The call, p.54
The Call, page 54
The American Board people at Paoting had generously given the Treadups temporary housing for as long as David would need to buy a small compound for the Association, where the family would make its home for good and where he would have the headquarters for his literacy work; and they had wound up, once again, downstairs from Mesdemoiselles Selden and Demestrie.
Old times! Miss Titty called Em “Hazy” and patted David’s cheek. Some things were different: Miss Selden’s hair was gray and Miss Demestrie had a lame knee—and the Treadups were five in number, not two. The three boys slept on cots in the “living room.” Treadups were all over each other. There was a game called sardines, and they were playing it. No one minded. Paterfamilias was young again. He bellowed, slightly off key, in his cold bath every morning:
When you hear dem-a bells go ding, ling, ling,
All join round and sweetly you must sing…
* * *
—
ON HIS second day in Paoting, Treadup wrote to Johnny Wu in Peking ordering three thousand copies of all four parts of the People’s One Thousand Character Lessons. The diary: “Might as well be optimistic.”
* * *
—
TREADUP knew he would need, in all things, and especially in launching his literacy campaigns in the villages, a Chinese gentleman of impeccable credentials as his partner and agent. An elderly man, to begin with, so all would respect him. Someone who knew the area well. A scholar, perhaps. A Christian. A man of some standing, either of wealth or of position—not one of your rapscallion rice-bowl Christians whom shrewd villagers would instantly recognize as a confidence man. One who was “modern”—who wanted a new China enough to work hard for it. And a man, if possible, with a confident temperament: the sort who would laugh at things that were funny, not only at things that were embarrassing.
He asked everyone and everywhere for such a man, and finally, one day, Dr. Cowley, still holding forth at the northern suburb, grudgingly made a suggestion. Dr. Cowley said he knew a chap named Hsiao, a landholder in a hsien to the southeast of Paoting, a man, he said, “of old-fashioned manners but up-to-the-minute thinking,” whom he, Cowley, had converted many, many years ago. So long ago, indeed, that one of Hsiao’s early adventures as a Christian had been the purchase of his life from some Boxers—at a time when many of his fellow converts were being butchered—by giving up to them his fur-lined coat and American leather shoes. He was in his late fifties, slender and wiry but with the enthusiasm and energy, Cowley said, “of a young billy-goat.”
Treadup went to call on this Mr. Hsiao four times. The two men liked each other at once. Impatient as he was to get started, David took his time with this courtly gentleman. Only on the third visit did he broach to Mr. Hsiao his proposal of a new life of hard work and devotion. During the fourth, Mr. Hsiao ceremoniously declared that he would be honored to do what he could to help in this most unorthodox work, teaching peasants to read.
* * *
—
IT WAS not easy to buy land for the new compound. The anti-Christian movement among the radicals had already reached its long arm into the real estate market, where it reinforced the greed that had been there all along. The moment a prospective seller learned that the purchaser was a mu-shih, a missionary, the price shot up to the stars. So Treadup went to Mr. Hsiao, who with great discretion found a front man for a front man for an agent of a friend of a friend who knew of someone who wanted to buy some land; and with covers of such depth a purchase was finally made on fair terms—a former temple ground north of the city.
* * *
—
THE EXCITEMENT now in Treadup’s letters!
One letter to his parents, on April 23, 1924, tells that New York has asked him for an accurate survey of the plot. He has managed to get his hands on a German transit (“looted from some European store somewhere during some ‘revolution’ ”) which he has mounted on a camera tripod, and with this makeshift rig and a couple of Chinese carpenter’s plumb bobs and a tape measure, he sallies out, certain that he can lay out the boundaries and get it all down on paper. He soon finds himself surrounded by a swarm of advisers, including neighboring property owners. They are working on the southern side of the property. They have this exchange:
TREADUP “How far does my property extend?”
NEIGHBOR “Into the alley.”
TREADUP “But how far?”
SECOND NEIGHBOR “About three English feet. Four feet.”
TREADUP “But is there no settled limit?”
THIRD NEIGHBOR “The alley belongs to the abutters.”
TREADUP “Halfway out, then?”
FIRST NEIGHBOR “Ay! No! The alley is the only way people have to get through. We have to leave room for the public to pass.”
Treadup gathers, after an hour or so of this, that “the proper method, when you want to put up your wall, is to call out the neighbors, name a middleman, move your marker stake back and forth until the protests have subsided to a minimum, and then drive the stake home. That’s where the ‘official’ boundary belongs….”
From a letter to brother Paul, in mid-May:
A carpenter is sawing away on what will be a bookshelf. Two masons, two wall scrapers, three painters, and two paperhangers are all asking for directions on how to do things ‘à la Américain!’ Every hour on the hour I get down on my knees and pray for patience.
