Shanghai to Liberation: A Journey Through the 1960'S

By William “Bill” Lee

This is a story of liberation from oppression and covers the challenges of a young man’s assimilation into American society during a time of great turmoil torn apart by the Vietnam War. This story is touched by Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, Mizmoon Saltzik of the SLA, Mark Rudd of the SDS, Che Guevara and Ann Romney. It is also a story about the kindness of many Americans, and the Author’s unabashed joy of becoming an American. California history during the 1960s is the backdrop for the story. In addition to the Watts Riots, this history includes Miss Teen LA contests, the first Beatles concert in the Hollywood Bowl, the original Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in Burbank, the design of the LA County Art Museum to float on a lake of tar, the planning of the Irvine Ranch for development into UCI and the city of Irvine, and the slaughter of the SLA in South Central LA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477267035

William “Bill” Lee

Displaced by the Communist revolution of 1949, which the author witnessed as a young boy in Shanghai, his family moved to Los Angeles in 1956. Dropped into the Los Angeles public school system speaking no English at age ten, fellow students and teachers nurtured him through. Upon completing high school he was awarded a full scholarship to Stanford University. Shocked by the Watts Riots during college, the author made a commitment to help rebuild the central cities of the American West. With that commitment honored, he now takes the opportunity tell this unique story of his youth.

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© 2012 William Bill Lee. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/05/2023

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6705-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6704-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6703-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012916645

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

I  Liberation From My Homeland

Eighth Route Army Enters Shanghai

Beijing Family Burial Ground

Leaving China with One Suitcase

II  Taipei To Los Angeles

Taipei

Across the Pacific

Los Angeles

Learning English in the Cloakroom

Le Conte and Hollywood High

III  Summer Work

Miss Teen LA and Snow White

Computer Matchmaking

Watts Burning

Planning Economics

IV  Palo Alto And Beyond

Freshman at Stanford

Lambda Nu

Semmering to Auschwitz

Stanford and the SLA

Nice Body Indeed

V  New Your City

Columbia and War Protest

Waiting for Mitt Romney

Induction Notice

Protest Marches

The Killing of Che Guevara

Visit to Harvard Law School

Marie Patterson

Cambodia Incursion

Walt and Marie

VI  Becoming An American

Development Research Associates

Becoming an American

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I

Liberation From

My Homeland

Eighth Route Army Enters Shanghai

Where were you during the liberation? I was in Beijing on a retail development consulting assignment in 2003; and a young client from the Sky is Red, the third largest housing development firm in China, asked innocently enough. The liberation as the Communist liberators called it was 1949, but I always knew of it as the rebellion. In 1949, I was four years old and living in Shanghai. My family and I were being librated.

I can remember it vividly. It was late May in 1949, and the Nationalist troops had quietly abandoned Shanghai, China’s largest and most important commercial city. Once a few Communist scouts determined that the city was cleared of the enemy troops, the Eight Route Army marched into Shanghai in victory without firing a shot. I could see them from my second floor window. My amah took me down to Nanking Road to get a better look.

My mother and step father had left for Hong Kong. I stayed behind with my grandparents because my mother was pregnant, and the housing situation for my family in Hong Kong or subsequently in Taiwan was uncertain. My stepfather was in the diplomatic service of the Nationalist government, which necessitated their departure well ahead of the imminent arrival of the Communist army. My grandfather was terminally ill with throat cancer, and my grandmother did not wish to move him given his condition.

On that day in late May, our household was tense. After all, they are Chinese. My grandmother would comment trying to reassure herself of the decision she had made to stay in Shanghai in full anticipation of the regime change from the Nationalist to the Communists. Our family had live through the Japanese occupation, which included the slaughter of 250,000 civilians in the Rape of Nanking. We had a house in Nanking, which is about 120 miles west of Shanghai, and heard about the Japanese soldiers using babies for bayonet practice to terrorize the civilian population into submission. Her implication and hope was that the Communist could not be as bad as the Japanese, after all they were Chinese.

The tension stemmed primarily from the uncertainty caused by regime change. While it was not clear at that time to my grandmother, this was Mao’s peasant revolution. It was a revolution directed at the class my family represented. My grandma, Mary Nieh, was the granddaughter of Tseng Kuo-fan. During the Ching Dynasty, he was the epitome of the conservative Chinese gentlemen—intelligent, honorable, loyal to his subordinates and obedient to his emperor. Because of his effectiveness in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion during the 1860s, he was appointed Governor General of Kiangnan Provinces. The Taipings were influenced by Christianity but also believed in the communal ownership of property. Because of that belief, their rebellion was considered by some to be the precursor to the Communist Chinese revolution which would succeed a century later. Governor General Tseng effectively and, according to some accounts, ruthlessly suppressed the Taiping movement. Because of his success in defending the throne, he was reward handsomely. At the time of the Eight Route Army’s entrance into Shanghai, my grandmother’s family had at least three houses in Shanghai and Nanking, substantial stock holdings in a silk factory and of course jewelry and other assets.

The victory march of the Eight Route Army was not at all what I would have imagined, neat parade uniforms and bands playing marching music. It was a ragtag guerilla army walking in silent single file most in bare feet. Some had rifles on their shoulders, and others carried submachine guns in their arms with bandoliers around their necks. Once in a while the line would be punctuated by soldiers pulling a wagon with a mounted heavy machine gun or small cannon. The most curious part of this caravan was three characters lying in boxes being carted along. What is that grandma? Grandma didn’t know at the time but she later figured out that it was three characters in effigy, and the boxes represented coffins. The characters were Chang Kai-shek, Douglas McArthur and Harry Truman. When the march reached its culmination point, these characters were burned