“I think I’ll take the white horse.” I said.
Two pairs of eyes shot back at me. The horse was the least imposing object among the bric-à-brac on display. The Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, pristine in her ceramic tutu, sitting on a bent knee, arms stretched out in the pose of the dying swan, was on one side. On the other, a deer in a snow white glazed forest, which, as children, my two siblings and I had pretended was Bambi. Knowing my love for ballets, both my siblings had thought I would go for the ballerina.
For a brief moment the milky horse was the foci of our attention. About six inches in height, it combined the delicacy of the ballerina with the grandiosity of the porcelain forest. The sculptor had shaped each part accurately, the budlike pointed ears, two dug-in commas for nostrils, an oversized belly and a tapering tail end. An egg shaped portion of the underbelly had been left unglazed, giving off a soft ecru tint. There were no seals or distinguishing marks that would place it chronologically in a particular period or dynasty.
My brother picked up the horse, none too gently, between index finger and thumb, turning it from one side to the other. My heart missed a half beat before I remembered that it was my turn to choose and I’d already called dibs on the horse.
My mother had passed away six months back and we had been left with the dubious task of dividing up her worldly goods. We had put it off as long as possible. Then one rainy day we organized all her possessions according to different categories: jewelry, silverware, vases, paintings, Chinese antiques, books and all the other paraphernalia we acquire during our brief journey on earth.
We took turns picking out what was precious to each of us. We had gone through the jewelry and silverware and were in the process of carving up the Chinese antiques.
While alive, Ma had doled out bits and pieces of her jewelry and personal possessions as suited her whim. The most precious ones she had squirreled away in the furthest corners of her drawers.
I don’t think Abba was a “collector” per se. Except for rows of books which adorned two large bookshelves in the living room, there was really nothing else I’d ever seen him collect. That is, till he was seduced by the beauty of Chinese porcelain.
Abba, my father, was a Second Secretary in the Pakistan Embassy in Peking, China, from mid-1959 to mid-1962. China during this time was called, “The People’s Republic of China,” with Mao Zedong at its helm, and any connection with the Bourgeoisie and their materialistic aptitude was frowned upon. In what came to be known at the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement”, certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. Elitist families with their collection of Chinese ceramics and jade ornaments relinquished their hold on their ancestral treasures and Ming dynasty and Qing Dynasty household goods flooded the markets. Nothing was sacred, vases, jars, urns, bowls, plates made of metal, jade, and ceramic was there for the eager buyer to look at with avaricious eyes and claim with greedy hands.
One man’s loss is another man’s gain. Foreigners, mostly from the different embassies, well aware of the value these items would bring outside the communist state, swooped down on the goods.
My brother, a few years my senior, had been shipped off to boarding school. With the promise of a school in Peking where I would get some rudimentary education, I was allowed to accompany my parents.
The House of the Sacred Heart School run by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary, was the only English medium school in Peking at that time and it was allowed to operate primarily for the convenience of the foreign missions. Without this school the only alternative for the children of the diplomats, too young to be sent to boarding school, would have been home schooling or being left to run wild.
Under the strict supervision of the missionary sisters I was able to move from grade V to grade VII during my three years in Peking. This meant moving from one end of the classroom to the other. Middle school was located in one room, with four to six students per class.
Living in a segregated “enclave” with the families of other diplomats, life consisted of a social triangle of school, home and public recreational centers. For a pre-teen in the middle of the last century, nothing else was really important. There was no TV, internet, or cell phone to connect us with the rest of the world, even if we had been interested. Newspapers and magazines that came in the diplomatic pouch were safeguarded until they were quite outdated and useless. Cocooned in the restricted life style set for us by Mao Zedong’s Red China we passed our days in a fool’s paradise.
Most days my friends and I walked to and back from school. We would pass the shanties and poor houses of the locals. Sadly, the only thing we took away from our surroundings was the strong musty smell of Napa cabbage drying on the roof tops. We turned up our snotty little noses, and made faces as we ran past these houses, holding our breath. Smug in our ignorance, we marveled that they lived on one egg per person a week and 200 grams of meat – information we gleaned from “hearsay” at home, at school or from friends. Our storerooms, on the other hand, were full of meat, chicken and fish. We were too naïve to ponder why the locals were so deprived, and too young to sympathize with their situation. Things were as they were.