* * *
—
“HE BEHAVES,” Emily wrote home,
like a young man who’s in love for the first time. In other words, he flaps around like a chicken with its head cut off. Grinning the whole time till you think he’s a dementia case. He plans to row on the Fu River, but his shell isn’t here yet, so he plays tennis—smashes the ball with all his strength, as if that were the way to get rid of the sins of this world. The awful singing in the morning! I tell you, dear ones, it is a severe trial to live with a happy man.
* * *
—
AT LAST, on a July day, he began.
For weeks he had been hiking into the countryside to get the feel of the villages. He decided to make his start in a group of five villages where the American Board evangelists had, over the years, made some headway.
He and Mr. Hsiao arrived in the first of them on foot. It was a poor village of some twenty-five mud houses, the name of which translated to Second Ma Family Village. They asked around for a Christian farmer whose name Letitia Selden had given David.
They were directed to a field dotted with grave mounds, where the farmer was hoeing along rows of hip-high sorghum. At first the man was suspicious; seeing Mr. Hsiao so well dressed, he must have assumed that some outrageous new tax was about to be levied. But Mr. Hsiao put him at ease: He merely wanted an introduction to the village headman, for, he said, he and his American friend had a great Christian gift to give the village.
Soon they were seated cross-legged on the k’ang in the house of a white-haired elder, named, of course, Ma. They were grouped around a low square table on which the women of the house placed hot teapots and riceware cups—the best in the village, no doubt. The village telegraph seemed to be at work, because one by one the senior men of the village drifted in, straight from the fields, and stood by the edge of the k’ang, politely listening.
Mr. Hsiao did all the talking. Treadup had primed him. Hospitality floated up into the room on bluish wisps of tobacco smoke, but the villagers’ old instincts of caution brought some sharp questions. The presence of a foreigner seemed to be, to these farmers, neither a plus nor a minus; they were used to having missionaries lollygagging around. The only peculiar thing about this one seemed to be that he was so enormous; he groaned trying to sit cross-legged on the reed matting on the hard mud k’ang.
By agreement beforehand, Mr. Hsiao did not move fast toward the subject of literacy; he talked around and around it. They left.
* * *
—
MR. HSIAO ascertained a few days later that rumors were flying around that village and all the nearby villages. Two men, one of them hairy, had come to the area to conscript young men and boys to be soldiers; mothers warned their sons to be on the lookout. One of them had captured some souls in his box (taken photographs). They were getting information for a new poll tax; a person must be guarded in speaking to them. They had come to force people to eat religion. They were agents of the government to suppress gambling and opium smoking. How could you believe that they were there to help people, when they asked nothing in return? What fool would work for nothing? Watch out! Trickery!
* * *
—
TREADUP and Mr. Hsiao decided to go slowly: to appear from time to time in the villages, be friendly, not rush things. They began talking after a while about why people in the cities could deceive and cheat country people—they could read. At first they left it at that. The rumors proliferated but died out one by one as the malign predictions were not borne out. Finally one day Mr. Hsiao asked if he and his friend could speak with the villagers at a nearby temple on the next market day. Chief Ma shrugged his shoulders and turned up his hands. That seemed to be permission enough.
* * *
—
SO THEY DID from village to village.
* * *
—
MARKET DAY in Second Ma Family Village.
Mr. Hsiao makes the introduction, but this time Treadup is the main speaker—in Mandarin. He puts on a show. He has brought blind-man posters, but he has brought something else, too, which doesn’t seem to have much to do with literacy, at least in an immediate way. It is the battered old Wrestling Gyroscope. He has decided to amaze first and persuade afterward.
Two of the strongest and most unpopular men in the village cannot budge the wheel! Much laughter! The big-nose modulates. He has grown serious. Have these people heard that China is now a Republic?
A few nod yes.
What is a Republic? A Republic is supposed to be governed by the people—the lao pai hsing, the “Old Hundred Names.” People? Who are the lao pai hsing? Is the name Ma not one of the old hundred? Did the people of this village choose the governor of Hopei or the President of China? Did they decide what taxes they should pay? Have they decided there should be war all the time, with generals demanding straw and sorghum and piglets? Have they chosen to send off their carts and provisions and brothers to be used to kill other Chinese?
There is a heavy silence. Then: “Why do we suffer all these evils? Why don’t we have a government chosen by the lao pai hsing which serves the lao pai hsing instead of feeding them bitterness?” Now he shifts. “How many members of the Ma clan understood why those two men could not push over the wheel?” None. “Do you know why Mr. Hsiao and I understand?” It was because they could read and write. They had studied science.
Then: “How many of you can read and write?”
Two men in the entire village.
“How many would like to be able to read and write?”
No hands.
“Why haven’t you learned?”
Answers: “No time.” “I have to work in the fields.” “We have to eat.” “The village has no money, a teacher costs money.”
Now the persuasion, in two hours of patient and indirect talking. The gist: A way has been found to teach you how to read and write without taking you away from your farm work. We will do it in the long winter evenings when it’s too dark to work in the fields and when you can’t go to market. We will set up evening classes, we will bring the teachers to you—and we won’t charge you anything….
