It is my punishment to let him see me, she told herself.
Yet she did not go for two full years more to the house of David. Kueilan bore her fifth child, this time a daughter, and had conceived her sixth, when one day a servant came in haste to the nunnery to beg Peony to come, because the eldest son of the house lay dying. She gave Peony a folded paper, and Peony opened it, and there David had written a few words.
“For my son’s sake, come.”
“I will come,” she told the maidservant, and she hastened to the Mother Abbess for permission. The Abbess had grown old and frail in the last few years and she never left her cell. To all she was kind, but Peony she loved exceedingly, as the daughter she had never had. Now she clasped Peony’s hand and held it a moment.
“The fire in you is quenched?” she asked.
“Yes, Mother,” Peony said.
“Then go, my child,” the Abbess replied, “and while you are away, I will pray for the boy’s life.”
So Peony went out that day from the refuge that was now her home, and as she walked along the street she quieted her beating heart with steady prayers, her rosary of brown satinwood twisted in her fingers. When she entered the familiar gate David was there waiting for her, and her heart quickened until her will commanded stillness. She looked at him fearlessly, determined that their eyes should not speak anything but cool friendship.
“Peony!” David cried, and she felt his eyes searching out the change in her.
“My name is Clear Peace,” she told him, smiling. No, she would not be afraid to smile.
“I think of you always as Peony,” David replied.
She did not answer this. “Where is your son?” she asked.
They were walking side by side now, she quieting her heart, her fingers busy with her rosary. She had forgotten how tall he was, how strong. The air of youth was gone, and he was a man powerful and grave. She took pride in him without feeling sin, and she looked up at him and met his eyes again. “You have not changed so much,” he said abruptly. “Well—except for your hair.”
“I have changed very much,” she said cheerfully. “Now take me to the child.”
“Ah, my son,” he sighed.
So they quickened their steps and went into the rooms where David and his two elder sons now lived. Each boy when he had reached the age of seven had left his mother’s courts and come to live with his father, and David led Peony into his room and there in his own bed lay the sick boy. He was no longer a child—that Peony saw at once. His tall slender frame lay outstretched on the bed. He was breathing but choking at every breath, and his face was flushed and his eyes were closed.
Peony took his wrist between her fingers and felt the pulse too swift to count. “We have no time to waste!” she exclaimed. “There is poisoned mucus in his throat.”
Now Peony, as all the nuns must, had been much with the sick, and she knew a disease had fallen upon the city this year, borne hither upon evil winds from the north. So she ordered a servant to bring a lamp with a strong wick, and another to cut a length of soft new bamboo and bring it to her. While she waited she dipped cloths in hot water and bound them about the boy’s throat to warm his muscles. As soon as she had the thin bamboo tube in her fingers, she bade David hold the boy hard, and set a manservant to hold his feet. Then delicately pressing the thumb and finger of her left hand to his jaw, she forced open his mouth and she put down the tube and sucked on it slowly. The boy choked and struggled but she persevered until a clot came up into the tube and he fell back with a great gasp.
“Burn this tube in fire,” she told the servant. “It is full of poison. And bring me wine to give him.”
She stood watching and motionless until the wine was brought and she poured some of it into the boy’s throat, and then she washed her own mouth with the wine, too, and spat it out into a silver cuspidor that stood by the bed.
“He is better!” David exclaimed with joy.
“He will live,” Peony said.
Nevertheless she did not leave the bedside until near dark, when the laws of the nunnery said she must return. The next day she came back, and every day indeed until the lad was well again.
By that time she knew that she must come often. David needed her sorely, for he was perplexed by growing children and impetuous sons and too many servants who were lazy and disobedient, and harassed because his own prosperous business took him much away. Peony saw clearly the years ahead when sons and daughters must be betrothed and weddings planned and all the life of a great and busy house be carried on to other generations. And she could come safely, for David loved his wife. This Peony saw with lingering pain. Indeed, she asked herself, why should there be any pain? Had she not brought Kueilan into this house? It was not Kueilan who had sent her out of it. The marriage she had fostered had flowered and borne seed. Between David and Kueilan now there was the close fleshly bond of house and home and children and prosperity, and all their life was entwined together. Was this not what she had hoped would be?
