Read Shanghai Girl for Free Online Page B

lazy Susan. "My name is Gordon Lou. I'm a Chinese-American businessman here in the city and a supporter of yours. I'm honored to meet you, Senator DellaFave."
    "Oh, the pleasure is mine, Mr. Bow. Welcome to the party, ha-ha. We need more supporters like yourself."
    I try to correct him on my name inconspicuously. "It's Lou, which means 'buildings'. My ancestors must have dealt in real estate near the Great Wall."
    "Oh, pardon me, Mr. Low. I like your sense of humor, a rare quality in the Orientals I've come into contact with," says the Governor aspirant. "My own ancestors owned a bakery. But now I’m all set to take over the State House’s kitchen cabinet."
    "And I’m here to cheer you on, Senator.”
    “Much appreciated.”
    A blond, tanned man sitting next to me holds out his hand. "Ted Cook," he declares, leaving no doubt what trade his ancestors engaged in. "Great suit you have on," he says. "You have to introduce me to your tailor someday."
    "Thank you. All my clothes are made in Hong Kong.”
    Ted smiles broadly and says, “Ah, they are quite a steal, I understand. My son traveled there and came back with half a dozen custom-made, hand-sewn suits with his initials stitched inside the lining – all for about a hundred bucks each. I wish I had this kind of a deal with my tailor.”
    The mention of the word “tailor” turns into a painful dagger in my underbelly. In a way, I had left China for the U.S. to flee an incident associated with the death of our family tailor. My father was the head of The House of Lou, a Colonial-style house in Shanghai’s International Settlement. In addition to the year-round staff of a servant, a maid, a cook, and a chauffeur, the house retained a seasonal, tubercular tailor. He would come from the countryside in late autumn each year and work until the Lunar New Year, when all three generations of Lou’s would don silk, cottonwood-wadded outfits hand-sewn by him. Little Jade, my father’s concubine then twenty years old, had recommended the tailor, who was from her village in Jiangsu. Known to us as Old Tailor, he wore a long strand of goatee, was hunchbacked, bamboo thin, and coughed all day. The small eyes on his dark and wrinkled face were forever squinting, possibly a condition caused by his line of work.
    It was during my sophomore year at St. John’s that Old Tailor brought to the House of Lou his apprentice son, Little Tailor. The young man, by contrast, was tall and muscular and had large shiny eyes with a ready smile.
    Run by the American Episcopal Mission, St. John’s on the surface was the elite school dubbed as the Harvard of Shanghai. But sentiment of resistance against the Japanese occupation was spreading on campus. I was among many who had spent more time being patriotic than studying. Whereas the Japs occupied much of Shanghai, the International Settlement where we lived and the French Concession were not touched. During one of my weekend visits home, I heard of two suicides. Our chauffeur had caught sight of Little Jade and Little Tailor holding hands in the garden and reported it to my father. My quinquagenarian old man vowed to kill his young competitor, prompting Little Tailor to jump into the well in the back of our garden. Knowing her days were numbered, Little Jade followed suit but not before slapping the face of the chauffeur.
    Subsequently, the informer got a generous cash award for his loyalty and my father got himself a new concubine, this time a 17-year-old. This one had a sophisticated city appearance, with double eyelids and a powdered face, although the same tiny bound feet known appreciatively as the “three-inch golden lotuses”. They were what turned opium-smoking men on the most in those days.
    It was her heartrending, lychee eyes that had me increasingly worried that I, too, would someday be sucked into the same dark deep well in our garden. The shadow cast by my vegetarian father, who spent his days chanting the name of Buddha while