The Great Flowing River Read online

  It was a letter bidding final farewell; a farewell from a twenty-six-year-old to his short past. Although I no longer have the letter, each word he wrote is branded on my mind. He wrote:

  Dear Zhenyi,

  If you receive this letter, it means I have died. Seven of those with whom I tested into air training school have departed. Three days ago, my last friend did not make it back. I know my turn is next. I pray and I contemplate; I am at peace. Thank you for your friendship over the years. Thank your mother for her loving concern for me over the years, such that I have had a place to think of as home amid all this wandering. And please forgive me for laying aside Pang-yuan’s feelings before even reciprocating them.

  I have asked ground personnel Mr. Zhou to return all the letters Pang-yuan has sent me over the years to her. Please forgive me for making her so sad in this way. Since learning your address in Hunan, she has replied to all of my letters, standing in place of your mother. Over the last eight years, my letters to her have been my only letters home, and hers have been my greatest comfort. I can almost see how she has grown from a skinny little girl into a young woman. When I saw her that day, walking across the playing field at Nankai, I was so amazed and I spoke what was in my heart. How could I have finally come to tell her I loved her? These last few years, I have told myself that our affections should be those of brother and sister; otherwise, I would hurt her if I died, and I would hurt her if I lived. We have walked two such vastly different paths: these years I have only fought in the sky, concentrating on surviving or perishing in the sky or on the ground; she has spent her days amid poetry and books, proceeding down that path of light with my blessings. Knowing that I must die, how could I say to her, “I love you”? Before summer break last year, when she said she wanted to transfer to Kunming to be closer to me, I knew things had become serious. How could Mother and Father consent? How could I, someone who lived in constant danger and who was always on the move, look after her? I wrote to her strongly recommending that she remain in Sichuan and study hard. Now when I am off, I drink and dance. I am twenty-six years old and have never tasted life. Since joining the service I have maintained purity in body and mind, my one desire to become a military chaplain after the war. While stationed in Guilin in the fall, I met a middle school teacher my age at church. She came to Yunnan to find me, and we were married on base. When I die, half my pension will go to my younger brother, and I ask that he support and take care of Mother when he returns home after victory. Please ask Pang-yuan to forget me. All I have ever wanted was that her life be happy.

  Final exams were postponed that year so that those students who had left school could make up their coursework. Along with many of my classmates, I took the boat back to scorching hot Chongqing. When I saw that green canvas military mailbag on my desk, even my mother would have had a difficult time telling whether it was sweat or tears running down my face. My heart was a turmoil of complex emotions, as if I had thrown myself into that confluence of three rivers. I didn’t open the mailbag until two days later, and right on top was a letter in an unfamiliar hand:

  Captain Zhang Dafei died in the line of duty in the skies over Henan on May 18. He always took this bag of letters with him when he was transferred elsewhere. Two months ago, he gave it to me and said that if one day he shouldn’t return, I was to send it to you at this address. I work in maintenance for the squadron and was with him for two years. He was a very kind and considerate captain, and we are all deeply saddened by his loss. After finding your letter in his coat pocket, I’m enclosing it as well. I hope you can restrain your grief.

  From Zhou XX

  The letter had been folded a number of times; the pale blue paper had faded yellow. I had written it in the third year of Nankai Middle School. It was purely a letter written by a student interested in literary writing:

  I envy you flying high in the sky, closer to God, because the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” does not exist among the white clouds in the blue sky. You said that flying back that night, the moon, huge and bright, suddenly appeared before your eyes from behind the clouds. You said it felt as if you were going to collide with it. If you did, poet Li Po would be jealous of you.… These days, I sit in class eight hours a day. Geometry is so hard that there is no joy in life. With Professor Meng’s Poetry and Song Lyric Selection, there is thankfully more to life than just testing into a university. Today I saw the high school freshmen sewing skirts out of bedsheets to dance in at the unified city athletic meet. We all did that once, terribly childish. Right now I don’t have much interest in reading books outside of class. Going home on Saturday I pass by the Time and Tide Bookstore. I walk by quickly so as not to be tempted.…

  I wrote such letters for years, until I went to Leshan to study philosophy. These letters, no doubt, helped him forget a hideous reality the way smoking, drink, and dancing helped his fellow soldiers. When I contacted him while considering switching from Leshan to National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming, he had hurriedly replied, dissuading me. I remember one line in particular: “The less you know of my real life, the better; the less you know of the actual quality of my ‘glory,’ the better.” When I first read it, I didn’t understand, and felt he had “changed.” Several years later, I came to fully understand him. As caring as he was, he had suddenly awakened, though it was a little late for him to back up and play the role of a caring older brother. But he prevented me from putting myself in a difficult situation, and in fact still protected me.

