The Great Flowing River Page 17
After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the American Volunteer Group was officially made a part of the Army Air Corps. In March 1942, Chennault was made commander of the Fourteenth Air Force based in China under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek with headquarters in Kunming. Their mission was to support the joint British–American force in Burma, with their main theater of action in the southwestern provinces of China.
Zhang Dafei joined the military at the end of 1937 and due to superior performance during basic training was selected for the twelfth class of officer flight school. After graduation, he took part in the defense of the skies over Chongqing, and owing to his outstanding performance, he was chosen to be among the first group of pilots sent to the United States for training. In the summer of 1942, after receiving flight training in Colorado, he returned to China and joined the Fourteenth Air Force of Chinese and American pilots. The noses of the planes were still painted with an open-mouthed shark’s head, but the papers persisted in calling them the Flying Tigers.
When he visited us at Shapingba, my mother said that the food in America must have been good because he looked stronger and seemed a little taller. Newly promoted to the rank of first lieutenant, he sported flying-eagle insignias on his collar and two stripes on his sleeves. How spirited his stride was! When he left us, he immediately reported to Kunming. According to newspaper accounts at the time, the U.S.–China joint force was victorious in nearly every battle. At that time, Chinese ground troops were engaged in bitter fighting, with Hunan and Guangxi almost completely fallen into enemy hands. The air force heroes were the only thing giving us much hope.
His letters, carefully written in his elegant, fine hand on blue airmail stationery and posted in blue airmail envelopes, were filled with strange place names: Yunnanyi, Gujiu, Mengzi—place names extending all along the Burma Road. In one letter he said he could see the street from one end to the other and a small store with a glass jar containing the round candies that my younger sister liked so much when she was four years old during our flight inland. Most of the pilots when they were off duty liked to drink; however, because he did not drink, the others laughed at him. One time he got a little drunk after only a few drinks and started dancing on the table singing “Hallelujah,” and after that no one pressed him to drink again. Nor could they prevail upon him to go dancing; in their eyes he was an oddball who wouldn’t join them in seizing the day and making merry while they could in such uncertain times. To his mind, being able to be on the ground and read the Bible, books, and newspapers, or write to his young, understanding friend made him happier than all other forms of merriment.
In one letter he told me that two days previously he had taken to the skies to track the enemy when suddenly, through a break in the clouds ahead, he saw a plane on which was emblazoned the rising sun! He clearly saw the face of the pilot in the cockpit, a face filled with fear. He didn’t have time to think—all he knew was that if he didn’t shoot first, it would be all over for him. Since returning, he couldn’t forget the face of the pilot he had shot down. I never saw it, but I couldn’t erase that face in flames from my memory either.
Yes, no matter how he expressed it in his letters, the conflicts in his mind, his sufferings, or his longing for home, amid the flames of war in an age when life was as short as that of a mayfly, he was the sort of hero young girls yearned for. The very image of the hero who defends his country, he far surpassed the common man, and he was that larger-than-life image no young girl like me dared desecrate with her personal feelings.
During summer vacation in my second year of senior high, after we had lunch, I took him through the Central University campus to that small rocky lair of mine above the bank of the Jialing River. The sun shone brightly and the river water was clear as we sat there discussing the things I had read outside of class and what he had seen from the air. On that riverbank beyond the ken of human affairs, time passed quietly. We never spoke a word touching upon what was in our hearts, much less of love. Then he returned to Yunnan, and it was nearly a year before I saw him again.
In April 1943, I was preoccupied with my approaching graduation and the National Joint College Entrance Exams. One day around sunset, as we returned to the dorm to get ready for dinner, a junior high school girl ran up to me and told me that someone was waiting for me on the athletic field.
I came out and saw him approaching from among the plum trees in a large military raincoat. Halfway over, he suddenly halted and said, “Pang-yuan, how you have grown and how pretty you have become in a year.” It was the first time I ever heard him offer me praise, a feeling I’ll never forget.
