province, I can remember the consternation of my parents and our liberal Chinese friends and the satisfaction of our conservative Chinese friends, including my tutor, Mr. Kung, when we heard the news one early morning that by a coup d’etat the young Emperor had been taken prisoner and locked up on an island, that Yuan Shih-k’ai, the Commander of the new Western-trained Chinese army, had deserted the Emperor to take his side with the Empress Dowager, that six of the reformers had been killed and only two of the leaders, K’ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, had escaped. A strange silence pervaded our region that day and doubtless it spread over the whole country. What now was to happen? The foreign governments, it became evident during the next few weeks, would do nothing. Opinion was divided but on the whole it sided with the Empress Dowager and with the conservative party. The foreign governments did not welcome reforms which might rouse the people of China to knowledge of what had been going on.
The first edict we next received was signed by the Emperor, but every one knew that the Empress had written it and sent it out over his name and the imperial seal. It was moderate enough, mildly saying that the reforms were going too fast and the people were becoming confused.
“Our real desire,” the edict announced reasonably, “was to make away with superfluous posts for the sake of economy; whereas, on the contrary, we find rumors flying abroad that we intend to change wholesale the customs of the Empire, and, in consequence, innumerable suggestions of reform have come to be presented to us. If we allowed this to go on, none of us would know to what pass matters would come. Hence, unless we hasten to express our present wishes clearly before all, we greatly fear that petty officials and their underlings will place their own construction on what commands have gone before, and create a ferment in the midst of the usual calm of the people. This will indeed be contrary to our desire, and put our reforms for strengthening and enriching our empire to naught.”
Then followed the retraction of all the young Emperor’s edicts during the past hundred days, and we knew that The Venerable Ancestor was back on the throne again and in full power.
It was in the year of 1900, when I was eight years old, that the two worlds of my childhood finally split apart. I had held them tied together by my very existence, I could see them clearly and combined from our vantage point on the hill above the Yangtse River. Sometimes in the morning when I looked abroad from our veranda, my mind flowed on beyond the green hillsides and the greener valleys, their ponds like diamonds in the sunshine, beyond the dark-roofed city and the bright breadths of the river, beyond to the sea. Across the sea was America, my own land, about which I knew nothing, and so upon which my imagination played with fantastic freedom. It all belonged to me, the near hills and the valleys, the city and the river, the sea and the land of my fathers.
In an academic fashion I knew, of course, even in those early years, that I was not Chinese, and I felt a rough justice in street urchins calling me “little foreign devil,” or in their pretending when they saw me that it would soon rain, since devils, they said, come out only when it is going to rain. I knew that I was no devil, and to be called one did not trouble me because I was still secure in my Chinese world. Did these naughty children know me, they would not call me a devil, and I merely made reply that they were the children of turtles—that is to say, they were bastards, a remark which sent them into shocked silence. My parents did not know for years the significance of the retort, and by that time I was old enough to be ashamed of it myself.
In the year of 1900, however, throughout the spring, the beautiful springtime of the Yangtse River Valley, I felt my world splitting unexpectedly into its parts. The stream
The first edict we next received was signed by the Emperor, but every one knew that the Empress had written it and sent it out over his name and the imperial seal. It was moderate enough, mildly saying that the reforms were going too fast and the people were becoming confused.
“Our real desire,” the edict announced reasonably, “was to make away with superfluous posts for the sake of economy; whereas, on the contrary, we find rumors flying abroad that we intend to change wholesale the customs of the Empire, and, in consequence, innumerable suggestions of reform have come to be presented to us. If we allowed this to go on, none of us would know to what pass matters would come. Hence, unless we hasten to express our present wishes clearly before all, we greatly fear that petty officials and their underlings will place their own construction on what commands have gone before, and create a ferment in the midst of the usual calm of the people. This will indeed be contrary to our desire, and put our reforms for strengthening and enriching our empire to naught.”
Then followed the retraction of all the young Emperor’s edicts during the past hundred days, and we knew that The Venerable Ancestor was back on the throne again and in full power.
It was in the year of 1900, when I was eight years old, that the two worlds of my childhood finally split apart. I had held them tied together by my very existence, I could see them clearly and combined from our vantage point on the hill above the Yangtse River. Sometimes in the morning when I looked abroad from our veranda, my mind flowed on beyond the green hillsides and the greener valleys, their ponds like diamonds in the sunshine, beyond the dark-roofed city and the bright breadths of the river, beyond to the sea. Across the sea was America, my own land, about which I knew nothing, and so upon which my imagination played with fantastic freedom. It all belonged to me, the near hills and the valleys, the city and the river, the sea and the land of my fathers.
In an academic fashion I knew, of course, even in those early years, that I was not Chinese, and I felt a rough justice in street urchins calling me “little foreign devil,” or in their pretending when they saw me that it would soon rain, since devils, they said, come out only when it is going to rain. I knew that I was no devil, and to be called one did not trouble me because I was still secure in my Chinese world. Did these naughty children know me, they would not call me a devil, and I merely made reply that they were the children of turtles—that is to say, they were bastards, a remark which sent them into shocked silence. My parents did not know for years the significance of the retort, and by that time I was old enough to be ashamed of it myself.
In the year of 1900, however, throughout the spring, the beautiful springtime of the Yangtse River Valley, I felt my world splitting unexpectedly into its parts. The stream
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