Mrs. Spring Fragrance

A Collection of Chinese-American Short Stories

Sui Sin Far

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780486782737
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

These remarkable tales rank among the first works of fiction published by a Chinese-American author. The daughter of an English shipping merchant and his Chinese wife, Edith Maude Eaton grew up in Canada and settled in the United States. She pursued a career in journalism under the pen name Sui Sin Far. A mixed-heritage woman in a culture rife with anti-Chinese sentiment, she was a pioneer in expressing the struggles and triumphs of the immigrant experience.
In these deceptively simple fables of family life, Sui Sin Far offers revealing views of life in Seattle and San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century. Her observations of the tensions of cultural assimilation reflect the difficulties of maintaining old customs in a new environment as well as the challenges that accompany new freedoms. This collection features the title story, in which a young Chinese woman acts as a bridge between immigrant parents and their Americanized children; `In the Land of the Free,` an ironically titled account of suffering inflicted by discriminatory immigration laws; `The Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese`; `The Three Souls of Ah So Nan`; `The Sing Song Woman`; and other captivating tales.

The Wisdom of the New

I

OLD Li Wang, the peddler, who had lived in the land beyond the sea, was wont to declare: “For every cent that a man makes here, he can make one hundred there.”

“Then, why,” would ask Sankwei, “do you now have to move from door to door to fill your bowl with rice?”

And the old man would sigh and answer:

“Because where one learns how to make gold, one also learns how to lose it.”

“How to lose it!” echoed Wou Sankwei. “Tell me all about it.”

So the old man would tell stories about the winning and the losing, and the stories of the losing were even more fascinating than the stories of the winning.

“Yes, that was life,” he would conclude. “Life, life.”

At such times the boy would gaze across the water with wistful eyes. The land beyond the sea was calling to him.

The place was a sleepy little south coast town where the years slipped by monotonously. The boy was the only son of the man who had been the town magistrate.

Had his father lived, Wou Sankwei would have been sent to complete his schooling in another province. As it was he did nothing but sleep, dream, and occasionally get into mischief. What else was there to do? His mother and sister waited upon him hand and foot. Was he not the son of the house? The family income was small, scarcely sufficient for their needs; but there was no way by which he could add to it, unless, indeed, he disgraced the name of Wou by becoming a common fisherman. The great green waves lifted white arms of foam to him, and the fishes gleaming and lurking in the waters seemed to beseech him to draw them from the deep; but his mother shook her head.

“Should you become a fisherman,” said she, “your family would lose face. Remember that your father was a magistrate.”

When he was about nineteen there returned to the town one who had been absent for many years. Ching Kee, like old Li Wang, had also lived in the land beyond the sea; but unlike old Li Wang he had accumulated a small fortune.

“ ’Tis a hard life over there,” said he, “but ’tis worth while. At least one can be a man, and can work at what work comes his way without losing face.” Then he laughed at Wou Sankwei’s flabby muscles, at his soft, dark eyes, and plump, white hands.

“If you lived in America,” said he, “you would learn to be ashamed of such beauty.”

Whereupon Wou Sankwei made up his mind that he would go to America, the land beyond the sea. Better any life than that of a woman man.

He talked long and earnestly with his mother. “Give me your blessing,” said he. “I will work and save money. What I send home will bring you many a comfort, and when I come back to China, it may be that I shall be able to complete my studies and obtain a degree. If not, my knowledge of the foreign language which I shall acquire, will enable me to take a position which will not disgrace the name of Wou.”

His mother listened and thought. She was ambitious for her son whom she loved beyond all things on earth. Moreover, had not Sik Ping, a Canton merchant, who had visited the little town two moons ago, declared to Hum Wah, who traded in palm leaves, that the signs of the times were that the son of a cobbler, returned from America with the foreign language, could easier command a position of consequence than the son of a schoolteacher unacquainted with any tongue but that of his motherland?

“Very well,” she acquiesced; “but before you go I must find you a wife. Only your son, my son, can comfort me for your loss.”

II

WOU SANKWEI stood behind his desk, busily entering figures in a long yellow book. Now and then he would thrust the hair pencil with which he worked behind his ears and manipulate with deft fingers a Chinese counting machine. Wou Sankwei was the junior partner and bookkeeper of the firm of Leung Tang Wou & Co. of San Francisco. He had been in America seven years and had made good use of his time. Self-improvement had been his object and ambition, even more than the acquirement of a fortune, and who, looking at his fine, intelligent face and listening to his careful English, could say that he had failed?

