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Han Suyin was born in Beijing in 1917. Her father was a Chinese railway engineer and her mother a Dutch lady. She is a physician and the author of many works, including A Mortal Flower, which tells of the experiences of the author and her family, both in and out of China. This excerpt describes the author’s experience of looking for her first job in the early 1930s.
A Mortal Flower
Han Suyin
1. The day after meeting Hilda I wrote a letter to the Rockefeller Foundation, applying for a job.baby be mine
2. Neither Father nor Mother thought I would get in. “You have to have pull. It’s an American thing, Rockefeller Foundation. You must have pull. ”
3. Mother said: “That’s where they do all those experiments on dogs and people. All the Big Shots of the Nanking government also came here to have medical treatment, and sometimes took away a nurse to become a new wife.”
4. It made sense to me, typing in a hospital; I would learn about medicine, since I wanted to study medicine. And as there no money at home for me to study, I would earn money, and prepare myself to enter medical school. I had already discovered that a convent-school education was not at all adequate, and that it would take me at least three more years of hard study before being able to enter any college at all. Science, mathematics, Chinese literature and with the poor schooling given to me, it would take me years to get ready for a university.
5. “I will do it,” But clenched teeth, decision tearing my bowels, were not enough; there was no money, no money, my mother said it, said it until I felt as if every scrap of food I ate was wrenched off my father’s body.
6. “No one is going to feed you doing nothing at home.” Of course, one who does not work
must not eat unless one can get married, which is called: “being settled at last.” But with my looks I would never get married; I was too thin, too sharp, too ugly. Mother said it, Elder Brother had said it. Everyone agreed that I should work, because marriage would be difficult for me.
7. Within a week a reply came. The morning postman brought it, and I choked over my milk and coffee. “I’m to go for an interview. At the Peking Union Medical College. To the Comptroller’s office.”
8. Father and Mother were pleased. Mother put the coffee pot down and took the letter. “What good paper, so thick.” But how could we disguise the fact that I was not [even] fifteen years old? I had claimed to be sixteen in the letter. In fact, said Papa, it was not a lie since Chinese are a year old when born, and if one added the New Year as an extra year, as do the Cantonese and the Hakkas, who became two years old when they reach their first New Year (so that a baby on December 31st would be reckoned two years old on the following January 2nd), I could claim to being sixteen.
9. “You look sixteen,” said Mama; “all you have to do is to stop hopping and picking your pimples. And lengthen your skirt.”
10. What dress should I wear? I had two school uniforms, a green dress, a brown dress, and one dress with three rows of frills for Sunday, too dressy for an interview. I had no shoes except flat-heeled school shoes, and tennis shoes. There was no time to make a dress and in those years no ready made clothes existed, so Mother lengthened the green dress. I squeezed two pimples on my forehead, then went to the East market and bought some face powder, Butterfly brand, pink, made in Shanghai by a Japanese firm.
11. The next morning, straw-hatted, with powder on my nose, I went with my father to the gates of the hospital.
12. “It’s not this gate, this is for the sick. It’s the other gate, round the corner,” said the porter.
13. The Yu Wang Fu Palace occupied a whole city block. We walked along its high grey out
er wall, hearing the dogs scream in the kennels, and came to its other gate, which was the Administration building gate. It had two large stone lions, one male, one female. We crossed the marble courtyard, walked up the steps with their carved dragons coiling in the middle, into an entrance hall, with painted beams and intricate painted ceiling, red lacquered pillars, huge lamps. There was cork matting on the stone floor.
14. “I’ll leave you,” said Papa. “Try to make a good impression.” And he was gone.
15. I found the Comptroller’s office easily; there was a messenger in the hall directing visitors. An open door, a room, two typewriters clattering and two women making them clatter.
16. I stood at the door and one of the women came to me. She had new style of hair, all upstanding curls, which I admired, a dress with a print round the hem; she was very pregnant, so that he belly seemed to be coming at me first. She smiled. “Hello, what can I do for you?”
17. “I have an interview.”
18. She took the letter from my hand. “Glad you could come. Now, just sit you down. No, sit down there. I’ll tell Mr. Harned you’ve come.”
19. The office had two other doors besides the one to the corridor, on one was “Comptroller.” That was the one she went through and returned from.
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