The Great Flowing River Read online

  FLEEING FROM HANKOU TO XIANGXIANG

  The government ordered the dispersal of all residents and refugees in Wuhan; all factories, military and government facilities, and schools were to move southwest to Guizhou and Sichuan. Chongqing was officially now the capital, and all people fleeing were to follow the Hunan–Guangxi Road southwest as expeditiously as possible.

  My father ran all over and managed to find an ancestral temple called Huangbi Hall in Yongfeng Town in Xiangxiang, Hunan. The locals acceded to his request to allow the one thousand students to be housed there.

  It was another five hundred li from Hankou to Xiangxiang in Xiangtan County. The students and teachers who located vehicles rode, while those who did not set out on foot from Hankou. It took about one month to make the trek to Yongfeng Town.

  My father found a car to take my mother, the mother of a teacher, a married woman, and my two little sisters and me, and we set off for Hunan as well. Halfway, we caught up with the contingent of students, at the rear of which walked my brother. My uncle told my brother to get in the car, and a place was made for him to squeeze in beside the driver.

  The following day we arrived at a stop, where my father caught up with us. He asked my brother why he was riding in the car.

  My uncle replied, “There is space in the car. You have only one son, so let him ride in it!”

  My father said, “Many of the students with us are only sons, and their families entrusted them to us. So why do they walk and my son gets to ride?” He ordered the car to catch up with the contingent, where he dropped my brother off to walk with the others.

  This moving contingent took to the road at daylight and stopped at night. We stayed in countless inns along the way. It was arranged for the students to stay in different school auditoriums, classrooms, or playing fields, while the local garrisons would provide some straw and a little rice. Everyone slept on the straw, and each meal there was also some boiled turnips or cabbage.

  After my brother was forced out of the car and rejoined the others on foot, I raised a ruckus every day to be allowed to join him: “Why does he get to walk, and I don’t? Why do I have to ride in the car?” So they let me out to walk with the others.

  I only walked part of the day and that night, while sleeping on the straw, I developed a high fever. Early in the morning on the next day, I was returned to my mother and dared not broach the subject again.

  Just prior to the lunar New Year, we reached Xiangxiang and discovered that Hunan alone was rife with different dialects, and that of Xiangxiang was different from other cities in Hunan.

  Qi Baishi was from Xiangxiang, and it had a good deal of local color. Huangbi Hall was another ten li from Xiangxiang and located in Yongfeng Town. It was the ancestral temple of the Ming dynasty imperial family. The temple actually did have nearly a hundred rooms, which meant that there was enough room not only for the students but also for classrooms. Meanwhile, my family moved into another temple: Fujia Hall.

  This was the first time since fleeing Nanjing that we had the semblance of being a family again. It was only then that we dared tell our mother the truth, that Jingyuan had died. In Hankou my father had told her that Auntie Han had taken Jingyuan and left with the first group of students and teachers dispersed to Hunan. And it was only then that we dared to tell her that cousin Pei Lianju and Zhang Dafei had enlisted. After she learned of this, she wept, deeply sorrowful, whereupon her illness returned and she remained sick in bed for a long time before recovering.

  MY HOME IS ON THE SONGHUA RIVER IN THE NORTHEAST

  After the school was settled in Huangbi Hall, a sense of calm returned, and then the lunar New Year soon arrived. On the stormy night of New Year’s Eve, the entire school assembled and made dumplings, a tradition since the establishment of Sun Yat-sen Middle School. The children, who had not had a hot meal in some time, on New Year’s Eve ate the authentic food from their native place with joy and alacrity.

  After the meal on the Lantern Festival, some went down to a clearing by the riverside outside the temple and lit bonfires, with hundreds sitting around the fires.

  Someone said we were getting farther away from home with each passing day. The Japanese had occupied half of China, and they were still killing. When would we ever be able to go home? Soon the sound of weeping was heard on the riverbank, and a few of the younger girls actually began to wail.

  Amid the tears, Hao Lengruo, a Chinese teacher, led everyone in singing “On the Songhua River” (lyrics by Zhang Hanhui), a song that had been handed down to later generations:

  My home is on the Songhua River in the northeast,

  where there are forests and coal mines,

  and where soybeans and sorghum grow all over the mountains and fields.