One of his partners called his name. Some ladies wished to speak to him. Wou Sankwei hastened to the front of the store. One of his callers, a motherly looking woman, was the friend who had taken him under her wing shortly after his arrival in America. She had come to invite him to spend the evening with her and her niece, the young girl who accompanied her.

After his callers had left, Sankwei returned to his desk and worked steadily until the hour for his evening meal, which he took in the Chinese restaurant across the street from the bazaar. He hurried through with this, as before going to his friend’s house, he had a somewhat important letter to write and mail. His mother had died a year before, and the uncle, to whom he was writing, had taken his wife and son into his home until such time as his nephew could send for them. Now the time had come.

Wou Sankwei’s memory of the woman who was his wife was very faint. How could it be otherwise? She had come to him but three weeks before the sailing of the vessel which had brought him to America, and until then he had not seen her face. But she was his wife and the mother of his son. Ever since he had worked in America he had sent money for her support, and she had proved a good daughter to his mother.

As he sat down to write he decided that he would welcome her with a big dinner to his countrymen.

“Yes,” he replied to Mrs. Dean, later on in the evening, “I have sent for my wife.”

“I am so glad,” said the lady. “Mr. Wou”— turning to her niece—“has not seen his wife for seven years.”

“Deary me!” exclaimed the young girl. “What a lot of letters you must have written!”

“I have not written her one,” returned the young man somewhat stiffly.

Adah Charlton looked up in surprise. “Why—” she began.

“Mr. Wou used to be such a studious boy when I first knew him,” interrupted Mrs. Dean, laying her hand affectionately upon the young man’s shoulder. “Now, it is all business. But you won’t forget the concert on Saturday evening.”

“No, I will not forget,” answered Wou Sankwei.

“He has never written to his wife,” explained Mrs. Dean when she and her niece were alone, “because his wife can neither read nor write.”

“Oh, isn’t that sad!” murmured Adah Charlton, her own winsome face becoming pensive.

“They don’t seem to think so. It is the Chinese custom to educate only the boys. At least it has been so in the past. Sankwei himself is unusually bright. Poor boy! He began life here as a laundryman, and you may be sure that it must have been hard on him, for, as the son of a petty Chinese Government official, he had not been accustomed to manual labor. But Chinese character is wonderful; and now after seven years in this country, he enjoys a reputation as a business man amongst his countrymen, and is as up to date as any young American.”

“But, Auntie, isn’t it dreadful to think that a man should live away from his wife for so many years without any communication between them whatsoever except through others.”

“It is dreadful to our minds, but not to theirs. Everything with them is a matter of duty. Sankwei married his wife as a matter of duty. He sends for her as a matter of duty.”

“I wonder if it is all duty on her side,” mused the girl.

Mrs. Dean smiled. “You are too romantic, Adah,” said she. “I hope, however, that when she does come, they will be happy together. I think almost as much of Sankwei as I do of my own boy.”

III

PAU LIN, the wife of Wou Sankwei, sat in a corner of the deck of the big steamer, awaiting the coming of her husband. Beside her, leaning his little queued head against her shoulder, stood her six-year-old son. He had been ailing throughout the voyage, and his small face was pinched with pain. His mother, who had been nursing him every night since the ship had left port, appeared very worn and tired. This, despite the fact that with a feminine desire to make herself fair to see in the eyes of her husband, she had arrayed herself in a heavily embroidered purple costume, whitened her forehead and cheeks with powder, and tinted her lips with carmine.

He came at last, looking over and beyond her. There were two others of her countrywomen awaiting the men who had sent for them, and each had a child, so that for a moment he seemed somewhat bewildered. Only when the ship’s officer pointed out and named her, did he know her as his. Then he came forward, spoke a few words of formal welcome, and, lifting the child in his arms, began questioning her as to its health.

She answered in low monosyllables. At his greeting she had raised her patient eyes to his face—the face of the husband whom she had not seen for seven long years—then the eager look of expectancy which had crossed her own faded away, her eyelids drooped, and her countenance assumed an almost sullen expression.