At the end of the day Mr. Hsiao and the headman made a kind of pact. Each put his fists side by side and bowed to the other, to seal some undefined agreement. At least he and Treadup knew they could come back another time.
* * *
—
IT WAS time to send the two older boys off to the mission boarding school at T’ungchow. Philip was fifteen, Absolom twelve. Emily wrote David’s brother Paul Treadup:
Little Abbo, twelve years old! Too tender an age to be packed off! But we have to do it. The boys will be going home to the States to college, and they must be prepared, and everyone says that T’ungchow is a superb school. And all the foreigners do send their tiny ones off—the English way.
The wrench of the boys’ departure and the reckless energy of her husband’s high spirits once again drove Emily out into the streets.
Letitia Selden had a suggestion. The Congregationalists had taught a flock of so-called Bible women—converts who had become native distributors of tracts, mostly widows or overflow females from poor families—how to support themselves by doing linen tatting of table covers, bedspreads, scarves, and “throws” for export to America. Miss Demestrie had had the supervision of this charity, but her bad knee was making it harder and harder for her to get into the city and back; and Miss Titty asked Emily Treadup if she would like to take on the care of the tatting workers. She said she would.
She found the tatting “factory”—less than a dozen women ruining their eyes in a rented room in a native church compound—a pathetic enterprise. But she listened to the Bible women and began to learn about the life of working people in this northern city. She began to explore. Emboldened by her experiences in Shanghai, she poked into some hutungs where a foreign lady had probably never been seen. What she found in those back alleys shocked her even more than the conditions she had seen in Shanghai. The principal manufacture was cotton cloth; the weaving mills were worse, she thought, than Shanghai’s filatures. There were also, however, hundreds or perhaps thousands of small piecework shops. Many produced medicines, both Chinese and Western. Emily was horrified by the number of women she saw in this medicine-producing city with trachoma, and children with the hideous white scabs of virulent fungi, and ricksha pullers with volcanic ulcers on their legs.
One day she came home in tears. A crowd of women had followed her through the streets, begging and wailing. She learned from them that they had been hairnet workers, who had used to earn a two-cent copper for each five hairnets they tied (every one with a couple of hundred tiny knots in strands of real human hair), but all the hairnet factories in the city had been shut down. Emily asked the women to direct her to one of the owners. “David! David!” she said. “He sat there in his silk gown and told me that there was nothing he could do. He had no control over American fashions. He said very coldly that what had made all those hairnet women hungry, David, was that all the girls in the States have taken to bobbing their hair.”
From a letter to her parents in June:
Last night there was an appalling fire in the Ching Shang Cotton Mill. It started about midnight, and many of the women and children who worked there were sleeping in the building—they had no other homes—and they were caught in a death trap. The main stairs were either locked or cut off by flames, and the windows were tightly barred—to keep thieves out! There were no emergency exits and no provisions of any kind for fighting fire. The approaches to the factory were so narrow and inaccessible that the fire engines could not be brought onto the scene of disaster. More than three hundred people eventually got out of the building with the help of Boy Scouts and spectators who managed to pry open some of the window bars from the outside. But there were some hundred twenty women and children trapped within who couldn’t escape and were consumed by the flames. I ask David, and O Heavenly Father I ask thee: What can I do? What can one woman do to change this world? And then I get even more bitter, and I say to David that there isn’t time for him to teach four hundred million blind Chinese to read. And what makes him think that reading is a cure-all? Will reading cure greed or heal the sick or feed the starving? There’s so much else—too much!—too much!—my hungry hairnet women, those horrible scabs on children’s heads, I can’t even think about those charred bodies….
* * *
—
THERE WAS “much else” in the Treadups’ own lives, too, but no matter what hardships came along, or what doubts Emily put in David’s way, his mood seemed to feed on adversity, and he went about his work with a blind dash.
The family moved into their new home in the tight little compound. The house was not grand, but there was room for everyone; and David had a study again. Emily found two poorly trained male servants. Just about when the family moved in, the hottest weather came on. For a month the thermometer went each day over 100 degrees. The Congregationalists kindly let the Treadups take ice from their ice house, but in mid-July the supply gave out. There were no electric fans to be found in the city. The three boys came down with a puzzling low fever. Emily had a terrible fright when, making up little Paul’s bed one morning, she found a huge scorpion under the covers. The only vegetables in the market were cabbage and a variety of yellow squash. There were no fresh fruits. Both servants fell ill with violent adult mumps which went to their testicles, and Emily had to do all the housework in the heat. David had an attack of dysentery, which, according to his diary, “I dealt with summarily, with a purgative from Calcutta which went through me like canister shot.”
* * *
—
ONE DAY a huge crate came. In it was a gift from old Syracuse supporters in the L. C. Smith Typewriter Company. The crate was far too big for a typewriter.
