33AT THE PALACE OF THE DRAGON LADY

WHILE ENJOYING the distinctly Chinese way of life in the ancient capital, Anna May did not forget the main purpose of her visit: to study classical Chinese drama with an eye to presenting the traditional art to the world. Among all the regional variations of Chinese drama, such as Kunqu, Cantonese Opera, Yue Opera, and Huangmei Xi, Anna May was particularly interested in Peking Opera.

A relatively new development in Chinese drama, Peking Opera was generally believed to have been born with the blessing of Emperor Qianlong on the occasion of his eightieth birthday celebration in 1790. Known for its elegant music, Mandarin librettos, and acrobatic feats, Peking Opera quickly became the favorite style of drama for the educated nobility, while the commoners continued to enjoy the regional variations performed in their own dialects. Empress Dowager Cixi, for instance, was a Peking Opera enthusiast; she had two open-air stages built in the Summer Palace, as well as another small one in her private quarters, and she regularly summoned the best talents to perform for her.

As the birthplace of the opera that bears its name, Peking had many drama schools that trained actors from very young ages. Also, reputable masters would routinely take on apprentices on their own and pass the skills down to the new generations in order to keep the artistic tradition alive. Mei Lan-fang, for instance, was born into a family of Peking Opera and Kunqu performers, and he started training in acting, singing, and acrobatics at the age of eight. His theatrical debut, as a weaving girl, took place in 1904, when he was only eleven. Another universally celebrated maestro, Cheng Yanqiu, born into poverty, was sold to an opera teacher and started tutelage at the tender age of six. For Anna May to study such an art, which requires rigorous training from childhood, seemed virtually fruitless. There was another insurmountable obstacle: In addition to singing, acting, and acrobatics, the operatic performance also demands impeccable elocution of Chinese words in Mandarin. One mispronounced syllable or an incorrect tone would create utter havoc. As Anna May acknowledged, “To study traditional Chinese drama, one must have a solid foundation in the Chinese language. Only then can she sing and speak the lines. I started learning Mandarin only after I came to China. With such flimsy knowledge, I can’t even speak it fluently, let alone learning to sing the opera.”¹ As a result, her study was limited to learning how to appreciate the art, knowing its history, and figuring out how to facilitate its propagation in the broader world.

In those pleasant but increasingly fraught months of 1936, Anna May made frequent trips to drama schools in Peking, visited Mei and Cheng at their homes, and attended performances at local theaters every time she had a chance. Despite her reputation as a gadfly and a socialite, she was a serious student with scholarly inclinations. In fact, one of the reasons that she had wanted to rent the house of Desmond Parsons on Tsui Hua Alley was that it was close to Mei’s residence. Regardless, she became a regular at Mei’s, and the fact that he had recently broken the taboo by accepting female apprentices further increased her admiration for the Chinese maestro. As an outsider and a seasoned actor, she was able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese drama in comparison with Western drama, an issue that also concerned Mei. As we know, he had made a few trailblazing trips to perform in the United States and Europe, but with mixed results. One of the strong points of the Chinese theater, Anna May reminded the master, is that it allows audience members to use their own imaginations. “Chinese plays produce their effects through suggestion,” she said. “They don’t hit you between the eyes.” But she also pointed out some elements of Peking Opera that might irritate Western audiences, such as the protracted cacophony of gongs, drums, and cymbals at irregular intervals and the lengths of the performances, which could drag on for four or five hours. From the master, she learned the meaning of the gestures and the stories of some iconic female characters he had famously impersonated, such as Mu Guiying, Mulan, and others.²

Meanwhile, she also collected books on Chinese drama, everything from history to criticism, plays, and stories. The pride of her collection, however, was her array of exquisite costumes. Being a fashion star, she was enamored with the ornate wardrobe on the Chinese stage. As Bertolt Brecht noted, these outfits often carry symbolic significance in color and design. “The costumes worn by actors in Chinese plays,” Anna May said, “are so beautiful with their vintage appeal.” She asked Bernardine Szold Fritz to help her buy the best silk in Shanghai and ship it to her in Peking so that she could have beautiful gowns made. Sparing no “shekels,” she planned to take these authentic Chinese dresses back to the United States and bedazzle everyone. “I’d never worn real Chinese dresses before—only costumes,” she said. “They may have looked right to Western audiences, but they weren’t. I’m busy now having a complete wardrobe made. Any woman will tell you how much fun that is!”³