The restlessness in David was gone. He had forgotten, or so it seemed to her, that there had ever been a life in this house different from his own. Even the vestiges of his mother had been taken away. The scroll above the table in the great hall was gone and instead a painting hung there of crags and clouds and pines. By whose command this was done Peony did not ask, but there it was, and it signified the change in the house—yes, and in David, too. He was content.
So Peony came and went through many years, and she met David and Kueilan as equals, and as time went on as something more than equal. They came to lean on her and to wait for her advice, and she spoke with authority in their house.
When Peony had been for ten years the nun named Clear Peace, the Mother Abbess died. During those years Peony had grown to such a place of reverence that when the old abbess had been buried, she was chosen by the nuns to take her place as mother abbess. She had less time then to visit David’s house, for she had her own house of women to govern, and she did it wisely, without casting down the spirit or wounding the heart of any creature, even to the lowliest kitchen nun.
Now followed the years when Peony and David came to perfect understanding. She, being Mother Abbess, was free to go out as she liked, and none could breathe against her name. Neither was she any longer young. David’s two elder sons were married and their wives and children lived in his house, and the next one was betrothed. His eldest daughter married young into a Chinese house, and his sons’ wives were all Chinese.
It might have been forgotten that this house was anything but Chinese except that David’s fourth son grew up so different from the others that he reminded his father now and then of what his ancestors had been. Hothearted, impetuous, excitable, strong, this fourth son kept the household in turmoil. Peony laughed at him and loved him best of all, and in some strange fashion he became the son of her childless heart.
“Leave him to me,” she told David one day when the father and son had quarreled again, as they did so often. “I understand him better than you do—because he is more like you than you know.”
“I was never like this young fool!” David protested.
To this Peony only smiled.
So the years passed, and as the three, Peony, David, and Kueilan, grew old, each year was better than the last. Between the two wiser ones Kueilan was treated as a dear and older child, and they made much of her and laughed a little over her head. She allowed herself to be spoiled and she used her tongue to berate them sometimes and she pouted when they laughed at her, but she leaned upon their love.
It was a prosperous house, and David was one of the city’s honored elders and Peony was its wise woman. Their age fell gently upon them all.
In the city, the synagogue was now a heap of dust. Brick by brick the poor of the city had taken the last ruin of the synagogue away. The carvings were gone, too, and there remained at last only three great stone tablets, and of these three, then only two. These two stood stark under the sky for a
long time, and then a Christian, a foreigner, bought them.
This made an uproar in the city. The son of David’s fourth son, surnamed Chao, had sold the stones. Upon his head the wrath of the city’s governor fell. “How is it you, unfilial son, have sold the stones of your ancestors to a Christian foreigner?” the governor demanded. “He must return them, lest he take them away from our country to his own and the dead of your house rise up to reproach us.” And he ordered his guards to throw this Chao into jail.
But Chao had the blood of Madame Ezra still strong in him and he shouted through the bars, “Though you heap a fortune on me, I will not ask this Christian to give back the stones! They belonged to our religion, which has come to an end in this land, but his religion sprang from ours and let him keep the stones.”
Now this Chao was supported by all that family of Chao which had sprung from the loins of David ben Ezra, and they pointed out to the governor of the city that for scores of years the stones had stood under snow and rain and sun until they were cracked, and none had protected them. Why then should there be complaint if they were sold?
There was no one to make compromise until it was remembered in the city that the Mother Abbess had known the family well, and so the governor sent his messengers to her and she received them at the gate of the nunnery, since it was the law that no man could step beyond the threshold.
