Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Chang’s grandmother, Yu Fang, was born in 1909 in Yixian, a town in southwest Manchuria. At the age of two, her feet were broken and bound to prevent them from growing, a centuries-old practice designed to make young Chinese girls look more vulnerable and thus sexually attractive to men. By the time she was 15, Chang’s grandmother was a famous local beauty. Her father, Yang Ru-shan, was a minor police official but an otherwise ambitious man. One day, General Xue Zhi-heng, inspector general of the Metropolitan Police at Peking, visited Yixian. Chang’s great-grandfather managed to orchestrate several encounters between his daughter and General Xue. Smitten with the young girl, the general soon offered to take her as his concubine, “a kind of institutionalized mistress” (11).

Chang’s grandmother cried because she did not want to belong to a man in that way, but she also did not dare defy her father, who was ecstatic at having made this connection to a powerful man. General Xue allowed her to reside in a luxurious house near her family in Yixian, and he was not cruel to her, but she rarely saw him. One week after the ceremony that cemented her status as his concubine, General Xue left the house in Yixian and did not return for six years.