Trust Me On This : Memoirs of a Merry Gentleman

When my family and I gather at the holidays we invariably sing the traditional air, “Gau Lei Tzu Mei Li Jen Loo Mung.” Traditional for us that is, and for a small but fiercely loyal group of John Espeyites.

Espey, the son of Protestant missionaries, was born and reared in a pre-Mao China that now seems as remote as the Bronze Age. Through the 1920s and ‘30s, his parents energetically attempted to convert the heathen in and around Shanghai. Meanwhile, their son slowly lapsed from the beliefs of his Baptist mother and Presbyterian father.

Eventually he went off to Oxford; later he became a Stateside professor whose background was Oriental but whose college was Occidental. Long ago, these ironies were summoned up in three volumes of subtle, wise and often hilarious memoirs. They have long since gone out of print.

The first, “Minor Heresies,” describes Espey’s early life as a stranger in a strange land. In one chapter, he recalls a rough Chinese gang whose members trampled a family flower bed. The prepubescent John bopped the leader, a predatory female known as the Lady Bandit; later in the day, her parents appeared, operatically demanding justice--the bump on her head had reduced the girl’s marriage value.

The Espeys conferred. John had sinned by failing to turn the other cheek, yet the Lady Bandit had trespassed. Something must be done, something fair to all concerned. “Almost in a chorus we said . . . ‘We will give them flowers.’ ” Accordingly, gang members were invited home to lunch, where they gorged themselves. Each was then presented with a “gift of love, which we hoped would flower into a lasting friendship between them and ourselves.”

Under the benign gaze of their hosts, every Chinese visitor received a plant, bowed gracefully and proceeded across the nearby canal. When the Lady Bandit reached the precise center of the bridge, “without flicker of hesitation, she poised the flowerpots and shot out both her arms. We gasped. A dwarf rose soared over the left railing, a white geranium cleared the right, and both plants splashed in the yellow water of the canal. As each alley-brat reached the same spot another plant sailed out over the water. . . . Not until the last rigid back had disappeared around the corner did a ribald chorus of shouts and hoots rip the air and strike upon our horrified ears. . . .

“We turned around, and burning foreheads held high, we walked with pride and Presbyterian hearts back into the house. If there had ever been a spark of Baptist fire in our hearts, it was eternally quenched in those moments.”

In another episode, Espey devoted a fortnight to learning a Mandarin song. Not until his mother attended the recital did he realize that “Gau Lei Tzu Mei Li Jen Loo Mung” was actually a Christmas carol in English--Chinese English: “We had spent two earnest weeks memorizing Miss Zung’s version of ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.’ ” Miss Zung is long gone, but her version still haunts my house with the seasonal regularity of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Espey never editorializes; he prefers the quiet vignette that detonated in the reader’s mind. On his first visit to the States, for example, John met his Midwest cousins. They held him at arm’s length until the 9-year-old announced that back in Shanghai his shirts were made to order: “We have half a house tailor at home.” Only later did he acknowledge that “Of course mine was a monstrous lie; at the most we owned a tenth of a house tailor.”

Note the use of the word “owned”; Espey throws it away, and it lies there, ticking on the shelf. His sequels, “The Other City” and “Tales Out of School,” offer similar time bombs, recollections of a youth surrounded by rickshaw men, private schools and the Public Gardens of the International Settlement where a sign barred the entry of dogs or Chinese.

In all of these quiet, lapidary stories the author never fails to beguile the reader with anecdotes, dialogues and confrontations. En route, he said--or whispered--more about the approaching catastrophe of Sino-American relations than a battalion of think tanks. Forty years ago you could read excerpts from the trilogy in The New Yorker, and later in hard-cover versions published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Alas, The New Yorker has changed beyond reckoning, and Knopf has lately gone in for epics such as “American Psycho.” Still, martini-dry humor and social acuity are not yet homeless. Used bookstores still yield out-of-print treasures, and so, of course, do libraries. Anyone who wants to know about the Orient, missionary zeal, main currents of American thought circa 1930, or about writing in general, should seize these highly polished gems and badger some publisher until he reprints them.

Gau lei tzu mei li when you do. Guaranteed.