The Porcelain Thief Extract

THE PORCELAIN THIEF

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P R O L O G U E

The first sign of trouble came in the spring of 1938.

On the tails of the snow cranes leaving their wintering grounds

in the Poyang Lake estuary, Japanese planes appeared in the sky,

tracing confused circles as if they had lost their fl ock. It soon became

clear that these reconnaissance planes were not stragglers but the van-

guard for another kind of migration. After taking Beijing, Shanghai,

and Nanjing, the Japanese army advanced through China not like a

spreading pool of water but like a gloved hand, and in the summer of

1938 its middle fi nger traced up the Yangtze River toward my great-

great- grandfather Liu Feng Shus village of Xingang.

Liu presided over one of the most prominent families in Xingang,

situated on a spit separating the Yangtze River and Poyang Lake, Chi-

nas largest freshwater body, like a valve. His estate included most of

the arable land along the river, worked by a small army of sharecrop-

pers, and a number of residences at the western edge of the village,

the largest being his own. Guarded by a trio of stately pine trees, the

sprawling stone abode fronted the road heading into the nearby city

of Jiujiang, a major trading and customs port. There lived a coterie

of daughters- in- law, grandchildren, and servants; the eldest of Lius

three sons, my great- grandfather, died of tuberculosis in his thir-

ties, and his school- aged children, as well as those of Lius surviving

sons, lived with him while their fathers worked elsewhere in the

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2 H U A N H S U

province, a common arrangement in Chinese families. My great-

great-grandfather fi lled the rooms with objets dart befi tting a scholar

who had passed the imperial civil service exam, including his prized

collection of antique porcelain. Accumulated by the crate, some of the

items dated back hundreds of years to the Ming dynasty and had once

belonged to emperors, and for all my great- great- grandfathers other

forms of wealth, these heirlooms, as enduring as they were exquisite,

best represented the apogee of both family and country. Across the

road, beyond the communal fi shpond, dug into a hill that gathered

the setting sun, was the cemetery where eleven generations of his an-

cestors kept watch over his prosperity.

As the summer went on, phalanxes of Japanese bombers soared

over Lius fi elds to drop ordnance on westerly cities, unencumbered

by a Chinese army with pitiful air defenses. According to the newspa-

pers that Liu picked up in the mornings from the general store down

the road, Republic of China president Chiang Kai- shek was prepared

to stage a vicious defense of Jiujiang and had nearly one million troops

dug in along the Yangtze. The presence of Chinese soldiers became a

regular sight in Xingang, if not a welcome one, given the Nationalist

armys reputation for incompetence and venality.

And now Chinese soldiers had taken up residence in Lius house.

Despite outnumbering the Japanese three to one, the Chinese resis-

tance lasted mere days. Xingang stood in the path of the retreat, and

the army had no qualms about demanding food and board from the

local gentry. The rice and fi rewood that Liu had set out for them was

not enough, the soldiers said. They eyed the houses heavy door bar

and prepared to hack it apart for fuel. You cant use that for kin-

dling, Liu protested. We need it to lock our door.

The argument turned physical, and a pair of soldiers began to beat

Liu with a stick. Three of his granddaughters had been herded into a

back room out of sight of the soldiers and watched the commotion

from a window, horrifi ed, until they couldnt bear it anymore. Pei

Fu, the oldest one still at home, newly graduated from a Methodist


T H E P O R C E L A I N T H I E F 3

boarding school, instructed Pei Yu, not yet a teenager, to run into

the village and fetch the elders. Then she and Pei Sheng, the second

youngest but the boldest, sprinted into the fray, jumping on the sol-

diers backs and thrashing them while they tried to pull their grand-

father away. You guys fought so poorly, ran away from the battle,

and you still dare to hit an old man? Pei Sheng shouted. No wonder

youre losing the war!

