Novel Excerpt



From the novel
The Woman Who Lost China
Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang

Manying sat huddled on the suitcase, her back against the door of the toilet compartment. For the moment no one disturbed her. The rushing blackness, metal cold, clanked and roared through the toilet hole in the floor. She felt as if she and her child might fall in at any moment.

Snuggling around the warmth of the baby on her chest, she slept fitfully. Her mind would not be still, running on and on through the rushing darkness.

And the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked. 

Soft, caressing, liquid nakedness. 

And the Lord said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, the Serpent beguiled me and I did eat. 

"Wife of mine, where are you?” The ghost of her husband flitted briefly above her and disappeared. 

"Xiong! Bear!” she called her husband’s name. “I’m coming!" She was climbing over the rocks by the sea as a child, her little dress hitched up into her pants so that she could run fast. 

"Manying! Manying!" A different voice was calling from a small straw hut.

"I'm coming!" She ran even faster, scrabbling on her hands and knees up to the door. In the darkness, a man cowered face down in the straw. Over and over he muttered something, but she could not understand what he said. She went inside. He rolled over. He had been beaten, his face purple and blue with bruises and swollen almost beyond recognition. He stank like an animal. Covering her mouth and nose with her hand, Manying saw that he was lying in a pool of glistening faeces. Still mumbling, the man reached up to her, trying to open his eyes, which were caked with blood. 

Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.


Shy whisps of dawn mist began creeping through the hole in the floor and the baby stirred on Manying's chest. Her shoulders and back ached from the cold and unaccustomed weight. Stiffly, she lifted the child out of the papoose. Rubbing his eyes with his fists he smiled up at her. Realising that the child would soon be crying for food, Manying felt the eagle's claw tighten on the back of her neck.

Squatting down with the baby on her hip, she opened the bottom compartment of the suitcase. Underneath some old towels someone had packed a thermos flask, an old army water bottle, a lunch box, chopsticks, an enamel mug, a paper bag containing peanuts in their shells, a baby's feeding bottle with a yellowing teat, and an orange. Manying stared at the plump, opulent flesh of the fruit. It seemed like an illicit jewel.

The thermos contained hot water, the metal box a small mountain of rice, some pork, a hundred-year-old egg, and pickled cabbage. Most likely it had been Zheng's own lunch for the previous day. In amazement, she fingered the contents of the suitcase. It was obvious what was intended: the old towels were meant as nappies. She remembered with a pang that Zheng was a father. In all likelihood the feeding bottle had belonged to his son.

The handle of her door turned, turned again and spun back home. Someone was trying to get in. The person on the outside cursed and rattled the door violently with his body. Manying remembered Zheng's words.

"If you run into trouble your answer is in the top of the suitcase." But she could not move.

"Hey Mate! Out of order!" A soldier with a thick Sichuan accent shouted. "Daft bastard! Can't you read?"

She heard the soldiers’ tired, gruff laughter and the chorus of coughing and spitting as they greeted the day. Canteen lids clattered open, followed by a concentrated silence. 

Manying returned her attention to the suitcase, tears of frustration welling up at the sight of the baby's bottle. Such kind foresight was all very well, but there was no milk. A wet nurse had fed her son since the day he was born. Roughly, she massaged her own small, barren breasts until they ached. 

I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in thy sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. 
It seemed hopeless. Soon the baby would start to cry and they would be discovered. 

The train rattled into the new dawn. The first rays of sunshine climbed over the wooden window frame. Taking the top off the thermos flask Manying poured an inch or so of steaming water into the cup. She waited for it to cool down before dropping some of the rice into the water. With her index finger she worked it into a paste, bit by bit, adding more water and rice until she had a warm porridge. It was not milk, but it was the best she could do. 

At first she tried to scoop the food directly from the cup into her son's mouth. But the precious mixture dribbled down his face and was wasted, so she decanted it into the bottle and added more water. Tipping her son back on her lap, she put the teat to his mouth. Surprised by the artificial teat, he looked at her with big puzzled eyes and tried to push the rice water back out of his mouth with his tongue. But soon he was soothed by the warm, easy flow and closing his eyes sucked vigorously on the worn teat. When he had finished Manying replaced his nappy with one of the old towels, throwing the dirty one through the hole in the floor. She would not allow herself to waste precious water on washing her hands, merely wiping them as best she could on an old handkerchief she found in the pocket of her padded jacket. Sitting the baby on the top of the suitcase she ate three pieces of pork and some cabbage and allowed herself three gulps of cold water from the army canteen. She thought of Zheng during the war against the Japanese, sitting in the sunshine on a snow capped mountain peak, drinking from the same battered canteen.

