My Three Childhoods: Through Life, Love, and Liberation

By Lucy Wu Mainer

My Three Childhoods takes readers on a journey of Lucy Wu Mainer’s riveting, one-of-a-kind experience that included her having to face adult responsibilities at a very young age, complete a challenging education while being torn from home to home, making it to America, facing language and school challenges, and eventually making it to retirement and recapturing the childhood she never had.  Lucy says studying hard, working hard, and playing hard, while maintaining a positive attitude, is what helped her survive her harrowing childhood experiences.

 

“I was born to escape the Japanese invasion of China,” Lucy says of her life.  She and her family were forced to leave their beloved home and resettle in many cities in China, Vietnam, and Burma, always one step ahead of the atrocities of not one, but two wars. Through a strict upbringing, Lucy reveals her inner sense of justice, fairness and distinguishing right from wrong.

 

Like a bird, predestined to fly, Lucy yearned for independence. In America, she worked for years at the United Nations, where she met some very influential and famous people. She received an Ed.D in the United States and taught for 30 years in the New York City public school system. She studied painting at the Art Student League in New York City under John Howard Sandon, Mario Cooper, and Edgar Whitney and others. Her paintings were shown at eight solo exhibits throughout New York and Staten Island. Lucy received many awards for her paintings in group exhibits.

 

In My Three Childhood, Lucy shares the secret ingredient needed to overcome hardship, find passion, and overcome challenges.  Retirement permits Lucy to brag about her age, for deep down she has kept a young-at-heart attitude throughout life, never allowing herself to believe that she’s “too old” or frail to try anything new.

 

“This book will open the eyes of the world to the ambition, drive, and courage of international students like Lucy who contribute to America’s greatness.”

—Virginia Castleman, Author, Sara Lost and Found

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Sep 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480867277

Lucy Wu Mainer

Lucy Wu Mainer is the second child of eight children, who grew up in turbulent times. My Three Childhoods is the gripping story of Lucy Wu Mainer’s journey from war-torn China to her dream of obtaining an education in the U.S, including the path she took to make it to America. Readers will get a unique perspective of Chinese culture, how, through an unusual matchmaking event her parents met and eventually married, the trials and tribulations of a family that was uprooted again and again surviving not one, but two wars, to Lucy breaking from family and tradition and moving to America to pursue The American Dream. Through courage, hard work, and persistence, Lucy shares her “life, love, and liberation” that transpired throughout this extraordinary era. Throughout the text, Lucy shares the secret to finding passion, exploring new terrains, and discovering one’s purpose.   Lucy Wu Mainer, Ed.D currently lives in Northern Nevada and continues to pursue the arts, teaching painting, dancing, as well as traveling to exotic corners of the earth.

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Copyright © 2018 Lucy Wu Mainer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-6726-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6725-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6727-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018911188

Archway Publishing rev. date: 11/09/2018

Acknowledgment

I wish to dedicate this memoir to my loving parents, General and Mrs. An-zhi Wu, who worked so diligently and struggled through much hardship to provide me and all my siblings with the best education they could afford. As strict and demanding as they were when we were growing up, they taught us all the important values in life, some of which we could not have learned in school, including honesty and integrity, diligence and responsibility, gratitude and humility, and justice and fairness. Looking at the world we live in today, my siblings and I realized what strong pillars our parents had been throughout our lives. What we each achieved, we earned the old-fashion way: through hard work, and with God’s blessings.

While it’s been years since my darling husband, Frank Mainer, passed on, his tender, encouraging words still guide me when my confidence wanes. Even in spirit, he has given me impetus and moral support in this venture, and I am so blessed to have had him in my life.

I owe much gratitude and sincere thanks to my friend, mentor and teacher, Virginia Castleman, for her guidance and support. Without her insight and encouragement, this book may not have become a reality.

I would be greatly amiss if I took for granted all the help from my little sister, Pauline Wu Shen. She was my proofreader, my reminder of events, and her gentle nudges here and there pushed me to persist.

Lastly, I must give tremendous thanks to the editors and entire staff at Archway Publishing for their dedicated support. I truly appreciate their professionalism and patience.

