Letter from
Aunt Baba
22 September, 1952
My precious little treasure,
What a surprise to hear from you after four long years and to learn that you are on your way with Third Brother to study in Oxford, England. Your letter (post‐marked Singapore) gave me more happiness than anything else in the world. The only thing better would be a personal visit from you. Thank you for thinking of me on your long ocean voyage. What an adventure for the two of you!
Here in Shanghai, I share your father’s big house on Avenue Joffre with Miss Chien and two maids. I am tired this evening after my usual long day’s work at the Women’s Bank. However, I have so much in my heart to say to you that I must write to you tonight.
I must confess that I have been much worried about you since we have been apart. Before he passed away in March this year, Ye Ye used to write and give me news of you. I knew Aunt Reine had taken you from Tianjin to Hong Kong and that you were in boarding‐school there. In his last letter to me, Ye Ye was gravely concerned about your future. That is why it is such a pleasant surprise to learn that your father has agreed to send you for further studies in England.
Tonight I miss Ye Ye more than ever and that is another reason why I am writing. Some day, you will be my age and may wish to speak to me but I may no longer be around. Keep in mind always, always, no matter what, that you are worthwhile and very important to me, wherever I may be.
When you were little and things were going badly, you used to run to me and ask me to take away this ‘big, black cloud’ in your head, do you remember? I’d tell you a story and you would fall asleep listening. Here is a new story I want you never to forget. Whenever you feel discouraged, and those clouds come back, take out this letter and read it again. It is a message from your Aunt Baba, who will always hold you precious in her heart.
This story was told to me by my own mother (your Nai Nai) many years before she passed away. It is part of our Chinese folklore.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Ye Xian who lived during the Tang dynasty in China. Her father had two wives and two daughters, one by each wife. Ye Xian’s mother died, followed by her father. Her stepmother maltreated her, showing preference for her own daughter.
Ye Xian was a talented potter and spent her time at the wheel perfecting her skill. People came from far and wide to purchase her pots. Her only friend was a goldfish which she loved. Her stepmother became jealous, caught the fish and ate it, hiding the fishbones under a pile of manure. Ye Xian found the bones and hid them in her room. The presence of the fishbones gave off magical rays which imparted a special sheen to her pots.
A Great Festival was being held but Ye Xian was forbidden by her stepmother to attend. After her stepmother and sister left, Ye Xian dressed herself in a beautiful cloak of kingfisher feathers and a pair of gold shoes which were light and elegant.
At the festival she spoke briefly to the local warlord who was much struck by her beauty. Her stepmother recognised her and gave chase. Ye Xian ran home but lost one of her shoes, which was found by the war‐lord. He ordered all the girls in his kingdom to try it on, but it was too small. The cobbler who made the shoes came forward and told the war‐lord of Ye Xian, who had traded one of her pots for the gold shoes. Through her own talent and effort, Ye Xian had bought the shoes which led eventually to marriage with the war‐lord. They lived happily ever after.
In England and America, your Grand Aunt tells me there is a similar story called Cinderella. In a way, both Ye Xian and Cinderella are like you: children who are mourning for their dead mothers. Their stories may be perceived as talismans against despair.
By winning that prestigious international playwriting competition, you have climbed another rung on the ladder of success. Like Ye Xian, you have defied the odds and garnered triumph through your own efforts. Your future is limitless and I shall always be proud of you,
my Chinese Cinderella.
The Story of
Ye Xian :
The Original
Chinese Cinderella
Following this is the Chinese text of a story written during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–906). It is the story of Ye Xian , also known as the original Chinese Cinderella. Isn’t it mind‐boggling to think that this well‐loved fairy‐tale was already known over one thousand years ago?* My Aunt Baba told me about Ye Xian when I was fourteen years old, and you can read all about her in Chapter 22.
I am grateful to Feelie Lee PhD and Professor David Schaberg of the East Asian Languages & Culture Department, University of California at Los Angeles, for their scholarship and research in finding the book Yu Yang Za Zu at UCLA’s East Asian Library. Yu Yang Za Zu contains a miscellany of ninth century Chinese folk‐tales, among them the Chinese text of Ye Xian’s story. The author’s name was Duan Cheng‐shi , and the stories were collected in an encyclopedic book that went through many editions during the last eleven hundred years.
Please note the absence of punctuation, and the beautiful Chinese characters. This is how ancient classic Chinese texts were written. The oldest Chinese books were copied by hand.
For many years the story of Cinderella was thought to have arisen in Italy in 1634. Iona and Peter Opie in The Classic Fairy‐tales, published by Oxford University Press in 1974, consider the Italian Cinderella story to be the oldest European version. We now realise that Duan Cheng‐shi’s Ye Xian predates the Italian tale by eight hundred years. Cinderella seems to have travelled to Europe from China. Perhaps Marco Polo brought her from Beijing to Venice eight hundred years ago. Who knows?
