Love in the Times of Occupation

By Doug Shepardson

Marie’s story begins on a quiet California farm but shifts to China when her wealthy family returns to bustling Hong Kong. When the cruel and sadistic Japanese troops march in, the family flees to a distant village where she manages to fall passionately in love despite the turmoil of the war. When the war ends she happily marries and becomes a teacher. End of story? Hardly. Soon the communists march in, and Marie and her children suffer torture and starvation as they watch families destroyed and loved ones lost in the name of 'communist equality'. Throughout her ordeals, Marie’s strength never fails when it comes to the two things that truly matter -- her love for her missing husband and her love for the children left in her care. There are more tears and tragedy in her life before she is finally able to return to her native California. Poignant and emotionally penetrating, Love In The Times of Occupation is an unforgettable story of one woman's courage and compassion during the troubled times of contemporary Chinese history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug Shepardson
• Release date: Jul 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005655600

Doug Shepardson

Doug Shepardson is the creator of the PuckHeads cartoon characters and has written an award-winning screenplay, "God Willing", as well as an amusing recollection of his life growing up titled 'Life In My Time and Other Writings'. Doug has made his home previously in Boston, Karachi and Los Angeles, and now lives in Sugar Land, Texas.

Book preview

LOVE

IN THE TIMES

OF OCCUPATION

The memoirs of Marie Tam

(Zhong Jiao Chin)

as transcribed and edited by

Doug Shepardson

Introduction

When one night over a Chinese dinner I asked Marie Tam what it was like to come of age in China I had no idea that it would lead to writing Love In The Times of Occupation. She smiled and simply said, times were terrible under the Japanese, and we owned several houses, but we lost everything to the communists. I knew there had to be more than this and I asked her to write down her memories. She soon provided me with thirty pages of notes, written in Chinese. When I translated these into English, I was astonished at the story that she had to tell. I had no idea of the struggles and suffering this kind and gentle dinner companion had experienced. All of the events in this story actually took place, although some of the names and details have been changed in order to enhance the historical context of her memories. Creating this book has helped me reflect on my own life and made me realize that when a person sits down for a pleasant social dinner, you never really know what pain the person sitting across from you may have gone through. - Doug Shepardson

Chapter 1 California Dreaming - The Early Years

At times at some social gathering, someone will ask me, Where are you from? I will smile and simply say, I was born in Stockton, California, but I lived in Hong Kong and China for several years, and then returned to Stockton. The person who inquired about my past will politely smile and say, How nice or how interesting and then the conversation will proceed to another topic. But the real story of how I and my family came to California is a bit longer and more complicated than just that simple reply. If you have a moment, I would like to share that story with you now.

I was born in Stockton, California, in 1927. There was a large community of Chinese families in Stockton, even then. You may ask; why were they in Stockton? How did they get there? My history then, starts earlier. Remember that gold was discovered in California in 1849 and many Chinese came over from Guangdong province, hoping to become rich in the fabled California 'gold rush'. America was called Gold Mountain. A few were lucky and found handfuls of nuggets by panning the riverbeds in the hills east of Sacramento. Most were not fortunate and returned to China. But some stayed in America to start new lives in San Francisco or Sacramento, while others traveled down the San Joaquin River to 'Sam Fow', or 'city number three', which was Stockton. They had not found gold, but they found that a living could be earned by selling fish, opening a small laundry or by working as a maid or a cook or a farm laborer.

In the summer of 1897 there was a second 'gold rush' -- this time in the Klondike region of Alaska. Once again, hundreds of people in Guangdong boarded ships and traveled across the Pacific to the far-away 'Gold Mountain.' Now their destination was Seattle, the starting point for fortune seekers heading north. My father, Kil Chin, was a farmer in Guangdong. He had a wife and a young son. The Klondike gold rush was long over by the year 1922. But in that year, at the age of 32, Kil decided to take a chance and pursue his dream of a better life in far-away America. A sympathetic friend told him:

You may find the city called Seattle to be a difficult place. But here is a piece of paper with the names of others who can help you if you need it. But if you wish to call upon them, they are in another city far away in a place called California.

