At the back of the Grand Salon, my mother had installed a curved carpeted staircase with a red-lacquered wooden banister, which took you up to three curved, velvet-lined balconies modeled after those found in opera houses. They overlooked the Grand Salon, and from them I often viewed the festivities below as Carlotta strolled back and forth on the balustrades.
The parties began after sundown. Carriages and rickshaws arrived throughout the night. Cracked Egg, the gatekeeper, would have already memorized the names of those who were coming, and they were the only ones allowed to enter. From my perch, I saw the men burst through the red curtains and into that palatial room. I could tell if a man was a newcomer. He would gaze at the scene before him, scanning the room, incredulous to see Chinese and Western men greeting each other, speaking with civility. The Westerner would have his first glimpse of courtesans in their habitat. He might have only seen them passing by on the thoroughfare in carriages, dressed in their furs and hats. But here, they were within reach. He could speak to one, smile with admiration, although he learned quite emphatically that he was not allowed to touch. I was delighted to see my mother inspire awe in men of different nationalities. She possessed the power to render men speechless from the moment they walked into the room.
Our courtesans were among the most popular and talented of all the girls working in the first-class houses of Shanghai—elegant, seductively coy, tantalizingly elusive, and skilled in singing or the recitation of poems. They were known as the Cloud Beauties. Each had the word Cloud in her name, and that identified the house to which she belonged. When they left the house—whether to marry, join a nunnery, or work in a lower-class house—the cloud evaporated from their name. The ones who lived there when I was seven were Rosy Cloud, Billowy Cloud, Snowy Cloud, and, my favorite, Magic Cloud. All of them were clever. Most had been thirteen or fourteen when they arrived and would be twenty-three or twenty-four when they left.
My mother set the rules over how they would conduct business with the guests and what share of their earnings and expenses they would pay to the house. Golden Dove managed the courtesans’ behavior and appearance and ensured they upheld the standards and reputation of a first-class courtesan house. Golden Dove knew how easily a girl’s reputation could be lost. She had once been one of the most popular courtesans of her time until her patron knocked out her front teeth and broke half the bones in her face. By the time she mended, with her face slightly askew, other beauties had taken her place, and she could not overcome speculation that she must have greatly wronged her patron to have incited violence in such a peaceable man.
As comely as those courtesans were, every guest, whether Chinese or Western, hoped to see one woman in particular—my mother. From my perch, she was easy to spot by the springy mass of brown curls that graced her shoulders in a careless style. My hair was very much like hers, only darker. Her skin had a dusky tinge. She told people proudly that she had a few drops of Bombay blood in her. No one would have ever honestly described my mother as beautiful, neither Chinese nor foreigner. She had a long angled nose that looked like it had been roughly sculpted with a paring knife. Her forehead was tall and wide—the telltale sign of a cerebral nature, Golden Dove said. Her chin bulged like a pugnacious little fist, and her cheeks had bladed angles. Her irises were unusually large, and her eyes lay in deep, dark sockets, fanned by dark lashes. But she was captivating, everyone agreed, more so than a woman with regular features and great beauty. It was everything about her—the smile, the husky and melodious voice, the provocative and languorous movement of her body. She sparkled. She glowed. If a man received even a glance from her penetrating eyes, he was enthralled. I saw that time and again. She made each man feel he was special to her.
She was without peer in style as well. Her clothes were of her own witty design. My favorite was a lilac-colored gown of near-transparent silk organza that floated above pale pink tussah. It was embroidered with a winding vine of tiny leaves. At her bosom, two pink rosebuds climbed out of the top of the vine. And if you thought the rosebuds were silk as well, you would be only half right, for one was a genuine rose that loosened its petals and released its scent as the night wore on.
From the balcony, I followed her as she crisscrossed the room, the tail of her skirt swishing behind her, the admiration of men in her wake. I saw her bend her face one way to speak to a Chinese man, then at another angle to speak to a Westerner. I could see that each felt privileged that she had selected him for her attention. What all those men wanted from my mother was the same thing. It was her guanxi, as the Chinese called it, her influential connections, as the Westerners put it. It was her familiarity with many of the most powerful and successful Westerners and Chinese in Shanghai, Canton, Macau, and Hong Kong. It extended to her knowledge of their businesses and the opportunities they held, as well as the ones they did not. Her magnetism was her ability to put men and prospects together for profit.
The envious madams of other courtesan houses said that my mother knew these men and their secrets because she slept with all of them, hundreds of men of every shade of skin. Or, they said, she blackmailed them by learning of the illegal means they had used to gain their money. It could also be that she drugged them nightly. Who knew what it took to get those men to give her what she needed to know?
The real reason for her business success had much to do with Golden Dove. Mother said so many times, but in such a roundabout way that I could gather only bits and pieces, which were as a whole too fantastical to be true. She and Golden Dove supposedly met about ten years ago when they lived in a house on East Floral Alley. At the beginning, Golden Dove ran a teahouse for Chinese sailors. Then Mother started a pub for pirates. So Golden Dove made an even fancier teahouse for sea captains, and my mother made a private club for the owners of ships, and they kept outdoing each other until my mother started Hidden Jade Path, and that was that. Throughout that time, Mother taught Golden Dove English and Golden Dove taught her Chinese, and together they practiced a ritual called momo, which thieves used to steal secrets. Golden Dove said momo was nothing more than being quiet. But I did not believe her.
I would sometimes wander down from my perch with Carlotta and wend my way through a tall labyrinth of dark-suited men. Few paid attention to me. It was as if I were invisible, except to the servants, who, by the time I was seven, no longer feared me as a Whirlwind but now treated me more like a tumbleweed.
I was too short to see past the clusters of men, but I could hear my mother’s bright voice, moving closer or farther away, greeting each customer as if he were a long-lost friend. She gently admonished those whom she had not seen in awhile, and they were flattered that she had missed them. I watched how she guided those men into agreeing with whatever she said. If two men in the room held opposite opinions, she did not take sides but expressed a view somewhere above, and like a goddess, she moved their opinions into a common one. She did not translate their exact words but altered the tone of intention, interest, and cooperation.
She was also forgiving of gaffes, and they were bound to happen, as is the case between nations. I recall an evening when I was standing next to Mother as she introduced a British mill owner, Mr. Scott, to a banker named Mr. Yang. Mr. Scott immediately launched into a story about his winnings at the racetrack that day. Unfortunately, Mr. Yang spoke perfect English, and thus my mother was unable to alter the conversation when Mr. Scott talked excitedly about his afternoon betting on horses.
“That horse had odds of twelve to one. In the last quarter mile, his legs were slashing the air, gaining steady speed all the way to the end.” He shaded his eyes, as if seeing the race once again. “He took the race by five lengths! Mr. Yang, do you enjoy horse races?”
Mr. Yang said with unsmiling diplomacy, “I have not had the pleasure, Mr. Scott, nor has any Chinese I know.”
Mr. Scott quickly replied: “We must go together, then. Tomorrow perhaps?”
To which Mr. Yang gravely replied: “By your Western laws in the International Settlement, you would have to take me as your servant.”
Mr. Scott’s smile vanished. He had forgotten the prohibition. He looked nervously at my mother, and she said in a humorous tone, “Mr. Yang, you must bring Mr. Scott into the Chinese Walled City as your rickshaw puller, and encourage him to make haste like his winning horse to the gate. Tit for tat.”