Invigorated by the food, the child lay on the top of the suitcase playing with his toes and smiling at his mother. 

Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life...thorns and thistles...thorns and thistles. 

Choking, Manying tried to smile back at her child. She had betrayed Bear. What was done was done. Yet, if she were to re-live the last twenty-four hours, she knew that it would be no different. And now Zheng was dead to her forever. She must expunge the memory of him from her mind.  

It seemed an eternity before the miraculous red and gold of the setting sun began to filter through the grubby window to Manying’s cell. Again she fed the child and laid him down to sleep on the suitcase. Hunger gnawed at her own stomach, but, calculating that they would have at least another day and a half of journey after Shanghai, she only allowed herself a few peanuts and enough water from the canteen to stop her tongue from sticking to the roof of her mouth. Sitting with her back against the door she prayed for sleep's embrace.

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So He drove out the man.

Manying was in a great temple, burning incense in front of a giant cast iron burner with swirling dragons on it, as she had done once secretly with her mother. On the steps leading up to an altar, from which radiated a blinding golden light, stood the American Pastor from her childhood. Arms outstretched, he was preaching. His voice, high pitched and clipped like that of the Generalissimo, echoed from loud speakers fixed to the blue and yellow eves of the temple. 

"And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth...the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." 

His words rose to a screeching crescendo as bombs began to fall. 

Amidst the falling rubble and dust, Manying was bowing in prayer, still holding her incense sticks. One of the glowing tips caught on the ends of her hair setting it alight. Desperately, with her bare hands, she tried to put out the flames, but the more she struggled the stronger the flames became. Screaming, she tried to run out of the temple. But it was too late. Darkness caved in around her. 
She awoke crying in the toilet compartment, her fists clenched in anger. How could God allow such suffering and destruction? Was He not supposed to love all his children? Yet in the end no one had been able to escape. The war had corrupted them all.


The train arrived at Shanghai in the early hours of the following morning. Manying was tempted to try to find somewhere to fill the thermos and buy more food. Peering out of the lower window, she realised the wisdom of Zheng's warning about leaving the train. The platform, floodlit like a stage, was heaving with soldiers and refugees. A fleet of foreign devil women pushed officiously down the platform. They were led by a large middle-aged woman in a bright blue dress and a white cloche hat, who viciously wielded a black man’s umbrella against anyone who got in her way. They were looking for someone or something. 

Seeing a foreign devil soldier on crutches with a bandage around his head climb down from the train, the woman in the blue dress shouted something in English and raised her gloved hand to encourage her followers. They had, it seemed, come to help the foreign wounded. One by one, injured foreign men climbed out of the train. The men on stretchers were unloaded by porters and shepherded by one of the foreign women into the first class waiting room with a curtained glass door at the end of the platform. Once more the door was propped open to facilitate the movement of stretchers. Inside were yet more foreign women, in an assortment of hats, handing out sandwiches and large white mugs of tea. All the while the woman in the blue dress superintended the operation with her umbrella, her voice cawing above everything like that of a great rook.

Why were there foreigners wounded, Manying wondered? It was a Chinese civil war. It did not involve foreigners.

After the foreigners had finished unloading their wounded, a bespectacled young man with hair slicked back and a woman in a fur coat arrived with a barefoot porter. The man and the porter started to load their mountain of luggage onto the train. A group of Chinese soldiers climbed into the carriage and threw the couple’s bags back onto the platform.

"No room on this train. Priority for military personnel.”

"Nonsense!” The young man picked up a soft leather bag that had been thrown off the train and attempted to get back on. There was a scuffle as the soldiers removed him.

"But we have valid tickets!" his companion tried to reason with a tall lieutenant dressed in school mistress Mandarin.

"Dog's fart! Black market tickets!" he sneered in Shanghainese, tearing them up and throwing the pieces into the air to fall like confetti.

“What is your name and rank? I will report you to your commanding officer. Have you any idea who we are? ” 

But the lieutenant grinned with tobacco black teeth and grabbed her around the waist.

“Let’s dance little lady! I am going to claim you as lost property and take you to Hong Kong to warm my bed. One, two, three!” He yanked her around in an ugly waltz circle, pulled her head back by her hair and forced his open mouth onto hers. The woman kicked him and scratched his face. 

“Leave her go!” The soldiers jostled the man, tearing his glasses from his nose and throwing them between them, over his head.

"Ever fucked a lady in a fur coat before? Nice and warm. Nice!" 

Clanking and swearing, another group of soldiers took up the space between the carriages outside Manying's door. They spoke Mandarin with a heavy accent that she could not place, but she could just about get the gist of their tired talk.