  He had painstakingly arranged that huge bag of my letters by year. The first letter was mailed from Fujia Hall, Yongfeng Village in Xiang County, Hunan Province, and was a report on my safe and sound life when I graduated from primary school; the last letter was written when I was a college sophomore and literature major, in which I confessed that I didn’t have the knack for philosophy and had thrown myself entirely into the Romantic poetry of Shelley and Keats. Looking up at the star-filled sky from my garret room, listening to the birds twittering in the trees, I wondered, where was he? How was it that he had miraculously showed his earnest love and then just as suddenly disappeared?

  The more than one hundred letters recorded in detail the emotional development of a girl’s heart amid the cruelties of war from 1938 to 1944. I had an even larger bag of his letters from that seven-year period in the closet, which stood as a complete account of how a nineteen-year-old young man went from fleeing difficulties to throwing himself into war. When he flew pursuit and shot down enemy aircraft, he sometimes thought: How will God judge me for being a devout Christian while having spent years killing? Didn’t he say, “I am the life and resurrection?” Didn’t Jesus say that if someone struck your left cheek you ought to offer your right? But the Japanese not only struck my cheek, they also killed my father and exterminated my family and to this day have not left off killing the people of my country in their own land. Every time I shoot down one of their planes, I could save many people from dying under Japanese bombings.…

  I put the two large bags of letters together, but I didn’t have enough strength to read them again that summer. Although I was conscious of his death, it still came as a shock because it didn’t seem real.

  By all indications, the war would soon end. MacArthur retook the Philippines, realizing his vow of “I shall return.” On July 7, eight years after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Military Council announced: “In the eight years of the war of resistance, more than 250,000 Japanese have been killed, wounded, and captured; we have lost over 130,000 troops with more than 170,000 wounded, but now we have turned the war to the offensive.” At that moment the entire country began to live in expectation.

  At the same time, General Chennault’s resignation shocked the Chinese government and the public. Roosevelt died, and Eisenhower took command of the armed forces from Marshall. (The Marshall Plan for reconstruction after the war had a profound impact on the postwar world. Marshall also managed to broker a halt to the war between the Communists
and the Nationalists, but most people felt he favored the “progressive reforms” of the Communists, and that is what led to the defeat of the Nationalists and the loss of mainland China.) General Stilwell, head of the allied forces in China, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek did not cooperate well. When General Albert Wedemeyer took over, he received a directive from headquarters that said Chennault had waged a guerrilla war for years with minimal funding, but “the quickest and most effective way of waging a modern offensive war with modern technology was to replace the commander.”

  Nothing as enthusiastic and moving as Chennault’s farewell at Chongqing was ever seen before or after. More than 200,000 people thronged the streets and windows, making it impossible for his car to proceed. People pushed his car all the way to the square and a variety of banners, many embroidered with the Flying Tigers emblem, hung from the city’s damaged buildings. Generalissimo Chiang himself presented Chennault with the country’s highest honor, the medal with the blue sky and white sun, and expressed the nation’s gratitude for his years spent toiling to assist the Chinese. The U.S. government also bestowed upon him the Distinguished Service Cross and second oak leaf cluster. Chennault was fifty-two that year. He had come to China, a distant and mysterious place, departing from the regulations of the U.S. military, and through his shrewdness and charisma, had brought together similar fine men to use a strategy of pursuit aircraft to alleviate the sufferings of countless people on the ground.

  Within a matter of four months, Roosevelt had died, Chennault had been dismissed, and Zhang Dafei had given his life for his country. The curtain fell on the war and the hatred of many people. Those powerful lines from Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” from across the Pacific expressed the mourning of all people in the face of war.

  O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done,

  The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

  The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

  While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

  But O heart! heart! heart!

  O the bleeding drops of red,

  Where on the deck my Captain lies,

  Fallen cold and dead.

  THE WAR ENDS

  After the Allies were victorious in Europe, they were anxious to bring the war against Japan in Asia to an end. The Japanese army clearly knew that their superiority in China and the Pacific islands was gone, but they insisted upon fighting to the death like a cornered beast. Hundreds of thousands on both sides died on those forsaken islands, until thousands of U.S. planes conducted mass bombings of Japan, leaving Tokyo in ruins.

  On July 26, the leaders of China, the United States, and England demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan at Potsdam in Allied-occupied Germany (on the same day, Churchill, who had led England to victory in the war, was not reelected to office and would not see the results after the war). The following day, the Japanese cabinet met from morning until late into the night, with the hawks advocated preparing to fight to protect Japan on Japanese soil. The people of Japan preferred death to surrender. The new leaders of England and America, Atlee and Truman, announced a joint declaration of war against Japan on August 3. Three days later, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but the Japanese still refused to surrender; on August 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. On the front page of every paper in the world was a photograph of a mushroom cloud from the atomic blast rising above a sea of flame.