“Ah, poor Sankwei!” exclaimed Mrs. Dean, who with Adah Charlton stood some little distance apart from the family group.

“Poor wife!” murmured the young girl. She moved forward and would have taken in her own white hands the ringed ones of the Chinese woman, but the young man gently restrained her. “She cannot understand you,” said he. As the young girl fell back, he explained to his wife the presence of the stranger women. They were there to bid her welcome; they were kind and good and wished to be her friends as well as his.

Pau Lin looked away. Adah Charlton’s bright face, and the tone in her husband’s voice when he spoke to the young girl, aroused a suspicion in her mind—a suspicion natural to one who had come from a land where friendship between a man and woman is almost unknown.

“Poor little thing! How shy she is!” exclaimed Mrs. Dean.

Sankwei was glad that neither she nor the young girl understood the meaning of the averted face.

Thus began Wou Sankwei’s life in America as a family man. He soon became accustomed to the change, which was not such a great one after all. Pau Lin was more of an accessory than a part of his life. She interfered not at all with his studies, his business, or his friends, and when not engaged in housework or sewing, spent most of her time in the society of one or the other of the merchants’ wives who lived in the flats and apartments around her own. She kept up the Chinese custom of taking her meals after her husband or at a separate table, and observed faithfully the rule laid down for her by her late mother-in-law: to keep a quiet tongue in the presence of her man. Sankwei, on his part, was always kind and indulgent. He bought her silk dresses, hair ornaments, fans, and sweetmeats. He ordered her favorite dishes from the Chinese restaurant. When she wished to go out with her women friends, he hired a carriage, and shortly after her advent erected behind her sleeping room a chapel for the ancestral tablet and gorgeous goddess which she had brought over seas with her.

Upon the child both parents lavished affection. He was a quaint, serious little fellow, small for his age and requiring much care. Although naturally much attached to his mother, he became also very fond of his father who, more like an elder brother than a parent, delighted in playing all kinds of games with him, and whom he followed about like a little dog. Adah Charlton took a great fancy to him and sketched him in many different poses for a book on Chinese children which she was illustrating.

“He will be strong enough to go to school next year,” said Sankwei to her one day. “Later on I intend to put him through an American college.”

“What does your wife think of a Western training for him?” inquired the young girl.

“I have not consulted her about the matter,” he answered. “A woman does not understand such things.”

“A woman, Mr. Wou,” declared Adah, “understands such things as well as and sometimes better than a man.”

“An American woman, maybe,” amended Sankwei; “but not a Chinese.”

From the first Pau Lin had shown no disposition to become Americanized, and Sankwei himself had not urged it.

“I do appreciate the advantages of becoming westernized,” said he to Mrs. Dean whose influence and interest in his studies in America had helped him to become what he was, “but it is not as if she had come here as I came, in her learning days. The time for learning with her is over.”

One evening, upon returning from his store, he found the little Yen sobbing pitifully.

“What!” he teased, “A man— and weeping.”

The boy tried to hide his face, and as he did so, the father noticed that his little hand was red and swollen. He strode into the kitchen where Pau Lin was preparing the evening meal.

“The little child who is not strong—is there anything he could do to merit the infliction of pain?” he questioned.

Pau Lin faced her husband. “Yes, I think so,” said she.

“What?”

“I forbade him to speak the language of the white women, and he disobeyed me. He had words in that tongue with the white boy from the next street.”

Sankwei was astounded.

“We are living in the white man’s country,” said he. “The child will have to learn the white man’s language.”

“Not my child,” answered Pau Lin.

Sankwei turned away from her. “Come, little one,” said he to his son, “we will take supper tonight at the restaurant, and afterwards Yen shall see a show.”

Pau Lin laid down the dish of vegetables which she was straining and took from a hook a small wrap which she adjusted around the boy.

“Now go with thy father,” said she sternly.

But the boy clung to her—to the hand which had punished him. “I will sup with you,” he cried, “I will sup with you.”

“Go,” repeated his mother, pushing him from her. And as the two passed over the threshold, she called to the father: “Keep the wrap around the child. The night air is chill.”

Late that night, while father and son were peacefully sleeping, the wife and mother arose, and lifting gently the unconscious boy, bore him into the next room wher...