A Time of Ghosts

David Coomler, Hok-Pang Tang

Description

A Time of Ghosts is the exciting and absorbing account of Dr. Hok-Pang Tang, who was born into a wealthy and prominent Chinese family in the years before the Communist takeover, but whose family suffered a drastic fall with the coming of the the new regime.

It offers a vivid personal insight not only into a traumatic period in Chinese history, but also a rare and revealing glimpse at the "supernatural" subculture that survived even under Communism.

A Time of Ghosts follows Dr. Tang's life from his overindulged childhood on through the bitter shocks of the transition to Communism, and finally to his repeated attempts to escape from a soul-destroying political and social system. It is a true personal history that reads like an adventure novel.

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 30 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456616663
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

A TIME OF GHOSTS

by Hok-Pang Tang

and

David Coomler

Copyright 2013 David Coomler and Ruby Po-King Tang. All rights reserved.

Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1666-3

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE THE HOUSE OF SORROWS CHAPTER TWO THE WORLD OF DUST CHAPTER THREE LEARNING CHAPTER FOUR THE GARDEN WITHERS CHAPTER FIVE THE LIGHT THAT IS DARKNESS CHAPTER SIX THE DARK MESSENGER CHAPTER SEVEN THE WAY OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN CHAPTER EIGHT THE REPOSE OF THE WHITE FLAMINGO CHAPTER NINE A LOOK OUTSIDE CHAPTER TEN ET IN ARCADIA EGO CHAPTER ELEVEN REGRETS AND MISGIVINGS CHAPTER TWELVE THE BLACK STRANGER CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE TREE IS FELLED CHAPTER FOURTEEN AMID THE YELLOW HILLS CHAPTER FIFTEEN FIRE WATCH CHAPTER SIXTEEN PEOPLE OF THE SAME FORTUNE CHAPTER SEVENTEEN A MADMAN SHOWS THE WAY

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN RIVER WORLD CHAPTER NINETEEN BREAKING INVISIBLE THREADS CHAPTER TWENTY UNCLE MING CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE SHANGHAI CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO AN ATTEMPTED ESCAPE CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE HEROINE OF THE TORN BLOUSE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR PLANS CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE A VISIT IN PRISON CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX SOUTH FOR NORTH CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN THE EMPTY HOUSE CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT A TEMPORARY HAVEN CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE UNCERTAIN ACCOMODATIONS CHAPTER THIRTY TO THE FAR NORTH CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE A WOUNDED SOLDIER CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO THE BLACK DRAGON RIVER CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE TREASURE JADE STRIKES BACK CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR A BOAT AND A WITCH CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE ANOTHER ATTEMPT CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX THE MIST-WREATHED MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN MEETING AND PARTING CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT THE ROAD TO LHASA CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE TENDER HANDS CHAPTER FORTY IN SEARCH OF A LAMA CHAPTER FORTY-ONE THE RUINED TEMPLE CHAPTER FORTY-TWO INTERLUDE AMONG THE KHAMPAS CHAPTER FORTY-THREE ZHANGMU CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR AN END AND A BEGINNING POSTSCRIPT

CHAPTER ONE

THE HOUSE OF SORROWS

I was born in the doorway between two worlds. The old China – the China of emperors and mandarins, of bound feet and marvels – had long been dying but was not yet dead. The new China – its coming anticipated with both hope and fear – was not yet born. It happened in the great house of many rooms that the Emperor himself had given my grandfather many years before – a place where only the faintest of curtains separated the living and the dead. My first memory is of ghosts. I was three or four years old. Near sunset on a spring day I went alone into my parents’ bedroom to use the chamber pot. As I sat there, a sudden chill filled the air, and I was seized by a mingled sensation of emptiness and loneliness. At the same time I felt someone watching me from behind, though my back was to the wall. I turned my head to the right and looked over my shoulder at the surface of whitewashed brick. Out of the flat wall popped two figures in the flowing garments of a hundred years before. They passed behind me, floating half- in, half-out of the wall, in total silence. I jerked my head to the left as they reached that side. Yes, there were two of them. They were facing the wall now, and the one nearest reached back and out toward me, gesturing and grasping like a woman urging a hesitant child to take her hand and follow. I screamed in horror and ran from the room shrieking and weeping. My family pretended not to believe me. My aunt, in spite of my terror, led me back into the room, where nothing was visible but two large, black spiders on the wall. “See there!” she laughed, “Only two harmless spiders, and you imagined that they were strange creatures!” But there was uneasiness in her forced ridicule. Though I was only a small child, I was not timid. Spiders did not scare me. And I knew it was not spiders that I had seen. I soon fell ill with a burning fever, and a drastic change came over me. I often lost consciousness, but conscious or unconscious, my mouth muttered on and on in a voice not mine – a voice with the depth and vocabulary of an adult. My father was beside himself, and took me to a