He said that they were changing planes in Chongqing en route for redeployment and that he had to be back at Baishiyi Airfield before half past seven. He only wanted to rush over and see me for a second. A friend was waiting for him at the school gate in a jeep, the engine still running, so I followed him toward the gate, but halfway there, the rain came pouring down. He ran, pulling me to the Fansun Building, where we stood together beneath the eaves. He pulled me to him, covering me in his raincoat, and pressed me close. Under his uniform and belt, I could hear his heart beating like a drum. In a moment he released me and told me to hurry back to the dorm, saying, “I have to leave.” In the rain I saw him trot to the gate, get in the jeep, and speed off.
That summer, I said good-bye to the most wonderful days of my life and headed up the Yangtze River to western Sichuan. The spring wind of 1943 was now far away.
It was the last time I ever saw him in this life.
4
AT THE CONFLUENCE OF THREE RIVERS
University Life
GOING UPRIVER
The Yangtze River is 3,964 miles long, the third longest river in the world. Two major turns in the course of my life occurred when I left home in tears, making my way up that river. The first time, I had just graduated from primary school when I took a military transport ship from Wuhu and fled to Hankou; and now, at the end of August 1943, having just graduated from high school, I was going upriver from Chongqing to Jiading (formerly known as Jiadingfu) in western Sichuan.
I boarded the boat at noon that day, and my father, who was always so busy, unexpectedly came to see me off in person at the wharf at Chaotian Gate, about thirty li from home. As the car passed Xiaolongkan Station, lightning flashed in the sky and it started to rain. I was carrying the standard luggage for a long trip in those days, a small suitcase and a bedroll that consisted of clothes and bedding rolled up in a blanket and bent in an oval shape, on which was fastened an enamel washbasin outside of which was an oilcloth, all tied off with coarse hemp rope. In 1976, at a baggage claim area in an airport in Europe, I saw the same sort of bedroll from Pakistan, which struck me as possessing a universal wisdom—all you have to do is unroll it and, voilà, a home.
From the wharf at Chaotian Gate to shipside there was what seemed like an interminable series of slippery stone steps. It was raining buckets and when we got on deck, the water was pouring over the gunwale from the awning, so an umbrella was of no use. My father’s white summer scholar’s gown was soaked through, and the water flowed like a column from his head to his shoes. I have no idea what I looked like; all I remember was doing everything possible to stifle the sobs that shook my body as I listened him express his gratitude to my elder schoolmates, then watched as he disembarked from the ship and quickly vanished behind the curtain of rain.
I have never been able to recall the entire trip by river. All I remember is the rain, my father soaked to the bone, and recalling with emotion that “Alas! Alas! My parents, with what toil ye brought me up!”
I did as everyone else did and placed my luggage on the half-dry floor in steerage, where we opened our suitcases and took turns concealing each other so we could change into dry clothes. When the bell tolled, we went forward to get our food and then sat on our belongings and ate. Night soon fell and the lamplight glowed faintly, the darkness inside merging with that outside. Grad
ually everyone fell silent, and the only thing that could be heard was the laboring engine of the steamship on the river. Where was I on that immense river?
Before daybreak the following morning, I awoke, having dreamed that I had heard a robust male voice shouting: “Head toward the trees on the right, as fast as you can, the Jap planes are coming!” I had just finished helping my mother change the bloody mats beneath her and had left the cabin but was not able to find my little sister, who was eighteen months old and had just learned to walk. Before I had let go of her hand, she had been walking unsteadily from my brother to Zhang Dafei to the troop of students and to the wounded soldiers in their seats.… I woke up to see the unfamiliar faces of those sleeping around me. Six years later, on the same river, I would once more shed tears of parting.
At dusk the ship tied up at the Yibin Wharf, and the Min River followed its course south to join the Yangtze.