"Those foreign devils must be the wounded from that English ship the communist bandits hit in the Yangtze."

"Nothing to save Nanjing now! They say our great Generalissimo’s already retreated to Taiwan. How heroic!" 

"Fucking fiasco! When I get to Hong Kong I'm going to get me a nice round Cantonese wife, with a soft warm pussy and live like an Emperor." 

"When I get to Hong Kong I'm going to the Beautiful Country: to America! America! America!" The speaker chewed over the English word for the Beautiful Country. No one interrupted, for in the noise and dust of chaos, the utterance of this simple foreign word was exotic poetry. 

Just after dawn the train left the station and the men were soon cursing the draughts from gaps between the carriages. Manying was glad to hear them stacking their guns and bedrolls against her door then moving back towards the carriage door to sit.

His pathetic face smeared with dirt, the baby began to whimper. Manying knew that his nappy was full, but she only had two more clean towels and decided not to change him until the evening. She took the cork stopper off the thermos and peered into the shiny silver inside. Shaking it gently from side to side, she judged it to be half full. 

The train powered purposefully onward. It seemed to Manying that her own heart had stopped beating and it was only the pumping of the engine that was keeping her alive. Many times that day soldiers clanked across the metal junction plates towards her toilet door. Sometimes they were stopped by the weary voices of defeated soldiers who just did not want to be disturbed anymore. 
"It's busted. Best just piss out of the door." But other times someone would reach the toilet unchallenged and rattle the handle and push on the door. 

Another day turned into night. Manying would not have noticed the day’s passing had it not been for the routines of the baby. He had played fitfully that day, sucking his index finger, and looking at her with wistful, sad eyes. She mashed up half the orange into some rice water to feed him. Afterwards she removed his nappy and, holding him over the hole in the floor, whistled to him softly to encourage him to pass water. He slept briefly on her breast but soon awoke crying, his screams amplified by the metal walls of their tiny cell.

He would not be placated. Manying tried to give him some more rice porridge but he turned his head away. In desperation she opened her shirt and put him to her breast. But his little fists beat the air, and he turned red with rage. Rocking him to her she put her hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. How could the soldiers not have heard? But the baby wailed and wailed. Manying's hand pressed harder and harder. The child turned blue. Manying never knew how long it was before she removed her hand. She held the child upright. Between screams he gulped great gasps of air, his little face contorted with the effort. 

Manying was resigned to her fate, but strangely no one came. The night wore on and the baby was eventually exhausted and fell asleep in her arms. Her arms ached and her clothes were damp with his urine, but she could not bear to put her son down. 


At last the train stopped. People shouted in Cantonese, her husband Bear's native dialect, and she felt the relief of homecoming. It turned out to be a small country station and the soldiers got out to stretch their legs. She could see the light of their cigarette ends outside the window, and hear them peeing against the carriage. After a while the train started. Calculating that it was probably only half a day to the Hong Kong border, Manying fed the child the last of the orange and rice. Her own mouth was so dry that she could hardly chew the peanuts, but again she allowed herself just one mouthful of water. 

As the day wore on the southern sunshine warmed the cold carriage. The train arrived at the Hong Kong border in mid-afternoon of the 23rd of April 1949. They had been in their tiny compartment for nearly three days. 

"All change!" A man's voice ordered from the platform. The soldiers cheered.

The crunch of boots and the excited voices of the passengers faded into the distance. In the drowsy stillness of the afternoon, listening to the humming of the crickets, Manying waited. At last she judged it to be safe and emerged from her cell. The baby was limp and heavy in her arms; her own legs trembled with fatigue. Closing the door she saw that Zheng had written a notice and stuck it on the outside of the door. She recognised his clear, elegant characters she had known since childhood.

Out of order
Please use alternative facilities

Standing on the platform, blinking in the spring sunshine, she smiled at the bizarre nature of a war, where a tiny notice could afford such protection against the violence and chaos around her. 

The passengers stampeded across the small bridge that crossed the border to the British Colony of Hong Kong. A tiny figure lost in the valley between the plump green mountains, Manying followed slowly in their wake. Crossing the bridge, she looked down at the cracks in the boards beneath her feet. Far below the cool clear water of the small river gurgled happily on its way. 

At the little station on the Hong Kong side of the border, passengers pushed and shoved to reach the one little window that was selling tickets for the final leg of the journey to the city of Hong Kong itself. Fists flew, chickens in wicker baskets squawked and a live pig trussed on a pole between two men squealed appeals for mercy.

