while everyone seemed to ignore them. What Russians there were in Shanghai clustered together near Avenue Joffre where Sergei had built his bicycle factory. The Concession was cleaner and more orderly than the International Settlement, and wealthy foreigners were building mansions in the west end.
Sergei had rented a three-storey house ten minutes by rickshaw from the factory. It was built of stone, not wood, and was surrounded by a high wall of the same pinkish grey stone, with shards of glass embedded in the top to discourage thieves and intruders. The house had a lot of rooms, including a separate room off the kitchen for the polished copper bathtub. In Russia, the bathtub had been brought into the large, heated kitchen on Saturday nights, and the girls would be scrubbed in soapy hot water that was warmed in a copper pot on the stove. In China, the water had to be carted in jugs from the kitchen into the bath room, which had a marble floor and a drain in the middle so the tub, shaped like a very large gravy boat with a pouring spout at one end, could be emptied there instead of outside.
Olga and Tatiana each had their own room, which Olga liked, but Tatiana didn't, because she was lonely. In Russia, they had both slept in the same room in a big feather bed with feather pillows and a comforter made of fine goose down. Even though Tatiana eventually got used to sleeping by herself, she continued to miss the intimacy and the secrecy of the whispered conversations that she and Olga once had in the dark, even when they had nothing to say. Tatiana had been allowed to choose her own room when they'd moved into the house and had chosen the smallest room because it had a tall, narrow window that looked out onto the street. She could always amuse herself by watching the human traffic that passed by in both directions. She told herself that each person, whether it was the fruit and vegetable vendor, the washerwoman or the knife sharpener, had a purpose and a story. It amazed her that they could do the same thing, day in and day out, whatever the weather. She didn't see it as the grinding poverty that it was. She saw only their valiant determination and steadfastness of purpose. This was Sergei's influence, she would later realize, his unwaveringly positive attitude.
I can transport myself back, even today, to a bed piled high with pillows and quilts, a green painted wooden table where I did my schoolwork, a chest of drawers, also painted green, and a wooden rocking chair where my favourite doll sat, dressed in blue satin and lace, her rosebud mouth painted red, her blue eyes always wide in a glassy expression of surprise. The walls were painted yellow, my favourite colour, and hung with pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary that the nuns had given us at Christmas. In later years, when I started sneaking in and out of the house to go to the cabarets, I was glad I had my own room and that Mother and Papa's room was at the other end of the house. My awe of Jesus and Mary had faded by then, but their pictures remained on the walls.
The girls were allowed to visit their father at work from time to time. The factory's output had grown quickly, no doubt because the bicycles it produced were sturdy and reliable. Sergei employed nearly a hundred people, including a foreman who made sure no one was sleeping or pretending to work. Sergei insisted on a production quota, although he sometimes confessed it was nearly impossible to maintain. He had to hire three people to do one job, because his employees had so many excuses for not coming to work. Usually, they would say a relative was getting married or had died, and they had to attend a wedding or a funeral. There seemed to be no shortage of relatives in Chinese families. After a while, Sergei stopped keeping track of the “Honourable Uncles, Cousins and Grandmothers” and accepted the inevitable.
Although the girls didn't understand it at the time, they were blessed with a childhood in which they felt secure enough to take risks, believing that their father would protect them, no matter what, and that their mother loved them, despite her sadness. Olga and Tatiana were taught to be watchful but not to fear. Perhaps because Sergei did not have sons, he passed on to his daughters the qualities he valued so highly in men: courage and an independent spirit.
Chapter Three
By the time China was declared a republic, a few months after Tatiana's fourteenth birthday in 1911, the Relnikovs were well-established Shanghailanders and she was slowly becoming aware of the turbulent underbelly of Chinese political life, if only as it affected what she saw. Men everywhere had begun to cut off their pigtails to disassociate themselves from the despised Manchu Dynasty that had ruled China since 1644. As a result of her friendship with Lily, Tatiana had been allowed to meet Lily's family and to visit her home for the past few years. Through Lily's brothers and her many cousins, several of whom were at university, Tatiana began to learn about the history of China and the plethora of revolutionary movements that were dedicated to bringing the country into the modern world. It seemed as if Sergei's predictions were coming true.
The first time Tatiana was invited to Lily's house, Sergei and Katarina had made a big fuss. Lily's father belonged to one of the most prosperous and powerful families in Shanghai. Tatiana didn't discover until many years later that he had been secretly financing Dr. Sun Yat-sen's movement to expel the Manchus and take power. Dr. Sun's plan was to control China through a strong central party with himself as its absolute leader. Once the people were educated in the ways of representative government, he believed, China would emerge as a democracy. Forced into exile several times, Dr. Sun would spend most of his time raising money so he could return to China and implement his plan. In 1912, he would form the National People's Party, the Kuomintang. In the first-ever elections in China, in 1913, the Kuomintang would win the majority of seats in parliament. In reality, China continued to be governed by local warlords whose interests were best served by keeping the country divided and preventing a strong central government from taking hold. When Dr. Sun died in 1925, he would be succeeded by his old friend Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Kuomintang army, who continued the campaign to unite China. Chiang Kai-shek was a personal friend of Lily's father and, as Tatiana was to learn, he had also been a classmate of Lily's future husband.
On her first visit to the Soong's, Tatiana was invited to celebrate Lily's tenth birthday. She was scrubbed until she shone, dressed in her best clothes, and Katarina braided her long hair so tightly it hurt. It was a sweltering July day in Shanghai, where the summers were not just hot but steamy, wet and stinky hot. Tatiana complained loudly but to no avail. She was instructed to ignore the heat and to think snowy thoughts of cold Russian winters so she wouldn't perspire. She wore her best pink dress, which had a lace collar and cuffs, and white gloves and stockings that stuck to her hot feet inside her buttoned leather boots. She carried a small bouquet of flowers for Lily's mother and a beautifully wrapped silk box that contained a hand-painted fan she had chosen as a gift for Lily. She knew Lily probably already had hundreds of fans, but Tatiana had decided this one would be special.
“Do you remember what I told you, Tatiana?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Repeat it for me.”
“Say please and thank you and only speak when spoken to.”
“And don't complain about being hot and uncomfortable. A lady never complains.”
“Yes, Mother. I won't complain.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Good girl,” said Katarina. “Papa and I are very proud of you.”
A rickshaw was sent to pick up Tatiana and deliver her to the large walled compound where Lily lived and which contained the households of her extended family. The compound contained several multi-storied wooden buildings arranged around a courtyard that had a large pond in the centre. The pond was like a carefully crafted work of art. The plants that were set around its perimeter had been chosen for their variety of textures, colours and styles of leaf, either broad and flat, tall and sharp, or feathered with delicate fronds. The water bubbled gently with a soothing gurgling sound. Several fat orange fish darted gracefully between lily pads upon which rested pink, yellow and white blooms, their fine long roots gently swaying like a young girl's silken tresses, right to the bottom of the pond. Each of the houses had wooden railed balconies on the upper floors,