Excerpts
The Japanese Sandman
Prologue
I woke up to the sound of a scuffle by our bed in the pavilion room. Black-clad figures loomed; something flashed down. The door slammed.
And then in slow motion, and in terrible detail, I found out what had happened. My husband was not beside me. As I slid endlessly across the bed I could feel the warmth where he had been. What was that smell?
In the moonlight I looked down to see the head and separated body of Shiying on the floor. Supported on one elbow I leaned over. With the sleeve of my nightgown I wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.
Then I began to scream.
Why The Japanese Sandman?
It is the title of an American popular song released in 1920 and is appropriate to the fate of one of the people in the book, the wife of a brilliant young writer of that era. Given that she was a dance hostess, I’ll be able to use the marvellous (mainly American) popular music of this time period (which fellow aficionados such as Dr. Greg Leck will enjoy) as a part of the background. It was widely played in Shanghai. The jointly British and American International Settlement of Shanghai received music and films from the United States far sooner than did Europe. Of course, the flowering of popular writing, and films in the United States had a corresponding one in China.
Excerpts
Over time The Japanese Sandman has changed and is becoming ever more sinister. He looms from the shadows behind me. … Now, in my dreams I can almost see the face of my nocturnal companion; and with dread I know The Japanese Sandman is coming closer. Now, he is my worst nightmare.
Our household typified the ambivalent attitude of the wealthier and better-educated Chinese to Western foreigners: on the one hand decrying their financial and political presence as dangerous to Chinese sovereignty, but on the other hand regarding Western clothes, education and culture as epitomizing the modern image they so wished to project themselves.
There was no breeze. The horses waiting to take us back hung their heads. We were silent. The birds and animals would have been active in the early morning; but now they were silent also, … But, as we turned to leave, high above us the desolate cry of a single white tailed fish eagle knifed through the thick humidity. “Eheu, Hélas … Alas!” it cried, in a timeless language each mourner understood.
I loved the calm voice and comforting scent of Ah Ailing, the scent of mint and cinnamon that she rubbed on her hands and face, when she was in the cosy kitchen of the family house in Canton.
I should have felt safer in Hong Kong: farther from war, nearer to my family. But that year’s unusually chill winds slicing down from the north failed to scour Shanghai’s charnel house stench from my nostrils: and in their wild wailing down the tree-lined streets, they seemed to bring rumours of what the Japanese were doing in Nanking, dark whispers that echoed in my dreams …
