As the Mist Rises

According to The Cambridge History of the Republic of China, from the late Qing through the Republican era, quite a few places in China were known for their foreign concessions. The names need not be specified: one in the south, three in the north. After 1900, there were even more. These places rich in concessions were also rich in churches, long, towering walls, and missionaries who never quite managed to speak Chinese without mangling it. Churches, walls, missionaries: all three could be called local specialties, and all are mentioned in The Cambridge History of the Republic of China. There was just one thing missing. It didn't belong in the official history and couldn't be mentioned in polite company. Anyone who encountered it would sniff and take a detour. What was it? Mixed-race children. In those days, villages near churches often saw the birth of astonishingly beautiful mixed-race children. Who could have imagined that after blood fought against blood, such perfection could emerge? What a pity that these children usually bore witness to something “ugly”: they were loved little and hated much, an eyesore and a thorn in everyone's side. People couldn't bring themselves to kill them, either. Most were wrapped in cloth after birth and left at the church door. A way of saying: go back where you came from. No one knows where these astonishingly beautiful children ended up. Did they go to the side of their other bloodline, or did they become spring mud, nourishing the flowers?