January 8th, 1951    Shanghai

Dearest Machi,

Phil has gone off bowling, after coming in for tea. He was elected to this bowling club, considered quite exclusive, where members go three nights a week and can get a game without fixing one up. He has gone so seldom it hardly seems worth belonging. After a truly wonderful Christmas and New Year week, with bright sun and warm enough for only a suit, it has rained slowly ever since, and we haven't been able to get any golf and there is no other form of exercise other than bowling, for you simply can't very well take a walk around these streets. Too much people. It is still warm, and I have a hard time getting them to keep my house cool enough. You wouldn't think so I reckon, but even with it 64 in here, I find it too hot for a fire, and I have on only a silk blouse. It must be the dryness of the heating, because I am very chilly at that temperature in England. My Chinese suit is much too padded and I can hardly wear it.

We had what Janet would call a very partified Christmas, too much for me, for I seem to get tired if I stay out at all late. We had five dances - four of them private, two with orchestras, with another two with gramophones, and I do enjoy them very much, as we have some very good dancers about, but I am not much at just going out to dinner. All parties seem to be very big, food buffet, and very monotonous. We have one on Friday. I expect it will be as awful as the rest, but I am getting in a lot of boys and having it served. For some reason, when it's buffet, there is a lot of choice, and masses left over so I'm not going to do it. To give you an idea of the large community still here, I wore my new suit four times, no five, two lunches, two eggnog parties, and an evening cocktail. In each case, more than twenty in the party, and always a different crowd. One was our staff and Chinese, one a Danish party, one a Russian woman who had about sixty odds and ends, including the dressmaker who made my suit. Christmas lunch at the BAT managers with a handful of BAT Americans left (all from nearly one county bordering on North Carolina) and a lunch at Vi's of the people we see all the time.

Naturally all gaiety is on the surface. The day to day uncertainty is nerve-wracking. I would like a life where you could make a few plans. Our local friends seem even more worried than the rest of us. No-one here can understand the continued support of the crowd in Formosa - and haven't done for many months - and right now America seems to be getting even more so instead of less, but maybe it is just that we hear the wrong people being quoted - "Taft".

You know we had been told that we might leave at the beginning of the year - rush to England and back so as to give Nelson a chance to go - but now we know definitely that we are not to go before April. Nothing definite about going in April either. Wish there could be something, as short notice will get us nowhere in an England crowded with the 1951 Festival. I told Nelson that, and he said we must have someone we can stay with in England! Such an absurd remark. Why should anyone necessarily just because he has! He means, only while we look for a house, and he says you can easily get any number if you get an hour outside of London, but I don't think he knows a thing about it. I have heard that hotels being so high, everyone tries to rent a house for their holidays so there aren't any houses, anywhere. I wish everybody in England didn't go on a holiday every year.

As to our not leaving immediately, everything is by guess and by God, but it could be that six months from now would the last time you'd want to be coming back. It's always been a bad time, though, ever since we've been in North China. We have had several rejections of entrance permits for men who have been waiting months in Hong Kong. But at least it is a definite answer, and they need hang about no longer. One was to be the chief accountant. They have finally come to terms - the Company and our labour union - and the Chinese staff has been reduced by more than half - and five or six of the foreign accountants will be able to leave. Our only engineer is going too. Dick Nash asked to be allowed to retire at fifty, and he put in for an exit visa today. I can think of only five foreigners who will be left. I am so very sorry for a man who worked hard winding up the company in Hankow (leaving it in Chinese hands) and has had to take over Dick's job here. He was so pleased to be in Shanghai so his wife could join him, and she was due in Hong Kong just about the day London decided to have no more wives come in. They may not be able to enforce that, but it is doubly hard for him because she has with her a girl of seventeen, left to her when her brother and his wife were killed in a plane.

I had a terrifying few minutes when the fence between us and the new goings on caught fire. It is a very high bamboo fence, and the flames shot up into the sky and appeared very much worse than it was. With many workmen next door, and mountains of sand for cement, they got it down before the fire engines arrived, but it was perilously near the big dioda tree just in front of our house, besides which a huge matshed was twenty feet further down (on their side) and goodness knows what would have happened had that caught. It was nine o'clock the morning of our tiffin party, and we were worried about being so exposed when our cars started coming, but no need, they liked being overlooked even less, and long before noon a temporary fence was up. Our German laurel hiding our fence was burned out, and a very nice smallish magnolia is badly damaged. They have an outdoor stove just by the fence over there.

Photo of the house

Wish you could have seen the house full of red and pink poinsettias. Huge great masses in various corners. I used to think I didn't like the pink ones but they are awfully pretty in clumps. The dining room looked very tropical with palm leaves in containers hanging on the walls, and my porch furniture. But I believe I told you about what I planned to do. Fixing the house is the funnest part.

Probably told you about our presents too. The nicest were two jade pins. Not alike. One a bug with pearl head, from such a funny old Chinese man too. The most disappointing was a very fine ivory - an ugly man with a broad beard.

It was disappointing to hear from Mrs Hood that Hugo had had an acute inflammation of the ear just before the end of term, and arrived home with a cold and cough. She asked the matron to see that he got cod liver oil, and he was all right until just the end. But she says he looks fine, and as gay as always. Lee also had a cold. As Claudia says, no wonder. But she said he seemed very cheerful and had apparently enjoyed the term. No recent letter from him, but Hugo wrote just before Christmas, and was first for the form, and came first in Latin, French and English in place, and exam, and that was all he could remember. Strange he should suddenly do so well. We hear that the weather has been awful, poor things. We were giving the Hood boy riding lessons for Christmas, but maybe it was too cold. The day Hugo wrote, they had had to put off a ride because of violent wind. A girl told me today she heard there was an epidemic of 'flu in Europe. I haven't heard of it. and hope it can't be a very bad one. We have a lot of it here right now.

I started another cooking class today. It's easier. She has the food cut up and ready before you get there, and from what I saw today I believe she seasons better. She tells me you can get anything Chinese in America. Try to get a jar of pepper oil. It's sort of ground up red peppers, looking full of oil - used in Szechuan cooking, most of which is very hot. We had prawns sauté, and a very hot sauce made of ginger, onions, red peppers, soya sauce, wine, sugar. All sauces seem to be made starting with a few tablespoons of oil, always soy and a teaspoon of sugar, wine and then other things, whatever. She makes her chicken and walnuts differently, using wine and sugar, but I didn't think it as good. Thinly sliced liver and giblets, and shrimps fried in deep fat after being coated with cornflour, then pour off most of the oil and make the same sauce of wine, soy, sugar, salt and a few chopped onions. Reheat giblets in it - is perfectly grand, and ought to be very good even without the shrimps. Oh, it should have bamboo. This teacher said use half sherry, half water, in place of the wine. The sauce is two tablespoons of oil, one of wine, two of soy, two of cornstarch (including what went on the meat) and a teaspoon salt, and I didn't see how much onion, and a teaspoon sugar.

Really don't know what to write. Can't discourse on subjects. No card from the Buhrers this year. First time ever. Nor the Motts.

Lots of love

 

Economists coming in within a week now.