Summer heat in the northern city was notorious. In his Peking-based novel Rickshaw, completed in the infernal heat of 1936, Lao She compared the sun to a “poisonous flower” that scorched and split the skin on the bony backs of ragpicking children and rickshaw coolies. The asphalt pavements melted, as did the brass shop signs. “The whole city was like a fired-up brick kiln,” the novelist observed. To escape the sweltering haze that hung over the city, ordinary folks would go outside the city wall and take dips in the moat. The more affluent would flee into the woodland shades of the Western Hills, or to Beidaihe, China’s version of Cape Cod. Anna May chose the latter and spent a few weeks at the seaside resort, along with some American friends. Before long, her bathing-suit photos appeared in Chinese newspapers.⁴

At one point, Anna May also took a side trip to Tientsin, one of the first treaty ports open to the West in 1860 and the gateway to Peking via the sea route. There she visited the Temple of Heavenly God Mother, also known as the Palace of the Dragon Lady. Built in 1326, it was a rare shrine in the north for the sea goddess Mazu, who was popular mostly in southeastern China and Taiwan. After kowtowing with burning incense sticks, Anna May drew lots to seek divine guidance from the patron saint of seafarers. When her lot was cast, it was a Chinese quatrain that read:

Crossing mountains and seas,

One shakes off the bondage of the dusty world.

Growing horns to the sound of a thunderbolt,

One soars up to the sky over the vast land.

The first two lines seemed to acknowledge her hitherto-long journey in life, while promising the ultimate escape from worldly concerns. The last two lines predicted her metamorphosis into a dragonlike creature with horns, ascending to the higher stratosphere. It sounded like an auspicious augury of her path forward, and Anna May was happy with it, especially because it was from a deity commonly known as the Dragon Lady or Dragon Daughter.⁵

With the summer over, Anna May began preparing for her return to China’s south and then back to the United States. She had packed several trunks of trinkets, art, and books harvested during her visit. The theatrical gowns—made with great care and at no little expense by the best costumer in Peking—were stunning. With these outfits—alternately suitable for a nun, a warrior, or a princess—she expected one day to present short scenes from a selection of Chinese plays to Western audiences. In fact, she had already booked an engagement for a play in London, where she planned to spend Christmas. One of the gowns, paired with a headdress, was for a traditional warrior, “for she hopes to present Mulan—China’s Joan of Arc,” as a newspaper article reported. “Like the Maid of Orleans, Mulan wore masculine garb. Another is that of Yang Kuei Fei, the Imperial concubine whose beauty is still a legend, and for whom an Emperor was willing to lose his Empire.”⁶

In October, she repaired to Shanghai, followed by a couple of trips farther south to Hong Kong and Canton to see her family. Butterfly Wu hosted a delightful tiffin party at the Cathay Hotel to bid farewell to Anna May. “China has been wonderful,” Anna May told her gracious host and others. “It is very hard for me to leave—even harder than I had thought it would be. I have seen and felt so much that it is a little difficult for me to feel that it is part of me as yet. I would like to go to California and think it over under one of our palm trees.”⁷

On the evening of October 23, as the United Kingdom remained shocked by ex-King Edward VIII’s abdication scandal, and Hitler ordered the Nazi Condor Legion to Spain to fight for the Nationalists, Anna May boarded the President Pierce and departed Shanghai for the United States. Over the horizon, war clouds were looming. As Japan sounded its drumbeats and increased its aggression day by day, “the blood-red blossom of war,” as Emily Hahn phrased it, was about to burst into full bloom. The war would change, and unpredictably so, the lives of countless millions, including Anna May. If she had left China wondering whether China had become part of her after her nine-month sojourn, it would not take her too long to find out the truth.