Contents

Preface

1 – The World I Entered

2 – My Father’s Family Tree

3 – My Mother’s Upbringing

4 – The Matchmaker

5 – My Parents’ Journey

Part I.   My First Childhood

6 – Born to Escape

7 – School Days

8 – Japanese Surrender

9 – Homecoming in Beijing

10 – Tropical Island Vacation

11 – High School Days

12 – My First Job

13 – Archbishop of Nanking

14 – Slow Boat to America

Part II.   My Second Childhood

15 – Barat College of the Sacred Heart

16 – Summer Jobs

17 – At Crossroads

18 – My Wonderful World at the UN

19 – Back to School

20 – My Wonderful Life in the Classroom

21 – The Most Challenging Chapter of My Life

Part III.   My Third Childhood

22 – Is There Life after My Loss?

23 – Lost and Found

Postlude

Preface

There are two tasks in my life I put aside until after retirement. The first one was organizing my old photos spread all over the house in dusty shoeboxes, in envelopes, and rubber-banded in bunches thrown in drawers. The second task was writing my life story.

I am proud to say that I did accomplish my first task, with considerable time and patience, a year or so after my retirement. Instead of having those black-and-white photos curled up in shoeboxes, they are filed away now in albums and envelopes.

With that tedious chore behind me, I could start enjoying my second and more fun challenge, writing my story. Well, it has been procrastination upon procrastination. Every time I tried to tackle my project, I thought, How do I go about it? Where should I start? I am not a writer. I have nothing significant to share with the world. Who do I think I am? What did I accomplish in life that is worthy of anybody’s interest? What did I contribute to the betterment of the humanity? No, I don’t really have a story after all. These thoughts would chase one another around in my head until my brain hurt, and then I had to give up. Days or weeks later, I would get the urge to try again … and again.

Often, I would try to boost my self-confidence by recounting some of my past writing experiences. When we first moved to Taiwan from Beijing, I entered the tenth grade. The main newspaper in Taiwan at that time was the Central Daily News. They had a column called Sights and Sounds on Campuses (學府風光) to which student reporters sent in articles of interest on any academic, social, or culture activities. I was the only reporter for my school. What was interesting was that the newspaper kept our identity strictly confidential so that we were free to report the bad as well as the good policies, practices, and activities. I kept myself busy and earned a lot of spending money to treat my brothers and sisters. If this experience is considered writing, then I have a feather in my cap. Is that enough experience and knowledge to tackle a book?

In college and graduate school, I wrote a great deal. They were all term papers, theses, and dissertations. I got all good grades, but does that count for, or help with, what I want to write now? Even so, that addresses only two points. No, I didn’t dare try to start a big project like writing a book. I was a good teacher and a decent artist, but I never saw myself as an author. That title scared me. So I told myself to let it go. I would do better to go dancing.

After a while, as I was enjoying my leisure, the same bug would come to tickle me. Or, as I was telling my friends about something that had happened to me when I was younger, they would say to me again and again, Why don’t you write a book? For a long time, I just ignored these comments.

One day, the seeds my friends had planted in my thick head started to sprout, and I jumped off my lazy massage chair and said to myself, Why not write a book? I thought, Let’s not be too ambitious. Let’s just make some notes about something interesting that I still remember—not for the world but for the children in my family. That was how I got started, one page at a time, one story at a time. Now it is hard to stop.

1 – The World I Entered

Mama, what is war?

Mother told me that I’d asked her that question one day out of the blue when I was about three years old. She didn’t quite know how to answer me, and she was busy, so she tried to brush me off. Oh, it’s when people fight.

Like me and Brother David? I persisted, looking across the room at my brother.

Why do you ask?

I heard Uncle Four—my father’s fourth older brother—and my aunties talking about it. They said because of the war, they may have to go back home to the North. I don’t want them to go!

That was 1936 in Beijing, China.

Soon after, Uncle Four and his family did go back to my father’s hometown in Manchuria, and we found ourselves in Tianjing (天津) because we, too, had to escape the Japanese attack of Beijing. Events unfolded quickly; some I vaguely remember, while others were passed on to me and my siblings orally throughout the years by our parents, mostly by Mother. To string events together in a somewhat historical sequence, allow me to leave my three-year-old self behind and explain things from the perspective of an adult.