  My home is on the Songhua River in the northeast,

  where my compatriots live,

  and my aged father and mother too.

  The Mukden Incident! Starting from that tragic date,

  The Mukden Incident! Starting from that tragic date,

  I fled my home, abandoning its countless treasures.

  Wandering! Wandering! Inside Shanhaiguan, days on end I wander!

  When will I ever return to my beloved home?

  When will I ever recover those countless treasures of mine?

  O Father, O Mother!

  When will we ever be reunited under one roof?

  After this song was written, it was taught in the music classes at Sun Yat-sen Middle School by our music teacher, Ma Baishui. We sang this song from Hunan to Sichuan, accompanying about a thousand students who had wandered from the northeast to the southwest. Eight years later, the same group of students would sing the same song while traveling from the southwest back to their decimated homeland. A wanderer’s trilogy for this tragic age: a song amid tears bespoke the pain of wandering children in exile; it was sung across the vast land from the time of fighting the Japanese and then the Communists; it was sung accompanying the tears of countless people for nearly a decade after arriving in Taiwan.

  ZHOUNAN GIRLS’ MIDDLE SCHOOL

  I had only finished elementary school, so I had to continue my studies, but I was not accepted by Sun Yat-sen Middle School because they were afraid that I might frequently be sick and become a burden to them. On account of this, my parents sent me on my own to Zhounan Girls’ Middle School in Changsha to start my first year of junior high. Zhounan Girls’ Middle School is a famous school with a history, and there is still an alumni club in Taiwan.

  The class tutor, as I recall, was our teacher Li Shifen. Almost twenty years after I arrived in Taiwan, I moved from Taichung to Taipei and frequently came across his name in the paper, as he was serving as the chairperson of the board of the Broadcasting Corporation of China. When I went to visit him, he still remembered me. My schoolwork was good, but I was often sick and would frequently faint or suffer from a high fever and then have to be sent to the hospital. It was a boarding school and the families had to entrust their children to the school, which thus was responsible for taking care of them. In his Hunan dialect, he said, “You were such a troublesome little girl.”

  In that one short semester, I was a very good student and quite diligent. When the Japanese attacked and entered Hankou, our school participated in a huge patriotic march in Changsha, and the whole city seemed to boil. I joined the school band and the teacher asked me, “What do you want to play?”

  I said, “I want to beat a big drum.”

  Since my anti-Japanese feelings were running high at that time, I could only express myself by beating a big drum. But I weighed a little more than sixty-five pounds and was as thin as a monkey, nowhere big enough to carry a drum, so Mr Li, helped me to fulfill my wish by having a bigger student carry the drum while I walked alongside and beat it. During the march, I led the band, beating that large drum. This also demonstrated the kindness and sympathy with which the school treated the refugee students from the northeast.

  Later, in Taiwan, I still he
ld on to a small autograph book in which my teachers and classmates had written their good wishes for me. Amid dramatic changes in real life and during the free time between raising my children and cooking three meals a day, I would still think of that frail thirteen-year-old and the whole city of Changsha boiling over with patriotic fervor in the march, and my own fear and anger amid the sound of a beating drum.

  Two months after we arrived in Xiangxiang, my brother received a letter from Zhang Dafei written at boot camp and sent to the school. A number of their young instructors were Whampoa graduates from the northeast from the eighth through the twelfth classes, who knew that Sun Yat-sen Middle School had made it to Hunan and had put up in Yongfeng Town in Xiangxiang.

  His letter opened by asking about my mother’s health (he dared not ask if she was still alive). He asked us to be sure to let him know. He addressed his letter to both my brother and me, perhaps fearing my brother would not reply.

  In his letter, he also explained his reasons for joining the army: “I’m already nineteen and at graduation will be over twenty, with no guarantee that I’ll be admitted to a public university. The Japanese have forced us to our current situation, putting me in no mood to study or await some unknown future. I have three brothers, and having gotten into the Air Force Officer Candidate School as I wished, I can really do something for the country and avenge my father.”

