Emily Hahn - Mr. Pan: A Memoir

EMILY HAHN

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Emily Hahn

Heh-Ven as Sage

OH, THEYRE NOT really inscrutable, I announced with tremendous assurance. People should not believe all that foolishness about the Chinese. Why, theyre just like us, actually, though they may seem a little peculiar sometimes.

This was rash of me, but two years ago I often spoke like that, being new to China. It all comes back to me now like some strange dream, especially the major on my right, who raised a grizzled old eyebrow and replied, with British caution, But just between ourselves, dont you sometimes find our oriental friends just the least little bitinscrutable?

I wish the major were still here, instead of sneezing his head off in some London club. I should like to answer him at last with a strong affirmative, inspired by Pan Heh-ven. Two years have passed since I thus lightheartedly contradicted the old-timer; two years since I first met Pan Heh-ven. In the ensuing time Heh-ven has remained just as he was and has always been, just as he will be until he gathers his funeral robes about him and takes his seat in the dignified and eternal conclave of Pan ancestors. It is I who have been transformed.

When I met him, when the enthusiastic little Mrs. Manners invited me to dine at a real Chinese restaurant with real Chinese guests in real Chinese clothes, I was a simple and eager seeker after the soul of things, delighted with every picturesque detail. Most especially was I charmed when Mrs. Manners persuaded Heh-ven to give us a brief demonstration of Chinese boxing, which, as she explained, is not boxing at all, nothing so crude, but a sort of lovely, flowing calisthenics full of the mysterious rhythm of nature. I should state here that Mrs. Manners passion for things Chinese has long since got beyond her control. Heh-ven had to be persuaded for a time, for he disclaimed any knowledge of the exercises; at last, however, his soft voice was shouted down. He stood up and made a few exotic gestures, shyly, while the other Chinese watched him gravely, in perfect silence, and Mrs. Manners beamed. The whole thing was portentously solemn.

Later I happened one day to see some professionals, that is to say athletes, doing their boxing exercises. It was nothing at all like the show Heh-ven had given us in the restaurant, and when I saw him I asked him about it. He smiled in that way he has, like a very good child who is also a little bit stupid.

Oh yes, he said; but of course that was simply nonsense. I cannot do boxing, but Mrs. Manners wanted to see boxing so much, you must know, so I just did a few kesturesyou say kestures? It was very funny. We all thought it very funny. Mrs. Manners was so pleased.

I recalled those pink-and-ivory faces watching him so gravely, without a flicker to show how funny they thought it, and my blood ran cold. I stared at him, but his dreamy eyes were fixed on the sky. Mrs. Manners is a very nice lady, he continued, and she does not understand that each Chinese cannot do all those things that all the Chinese do. She sometimes asks me to act Chinese theater, or to show those Peiping puppets, or to get Chinese dancers for her parties. Now, I do not act, and I do not know anything about puppets and about those dancing girls. I am not supposed to know dancers unless I pay them much money, and then, of course, it is different. I am not an actor. I am a gentleman. Mrs. Manners does not quite understand.

He paused sadly, and then he laughed. You know what we call that, what I did in that restaurant? You will please not to be angry? We say kidding the ocean people. We say Chi yang renpull the foreigners legs. I have told you before?

I said he had. But I thought you call us foreign devils?

He was shocked and pained and assured me that nobody ever does use such old-fashioned, heathenish insults any more. He said we are all friends now, and the present-day Chinese do not believe in devils anyway. He was all velvet and silk. But I remembered those pink-and-ivory faces.

Sometimes, among the tourists who storm my gate, demanding my very life on the strength of some letter of introduction given hastily at a cocktail party in New York by someone I never knew very well anyway, sometimes there comes one who disdains the common night life of Shanghai. To my wearily mechanical proffers of Russian or Korean girls, Del Monte and the Venus, or the neon lights of Bubbling Well Road, the tourist replies, Oh no, I can do all that in Paris. No, show me the real China. Weve got six hours. Dont you know any interesting Chinamen?

I used to get Heh-ven for these people, but I have stopped the practice, or Heh-ven has stopped it, which amounts to the same thing. Not that he isnt just what the doctor ordered for tourists; he is. Pale and wraith-like, bearded with a few wisps of real Chinese hair, gowned in sober brown, his long, narrow eyes blank and faraway, he is calculated to make the most hardened tourist gape and gasp. In the beginning he would quote Confucius, with one eye on me for my approval, and he talked real Chinese with the waiters, and because he had been trained by Mrs. Manners, he never failed to say after some dull evening at a restaurant, You are the first foreigner who has ever been there, do you know? So sightseeing with Heh-ven was very satisfactory as long as he was obliging, but he grew restless after a time. He talked briefly and hopefully of turning an honest penny at the gameI will grow a pigtail and forget all my English, and you can learn a little Confuciusjust memorize the easy onesand translate for me, and they will then pay to us thousands of dollars, of which I shall give you halfbut I knew he didnt mean it. The inevitable time came when Heh-ven was an hour late for a party of schoolteachers from New Jersey, and again he was two hours late, and then one evening he didnt turn up at all until the boat had sailed away with my tourist. After that we tacitly forgot the whole thing, and nowadays when I must meet a boat, I bring along a smart young Chinese who lives at the Y.M.C.A. The picturesque Heh-ven I leave in peace.