During the turn of the century, from the late 1800s until World War I broke out in 1914, the world was relatively peaceful. America’s industrialization was picking up speed. Ford surprised the world with its first Model T; railroads were being expanded and improved. The Wright Brothers had their first experimental flight in 1903; then success and improvements followed in the world of aviation. Everything seemed to be heading up and up in America. Far away in China, however, signs of a healthy nation were steadily declining. The Qing dynasty (the last imperial dynasty) was struggling with her last breath. It was a time of royal corruption, led by Empress Dowager and her courts. Civil unrest broke out everywhere and became known as the Boxer Rebellion, when the Chinese were resisting foreign influence. This led to the opium war against the British. China was in turmoil.

Both of my parents were born during this era, Father in 1906 and Mother in 1909, before the significant year 1911, which changed Chinese history. In 1911, the American-trained medical doctor Dr. Sun Yat-Sen led the Chinese revolutionaries to overthrow the imperial Qing dynasty. Together they established a democratic form of government that became the Republic of China. Technically, both of my parents were born during the Qing dynasty. Although China was still involved with foreign trade disputes, wars, and concessions with many Western countries and Japan, both of my parents’ childhoods seemed to be unaffected on the surface. The following chapters trace my parents’ different upbringings in quite diverse subcultures.

2 – My Father’s Family Tree

A Big Family in Manchuria

In 1906, my father was born as the fifth son in the Wu family, so he had four older brothers and one older sister. After my dad, there came a younger brother and a baby sister, which made a family of six brothers and two sisters. They lived in a huge compound that consisted of many houses all attached to the main house, where my grandparents resided. The main house was the center of all family activities. The houses were typical farmhouses, nothing ostentatious, but they formed a fortress, surrounded by a high stone wall for an important reason.

In the old days in Manchuria, there was the constant threat that Mongolian bandits would come in large groups to rob the wealthy families of food, clothing, and anything of value. Families always had to be prepared for surprise attacks. When the bandits came, the men (both family members and hired hands) would circle the inner walls with shotguns, bows and arrows, sticks, and whatever they could lay their hands on. Women learned how to use pistols to defend themselves in case the bandits entered the houses. Mother had never even seen a pistol before she learned how to aim and shoot. Once she showed us her little pistol. It was cute, made of silver with engraved designs. If a shooting device can be considered pretty, that fancy pistol looked like a pretty toy to us.

Father’s hometown, Da Xing Village (大興鎮), meant great prosperity. It was in the outskirts of the city of Qiqi Ha Er (齊齊哈爾), in the province of Hei Long Jiang (黒龍江), translated as Black Dragon River, in the northeast of China. It was one of the three provinces of Manchuria (東三省). The population in this town was sparse in proportion to the vast agricultural land it encompassed. Seeds of legends sprang up in these parts.

The Legend of Black Dragon River

Folklore had it that the big river that ran through one town in this province was ruled by two dragons—one black and one white. They were always fighting for power to control the river and the land, and the choice of which dragon to favor caused division among the people as well. Legend passed on that, at one point, the people were tired of the division and growing hostility among themselves. They boldly asked the dragons to have a duel to settle the score once and for all. They selected a day, and all the citizens showed up by the riverbanks carrying as much white or dark bread (饅頭) as they could. As the crowd grew, the clouds suddenly turned black. The river tossed and churned. Rain poured down like the Niagara Falls. (This is, of course, my interpretation. Those people had never seen, nor heard of, Niagara Falls.) They saw white or black waves surging high over the banks. They saw the surfs twisting and turning with vengeance. When the white surf came up, the people who brought white bread would throw it into the white surf, and when the black surfs turned up, the people with dark bread would throw it into the water. Just when both sides were about to deplete their bread supplies, the river began to calm. The rain and wind stopped pouring and howling. The sky opened up. The sun smiled down on everyone. When people looked at the river, it was all black water shimmering serenely with seeming contentment.

Thereafter, the townspeople named the territory Black Dragon River, which later became the province of Hei Long Jiang. There was no more division or animosity among the people. Peace and harmony blessed the hardworking people of this land for many years to come. What also came was a new line of people.

Our Ancestors

China has her ethnic components. The majority of Chinese are Hans (漢). Then there are Manchurians (滿), Mongolians (蒙), Muslims (回), and Tibetans (藏). For centuries, these ethnic groups got along peacefully. Growing up, we thought we were Han people, but recently some of my siblings did some research and found out that we are actually of Manchurian descent. Our ancestors supposedly held some Manchurian royal titles; however, we couldn’t find the details, so we had to file it under couldn’t care one way or the other now.