My elder Nankai schoolmate Feng Jialu was from an old, influential family in Yibin, and she invited the six of us to dinner and to spend the night at her house. It was the first time I ever experienced the plentitude and stability of Sichuan, commonly referred to as a land of abundance. After dinner, we took a stroll in town and to the Protestant church. The local gentry and businessmen I saw all had cultured taste that seemed to have been handed down for generations, with a level of self-confidence that was greater even than that seen in Hunan before the flight of refugees began.
From Yibin we continued our boat journey upriver, but the river was appreciably narrower and there were fewer boats on the water. In August, the rivers were surging at their fullest, and at several points the boat made no headway and was in fact was pushed back, which set the passengers to screaming. I leaned against the gunwale and shed tears of homesickness for quite some time, thinking I was unseen. I had never been very robust and always had someone to look after me. Nankai Middle School was only three li from my home, and I had never for one day been “free.” When it came to choosing universities, I didn’t select one near Chongqing, because I thought one could become strong by facing life in the vastness of the world. But all I could think of now was Shapingba, and I regretted leaving home, but it was too late to do anything about it. At that moment Lu Qiaozhen silently walked up to me and said, “A boy student just said to me, no wonder the river is swelling, given the way that new student keeps crying.” She continued, “Last year, on the way, I also cried for a while. This is my second year, so I’m okay.” In the three years before she graduated in 1946, she was my best friend. We were of one mind and of the same views and talked about everything; there wasn’t a thing that we didn’t understand about each other.
THE GIRLS’ DORM ON WHITE PAGODA STREET
What I remember of university life doesn’t begin with beautiful Leshan City, but with the girls’ dorm.
I spent about ten years of my life living in dormitories, eight years in wartime and two years in the early period of demobilization after victory. In those days, dormitory facilities were quite simple and crude, and lights went out at 9 p.m. But there was a huge difference in atmosphere, as university dorms were freer, and one could come and go freely before the lights went out. The girls’ dormitory on White Pagoda Street in Leshan was nicknamed the “White Palace.” It was a four-story wooden structure originally built by a Christian church for training missionaries in the hinterland and was able to lodge a hundred people. With its own courtyard, it was quite safe. Repairs were impossible during wartime, so it seemed rundown and was neither white nor a “palace,” but it was far better than any of the six places in temples and temple halls that served as dorms for the boys. It probably owed its name to its location on White Pagoda Street (though I never saw a white pagoda).
The single dorm supervisor was a woman by the name of Zhu Junyun. Unlike Wang Wentian, a very strict teacher at Nankai, who was always present, she seldom meddled with us and was rarely seen. I thought she was the wife of the famous playwright Xiong Fuoxi, now divorced. Being aloof and mysterious, she didn’t need to “mix with the rabble” and get involved with trivial matters of clothing, food, housing, or our behavior. As I recall, the only person who got involved in our lives was Old Yao, a worker who sat at the door to the dorm (it was said that the boys called him Gramps or Master Ye). He was more than an impartial and incorruptible old man who locked the door with a large metal key and bolted it every night; he also looked after everything inside and outside the dorm and clearly understood everything. He had the personal information of each of the more than one hundred girls in his head and was like some very sharp character out of a Shakespearean comedy. He was very short and almost entirely bald—I don’t recall him having any hair—and all year round he wore a blackish gray cotton-wadded jacket. In summer we went home, so I don’t know what he wore then. Whether he was smiling or not, his top row of teeth always protruded from his lips.
When my elder classmates and I carried our ridiculous bedrolls through the front door of the dorm, we seemed to be reporting to Old Yao. He told Lu Qiaozhen and the others to go to the second floor, and he led me through a small courtyard to a small room on the left corner and, pointing to the upper bunk of the innermost bunk bed, said, “That one’s yours.” The bed was next to the only window in the room, so I was in luck, but I soon discovered that the window opened onto White Pagoda Street and had been boarded up for security reasons. That night the sky never grew light from moon or stars and if it had, I wouldn’t have known.