Peony was very old now, but her mind was clear and cool and she heard the messengers. Then still standing she gave out wisdom, and these were her words:
“This one surnamed Chao was a lively child and he grew into the man you know. It is his nature to spend his life in the jail unless a way is found for him to come out without leaving his pride behind him. I knew his father before him and his father before that. I will tell you the way: The foreigner shall keep these sacred stones he has bought but he shall not take them from our city. Let him set them before his own temple, and let him build a pavilion over them to preserve them for the generations to come.”
The men looked at one another and scratched their jaws and acknowledged that the Mother Abbess was wise indeed, and they thanked her and went away.
Even as Peony had said it was done. There in the new temple the stones stand to this day, under the shelter of the pavilion. Upon them are carved the ancient words “The Temple of Purity and Truth,” and beneath the words are carved the history of the Jews and their Way, and it is there said, “The Way has no form or figure, but is made in the image of the Way of Heaven, which is above.”
When Peony had returned to her cell she pondered long. Her memory brought back to life all the story of the House of Ezra, in which her own life had been entwined by some chance, for some purpose she did not understand, except that she knew that whatever happened was Heaven’s will. That strong and powerful family, the seed of Israel and Ezra and David, were they one day to be no more, even as the synagogue was gone, which their ancestors had made for a temple of their God? Had she done evil when she had enticed David away from Leah to marry Kueilan?
Long she pondered, and as often happened to her in her great age, the answer came to her. She had not done wrong, for nothing was lost. “Nothing is lost,” she repeated. “He lives again and again, among our people,” she mused. “Where there is a bolder brow, a brighter eye, there is one like him; where a voice sings most clearly, there is one; where a line is drawn most cleverly to make a picture clear, a carving strong, there is one; where a statesman stands most honorable, a judge most just, there is one; where a scholar is most learned, there is one; where a woman is both beautiful and wise, there is one. Their blood is lively in whatever frame it flows, and when the frame is gone, its very dust enriches the still kindly soil. Their spirit is born anew in every generation. They are no more and yet they live forever.”
Afterword
by
Wendy R. Abraham, Ed.D.
THE CHINESE JEWS OF Kaifeng represent one of the most obscure, and one of the most fascinating chapters in the annals of the Jewish diaspora. Throughout Peony, interwoven within the fictional events surrounding the House of Ezra, Pearl S. Buck has managed to convey with historical accuracy the Jews at the twilight of their existence in Kaifeng—a people at once assimilated and yet set apart from their neighbors.
That the daughter of Protestant missionaries could so effectively impart the depth of feeling and concern behind a Jewish family aware of its imminent spiritual demise, yet deeply cognizant of its obligation to carry on the traditions of its forefathers in a foreign land—all the while exhibiting authentic Chinese sensibilities—is a testimony to the greatness of the writer herself.
Origins of the Chinese Jews
The actual history of the Jews in China dates back at least to the 8th century C.E., when Jewish merchants and traders from Persia and India travelled overland along the Silk Road to trade in the Middle Kingdom during the Tang dynasty (618-906 C.E.). Testimony of this early history exists in bits of archaeological evidence which came to light at the turn of this century. A Judeo-Persian business letter, dating to 718 C.E., was discovered in 1901 by the archeologist and Orientalist Sir Marc Aurel Stein, along the Northern caravan route of the Silk Road. Nine years after this discovery, a Selichah, or Hebrew penitential prayer sheet, was unearthed in the Dunhuang Caves of Gansu Province, along what was the Southern Caravan route of the Silk Road. Dating to 708 C.E., it represents the earliest known Hebrew manuscript still extant. What makes these two pieces remarkable is the fact that they were made on paper, which at the time was only made in China, proving a Jewish existence in Chinese territory at least as early as the 8th century.
Some scholars theorize that the Jews came to China by sea, noting the various coastal Jewish communities which sprung up in Canton, Hangzhou, Yangzhou and other cities. Of these, Kaifeng was the grandest, with its opulent synagogue dating to 1163 in what was then the capital of China.
