew was that Chen Mah, my maid, was gently pushing me to wake me up.

I looked at the clock on my bedside table. It was only half past six, but sunlight was already on the awning outside the windows and the temperature in the room was rising.

‘Chi and another man from your old office have come to see you,’ Chen Mah said.

‘What do they want?’ I asked her drowsily.

‘They didn’t say. But they behaved in a very unusual manner. They marched straight into the living room and sat down on the sofa instead of waiting in the hall as they used to do before the office closed,’ Chen Mah said.

‘Who is the other man?’ I asked her as I headed for the bathroom. Chi, I knew, was the Vice-Chairman of our office branch of the Shanghai Labour Union. I had often conducted negotiations with him as it was part of my job. He had seemed a nice man: reasonable and conciliatory.

‘I don’t know his name. He hasn’t been here before. I think he may be one of the guards,’ Chen Mah said. ‘He’s tall and thin.’

From Chen Mah’s description, I thought the man was one of the activists of the Shell Union. We had no Party members. From the way the few activists in the Union behaved, I knew they were encouraged to act as watchdogs in our office for the Shanghai Labour Union. Since I had no direct contact with the activists who were mostly guards or cleaners, I learned of their activities mainly from the department heads.

There was a knock on the door. Lao Chao, my manservant, handed Chen Mah a tray and said through the half-open door, ‘They say the mistress must hurry.’

‘All right, Lao Chao,’ I said. ‘Tell them I’ll be down presently. Give them a cold drink and some cigarettes.’

I did not hurry. I wanted time to think and be ready to cope with whatever was coming. The visit of these two men at this early hour of the morning was unusual. However, in China, whenever one had to attend a meeting to hear a lecture or political indoctrination, one was seldom told in advance. The officials assumed that everybody should drop everything whenever called upon to do so. I wondered whether these two men had come to ask me to join one of their political indoctrination lectures. I knew the Shanghai Labour Union was organizing classes for the ex-staff of Shell so that they could be prepared for their assignment to work with lower pay in government organizations.

While I ate toast and drank my tea, I reviewed the events leading to the closure of the office of Shell and re-examined my own behaviour throughout the negotiations between the company and the Chinese government agency. Although I had accompanied the general manager to all the sessions, I had not taken part in any of the discussions. It was my job only to observe and advise the general manager afterwards when we returned to our office. I decided that if I were asked questions concerning Shell I could always procrastinate by offering to write to London for information.

I put on a white cotton shirt, a pair of grey slacks and black sandals, the clothes Chinese women wore in public places to avoid being conspicuous. When I walked downstairs I thought those who sent the men to call on me so early in the morning probably hoped to disconcert me. I walked slowly, deliberately creating the impression of composure.

When I entered the living room, I saw that both men were sprawled on the sofa with a glass of orange squash untouched on the table in front of each of them. When he saw me, Chi stood up from force of habit but when he saw that the activist remained seated, he went red in the face with embarrassment and hastily sat down again. It was a calculated gesture of discourtesy on the part of the other man to remain seated when I entered the room. In 1949, not long after the Communist Army entered Shanghai, the new policeman in charge of the area in which I lived had made the first of his periodical unannounced visits to our house. He brushed past Lao Chao at the front door, marched straight into the living room where I was and spat on the carpet. That was the first time I saw a declaration of power made in a gesture of rudeness. Since then, I had come to realize that the junior officers of the Party often used the exaggerated gesture of rudeness to cover up their feeling of inferiority.

I ignored Chi’s confusion and the other man’s rudeness, sat down on an upright chair and calmly asked them, ‘Why have you come to see me so early in the morning?’

‘We have come to fetch you to a meeting,’ Chi said.

‘You have been so slow that we will probably be late,’ the other man added and stood up.

‘What’s the meeting about?’ I asked. ‘Who has organized it? Who has sent you to ask me to participate?’

‘There’s no need to ask so many questions. We would not be here if we did not have authority. All the former members of Shell have to attend this meeting. It’s very important,’ the activist said. In a tone of exasperation, he added, ‘Don’t you know the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has started?’

‘What has a Cultural Revolution got to do with us? We worked for a commercial firm, not a cultural establishment,’ I said.

‘Chairman Mao has said that everybody in China must take part in the Cultural Revolution,’ Chi said.

They both said rather impatiently, ‘We are late. We must leave at once.’

Chi also stood up. I looked at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece; it was a quarter past eight.

Chen Mah was waiting in the hall with my handbag and a navy blue silk parasol. As I took them from her I smiled but she did not smile back. She was staring at me anxiously, obviously worried.

‘I’ll be back for lunch,’ I tried to reassure her.

She merely nodded.

