The Great Flowing River Read online

  Since ancient times, the legendary people of the frontier have all been heroes, brave archers on horseback good at fighting, who guarded the nation and built its strength. General Guo Songling was born in the ninth year of the Guangxu Emperor (1883) in the late Qing dynasty in East Village in Shenyang County, Liaoning. His family was poor, and after he had studied for a few years in a tutorial school (when he was fifteen years old) he entered the Fengtian Military Academy. Upon graduation he went to Sichuan with Zhu Qinglan’s (1874–1941) army, and in the New Sichuan Army he joined the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui). At thirty-three, after graduating from the Army College and at the recommendation of Zhu Qinglan, who was serving as governor of Guangdong Province, he served as a guard in Sun Yat-sen’s Constitutional Protection Military Government and as a military instructor at the Shaoguan Military Academy. He had knowledge and ideas, and in his classes, he urged that young men became democratically minded patriotic officers. In the state of chaos after the Revolution of 1911, he fully experienced the turmoil and suffering throughout the country and had a broad view of the situation. He became military tactics instructor at the newly established Northeast China Military Academy. At that time, Zhang Xueliang, the young marshal of the Fengtian Army, was his student and greatly admired Guo, asking him to join the Fengtian Army in order to reform it and set up a new army. They worked earnestly together in everything. In two of the Zhi–Feng wars, Guo’s distinguished military exploits were the result of his tactics and strategy. But what was the point of entering China proper to fight? There was not enough manpower to till the fertile land at home, and the young soldiers ended up as casualties far away, leaving their families to a pitiful fate. The fighting had to stop and education be revived.

  In the eyes of the young people who returned from Europe, the idea of a new army was attractive. General Guo was already the head, his position prominent, his appearance imposing, and he was decisive and a man of action. His wife, Han Shuxiu, was a graduate of Yanjing University. They were deeply attached to each other, fond of reading, and open to new thought; good at making friends; and when they talked, they took the world and the country as their own responsibility. General Guo and Zhang Xueliang along with others planned to set up a middle school for the education of the surviving children of soldiers who had lost their lives, doing everything they could for their comrades-in-arms. The school was called Tongze Middle School. Knowing that since returning from abroad my father had set his mind on education and fostering new ideas among the young at home, they appointed him the school principal. Following the examples of schools in England, Germany, and Japan, they set out good rules and regulations, laid a solid foundation, and hired excellent teachers from all over the country. Before the establishment of Manchukuo, politics had no influence on the school, and it was always well run. Later Tongze Middle School for Girls was established. At the same time, there were also plans to set up a real research university that would not be controlled by the authorities and did not have the training of government officials as its goal.

  After Tongze Middle School was established, but before the school buildings were finished, they borrowed some newly remodeled barracks at the Dongshanjuzi Military Camp at Shenyang, the remainder of which was used for military officer instruction. In the summer of that year three classes of students under fourteen (one of the students was Song Changzhi, who later served as Commander-in-Chief of the Republic of China Navy in Taiwan) passed the entrance exam and were admitted. Such a promising undertaking was the realization of a young man’s dream. The young principal was in high spirits, busily doing his job wholeheartedly—attending to teachers and class schedules, and instructing students. The barracks at Dongshanjuzi Military Camp were about twenty li from Shenyang and there was a small train to town used for the construction of the barracks. The state of his mind was like the locomotive of that little train—full of drive to advance.

  In less than a year, these happy days came to an end. One night early in November 1925, General Guo telephoned him and asked him to come to town to talk. The coal fire of the little train had been shut down by that hour, but after a little discussion, it was fired up again to take him into town. General Guo said that he had received orders to lead troops back through Shanhaiguan, going first to Tianjin. He asked my father to join his troops; the director of school administration could handle everything for a short while, as they had to leave the next day. Several days after arriving in Tianjin, General Guo stayed in the Italian hospital in the Italian concession and told him that the purpose of entering Shanhaiguan this time was to fight the Five-Province United Army assembled by Sun Chuanfang after the Second Zhi–Feng War and secure the territory under the control of the Fengtian Army in Hebei, Shandong, Anhui, and Jiangsu. The army of General Guo was ever triumphant, but he was tired of this policy of constantly waging war in which casualties were high and there wasn’t a good reason for fighting. After garrisoning Tianjin, he called a meeting of his core cadres and all officers above the rank of regimental commander. Those willing to return with him to the northeast would sign their names to the plan of peacefully developing the region; those unwilling would stay in Tianjin as part of Li Jinglin’s troops. Most signed their names, except for a few leaders who had served Zhang Zuolin for many years and found it inconvenient to “rebel.”