We were not permitted to mix with the local people, even though after the first six months, my Chinese was fluent enough, thanks to the Amah, who came in during the day to look after my baby sister, and the cook, neither of whom spoke any English. Life was routine, a triangle of school, parks, home.
Life was “peaceful”. We were least aware that a red wave was spiraling over parts of China that would soon engulf the rest of the country, taking not just their culture but also their past with it. This seemingly peaceful state would last another four years.
In 1966, China would go through a Cultural Revolution, to be known formally as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The idea or stated goal of the Cultural Revolution would be to preserve Chinese Communism by purging remnants of capitalist elements from Chinese society, and re-imposing Mao Zedong’s, the then Chairman of the Communist Party, thought as the dominant ideology in the Communist Party of China. What were once the finest accoutrements of the imperial palace and an elite section of society would come to represent the excess and injustice of the old regime, and many porcelain antiques would be destroyed – a symbolic rejection of the old customs and habits. Keeping this “heritage” at home would come to be considered illegal, and many owners of these priceless artifacts would break their own pieces and threw them away. This Cultural Revolution would last almost ten years.
In 1961, however, normalcy reigned. Porcelain figurines were bought and sold all over Peking. There were sections of the city allotted to these curio shops. Porcelain statues of a saluting Mao, wedged between fat Chinamen with protruding tummies and wide grins, were on display everywhere. Among them, hidden in public view, were laid out the utensils and household crockery of the imperial palaces. If one had some basic knowledge of the history of China and Chinese porcelain and an eye for beauty, one would come across a vase or two from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) and if one were a connoisseur and it was their lucky day one might even find a porcelain or jade piece from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) .
Abba soon found, to his amusement, that collecting Chinese antiques seemed to be the prime hobby of most of the members of the diplomatic corps in those days. I don’t know who initiated Abba into the wonders of the antique market, but after a few months in Peking, he felt confident enough to venture out alone. After two years my father had picked up a more than rudimentary knowledge of seals and periods with the aid of a few books he had managed to scrounge in the old bookstores for a bare Yuan or two.
Unless the weather was exceptionally bad or there was a social do that couldn’t be avoided, Abba would put on his hefty long coat and his Russian ushanka hat, with the ear flaps either tied to the crown of the cap, or fastened at the chin depending on how cold it was outside, and thus protected, venture out into the cold.
There were districts in certain areas devoted to antiques and he would pick one and head for it. I vaguely remember accompanying him on a couple of these sojourns.
In little alleys and lanes, in front of innocuous hovels would be displayed porcelain plates and dishes, vases and jars. Suddenly from a shadowed corner, a wizened Chinaman would detach himself from the still-life and gesture with his head, perceptible only to the prospective buyer, usually a foreigner. The Chinaman would vanish behind a cloth screen or door and the foreigner, having ascertained he wasn’t attracting attention, would tentatively follow and be absorbed into the setting.
The avid buyer would find himself in a dimly lit room or passage with a collection of curios. Trying not to show too much interest even when his eyes lighted up in elation at a choice piece, he would be overwhelmed with the display. There was always something to be found, a celadon bowl, a vase encircled with the auspicious spread-eagled five bat emblem, plates with five clawed griffins, or even a jade writing set encrusted in silver belonging to some long gone scribe.
Abba would return hours later, sometimes with specks of snow on the shoulders of his innocuous grey coat and the crown of his cap, thick gloves clutching a cloth bag bulky with paper packages, his eyes alight with the glow of a gambler on a winning streak.
That particular night the roadsides were piled five feet high with the previous night’s snow and sleet.
“I think I’ll go out for a bit of air,” Abba murmured putting on his Russian cap and tying the laces under his chin.
“Must you?” My mother glanced at the overcast sky and the skift outside.
“Just one round. The bus routes are cleared up very fast. Someone might have brought out something new and with fewer people outside I might be able to get a good bargain.”
Ma smiled but kept her peace. Abba’s bargaining power consisted in doling out the vendor’s asking price after a little light hearted banter. However, he always managed to build a bridge of trust with the seller so that on Abbas’s next visit the Chinaman would welcome him with a few choice pieces.
That evening we sat down to dinner without Abba. For the last hour or so Ma had been mumbling to herself about people who just couldn’t stay home safe. He turned up as we were finishing dinner. He stood in the vestibule shaking off the snow from his boots and shoulders. As he removed his Russian cap I noticed how red his face was; his eyebrows stiff with ice crystals which gradually began to melt and drip down his face.