Lao Chao was there standing beside the open front gate. He also looked anxious, but said nothing, simply closing the gate behind us.

The apprehension of my servants was completely understandable. We all knew that during the seventeen years of Mao Tze-tung’s rule innumerable people had left their homes during political campaigns and had never come back.

There were few people in the streets but the bus was crowded with solemn-looking passengers. It took a circuitous route so that we did not get to our destination until after nine o’clock.

A number of young men and women were gathered in front of the technical school where the meeting was to be held. When they caught sight of us approaching from the bus stop, a few ran into the building shouting, ‘They have come! They have come!’

A man came out and said to my escorts irritably, ‘Why have you been so long? The meeting was called for eight o’clock.’

The two men turned their heads in my direction and said, ‘Ask her!’ before hurrying into the building.

This man now said to me, ‘Come this way.’ I followed him into the meeting room.

The large room was already packed with people. Among those seated on narrow wooden benches in front of the assembly I saw Shell’s physician and other senior members of the staff. The drivers, guards, liftmen, cleaners and clerks sat behind them among a large number of young people who were probably the students of the school. Quite a number stood in the aisles and in the space at the back of the hall. Hot sun streamed into the stifling room through bare windows, but very few people were using their fans. The atmosphere in the room was tense and expectant.

Although we had worked in the same office and seen one another daily for almost nine years, not one of the senior staff greeted me or showed any sign of recognition when I brushed past them to take up the seat allocated to me in the second row. Most of the men averted their glances; the few whose gaze met mine looked deeply troubled.

I wondered what these men had been through in the months since Shell had closed its office. They were the real losers of the ‘Assets Against Liability Agreement’ reached between Shell and the People’s Government agency authorized to take them over. Nearly all the men had been with Shell for a very long time, some since the 1920s. During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, some of them made the long and arduous journey from Shanghai to the company’s office in the wartime capital of Chungking, abandoning home and family; others remained in the city and suffered great economic hardship rather than work for the Japanese oil company that had taken over Shell’s premises. Most of the men were nearly sixty and approaching retirement. The Agreement specified that they were all to be given jobs in Chinese organizations. What was not mentioned was that they would not be given jobs commensurate with their former positions in Shell but would be employed as clerks or translators at a low rate of pay with much reduced retirement pensions. None of them had dared to oppose the terms of the Agreement since it was what the government wanted them to accept. Both the last general manager and I tried to obtain assurances from the Union chairman, but we were told that every member of our staff was pleased with the terms of the Agreement.

At my last meeting with the Shell Union chairman, he had said to me, ‘Everybody is extremely pleased at the prospect of being freed from the anomalous position of working for a foreign firm. They all look forward to making a contribution to socialism as workers of a government organization.’ That was the official line in which even the Union chairman himself could not possibly have believed. Senior members of the staff who came to my office during those last days would shake their heads and murmur sadly, ‘Mei you fa tze!’ a very common Chinese phrase meaning, ‘Nothing can be done’, or ‘It’s hopeless’, or ‘No way out’, or ‘There’s no solution’.

From nine o’clock to lunch-time, when the meeting might be adjourned, was more than three hours. The room was bound to get a great deal hotter as time went on. I knew I had to conserve energy while waiting for events to speak for themselves. The narrow wooden bench was just as uncomfortable as the one I had sat on during the war in a cave in Chungking while the Japanese planes rained incendiary bombs on the city. Perspiration was running down my face. To get a handkerchief, I opened my bag. I saw that Chen Mah had put in it a small folding fan made of sandalwood with a painting of a peony on silk done by my painting teacher. I took it out and fanned myself to clear the air of the unpleasant odour of packed humanity.

Suddenly there was a commotion at the rear. Several men dressed in short-sleeved shirts and baggy cotton trousers came through the door at the back and mounted the low platform. One of them came forward to a small table covered with a white cloth while the others sat down on the row of chairs behind him. One could no longer assess a man’s station in life by his clothes in China because everybody tried to dress like a proletarian, a word the Chinese translated into wu chan cheh which meant ‘a man with no property’. To look poor was both safe and fashionable for the Chinese people. So, while I could not tell the approximate rank or position of the man in charge of the meeting, I thought he must be an official of the Shanghai Labour Union.

‘Comrades!’ he said, ‘Our Great Leader Chairman Mao has initiated and is now personally directing the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. With our Great Helmsman to guide us, we shall proceed to victory without hindrance. The situation is excellent for us, the proletariat!

‘The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is an opportunity for all of us to study the Thought of Mao Tze-tung more thoroughly and diligently than ever before so that our political awareness is sharpened. Only then can we truly differentiate between those who are within the ranks of the People and those who are on the side of the Enemy.