  General Guo charged my father with obtaining foreign support when they returned. First of all he had to obtain assurances that the Japanese army stationed along the South Manchurian Railway would remain neutral. A number of important political figures from Shanhaiguan were also in attendance in Tianjin, including Rao Hanxiang (who served as secretary-general to Li Yuanhong), Yin Rugeng, Gao Xibing, Yang Mengzhou, Su Shangda, Fan Guang, Lin Changmin (Li Huiyin’s father), and Lu Chunfang. Since Wang Zhengting, who had been appointed department head for foreign affairs, had not yet assumed office (he later served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the ROC government), Chi Shiying acted as deputy in charge of foreign affairs. Everyone had a great deal of confidence in General Guo’s innovative idea of returning to Shenyang and not becoming involved in a civil war among warlords. The evening before returning, General Guo said to everyone, “If we succeed, great; if we fail, everyone will pay with their life.”

  On November 22, General Guo marched his troops toward Luanzhou in Hebei and cabled Zhang Zuolin to cease fighting, resign, and hand control of the army and government over to Zhang Xueliang. The cable said that the casualties among the officers and men who entered Shanhaiguan to fight were very high, the surviving families had no means of support, and the lives of the people were difficult. Japanese and Russian ambitions to invade the northeast were growing stronger by the day, so the Chinese must recuperate and build up reserves to deal with the foreign aggression and never again become embroiled in a civil war. They had to revitalize education and wholeheartedly dedicate themselves to the development of the homeland, whose resources were the richest in the entire country. After receiving the cable, Zhang Zuolin sent a telegram the following day in which he never mentioned ceasing hostilities or passing on his authority, but rather asked Guo Songling to return to Shenyang to discuss matters face to face. It was clear that the murder of an invited guest was planned. Guo waited a day before sending another telegram from Luanzhou, but not receiving a reply, he set out to attack. Going out of Shanhaiguan and north from Qinhuangdao along the coast to fight at Lianshan, they encountered a once-in-a-century snowstorm. The temperature fell to five below zero (twenty degrees Celsius) and the sea froze, over which both man and horse could walk. That night, Guo’s vanguard, the Second Corps, broke through Zhang Zuolin’s defending troops in a surprise attack over the ice and captured Huludao and three days later garrisoned Jinzhou. When the news arrived in Shenyang, the entire city was shocked. Marshal Zhang urgently mobilized ten large trucks, which were filled with wealth amassed in office, and sent them to the warehouses of the Japanese along the South Manchurian Railway, where this wealth was stored; more than ten
trips were required to remove it all. The marshal’s residence was surrounded by wood and drums of petrol so that when it came time to flee, it could be burned down. The Provincial Legislative Assembly and the various chambers of commerce sent a telegram to General Guo, saying that after he entered the city, “the demands, aims, and future of our Revered Sir can be assured … we hope that there can be a temporary cessation of the fighting.” At that time, the Fengtian Army and the Japanese garrisoned along the South Manchurian Railway had reached an agreement to keep Guo pinned down and the Jilin and Heilongjiang garrisons were hurriedly dispatched to help, being deployed along the eastern bank of the Liao River to meet the approaching enemy. On December 20, Guo’s forces took and occupied Xinmin City and prepared for battle on the western bank of the river. The vanguard troops could already see the lights of Shenyang and they only awaited the arrival of the main group in Xinmin City, after which they would cross the river in force. But the troops, who had marched a long way in extreme cold without proper provisions or clothing, stopped several days in Jinzhou to rest, giving Zhang sufficient time to move his troops. This delay also gave the other side a number of opportunities to infiltrate and divide Guo’s army. The difficulties increased and the soldiers grew conflicted. The morale of Guo’s brave and skillful troops was shaken when they heard the other side shouting: “Those who eat at Zhang’s table shouldn’t fight Zhang’s people.” The armies confronted one another across the river for three days. Guo’s forces could have crossed the river with one vigorous push to fight to Xinglongbao, ten li from Fengtian Army headquarters, but at the critical moment, the shells fired by Guo’s army failed to explode because someone had removed the fuses. On the morning of the 24th, Chief of Staff Zou Zuohua and two others, who had become agents of the Fengtian Army, forced Guo to capitulate and sent a telegram offering to surrender.

  General Guo, leading a guard of more than two hundred, left Xinmin City. Riding fast horses should have made it easy to escape and attempt a comeback later, but the general’s wife and the scholar Rao Hanxiang didn’t know how to ride. Unwilling to flee alone, General Guo rode south in a wagon with them. The enemy horsemen caught up with them and had been ordered to execute them on the spot to avoid any further problems.

  General Guo’s final words before execution were, “I started a righteous cause but failed to eradicate the traitors, so death is what I deserve. If there should happen to be in the future those who share the same ideal, please follow this trail of blood.”