So far, we have not been able to trace back to when and which generation settled in Hei Long Jiang, because our family tree record book was lost during either the Sino-Japanese War, or our civil war following WWII. Mother told us that two years after she was married, the family updated the family history book, as scheduled every fifty years. It was a big event, she recalled. For nearly half of the year, local scholars, officials, family bookkeepers (they didn’t have CPAs in those days), children’s tutors, relatives, and friends were all invited to the house almost daily to work on the book and to celebrate. There were no printing shops or Xerox machines or Kinko’s services. Hired local scholars had to copy the old book by hand, and then the new births and new marriages were added on. Mom said that the family cooks had to serve tea and meals all day long to a houseful of people. She also proudly told us that they added my oldest brother’s name and her name to the book.

We know one thing for sure from my mother’s firsthand recollection: that my great-grandfather was a highly respected landowner. He was the mayor of the town for many years. Because of the wealth accumulated over generations of hard work and thriftiness, he and my grandfather were capable of helping many of the newcomers to the land, along with aiding the unfortunates to build their family stability. My mother, just as curious as we were, learned that during the harvest time of wheat, millet, soybeans, and potatoes, poor farmers could collect their whole year’s food supply just by cleaning after our harvest crew. The number of regular farmworkers hired by the family was over a hundred. During the busy planting and harvest seasons, the temporary hires would add up to more than two hundred. Remember that in those days in China, there was no farming machinery, no automatic sprinklers or tools. As such, every chore was completed by bare hands and human sweat. Yet people were grateful for the opportunity to work to build their dreams.

Great-grandfather and Grandfather’s philanthropic deeds had immense and lasting influence on many of the local families. After my mother married into the family, and Great-grandpa had already long since passed away, she witnessed many local gentry coming to pay homage to Great-grandpa during the Chinese New Year season for helping them get their families’ farming businesses started.

Father once told us that the land our grandfather (whom we called Yie Yie, 爺爺) inherited measured somewhere around eight thousand qing (頃). One qing equals one hundred acres. It was mind-boggling for me to visualize the size of that land. Father said, If we stood in front of our compound, looking around 360 degrees, we could not see the end of our property. At my tender age, I thought my father owned the world.

No wonder Dad made such big promises to me. He told me when I was in fourth grade, after reading my composition My Ambition, that he could easily finance my ambition of wiping out illiteracy in China by building schools all over our country. He also told me that we would start in our own hometown as soon as we had recovered our land from the Japanese. Dad was as innocent as I was despite our age difference. It was not until I was in high school in Taiwan that Dad realized that his family fortune was gone forever. He said to us in one of his lectures, I have no tangible or intangible wealth to pass on to you. The only thing of value that your mother and I can give you is your education—something you can take with you wherever you go that can’t ever be taken away from you.

Dad’s Childhood

It’s lucky Dad had a very privileged childhood. From early on, the family hired tutors for him and his siblings by selected local scholars. Besides the three R’s, they learned the Chinese classics, poetry, history, calligraphy, and some limited current events. The rest of the time, the boys trained in marksmanship and horse riding. The household owned and continuously raised hundreds of horses, mostly for work and transportation, but some were for hunting. They had twenty-some fulltime horse officers (馬官) to groom and train the horses, as well as to escort my dad and his brothers on hunting and camping trips. Each of my uncles developed great skill in their favorite sports. Our number six uncle was even better skilled than our horse officers in taming the horses chosen from a wild herd. He did not even need a rein or a saddle. By the time he was through with the poor wild horse, the critter would behave like an obedient dog. My father, on the other hand, took an interest in precision sharpshooting. When they went camping and hunting for days, Dad was the one to take care of the dreaded wild boars who would attack the tents in the middle of the night. The wild boars’ skins were so thick, what with years of body oil and rolling in the sand and dirt, that they were impenetrable; even bullets could not go through their coarse skin. Dad would get them when they opened their mouths and growled in protest. All my uncles were superb horse riders, and they all developed sharp eyes for spotting a good breed of horse from a wild herd.

We all so enjoyed these stories when my dad had the rare time and was in the mood to share them with us. Once I was so excited, I jumped up from my little stool and screamed, Baba, you were cowboys!

Career by Destiny

When Dad was still a young teenager, he had learned all the tutors had to teach him. He was a little bored. It happened that the town next to theirs opened a