well-known Chinese doctor who had studied Western medicine. Trained in the science of Europe, he examined me carefully but found no reason for the mysterious fever. Finally he admitted that he had never seen anything like it, and could do nothing. He did, however, refer my father to an odd individual schooled in traditional Chinese herbal medicine. And he told my parents that he had verified the Herb Doctor’s trustworthiness in the following way: He visited him as an ordinary patient complaining of illness, and requested an examination and a prescription. The Herb Doctor performed a thorough check, and declared his system to be in harmonious balance with nothing wrong. The Western-trained doctor, however, demanded a prescription for his “illness.” The Herb Doctor refused. The patient then requested a re- examination, but the result was the same – nothing was wrong, and no prescription was given. On further insistence, a third examination was performed, and still nothing was found amiss, and the Herb Doctor absolutely refused to prescribe for a non-existent problem. Had the herbalist been a fake or unreliable, he would have taken up brush and ink to write a prescription, and would have charged a sizable fee. It would have been an easy thing to do at the urging of an irritated patient. But he was tested three times and preserved his honesty. That is why the “Western” doctor felt confident in recommending him to my parents. I was quickly taken to the Herb Doctor’s modest home, where he received his patients. His name was Ch’ing Yu Chou, and he was striking and unusual in appearance. He wore the robes of a Chinese scholar, yet in a careless manner. The backs of his shoes had been pushed down through slipping them on and off repeatedly, until they flattened permanently and flapped like slippers when he walked. By conventional standards his face was ugly – the skin dark and heavily wrinkled, the jowls and chin sagging like those of a dog. His head was pointed and bald, except for a few wisps of hair that clung to the edges. His two front teeth were unusually long, and set amid an unpleasant assortment of neglected and discolored neighbors. That remarkable head perched atop an extremely skinny body. He examined me intently. My fever, he concluded, was the result of the terror of my experience. My soul had flown from the body, and a ghost had taken its place. That explained the strange adult voice and words coming from the small mouth of a child.

It was time for the treatment. He reached out a clawed hand with nails some three inches long, and dipping an extended nail first into one small bottle and removing some powder, then into another from which he extracted a different powder, he prepared a mixture that he folded into a small paper packet. He said it was to be administered with the milk of a human, obtained from a woman who sold her own for such purpose. The unusual medicine was fed to me while I was unconscious, still gabbling on in a man’s voice. As I lay writhing, head filled with nightmares, I suddenly screamed loudly. At that moment the invading presence left me and I felt the intense heat of the fever rapidly dissipated by a refreshing coolness that spread slowly throughout my body. The strange doctor had cured me. My father was so overwhelmed with gratitude that he gave Ch’ing Yu Chou, the odd Herb Doctor, a permanent dwelling in our family mansion, and with it financial support and friendship for life.

Mine was not the first strange experience in that great house. My grandfather was a military general of Manchu warrior lineage. He had a violent temper, yet could be kind and softhearted. Strongly built, with broad shoulders and heavy eyebrows, he wore the traditional robe and round cap, and his long, braided pigtail hung down behind as was customary in the latter days of the Ch’ing Dynasty. His mansion, in which I spent my childhood, was a large, white- plastered brick structure with a tiled roof. It lay on the Pearl River in the northern part of the city of Canton. I have said that the Emperor gave it to him, and though officially true, it is not the whole truth. It really came to him through the wiles of the evil old Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, thereal ruler of China, whose hands were stained with the blood of many. At that time my grandfather was part of the aristocracy in the north of China. The Imperial Court of those days was a nightmarish drama of greed and lust for power, and Tzu Hsi, like a wicked puppeteer, held strings connected to all the secret places of the Forbidden City in Peking. Even the emperor Kuang Hsu danced at her will, and when his mouth moved it was the wishes of Tzu Hsi that were heard. My grandfather had no stomach for her black designs, and she knew it. The Empress sniffed the air constantly for the slightest whiff of

revolt, and feared that my grandfather owed his allegiance more to the puppet Emperor than to her. Consequently she contrived to remove him a safe distance from the capitol. He was informed that for “years of loyalty to the Emperor” he was to be given a fine mansion in the city of Canton, far in the South. An imperial gift could not be refused, so there was no choice but to leave Peking. Tzu Hsi thus succeeded in banishing my grandfather under the guise of imperial benevolence, but her evil plans for him did not end there. Something far more sinister was to come – the mansion. There was something very wrong with it. My grandfather soon heard fragments of a grim story. When given to my family, the house had lain empty for some two years. Previously it had been the residence of a high official who had initially supported the wicked Dowager Empress in her plot to keep her son, the Emperor, weak and subservient. But for some reason the former owner changed allegiance, and was quickly perceived as a threat to Tzu Hsi’s power. The Empress, who seemed to know everything whispered in the shadows, struck quickly and violently. The official was executed in Peking, and all his family in Canton – relatives, children, even servants – were given the “imperial favor” of dying at the hands of soldiers or of committing suicide as the soldiers watched. The mansion became a scene of unspeakable gruesomeness as soldiers stabbed weeping women and children, while other unfortunates fell on their own knives, hanged themselves, or jumped to their deaths down the deep well in the inner garden. That was the house of suffering and sorrow that Tzu Hsi gave smilingly to my father, knowing he had no choice but to accept. On the day my grandfather came to officially claim the mansion, he was borne in a palanquin carried by four men. A fearsome guard with a sword led the way. At the rear came ten others, carrying household possessions. When the procession reached the outer gate, Grandfather got out of the palanquin and prepared to ceremonially enter the house as its new master. But he took only a few steps and halted in amazement. There on the road in front of the gate was a sewer grating, and on the curbstone beside it sat two uncanny creatures, like shrunken, shriveled old men, with outsized heads on tiny bodies with unnaturally small limbs.