  General Guo’s wife, Han Shuxiu, said, “My husband dies for the country, I die for my husband; neither of us has any regrets.” Guo Songling was forty-two; Han Shuxiu, thirty-six. Their corpses were transported to Shenyang, where they were put on display in a square by the river for three days before the family was allowed to collect them. Their bodies were still on display when on Christmas Day, snow fell and covered them, forming a pure and peaceful coffin. No one dared to go and pay their respects; the tears of the family and friends lamenting at a distance froze immediately.

  Guo’s followers should also have been put to death, but Zhang’s brother Zhang Zuoxiang, a wise, kind man who had been with Zhang Zuolin from those early days (the initial greenwood) until his ultimate seizure of power, said, “This is no way to do things. They are brothers from our homeland, reprisal breeds reprisal, so where will it end?” It’s hard to say how many lives were preserved with these words. When the rebellious soldiers returned to their posts, they were more loyal and worked even harder, thus extending the political life of the Fengtian Army.

  Later it was learned that Lin Changmin, who offered his services to General Guo, had been killed by a stray bullet as he was on the run. Rao Hanxiang was apprehended on the road to Shenyang and was questioned by the guards: “What do you do?” He replied, “I write.” The soldiers said they had no use for his sort, so they pushed him off the wagon and he lived to return to Li Yuanhong’s house in Tianjin.

  But the Zhangs, father and son, made a point of offering a reward for the capture of Chi Shiying, because he had gone abroad to study with their support and had come home to oppose them, stirring up the mutiny of Guo’s troops, and therefore had to be apprehended and executed. In those days, they believed that northeast China was theirs and that all students selected through exams to study abroad with official funding were from the Zhang family and should be loyal only to them.

  On December 24, just after daybreak, Chi Shiying went to the temporary headquarters in Xinmin City to prepare for the full-scale crossing of the great flowing river, having no idea that General Guo had been forced to flee in the middle of the night. In the midst of the chaos, he took with him five people from the foreign relations office—Yin Rugeng, Liu Youhui, Yang Mengzhou, Su Shangda, and Lu Chufang, who had caught up later—to the Japanese consulate in Xinmin City to seek temporary refuge despite the risks. Two days previously Chi Shiying had negotiated with the Japanese about the Japanese military garrisoned along the South Manchurian Railway. He had met them a number of times, so this time political asylum was granted without much ado.

  The Fengtian Army surrounded the Japanese consulate and demanded that the six be handed over. In order to protect the political offenders, the Consul General in Shenyang, Yoshida Shigeru (1878–1967), sent ten policemen to Xinmin City and told the Fengtian Army that it was not to set foot inside the consulate. To protect the political offenders, he himself also came to negotiate, while even sending luggage and whiskey to show the refugees his respect.

  This humanitarian decision of Yoshida Shigeru not only saved the lives of the six men but also displayed the political courage in acting and shouldering responsibility that marked his whole life. His father, Takeuchi Tsuna, was the leader of the foreunner of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, and left his immense family wealth to his son as capital so that he might involve himself in politics. His father-in-law, Makino Nobuaki, was in the first generation of important government officials after the Meiji Reforms and cultivated a macroscopic political wisdom that lasted for generations to come. As the Shenyang Consul General, Yoshida Shigeru was in charge of investigating the political situation in north China and had a low opinion of Zhang Zuolin, because he held the rich land of the northeast but did nothing to foster the well-being of the people and society or elevate culture and education, and considered his frequent recourse to war ignorant and shortsighted. It was said that in the consulate, he never referred to Zhang Zuolin by his title or name but simply called him “horse thief.” He had nothing but respect for Guo Songling’s reformist thinking. With a background in foreign affairs, he deeply believed that in a normal international situation, if Japan could maintain close relations with a modernizing neighboring country, it could benefit appropriately. Yoshida served as Japan’s first prime minister after his country was defeated in World War II and, using the liberal assistance of America’s occupation forces, not only saw the reestablishment of Japan’s politics and economics from the rubble but also helped it grow into an economic superpower. During his term in office he also fostered a large number of talented cabinet ministers, a group later known as “Yoshida’s School.”

  Chi Shiying and his companions in misfortune slept in an eight-tatami spare room in the consulate. They were besieged by the Fengtian Army day and night for six months, and during the day dared not even enter the courtyard for fear of being shot. They learned from the consular officials that General Guo had died and that his body had been displayed for three days in a square by the small river in Shenyang, and moreover that the army had been reorganized and incorporated into the Fengtian Army. The six of them lived in confinement, where setting one foot outside meant death. They had followed General Guo in his earth-shaking heroic return. But it was like smoke and clouds passing before the eyes—everything had been blown away and scattered outside the imprisoning walls.