  He said that shortly after joining the army, he tested into the officer candidate school and that the training was very arduous, but he had enough to eat: “I haven’t had so many good meals since leaving home, except at your home in Nanjing.” He was in good shape and could get through the training. He asked me if I had been reading the Bible, suggesting that I start with the New Testament. My brother was very busy in school, so he told me to write back right away.

  Before I went to Zhounan Girls’ Middle School in Changsha, I wrote a reply, telling him clearly about our family and my mother’s health. I also said that I carried the Bible he had given me in my waist pocket and that I took it with me even when I was running for my life as the warning sirens sounded, but that I didn’t understand why Jesus said that if someone struck your left cheek you should offer him the right.

  On the eve of two conflagrations in Changsha, the situation became more difficult by the day, so my parents had me return to Xiangxiang in order to get ready to flee once more.

  To this day, I still remember the good days we spent in Yongfeng Town. Hunan is abundantly productive, the people are sincere, and the literary heritage is time-honored. On account of their persistence and self-confidence, people from Hunan are often called “Hunan mules.” It is a land of rice and fish, and, while I’ve been to a lot of places in my life, I have rarely seen such beautiful turnips and cabbages as I saw there. Before the fires of war arrived, the days were quite peaceful and quiet as if the place were cut off from the world, like Cuicui’s lovely world in Shen Congwen’s novel Border Town.

  In the National Northeast Sun Yat-sen Middle School Golden Anniversary Commemorative Album, many people noted that the nearly one year’s time spent amid the beautiful scenery of Xiangxiang with sufficient food and clothing constituted a beautiful memory, even though they were still on the run as refugees.

  FLEEING FROM XIANGXIANG TO GUILIN

  On October 21, 1938, the Japanese landed at Dapeng Bay and took the city of Guangzhou, which was engulfed in flames. In November, Chinese troops mistakenly thought the Japanese army was about to reach Changsha, so the order was given to burn the city, resisting through a scorched-earth plan. On December 21, Chiang Kai-shek, Chairman of the Military Commission, released “A Letter Informing the People and Soldiers of China of the Withdrawal from Wuhan,” in which he vowed that the entire nation should be united as one, continue to fight in the southwest, and never surrender.

  By now, it had been a year and three months since the Japanese military made its crazy guarantee to the emperor and the people that it would occupy all of China within three months. And the southwest was more mysterious than the Japanese ever imagined—the mountainous territory would tie up hundreds of thousands of invading Japanese troops for eight years, many of whom were to die in a foreign land.

  Mother took us and went with Sun Yat-sen Middle School, which my father had arranged to leave Hunan, which had been surrounded by a Japanese pincer movement, and take the Hunan–Guangxi Railroad to Guilin and then on to Sichuan via Guizhou.

  We thought we could pause and catch our breath after reaching Guilin, so my parents sent me to the Guilin Girls’ Middle School to continue my first year of junior high, as even one day of schooling was better than none. My family stayed in an inn while I boarded at school, studying for a little more than a month of the fall term.

  Two things that occurred at that time that are difficult to forget.

  If the skies were clear during the day, the Japanese planes would bomb, the air-raid sirens would wail, and we’d have to run to the outskirts of town. Several of the older high school girls, probably as arranged by the school, would take me to a place on the river where there were a lot of willows under which we would hide. As the planes flew overhead, we watched as they dropped strings of shining bombs, followed by black smoke and flames rising from the city.

  Sometimes a dogfight would seem to begin right overhead, with the Chinese and enemy planes exchanging machine-gun fire. When we saw a plane with a rising sun on it begin to smoke from the tail and fall toward the earth, we would applaud excitedly despite our fear. One time an enemy plane crashed nearby and lots of people ran to have a look, cheering without end.

  While waiting for the all-clear signal, I remember hearing one of the older girls sing in a soft voice, “Every day I go to the Huansha River … and foolishly count the days till you return.” Although I was old enough to understand it, I felt pretty uncomfortable listening to that sort of “decadent” song under a sky like that.