He only carried one package which he handed to my mother and said, “This might be one of my best buys.”
“What did you get for me Abba?” I blurted out.
Caught off-guard, he turned to me and in a rare show of affection, patted my head. “You can have this,” he said taking the parcel from my mother’s hands and offering it to me.
Wondering if it was a toy, perhaps a porcelain doll or a pretty container, I started unwrapping the layer upon layer of soft pink handmade paper. When the last shreds had been removed, I was holding a white porcelain horse. I tried to hide my disappointment.
My mother gently took the horse from my hands and said, “I’ll put it away safe for you.”
A year later, Abba was transferred to the Philippines and I was uprooted again. This time I was a high school student at St. Scholastica’s College, Manila. The Philippines was very different from Red China and though I missed my friends there, I was soon immersed in the fast paced life of a teenager in an American style school system.
One day, four years later, Abba handed me a newspaper and said in a gentle voice. “There’s something about your school in there.”
Excited, I started reading. My enthusiasm was replaced by a tight grip in my chest.
On August 24, 1966 the last seven foreign nuns with a few Chinese nuns who ran Sacred Heart School for the children of the diplomatic corps in Peking, were attacked and beaten up by the Red Guards. They devastated the house from top to bottom, breaking open doors which they found locked, destroying everything they came across, especially religious articles. That went on all night without interruption until 6 a.m.
I don’t remember the exact words but the images created by the written words are seared into my sixteen year old psyche: the serenity, purity and sanctity of my Alma Mater invaded by the red guards; Sister Thomas, who had been my class teacher in Grade VII, kneeling in front of the crucifix while young Red Guards, no older than myself, stood over her wielding bamboo sticks, ordering her to spit on the crucifix. Nuns who had always taught peace and respect, standing there terrified, some possibly questioning their vocation, helpless to protect themselves. While Sister Thomas had evoked terror in our hearts outside the classroom, we had loved her during class. She was strict but helpful, firm but fair, and to top it all she had a wonderfully wry sense of humour. As Asian children we had been taught to respect out teachers and elders. I felt nauseated with grief.
I remembered our first Christmas in Peking. We did not celebrate Christmas but my mother prepared a gift for my teachers and asked me to take it them on the last day of school, before we broke for the holidays. Curious as to what was in the package, I was aghast to see bottles of coke, tins of Danish butter and Jacobs Assorted Biscuits. What was my mother thinking? Butter? Biscuits? COKE?
I debated whether to leave the package in the basement or “lose” it somewhere on my way to school. When my mother made up her mind there was no deterring her, and much against my will I trudged to the Teachers’ Lounge which I had been fortunate enough not to see the interior of up till then.
Sister Thomas opened the door with a “Yeeees?”
Red faced I mumbled “MymothersaysMerryChristmas,” all in one breath and fled.
The following day Sister Thomas asked me to see her after class. Quaking in my shoes, I went to face her, my head bowed down.
“Hello, Razia.” Surprised that she even knew my name my head jerked up, “Please thank your mother for the Christmas gift. I sent it down to the infirmary and Sister Pauline and Sister Cordelia said to tell your mother how much they enjoyed the Coca Cola. Neither of them had had any since leaving Ireland fifteen years ago.”
Later I was to find out that these items were not available to the local public at that time and the Convent, being outside the diplomatic enclave did not have the advantages in food procurement that we did. That day I went home with the knowledge that mothers did know best – sometimes.
My brother shrugged and placed the white porcelain horse on my side of the table.
Later that night I sorted the bits and bobs of my inheritance and placed the 19th century Blanc de Chine porcelain horse in the center of my showcase. It stood in regal majesty, shouldering its thousand-year-old heritage.
For me, however, this horse, was not just a piece of Chinese antique, it was so much more. It was an archive of my childhood.
The horse represented carefree days traipsing through the nooks and crannies of Peking, lazy afternoons spent rowing in the lake of the Summer Palace with my friends. It exuded the flavors of exotic foods and fruits, and friends so close that to spend a day without them was unthinkable. It embodied the warmth in my parents’ eyes as they looked at each other, with love, longing and something else, perhaps the hope of a settled future where they would live among the beautiful antiques they had so lovingly acquired.