How would she ever get a ticket? Looking around she saw that not everyone was rushing to buy tickets. Some soldiers had stripped off their shirts and were washing at one of the trackside water taps. Laughing, they splashed each other and scrubbed away until their skin was red raw. Leaving their damp towels around the backs of their necks, those that still wore uniforms ripped the badges and stripes off their hats and coats. 

Manying waited until a group of soldiers was moved off by a border guard and took her place with two other women at a tap. She filled her metal cup with water. It glistened like liquid diamond in the sunshine. Greedily she gulped it down. Washing her face and hands, again and again she scooped up the water, letting it run over her head and down her neck. When the other women had finished, Manying undressed her baby and bathed him under the tap. At first he cried from the coldness of the water, then he started to kick his legs sending water splashing everywhere. The British officer in his green beret, overseeing the arrival of the refugees from the corner of a Customs shed, laughed. He watched Manying hold her baby up to the golden sunshine, the water dripping off him like long strings of pearls. 

When the local train from Hong Kong arrived, those passengers who wanted to disembark were met by the tide of refugees rushing to board. In the crush, Manying and the other women at the pump took their opportunity to get to the window and purchase tickets. 

The journey through the New Territories to the city of Hong Kong lasted about two hours. There was no room to sit and Manying was crushed up against the door of a carriage. She looked down at the little black head of her son peeping out of the papoose. He did not move. She tried to adjust her position and raise the child up onto her shoulder but it was impossible, and if she lifted the child too high she was afraid he would fall out of the open window. 

At Hong Kong station, Manying struggled to remain upright as the carriage door was opened and the press of people inside pushed her out onto the platform. 

Outside the station, hundreds of wide-eyed faces pressed up against the railings, to see if by chance they could find one of their loved ones. There were many tearful reunions but, as she left the station, Manying saw that most people were leaving in disappointment. 

Half an hour later she sat on her heels by the harbour next to the white Star Ferry terminal with its little clock tower. Giddily she looked over to Hong Kong Island, its white, colonial buildings and mountain peaks shrouded in mist. In the exhaustion induced by lack of sleep and lack of food she almost believed it could be the Penglai Islands of the Immortals. 

The Star Ferry left the far side of the harbour, weaving its way across the busy waterway. There was a large party of foreigners on the top deck, the men in white jackets and the women in brightly coloured dresses and big hats. The ship appeared to be decorated with gay bunting. The ferry bounced against the rubber fenders on the dockside. There was a series of thuds as gangplanks fell, and passengers disgorged onto the quay. The foreigners' laughter was like the chatter of roosting birds in the late afternoon.

The ferry was immediately ready for its return journey and Manying boarded the crowded lower deck. She stood by the rail at the back of the ship, and when the coolies next to her moved away, she remembered that her trousers were damp with the baby's urine. 

She was an outcast: her belongings all were gone, and she did not know if her husband and the father of her son were dead or alive. She readjusted the heavy load of the child in his papoose and raised her face to the sun and the wind. 






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About the author:

Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang was born and educated in Yorkshire. As a young person she spent a lot of time in Europe, and speaks French, German and Spanish, as well as Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese. She read Chinese at Oxford and made her first trip to China, via Karachi and Islamabad, at the age of nineteen. She found a silent, black and white country largely abandoned since 1949, and a traumatised people emerging from the Maoist years, bravely hoping for better things.

She has worked in business in the UK and Taiwan and is a non practising lawyer. She runs Chinese language and cultural training courses for businesses with China links.

Rhiannon has worked as a freelance writer in Taiwan and was a runner up in the Woman and Home magazine short story competition. She has also had a short story about being an English mother with a baby in Taiwan, broadcast on BBC Radio Oxford.

She lives a traditional Nottinghamshire village with her husband, Steve Tsang, and their nine year old son. When not writing, doing school runs, or otherwise mothering, she enjoys walking, yoga, tennis and watching cricket.



About the Book...

It is 1949 and the Chinese Republic is collapsing under Mao Tse Tung’s communist onslaught. Manying, distressed and frightened and unsure of the fate of her soldier husband, must flee Nanjing with her baby. With the help of her beloved childhood sweetheart, she finds a place on the last train leaving the city and endures a horrifying journey to Hong Kong where she is taken in by her brother and sister-in law. Grief-stricken and destitute, she struggles to make sense of the world in which she now finds herself. As she recalls the cruel fate of her uncle at a provincial court half a century earlier and all that has been lost, she makes a discovery: the past shapes the present. Fate, however, has yet more in store for her. Love, war, sacrifice, corruption and revenge all play their part in this epic story that reaches its climax in twenty-first century Shanghai.
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