Historical Note
China is a big country roughly the size of the USA. It has the world’s oldest continuous civilisation and Chinese writing has remained virtually unchanged for the last three thousand years.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, China was the most powerful country in Asia. The country looked inward and considered herself the centre of the world, calling herself zhong guo, which means central country.
In 1842, China lost the Opium War. As a result, Britain took over Hong Kong and Kowloon. For about one hundred years afterwards, China suffered many humiliating defeats at the hands of all the major industrial powers, including Britain, France and Japan. Many port cities on China’s coast (such as Tianjin and Shanghai) fell under foreign control. Native Chinese were ruled by foreigners and lived as second‐class citizens in their own cities.
In 1911, there was a revolution and the imperial Manchu court in Beijing was abolished. Sun Yat‐sen became president and proclaimed China a republic. However, the country broke into fiefdoms ruled by war‐lords who fought each other for the control of China. Chiang Kai‐shek, a military general and protégé of Sun Yat‐sen, took over after Sun’s death in 1925.
Japan first seized Taiwan from China in 1895. She then usurped Manchuria. In July 1937, she declared war on China and quickly occupied Beijing and Tianjin.
When I was born in November 1937 in Tianjin, the city was still divided into foreign Concessions. However, outside the Concessions, the Japanese were in charge. My family lived in the French Concession, where we were ruled by French citizens under French law. My sister and I attended a French missionary school and were taught by French Catholic nuns.
On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and declared war on the USA and Britain. On the same day, Japanese troops marched into Tianjin’s foreign Concessions. Because my father did not wish to collaborate with the Japanese, he took an assumed name and escaped from Tianjin to Shanghai. We joined him there two years later.
In 1945, Japan surrendered, and the Second World War was at an end. Chiang Kai‐shek was back in charge. His triumph was short‐lived because a civil war soon erupted between the Nationalists under Chiang and the Communists under Mao Ze‐dong.
In 1948, during the height of the civil war, my parents took me from Shanghai back to Tianjin while they themselves went back to Shanghai, and then on to Hong Kong. The Communists won the war and drove th
e Nationalists out of mainland China to Taiwan.
I was the only student left in my school when the Communists commandeered Tianjin. All the other students had escaped. Luckily, I was rescued by an aunt who took me out of school and brought me to Hong Kong.
At that time, Hong Kong was still a British colony and my parents sent me to another Catholic boarding‐school. They themselves were hoping that the Americans would help Chiang Kai‐shek take back mainland China. The Korean War broke out in 1950, pitching North Korea (aided by Communist China and the Soviet Union) against South Korea (aided by the United Nations). People in Hong Kong were extremely nervous that Communist China would march in from the mainland and occupy Hong Kong. This did not happen. A truce was reached instead and the Korean War ended.
I left Hong Kong in August 1952 and went to school in England.
Postscript
My life changed dramatically after I went to England. I spent three years in two different English boarding‐schools, then entered University College and London Hospital Medical College. It was a wonderful period of my life. The whole world of science was opening up to me. I could not wait to get to classes every morning. Laboratory experiments reminded me of intricate chess games. My opponent was the great ‘unknown’, about to be unmasked. Along the way, there were tantalising clues.
After graduation I emigrated to California, USA, and practised as a physician for twenty‐six years. Although by then I was very happily married and had two lovely children, I still yearned for my parents’ acceptance. My father died in 1988 but our stepmother Niang prevented us from reading his original will. It seemed as if I would never know if my father had ever wanted me.
Two years later, Niang herself passed away. It was then that Third Brother suddenly informed me that I had been unexpectedly and mysteriously left out of our stepmother’s will. I also found out that there had been a conspiracy to hide the truth from me. This discovery, together with my desperate search for my father’s missing will, was like a page torn out of my childhood, when I had been so cruelly punished for speaking out against Niang. Forty years later, it was happening all over again.
You can read all about it in my autobiography, Falling Leaves, which was first published in London in 1997 by Michael Joseph and Penguin Books.
I hope you have enjoyed reading Chinese Cinderella.
* My name as used outside the family.
* The French nuns called me Adeline Yen instead of Yen Jun‐ling at St Joseph’s School.
* Paper was invented in China in the year AD 105 by Tsai Lun, a Han Dynasty eunuch who served as an official in the imperial court. A book of Buddhist scriptures printed in the year AD 868 (Tang Dynasty) was discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in 1907. Considered the world’s first complete printed book, it is preserved in the British Museum and is apparently in perfect condition.
Adeline Yen Mah, Chinese Cinderella
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