[200] The Piano Teacher – Janice Y.K. Lee

“They’re supporting that Wong Chang Wai [see Lust Caution by Eileen Chang] chap, who the Japanese installed in China. I’ve heard Dominick has been seen with a lot of that crowd. And Victor Chen, of course, thick as thieves with whoever can help him. Rumor has it that he had the Japanese consulate over the dinner last week.” [77]

The Piano Teacher captures the interplay between the East and West in Hong Kong over a period of instability in the 1940s on the verge of war. After the fall of Canton about three months earlier, the Imperial Japanese Army encroached the British colony for three years and eight months. When Will Truesdale arrived in 1942, the city was already thriving in a diversity of trades and commercial bustles, which became the inevitable source of British superiority. The Chinese, who were stereotypically known to foreigners as an unscrupulous, conniving people, generally filled the subservient jobs.

They [the Brits] live in grand style on the Peak, where Angeline’s presence [Chinese woman who married a Brit] causes some discomfort as Chinese are supposed to have permission to live there, except for one family who is so unfathomably rich they are exempt from the rules. [31]

Not too long after he had settled down, he fell headlong in a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, an Eurasian socialite who had been the consistent target of rumors and scandals. But owing to the family’s social status (Hong Kong is all about status and pleasantry even today), everybody, expatriates and locals alike, hobnobbed with her. But soon the Japanese invasion threatened their love affair, which proved to be ephemeral. As the Japanese began to collect civilian enemies and Will Truesdale was thrown into Stanley Prison, Trudy proved herself indispensable to the Japanese commander Otsubo, who believed she would secure the information on where the Crown Collection (a collection of priceless art pieces shipped from England to most colonies, and apparently the Hong Kong collection was impressive) was secreted away before the belligerency. Obviously both the Communists and the Japanese were preying on these pieces— centuries old, inestimable in value and politically sensitive. Unbeknownst to a series of conspiracy and sabotage of a family member, Trudy was coiled in the mission with the Japs for the sake of her love for Will.

Ten years later, in 1952, Claire Pendleton came to Hong Kong with her husband and was hired by a wealthy Chen family as their daughter’s piano teacher. A provincial newlywed who quickly acclimatized to the colony’s natural and social faculty, the heady social life quickly enthralled her. She began an affair with Will, who was now the Chens’ chauffeur. As her husband receded so far from her life, Claire plunged deeper into the a devastating past that had enslaved Will and rendered him emotionally detached.

You always tell me to be strong, but you’re never strong yourself. When we first met, you told me I should take the opportunity to become something else, to transcend what I had been given. You can’t do that yourself. You’re mired in the past and determined to be unhappy. [308]

This debut is very well-researched, citing the important historical facts that revolved around inveigling of priceless collection for personal gain. The destiny of Trudy Liang is both haunting and poignant, on the account that mixed breed at the time was usually not accepted as equal. Nobody but Will Truesdale had ever loved her and yet she had demonstrated the rigor of love and loyalty at a time when survival seemed to be what self-interested dictated. Trudy valued her love for Will, but Will valued the well-being of his fellow Englishmen in the prison. Whereas other people, those who considered most revered and elite, were the thickest of thieves who betrayed everyone.

They loved my money or the way I looked, or even the way I talked, because it made them think I was a certain way. Or my father, he loved me because he had to. My mother loved me but then she left. No one loved me for me, or thought I was more than a good distraction at a party. [271]

The Piano Teacher transports readers to a time when everyone was confronted with impossible choices: between love and safety, between fortune and family. The book ponders at how we all make choices and how important we have to stand by the choices and acknowledge responsibility if we find ourselves on the wrong end. The way Lee delineates the underlying tension between foreigners and locals, the unspoken expectation and etiquette in these social relationships is just so spot on.

336 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]

You might also like:

• Gweilo: A Memoir of a Hong Kong Childhood, Martin Booth
• Love in a Fallen City, Eileen Chang