  One other thing that left a deep impression on me was that through the long night, with the lights out from nine o’clock until the following morning, you had to take a long walkway in the open air from the dormitory to get to the toilet. The walkway was supported by columns like those of the temple, on which hung two or three large oil lamps that flickered in the night breeze, casting dark, wavering shadows. I always waited for someone else to get up and went with them. My feelings of fear are still vivid today.

  After lights out, sometimes someone would tell a ghost story. I would just tightly cover my head, and my fear of the coming dusk was similar to what I had felt at Western Hills Sanatorium. Fortunately, we soon left Guilin with Sun Yat-sen Middle School and set off for Guizhou, and only then was I set free.

  FROM GUILIN TO HUAIYUAN

  All too soon the situation grew more unstable as refugees from Shanghai and Nanjing who had fled to Wuhan and Hunan now surged toward Gulin. All the places to stay were bursting at the seams.

  Of the Sun Yat-sen Middle School students and teachers, the boys lived in a cave on Qixing Crags, while the girls lived in temporary thatch shacks. My father went on to Sichuan to find a place to house the school. With the assistance of the local government, he found the Jingning Temple near Ziliujing in central Sichuan where the students could live and take classes.

  Once again we embarked on the road to refuge, which became ever more difficult. The students and teachers in Guilin divided into three groups and set off for Liuzhou in Guangxi. They then went on to the prearranged meeting place of Huaiyuan Town in Yishan County, Guangxi, and after getting a clear picture of the situation, set off for Chongqing in Sichuan.

  In Guilin, the local command helped my father by lending three military transport trucks to carry the basic school equipment, and my mother took the rest of the family to Liuzhou by long-distance bus.

  My uncle and I rode in the baggage truck on top of suitcases and trunks piled as high as they would go. We had to be tied in place so as not to fall off. I felt “honored” to be allowed to ride in the baggage truck and
not sit with the little children on the bus. I had no choice but to grow up after the separation and deaths in Hankou.

  We stayed in Liuzhou for a few days. The commander of the newly garrisoned armored regiment, who was from the northeast and a graduate of the eighth Whampoa class, delivered my family and those of the last group of teachers and their families (most had already gone to Sichuan) to Huaiyuan Town, where we were to stay.

  Every morning my mother went to the highway in front of the town to wait for the Sun Yat-sen Middle School students who had proceeded on foot, including my brother. After 27 days and 760 li, the first students appeared. The moment my mother saw Dong Xiumin (the only son of my father’s good friend Dong Qizheng) shouldering his luggage and in his tattered clothes and shoes approach and call her “Auntie Chi,” she broke into tears.

  It had been days since the several hundred teenage students had washed their khaki uniforms. Since leaving Xiangxiang, they hadn’t slept in a bed and had walked all the way; their hair was mussed and their faces were dirty. She couldn’t recognize her son among them.

  In that age of suffering, being bullied and insulted by foreigners and fleeing the spreading flames of war, I had the chance to see the majesty and beauty of the land of China. On the Tianjin–Pukou Railway we crossed the steel bridge over the Yellow River, and from Nanjing to Wuhu, again from Wuhu upstream to Hankou, on to Changsha, then to Xiangtan and Xiangxiang, and in the paradise of Yongfeng, we saw the beautiful land and its culture. After reluctantly setting off from Xiangxiang, I saw the actual Xiang River during the bumpy trip from Xiangxiang to Guilin and crossed the river to Zhuzhou, then to Hengyang, heading ever south through Chenzhou. (No wonder that since I read Qin Shaoyou’s Tune: Treading on Sedge in Nankai Middle School—“The Chen River should be meandering around Chen Mountain, / Why does it flow into the Xiao and Xiang rivers?” tears well up in my eyes whenever I think of it, even to this day). You could say that I crossed the entirety of Hunan, and when I read that Mao Zedong had advocated the independence of Hunan back in 1920, it didn’t seem all that crazy for something from back in that hermetic age. Going from Hunan to Guilin in Guangxi, the refugees took the precipitous mountain road toward Guizhou, where everywhere you looked were natural barriers, and when you looked back, you couldn’t see the road by which you had come.