dreamy child in a strict and practical household. I barely remembered my own mother, who died before my third year. My amah and tutors were capable but cold. The social reverberations of Rosalie Gilder and Chen Kairong’s marriage were known to me, a boy of ten, but I didn’t understand or care. I was excited that it gave me more family to be part of.”
“Were you at the wedding?”
“I was. Rosalie Gilder wore the Shanghai Moon at her throat.” His eyes found the nighttime photo. “Though by then it was already legendary. You read about it, you say. So you know its story.”
“I know it was made from an antique jade of the Chen family, and stones from a necklace that had been Rosalie’s mother’s.”
“Its legend started before it was made. Please understand what an extraordinary event this engagement was in Shanghai. Of course Europeans had always taken Chinese wives. The exotic bride—a mark of wealth and power! And Chinese men with fortunes kept European mistresses. British girls, Germans, White Russians. And Americans! Very popular, American girls. And yes, some Jewish refugees took Japanese officers or rich Chinese as lovers. They were poor and times were hard. They did what desperate girls have always done, and though few approved, no one was surprised. But marriage? A Chinese from a noble family and a refugee? It’s hard to say which community was more appalled.”
“Mr. Zhang, the book I read said the engagement was secret.”
“In Shanghai everything was secret, and every secret was known! Over the charcoal stoves in their alleys, the Jewish women whispered that Rosalie Gilder couldn’t be blamed for taking an easy path to good meals and clean clothes—which meant they blamed her deeply. Among my father’s friends, the wives muttered and the men shook their heads. The Chen lineage, that had served every emperor of the last thousand years, diluted with European blood? The prophecies ran wild: the fury of the Chen ancestors, how their retribution would strike!”
“But the marriage went ahead.”
“It did. And nothing worse happened in Shanghai than what was happening every day. Rosalie Gilder, with her brother, moved to the Chen villa. Where, briefly, they lived a life more comfortable than most of their fellow refugees.”
“Why briefly?”
“The marriage took place in April of 1942. In early 1943, to please the Germans, the Japanese ordered the Jewish refugees to relocate to Hongkew, where they could be controlled and watched. Many already lived there, but many lived and worked elsewhere. Then, with one stroke, businesses were closed and families uprooted. Twenty thousand Jews, many with no way now to make a living, confined together with a million of the poorest Chinese in a single foul square mile.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“Horror, Ms. Chin, is relative. The Germans wanted the refugees exterminated. The Japanese, for their own reasons, didn’t care for that plan. The ghetto was a compromise.”
I supposed, given the choice, he was right. “And Rosalie and her brother had to go?”
“As Chen Kai-rong’s wife, Rosalie Gilder might have been excused. But as it happened, Chen Kai-rong fled Shanghai shortly before the edict was to take effect. That angered the Japanese.”
“Fled? What do you mean? He abandoned her?” This couldn’t be right.
“Ah, Ms. Chin! It was wartime. His loyalty was questioned, he offended a Japanese corporal on the Garden Bridge, a Japanese officer wanted his limousine—I don’t know. But he was gone. So Rosalie and her brother went to live in Hongkew. Taking with them,” he added, “my brother, Li, who was not yet two.”
“Your brother? Why?”
“Because my stepmother, Mei-lin, had disappeared, never to be seen again.”
“What do you mean, she disappeared?”
He gazed at me evenly. “It was wartime.”
Just like that, I thought. Your mother disappears forever, and the answer is It was wartime.
“Why didn’t your brother stay with your father and you?”
“By the time Rosalie went to Hongkew we also were long gone. To Chongqing, where my father, changing allegiances, joined Chiang Kai-shek’s army. As, within a few years, I did myself.”
“You don’t seem old enough to have fought with Chiang Kai-shek.” I’d seen the remains of the Nationalist army marching defiantly through Chinatown every October, and though C. D. Zhang was not young, those men definitely had years on him.
“I joined up at fifteen, not the youngest in my brigade. To my surprise, military life suited me. Soldiers are family, dependent on each other. People helped me and expected me to help them. I could be useful, you see! And appreciated for it! An unfamiliar situation in