  On August 14, the Japanese soldiers in the trenches, struggling to the point of death, heard a broadcast from the Showa Emperor telling them to lay down their weapons: “Japan has been defeated and has surrendered unconditionally and, in accordance with the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration, returns Taiwan to China.…”

  On August 15, Chairman Chiang Kai-shek broadcast a speech to China’s soldiers and people: “After victory, we should be neither arrogant nor idle. We must work to build and not harbor old grudges or seek revenge on the Japanese.” This magnanimous attitude became the generous reparations clause of “returning evil with kindness,” which, to this day, has posed problems for the Chinese people. With the aid of the Allied nations, Germany and Japan quickly recovered, but after the war the Chinese Nationalist troops, exhausted and with no time to rest, were forced into a civil war with the Communists for political power. Even the slightest happiness of an “ignoble existence” was not theirs to enjoy.

  When Japan surrendered, Chongqing was ecstatic, the only time I have seen anything like it in my life. Following Chiang’s broadcast, the miserable earth erupted in joy, as people dropped their accustomed reserve and embraced in the streets, and jumped, laughed, and sang patriotic songs such as “beautiful mountains and rivers, the national flag waves …” until they were hoarse. It was said that turning out en masse was not enough and shortly after sunset, a huge torchlight parade lit up every street.

  My brother, cousins, and I ran with torches to the main street of Shapingba, then left to Xiaolongkan Station and right to Ciqikou. Everywhere we went it was brightly lit and people were singing, and their shouts of “Long live the Republic of China!” rose to the clouds. I walked with them to the gate of Nankai Middle School, with two extra scouts standing sentry, holding the same thick military baton I once held, their faces filled with young and simple self-confidence, exactly the same as when I accompanied Principal Zhang in reciting “With me, China shall not perish.” All the lights in the Fansun Building were lit, and I recalled the time Zhang Dafei walked across the playing field toward me. At that moment, I suddenly felt everything go silent and could no longer stand being in the crowd. I actually cut through the campus to get to the small path home and gradually got to the empty raised paths between fields and continued on toward Yanggong Bridge. Before the small bridge on that slope there was an abandoned and forlorn cemetery, where my brother and his friends would often challenge one another to see who dared go there and pull out a half-exposed coffin. They also told a lot of will-o’-the-wisp stories to see who was the bravest. Normally I returned home via the main road; I occasionally had passed the cemetery, but with plenty of company during the day. Across the small wooden bridge on the slope was the home we had moved to in order to avoid the air raids last year. I cried as I ran; my torch had long since gone out. When I returned home I saw my mother’s startled face. I said, “I can’t stand this reveling.” I spent victory night weeping bitterly in the dark.

  Afterward, I never again mentioned his name. I put the large pile of his letters together with mine in the mailbag and placed them with my books and the few clothes I owned, thinking that one day I would be strong and read through them again. But the following summer I was unexpectedly “demobilized” from Chengdu and returned directly to Shanghai, while my mother and my sister returned to Beiping. In addition to the clothes she took a few photos of sentimental value, but those letters and all trace of them had to be left to the wild winds of those bitter years. I had a hard time imagining their fate in later years spent wandering.

  In November of that year, eight full years after Zhang Dafei joined the military and gave me a copy of the Bible, Pastor Ji Zhiwen wrote a long letter to me from Chengdu in which he said he had heard from a friend at the Christian Fellowship that I was suffering a great deal. He urged me to pull myself together and wrote the last line from The Revelation of St. John the Divine: “For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

  A short time later, Pastor Ji came to Leshan to preach the gospel, and I was baptized at the Methodist Church. After much consideration, I chose this solemn way to remember him always: to remember his sad life, to remember his Christian goodness, to remember all those who, like him, had heroically sacrificed everything to take national and personal vengeance.

  5

  VICTORY

  Empty, Everything Is Empty<
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  THE NEW SITUATION AFTER THE WAR: A LOST BEGINNING

  While the entire country greatly rejoiced, my father often frowned and said nothing.

  One evening at the dinner table, my father said to some old friends that five days before the end of the war, Russia had hastily declared war on Japan and had crossed the border into Manchuria, driving over sixty miles into the northeast, and in a matter of ten days had occupied Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, and other cities, and taken Pu Yi, the puppet emperor of Manchukuo, prisoner. On August 23, in complete disregard for the political authority of China, Stalin announced, “Manchukuo has been completely liberated.” Zhu De, of the Chinese Communist Party, issued seven orders in the name of “Headquarters in Yan’an” for the full-scale mobilization of the Communist troops to take control of cities and territory; he also ordered Lu Zhengcao, Zhang Xueshi, Wan Yi, and other Koreans to lead the march and fight alongside the Russians to take the three provinces of the northeast.

  One month later, Mao Zedong arrived in Chongqing on the anniversary of the Mukden Incident to participate in the National Political Council, where he expressed his gratitude to Chairman Chiang Kai-shek for the invitation in his speech: “For future peaceful development and to peacefully build a new age for the country, we must work together and put an end to civil war. Therefore, all parties should, under a single, fixed guiding principle and under the leadership of Chairman Chiang, thoroughly implement the Three Principles of the People to build a modern new China.”

  This was one of the biggest lies I ever heard in my life.