The Porcelain Moon

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. the porcelain moon. Copyright © 2023 by Janie Chang. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. first edition Cover design by Elsie Lyons Cover photographs © Idiko Neer/Arcangel Images (Paris); © Getty Images; © Shutterstock Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2023 ISBN: 978-0-06-307287-9 Print ISBN: 978-0-06-307286-2 To T.K. and C.H., who have always looked out for their little sister Contents Cover Epigraph Chapter 1: Saturday, November 2, 1918 Chapter 2: Noyelles-sur-Mer 1906 Chapter 3: Shanghai 1907 Chapter 4: Sunday, November 3, 1918 Chapter 5: Monday, November 4, 1918 Chapter 6: Paris 1917 Chapter 7: Letters from Theo Chapter 8: Noyelles 1917 Chapter 9: Letters from Theo Chapter 10: Noyelles, April 1918 Chapter 11: Tuesday, November 5, 1918 Chapter 12: Letters from Theo Chapter 13: Noyelles, August 1918 Chapter 14: Wednesday, November 6, 1918 Chapter 15: Thursday, November 7, 1918 Chapter 16: Thursday, November 7, 1918 Chapter 17: Friday, November 8, 1918 Chapter 18: Saturday, November 9, 1918 Chapter 19: Sunday, November 10, 1918 Chapter 20: Monday, November 11, 1918 Chapter 21: Tuesday, November 12, 1918 Chapter 22: Thursday, November 21, 1918 Chapter 23: April 30, 1937 Author’s Note Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Janie Chang iii v vi vii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 Europeans understand the logics of matter and by using the logics of the human spirit are able to transform a pitch-dark battlefield to a clear morning sky. But suppose they tried to reach the logics of Heaven through the logics of matter, now that would be real civilization. —Sun Gan, student worker, after seeing flares light up the night sky over No Man’s Land Chapter 1 Saturday, November 2, 1918 Pauline But I don’t want to get married, she thought. The letter fell from her hand and fluttered to the floor of the study, the neat precision of her uncle’s brushstroked Chinese writing at odds with the chaos that churned her insides. Pauline didn’t reach down to retrieve it, just stared at the sheet of paper as though it were some malevolent creature, a serpent or venomous spider lying on the wooden parquet. Her uncle’s first wife was now in control of her fate. First Wife, who had never wanted her in their household. First Wife, whose expression visibly curdled whenever she looked at Pauline. Her uncle had murmured occasionally about writing to First Wife in Shanghai about arranging a match for Pauline, but in his absentminded way he’d never followed through. Not until now. Now, because he was back in China for Grandfather Deng’s funeral. Now, because while he was there he had remembered to ask First Wife to hire a matchmaker for Pauline, his dead brother’s illegitimate daughter. Pauline’s gaze fell on a tall vase in the corner, its glazed surface painted with a folktale she knew well: the Lady Ch’ang O escaping from a cruel husband, her robes streaming in the wind as she ascends the night sky toward a full moon. Her right hand is raised, pointing to her destination. A porcelain woman reaching for a porcelain moon. The air in Pauline’s lungs felt chokingly thick. She threw open the study window, oblivious to the frigid November wind that slashed