Early information about the Jews in China is scanty. Between the 9th and the 14th centuries, well-known Arab travellers and historians such as Abu-Zaid and Ibn-Battutah reported the presence of Jews in China. Although these constitute the first available observations noted by Westerners, they said little about the daily life of the Jews themselves. Pointing to Moslem countries for the origins of the Chinese Jews—in particular Persia, they confirm that they lived in the same major cities as did the Moslems, having arrived approximately the same time and in the same manner. Indeed, the Chinese often confused the Jews for Moslems, calling the former “blue capped Moslems”, since the real Moslems always wore white skull caps, while the Jews wore blue. (In Peony, David is depicted at one point, as donning a blue silk cap. This was not a chance color chosen by Pearl S. Buck.)
Early European travellers in China during the Yuan dynasty (1280-1367) also reported sighting Jews. Remarkably, Marco Polo made it a point to mention in his memoirs that the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan (for the Yuan was a “foreign” dynasty), celebrated the festivals of the Moslems, Christians and Jews. During the same period European missionaries such as Andrew of Perugia reported Jewish resistance at attempts to convert them, or to be otherwise swayed from their convictions. It is clear that through the 14th century, at least, the Jews in China had contact with other foreigners, and that their religious life and identity as Jews remained intact, undisturbed and unchallenged by the exceptionally tolerant Chinese people and government.
For their part, the native Chinese left negligible information about the foreigners in their midst. Only six references to Jews have ever been found in official government documents, all dating to the Yuan dynasty. Extensive contact with foreign peoples and cultures was one of the unique features of the Yuan dynasty, during which time commerce flourished. It is therefore not surprising that the only bits of information on the Jews found in official Chinese government sources should appear during this dynasty. Mentioning Jews in the same breath as the Moslems, the Statutes of the Yuan Dynasty decreed a prohibition on ritual slaughter on January 27, 1280. Forty years later th
e same Statutes mention Jews, Moslems and Nestorians with regard to the payment of taxes. The Official History of the Yuan Dynasty contains the remaining instances in which Jews are mentioned, for the years 1329, 1340 and 1354. Jews were prohibited from tax exemption and the ancient practice of having a widow marry her deceased husband’s brother—a practice common to both Moslems and Jews.
Local gazetteers dating to the 17th century indicate that a great number of Chinese Jews attained high rank in the civil service system. While the gazetteers attest to the great success the Jews had in Chinese society by virtue of their disproportionate numbers having passed this difficult exam, they also serve as the first indication in Chinese sources of the tremendous degree of assimilation which must have taken place in advance of the Jews’ ability to master the Confucian Classics by then, for the Classics were essential for any hope of passing the exams and attaining high rank in society.
History Etched in Stone
The bulk of our knowledge of early Jewish life in Kaifeng comes not from the Arabs and not from the Europeans or the native Chinese, but rather from the Jews themselves, in the form of inscriptions found on steles (stone monuments) which they erected in the synagogue’s courtyard as early as 1489.
The steles offer a fascinating glimpse into the way the Jews portrayed their history and customs, both to themselves and to their Chinese neighbors. Dated 1489, 1512, 1663 and 1669, two of these stone monuments are all that is left of this exotic community today in Kaifeng.
The 1489 stele was erected in commemoration of the rebuilding of the synagogue, which had been destroyed in a flood during 1461. It speaks of the Emperor granting express permission to the Jews to build their first synagogue on that very spot in the year 1163. Chronicling the history of the Jewish religion, it mentions at the outset that the patriarch Abraham was the nineteenth generation descendant of “Pangu-Adam.” That the stele was erected at all shows the point at which the Jews can be said to have truly assimilated into their environment, since it was a Chinese, rather than a Jewish, custom to do so in houses of worship. And that the first man in Biblical creation could be combined in one breath with the first person in the Chinese story of creation is further testimony to the degree of assimilation the Jews felt with their Chinese neighbors by the 15th century.