Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls 1)

The separation of Europeans (meaning all whites), Asiatics (meaning anyone from across the Pacific who isn’t Chinese), and Chinese continues as we’re marched up a steep hill to a medical facility in one of the wooden buildings. A white woman wearing a white uniform and a starched white cap folds her hands in front of her and begins speaking in English in that same loud voice that’s somehow supposed to make up for the fact that no one except May and I understands what she’s saying.

“Many of you are trying to enter our country with loathsome and dangerous parasitic diseases,” she says. “This is unacceptable. The doctors and I are going to check you for trachoma, hookworm, filariasis, and liver fluke.”

The women around us start to cry. They don’t know what this woman wants, but she’s wearing white—the color of death. A Chinese woman in a long white (again!) cheongsam is brought in to translate. I’ve been moderately calm up to now, but as I listen to what these people plan to do to us, I start to tremble. We’re to be picked over like rice being prepared for cooking. When we’re told to undress, murmurs of distress ripple through the room. Not so long ago I would have snickered with May about the other women’s prudishness, because we hadn’t been like most Chinese women. We’d been beautiful girls. Good or bad, we’d shown our bodies. But most Chinese women are very private, never exposing themselves publicly and rarely even in private before their husbands or even their daughters.

But whatever looseness I had in the past has disappeared for good. I can’t bear to be unclothed. I can’t stand to be touched. I cling to May, and she steadies me. Even when the nurse tries to separate us, May stays with me. I bite my lips to keep from screaming when the doctor approaches. I look over his shoulder and out the window. I’m afraid that if I close my eyes I’ll be back in that shack with those men, hearing Mama’s screams, feeling… I keep my eyes wide open. Everything’s white and clean … well, cleaner than my memories of the shack. I pretend I don’t feel the icy chill of the doctor’s instruments or the white softness of his hands on my flesh; I stare out across the bay. We face away from San Francisco now, and all I see is gray water disappearing into gray rain.

Land has to be out there, but I have no idea how far it is. Once he’s done with me, I allow myself to breathe again.

One by one, the doctor makes his examinations while we all wait—shivering from cold and fear—until everyone has given a stool sample. So far we’ve been separated from other races, then men separated from women, and now we women are separated yet again: one group to go to the dormitory, one to stay in the hospital for treatment for hookworm, which can be cured, and one for those with liver fluke, to be instantly and without appeal deported back to China. Now the tears really flow.

May and I are in the group that goes to the women’s dormitory on the second floor of the Administration Building. Once we’re inside, the door is locked behind us. Rows of bunks two across and three high are connected to one another by iron poles attached to the ceiling and floor. There are no “beds” to sleep on, just wire mesh. This means that the frames can be folded up to create more space in the room, but apparently no one wants to sit on the floor. The distance between bunks is barely eighteen inches. The vertical gaps between the bunks are so tight that at first glance I can see I won’t be able to extend my arm without hitting the one above. Only the top bunk has enough space to sit upright, but that area is cluttered with drying laundry of the women already here, which hangs on strings tied between the poles at the ends of the bunks. On the floor beneath each occupied tier of bunks are a few tin bowls and cups.

May leaves my side and hurries down the center aisle. She claims two top bunks next to each other near the radiator. She climbs up, lies down, and promptly goes to sleep. No one brings our luggage. All we have with us are the clothes we’re wearing and our handbags.

THE NEXT MORNING May and I straighten up as best we can. The guards tell us we’re going to a hearing before the Board of Special Inquiry, but the women in the dormitory call it an interrogation. Just the word sounds ominous. One of the women suggests we sip cold water to calm our fear, but I’m not afraid. We have nothing to hide, and this is just a formality.

We’re herded with a small group of women into a room that looks like a cage. We sit on benches and stare at one another pensively. We Chinese have a phrase—eating bitterness. I tell myself that, whatever happens with our hearings, it won’t be as bad as the physical inspection, and it can’t be as bad as what has happened to May and me day after day since the moment Baba announced he had arranged marriages for us.

“Tell them what I told you to say and everything will be fine,” I whisper to May as we wait in the cage. “Then we’ll be able to leave this place.”

She nods thoughtfully. When the guard calls her name, I watch her enter a room and the door close. A moment later, the same guard motions me to another room. I put on a false smile, straighten my dress, and stride in with what I hope is an air of confidence. Two white men—one nearly bald, one with a mustache, and both wearing glasses—sit behind a table in the windowless room. They don’t return my smile. At a table set to the side, another white man busily cleans the keys on his typewriter. A Chinese man in an ill-fitting Western-style suit studies a file in his hands, looks at me and then back at the file.

“I see you were born in Yin Bo Village,” he says to me in Sze Yup as he passes the file to the bald man. “I am happy to speak to you in the dialect of the Four Districts.”

Before I can say that I know English, the bald man says, “Tell her to sit down.”

The interpreter motions to a chair. “I am Louie Fon,” he goes on in Sze Yup. “Your husband and I share the same clan name and the same home district.” He sits to my left. “The bald one before you is Chairman Plumb. The other one is Mr. White. The recorder is Mr. Hemstreet. You don’t have to concern yourself with him—”

“Let’s get on with it,” Chairman Plumb cuts in. “Ask her …”

Things go well at first. I know the date and year of my birth in both the Western and the lunar calendars. They ask the name of the village where I was born. Then I name the village where Sam was born and the day we were married. I recite the address where Sam and his family live in Los Angeles. And then …

“How many trees are in front of your alleged husband’s home in his village?”

When I don’t answer right away, four sets of eyes stare at me—curious, bored, triumphant, snide.

“Five trees stand before the house,” I answer, remembering what I read in the coaching book. “The right side of the house has no trees. A ginkgo tree grows on the left.”

“And how many rooms are in the house where your natal family lives?”

I’ve been so focused on the answers from Sam’s coaching book that I haven’t considered they’d ask anything so detailed about me. I try to think what the right answer would be. Count the bathrooms or not? Count before or after the rooms were divided for our boarders?

“Six main rooms—”

Before I can explain myself, they ask how many guests were at my “alleged” wedding.

“Seven,” I answer.

“Did you and your guests have anything to eat?”

“We had rice and eight dishes. It was a hotel dinner, not a banquet.”

“How was the table set?”

“Western style but with chopsticks.”

“Did you serve betel nuts to the guests? Did you pour tea?”