China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

ate and was clothed. But they had little money to spare.

There was one ray of hope, though: one person who might be able to achieve the good life and, with a bit of luck, help them all. Her little girl: Bright Moon.

“She’ll be as beautiful as you,” Second Son often declared.

“She is more beautiful,” Mei-Ling would reply.

“Not possible,” he’d say, and perhaps he really thought so. But Mei-Ling knew better.

It was extraordinary how perfect the child was: Her skin was so pale, pure white, the hallmark of a Chinese beauty. And Bright Moon’s eyes were large, and her nose and eyebrows were straight, like those of a noble lady of the court from the days of the shining Ming.

Second Son doted on the little girl. As soon as he got home from work each evening, he’d sit and play with her.

Sometimes, if there was a wind, he and Bright Moon would go up to a place where they could watch the forest of tall bamboos swaying in the wind. The bamboo made beautiful clicking sounds as they knocked against one another, and if the wind was strong enough they sighed as well. “Their music is even more lovely than the erhu,” Second Son would happily declare. “And do you see along the forest fringe how their heads and shoulders droop so gracefully? Yet in a storm, even the tallest heads can touch the ground without the bamboo breaking.”

“Don’t they ever break?” the little girl once asked.

“If a bamboo is beside a wall, or even other bamboo canes that prevent it from bending the way it wants to,” he answered, “then sometimes it can snap.”

“Does it die?”

“No. The best thing is to cut it just above the ground, and by the next year another cane will grow up just as tall as the one before.”

“You love the bamboo, don’t you, Papa?” the little girl cried.

“Almost as much as I love your mother and you,” he answered, and the little girl knew that it was true.

—

Bright Moon was three years old when Second Son and Mother began to talk about her feet.

“She could become a rich man’s wife,” Mother said.

“And live the good life,” Second Son agreed.

“We need to bind her feet,” Mother said. “She can’t get a rich man otherwise.”

“I want her to have a good husband like I did,” said Mei-Ling. “And my feet weren’t bound.”

“She could do much better than me,” said Second Son. “I want her to have the best.”

“But would she be happy?” Mei-Ling asked.

“Why not?” her husband reasonably asked. “Being rich doesn’t make you unhappy. And it’s better than being poor, as we are now.” He gestured to the house and the broken bridge in the pond. “She’s been given so much beauty. We have to respect that, not waste it.”

“Perhaps she could marry a rich Hakka man,” Mei-Ling suggested. “Some Hakka are rich. And their women don’t bind their feet.”

“No Hakka,” said Mother.

“Or a Manchu, even. Their women don’t bind their feet, either.”

“The rich Manchu usually marry other Manchu. And their Han Chinese concubines all have bound feet,” said Mother. “You can be sure of that.”

“It’s painful,” Mei-Ling cried. “Everyone says it is.”

“It’s not so bad,” said Mother.

“Do you know how to do it?” asked Mei-Ling.

“There’s a woman in the town who has bound lots of girls’ feet. She’ll come and show us.”

Mei-Ling was still unhappy, though Second Son tried to comfort her.

“It’s all for the best. She’ll thank us one day,” he promised. “And being born with such beauty, she’d never forgive us if we didn’t give her the chance to make use of it.”

“I still can’t bear to think about it,” Mei-Ling confessed.

“Then don’t,” said Second Son. “She’s only three. We wouldn’t start until she’s six.”

So they didn’t talk about the foot-binding, not for the time being. And the only thing Bright Moon knew was that she had to carry a sunshade whenever the sky was blue.

—

The rumors from the coast began when Bright Moon was five years old. American merchants had been going around the towns and fishing villages again, offering good money to men who’d come out to California to build a railroad.

Of the three men who had gone to America from the hamlet when Read had come before, two had remained there, but one had returned. He’d come back with money.

And stories of the huge continent in the West: its temperate climate, beautiful bays, soaring mountains. And of course, the railroad: the endless iron tracks the barbarians were laying across the land, and the engine with the fiery furnace inside, belching steam and sparks, that raced along the tracks. Some people in the hamlet thought it was wonderful, though to Mei-Ling it sounded like a terrible and evil thing.

But the iron dragon on rails did not frighten her as much as the effect all this information had on her husband.

“I’ve heard they’re giving good money to people before they go. An advance payment. A lot more than I could ever earn around here.” He looked at her seriously. “You could use that money for the farm and for Bright Moon. And then, if I could come back with another pile of money…” He looked at her sadly. “I’d be away from you.”

“Please don’t go.”

He sighed. “I don’t know what to do. We have to think of the family.”

She thought of the run-down farm and the poor hamlet. It was hard for anyone in that area to make a living. If the Americans came offering well-paid work and cash down, they’d have no shortage of takers.

As for Second Son: She knew her beloved husband. If he decided a thing was right, nothing would stop him. He’d shown the same obstinacy when he’d insisted on marrying her. Wonderful then; terrible now.

“How long would you go for?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Two or three years, I suppose. I’d take our younger boy with me.”

“I’d be lonely,” she said simply.

“So would I. But if we need the money…”

“You’re not going down to