Zhao Xiaolan, a math student who was in the lower bunk, had arrived three days before me. She showed me the toilet and the nearby cafeteria. On the right side of the small courtyard was a row of bathrooms, each of which was subdivided into eight smaller stalls; inside of each was a wooden frame to hold a washbasin. Near the door was a huge metal cauldron. Every morning water carriers would haul water from Shuixi Gate, fill the cauldron seven-eighths full, and light a fire underneath. After the water was heated, we would walk up the small stone steps to scoop out some hot water to fill our basins.
Our room was the last choice in the entire dorm (that is, if we had a choice). The bunk beds were pretty flimsy and had been hurriedly installed by the school, because all the local carpenters were busy making desks, chairs, and beds. However, the girls were a lot better off than the boys. Neither one of us weighed much, but when you rolled over or got in or out of bed, the whole thing would sway. The upper bunk had no railings, and I was always afraid of falling out of bed in the middle of the night. One night I noticed that the bed had been trembling lightly for some time, so I leaned down and asked, “Can’t you sleep, either?” Zhao Xiaolan replied, “Every night I hear you lie there and cry and I start feeling homesick.…” From then on, the two of us relied upon each other. Every day after dinner, we would go out to White Pagoda Street, turn onto Shaanxi Street and then onto County Street to “explore” and try to find something to fill up on. On rainy days, we’d carry an umbrella and walked supporting each other on the slippery cobblestone streets, especially at the corner to Shuixi Gate, where, from morning till night, countless people went to fetch water from the Dadu River. A third of the water in the wooden buckets carried on shoulder poles would end up on the cobblestone streets before it got to anyone’s home.
On the first day of class, Lu Qiaozhen, who was a sophomore in economics, led the way. Classes in the College of Arts, Letters, and Law were held in the Confucius Temple; the main library was also located in the temple. When Wuhan University was moved to the rear, it proudly moved more books than any other university. In those four years, most of our class materials were borrowed from the library by the class representative and were shared out and copied by the students before class. The first thing everyone did after coming out of the Confucius Temple was to go and buy notebooks.
Taking the stone steps up Yue’ertang on the left-hand side led to Dingdong Street and to Fu Street and Purple Cloud Street, and after walking for some time you would hit Jialemen Avenue, where the store of the Jiale Paper
Factory was located. One’s first sight upon entering was unforgettable—the paradise among paradises! Spacious and wide wooden shelves along four walls were filled with all sorts of notebooks with elegant and immaculate covers, large and small, light blue, lake green, butterfly white, light yellow, thick volumes, side by side, in all the colors a person could dream of.
Jiale paper, famous throughout the rear, came in hundreds of varieties—from xuan paper treasured for calligraphy to notebooks used by students—and all were works of art, produced by ingenious handiwork using the bamboo and wood from Emei Mountain and steeped in the flowing waters of the Min River at the foot of the Giant Buddha on Leshan, Jiading. A museum expert said that even after a few hundred years, the paper would retain some faint fragrance. I was so lucky to live in this mountain city for three years with such an auspicious beginning.
Coming out of Jiale Paper Factory, my classmates led me through Anlan Gate down the stone steps to Xiaogongzui to see the rapids where the Dadu River and the Min River converged, a broad and magnificent space that impressed me even more than the Giant Buddha carved in the Tang dynasty from 713 to 803. Owing to its history and value to tourism, it was so modernized after the Cultural Revolution as to be unrecognizable.
THE NEW STUDENT IN THE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT
In my freshman year, university work wasn’t really very challenging. The introduction to philosophy and economics required listening to lectures, but the class handouts were simple and we had no assigned reference works, and even if we had, the books wouldn’t have been available because the specialized works in the library were allotted to various departments. The professors at Wuhan University all seemed to have a tacit practice of giving low grades—no matter how well you did on an exam, you’d never score 90 percent. Freshman Chinese and English were easier than at Nankai, and the classes progressed slowly. I remember the English teacher spoke the word “blackbird” with a heavy Hunan accent in class and thenceforth was known by that name. The required physical education class was a joke, and I don’t remember there even being a playing field.