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

“I don’t know,” she said. “But my mother was half Hakka, so I was used to having family in two worlds from the start of my life. Perhaps that helps me.”

He soon realized that her intelligence went far beyond talking to the Zhuang servants.

When he first arrived, he’d wondered what to do with Mei-Ling as regards the prefect and the other officials. Of course, he could keep her secluded in the house. But then people would talk and make up stories. So after a month, when he had got to know the prefect, who turned out to be a kindly and easygoing man, he told him frankly about his charming concubine. “She’s just a peasant, part Hakka. But she’s intelligent and very beautiful. What should I do with her?”

“My dear Jiang,” the genial grey-bearded prefect said, smiling, “rumors of her beauty had reached me. I was wondering if I’d get to see her.”

“I must warn you that her feet aren’t even bound.”

“I’ll start a rumor that she’s half Manchu.” The older man grinned. “We’re so far from Beijing down here, you know, and surrounded by all these curious tribes, that we don’t worry about all that. Bring her to see my wife. She’s always glad of fresh company.”

Shi-Rong did as bid. The two women met for an hour. Afterwards, Mei-Ling told him that the prefect’s wife wanted her to return the next day. And to his astonishment, this invitation was repeated a dozen times in the course of a month. Any doubts he might have had about these visits were soon dispelled when the prefect remarked: “My wife enjoys Mei-Ling’s company so much. They chatter away all afternoon.”

“How do you talk to each other?” he once asked Mei-Ling. “I suppose she speaks Cantonese.”

“Yes, she speaks Cantonese. But she’s teaching me to speak Mandarin.”

“What do you talk about?”

“She’s quite curious about my little hamlet and our simple life. She’s always lived in towns. And I have many questions for her.”

“Oh,” he said, wondering what those might be. He was to discover a month later, when she announced one day that she was going to serve him tea. Nothing unusual in that, of course. It was a normal ritual in any household in the land. He was surprised, however, to find a beautiful new tea set laid out in the most elegant manner, and still more so when Mei-Ling ministered to him in a rich silk dress and with her hair coiffed as elaborately as a Beijing lady’s. Not only did she make polite conversation in Mandarin, but she even dropped appropriate poetic quotations into the conversation.

How in the world had she learned such things? Obviously, from the prefect’s wife. And as time passed, her accomplishments increased. She began to hold herself in a different way. Her Mandarin improved so much that in a year, he supposed, it would be quite elegant.

What was her purpose? To please him? To show what she could do? Or might it be that after enjoying the life of a sub-prefect’s household, she might not want to go back to her poor hamlet. She might be thinking that after they parted she could become the concubine of another official, or even the wife of a merchant, perhaps.

A new suspicion came to him when he noticed something else.

At first he had observed that she gently avoided his attentions at the time of the month when she might conceive, and he did not complain. But then she gave that up. She was not too old to have a child. Was it possible that she was now calculating that she could make her position permanent if she gave him a child? And come to that, if such an event had occurred, what would he do? So one evening he asked her outright: “Are you risking having a child?”

“No,” she said calmly. “There’s an herbal drink you can take. It’s made from dandelion roots and the thunder-god vine. It’s very effective. The apothecary gives it to me.”

“I didn’t know that,” he confessed.

“Neither did I. The prefect’s wife told me about it.”

Shi-Rong wasn’t sure how he felt about the prefect’s wife intruding quite so far into his private life, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

The idea of keeping her for the longer term still remained. It was tempting. As a lover, she gave him everything a man could wish for. He constantly looked at her with a sense of wonder. While they were making love, there were moments when he would ask himself: How can it be that I feel this strange magic? She was like that southern region’s rose, with its never-fading color, repeatedly blooming. Or like the lotus, China’s symbol of purity, which rises out of the common mud to flower.

Whether Mei-Ling’s own emotions were engaged was another matter.

Did he know how she felt? Not really.

“You do so many things to please me,” he said to her kindly one day. “I hope you know that I am grateful that you learn so much.”

“I am glad you are pleased,” she said politely. She seemed to pause for a moment. “And I am grateful to you in turn, that I can learn such things for my daughter.”

For her daughter. Of course. How could I have been so vain, he thought, and so foolish? She is learning so that she can teach all this to her little girl, whose feet are being bound, to make her a lady. And though he might have liked it if she had been seeking to please only him, he couldn’t help admiring her.

Soon afterwards, she started learning to read and write, and curious to discover more about her mind, he even began to teach her a little himself.

She learned fast. “Another skill you’ll be able to teach your little girl,” he remarked laughingly.

But she shook her head. “I can get her started, but she’ll need a proper teacher. I’ll need money for that.”

Shi-Rong said nothing. But he got the