Pei Yu found the elders, who alerted the commanding offi cers,

and all parties converged on the house. The girls explained what they

had witnessed, and the elders vouched for the girls. The chagrined

commanders forced the offending soldiers onto their knees before Liu

and offered to execute them. Oh, dont kill anyone, Liu said. Thats

not right, either. You come here and we give you food, a place to stay,

and you act badly. As long as you understand what you did wrong,

thats enough. He made them kowtow and apologize, and for the

rest of their stay, the soldiers didnt even dare to touch the fi rewood

left out for them without fi rst asking. Were afraid of what the three

tigresses might do, they said.

My great-great-grandfather was not nave about war. In midlife he

had witnessed the end of dynastic China and the birth of a republic

when revolutionaries overthrew the Qing monarchy in 1911, ending

more than two thousand years of imperial rule. Ten years before the

Japanese encroached, Chiang Kai- sheks campaign against local war-

lords had swept through the area, followed by sporadic skirmishes

between Chiangs Nationalists and the upstart Communists. Each

time feng liu yun san, the winds fl owed and the clouds scattered;

the crisis passed. Lius wealth and land holdings continued to grow.

Still, his blood curdled from the reports of Japanese soldiers sha ren

ru ma, killing people like scything grass, in occupied cities. He es-

pecially feared for the granddaughters still living with him at home.

Most of the village men of fi ghting age had already left home, eager to

avoid death by the Japanese or, worse, conscription into the Chinese

army. Liu was a widower in his seventies and could hardly be counted


4 H U A N H S U

upon to protect his family. As he debated whether to fl ee everything

he had spent a lifetime achieving, he must have wondered if perhaps

this time things would not return to normal.

His eldest granddaughter my grandmother was safe, ensconced

in neutral Macau as a high school chemistry teacher at a missionary

school. He allowed Pei Fu, the second oldest and my grandmothers

middle sister, to marry into a family he despised, fi guring a woman

wedded to a good- for- nothing was still safer than remaining unmar-

ried during wartime. He had already sent away his one grandson, the

sole heir to the family fortune, with his youngest daughter, another

science teacher whose local missionary school had relocated to the

Chinese interior. That left my grandmothers youngest sister, two

of her cousins, a daughter- in- law, and a long- serving footman, Old

Yang.

When the soldiers moved on, Liu and Old Yang waited for the sun

to set and went into the garden with shovels and picks. Over the next

few nights, they removed a patch of fl ax and dug a large hole, deeper

than a man was tall and as wide as a bedroom, and lined the walls

with bamboo shelving. Working by moonlight after the village had

gone to sleep, they fi lled the vault with the familys heirlooms: intri-

cately carved antique furniture, jades, bronzes, paintings, scrolls of

calligraphy, and fi nally, Lius beloved porcelain collection. Vases of

every shape and size; painted tiles of Chinese landscapes; hat stands;

fi gurines of the Fu Lu Shou, the trio of Buddhist gods that represented

good fortune, longevity, and prosperity; decorative jars, plates, and

bowls; tea sets; the dowries for his granddaughters. Liu and Old Yang

packed the porcelain in woven baskets lined with straw, and once the

vault could hold no more, they sealed it with boards, covered it with

soil, and replanted the fl ax.

A few nights after the burial was completed, Liu heard a knock on

his door. He opened it to fi nd a raggedy Chinese soldier, who asked

if he could spare something to eat. Liu took him in and fed him. The

soldier ate as if it were his fi rst meal in weeks. When he fi nished, he


T H E P O R C E L A I N T H I E F 5

looked up from his bowl. Mister, is your family still here? the sol-

dier asked.

Yes, they are, Liu said.

Why have you not left yet? the soldier said. The city has fallen.

The Japanese are here.

The next morning the family packed as much jewelry and silver

coins as they could fi t into their pockets and bundled their clothes

in knapsacks. They stuffed winter and summer clothing for fi ve peo-

ple into a woven basket that Old Yang, who had no family but for

the Lius, carried on a bamboo shoulder pole. The thousands of extra

silver dollars that were too heavy to carry were thrown into jars and

buried in a hastily dug hole in the fl oor of the living room. Then my

great- great- grandfather barricaded the heavy front doors and joined

the Chinese retreat.

Seventy years later I went to China to fi nd what he buried.


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