The ship Kil traveled on was not a luxury cruise ship. For the month-long voyage he lived in a cramped cabin with many other poor Chinese gamblers. When my father stepped onto the docks in Seattle he had little more than the clothes on his back and the hope in his heart for prosperity for his family. But Seattle was not the city he had imagined in his dreams. People were hostile to Chinese, the weather was cold, and there was no work to be found. So very soon a discouraged Kil rode south in an empty freight train to 'Sam Fow', Stockton, California. In his pocket was that piece of paper with the names of others from Guangdong who could assist him in Stockton.

In the years since the Gold Rush and the building of the new railroad the Chinese population in Stockton had increased to over 4,000 people. There was a vibrant Chinese community of Chinese cultural heritage that would welcome Kil into its family.

Through the help of his new friends, my father Kil soon found work as a farm laborer on a large potato farm. You must remember at that time the planting and harvesting of potatoes was demanding physical work, even with the help of plows pulled by tractors or horses. There was much digging and weed-pulling, with your body always bent forward towards the earth. Your back muscles would ache and the back of your neck was soon burnt red by the summer sun. This was my father's life. He worked hard and he carefully saved his money. He sent much of it back to his wife and son who had remained in Guangdong. In my father's second year at the farm, 1923, he met the young woman who would become my mother. Her name was Cora Chong. She was 22, from a poor family in China, and had many brothers and sisters. She had worked as a servant girl for a missionary family for several years in Shantou. When the American family returned to the U.S. they brought Cora with them and treated her like a daughter.

Somehow Cora and Kil met. Although they had friends in the Chinese community in Stockton, their fraternal families of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles were back in China. So they turned to each other for comfort and companionship. Cora fell in love with my father and in 1924 they were married. Did she know that Kil had a wife and a son back in China? Of course. This may seem unusual to you – a man taking a second wife, and the woman in agreement to be a second wife, when he already has a wife and a son. But in the old Chinese culture it was very acceptable for a man to have more then one wife as long as he could provide for all of them financially and emotionally.

My father worked hard. The next year the farm owner told him, You've done a good job organizing the laborers to work together effectively. I am promoting you to foreman.

The owner and my father liked and respected each other very much as employer/employee.

In 1925 a son was born to my father and Cora. His name was Yaodeng, the man you know as ‘Uncle Jack'. Two years later they had a second child, a daughter, and named her Zhongjiao -- that was me. Two years later they became parents of a third child, a daughter they named Zhongxian, my little sister, the woman you know as ‘Aunt Lola’.

The five of us lived in a small, whitewashed wooden house on a quiet dirt road near the potato fields. The three of us children shared one small bedroom and my parents had a separate bedroom. There was no air conditioning. The summer days were hot, and I looked forward to the setting of the sun and the cooling night wind that blew from across the fields. There was no television and we often walked to the river and chased ducks or played with stones and sticks in the dust.

Mother made dresses for us from fabric bought at the Chinese goods store in downtown Stockton – she even made matching hats for me and my little sister Lola. We felt very special, because some other farm families were so poor that the parents had to sew their clothes from old feed bags. The landowner paid my father well, but we were still poor by today’s standards. My parents believed in saving money, not spending it. We did not have many material things, but we were never hungry or without warm clothing. My mother took pride in keeping up appearances, and our small house and everything in it was always neat and clean.

In 1932 my parents took me and my two siblings back to China. My mother later told me, It was a major decision to leave our home. But I fully approved. We wanted very much for you children to learn more of the Chinese culture and language.

Perhaps another reason was, as I now know, there was growing resentment in the white population of Stockton against Chinese and Japanese farm workers and Asian farm owners who had become successful. Or it may have been that after seven years of hard work in the fields, Kil had saved a great deal of money and wanted a change in his life. But perhaps most of all, there was a longing desire in his heart to return to China to be reunited with his first wife and his first son, Diyong.

And so we said goodbye to California, the only world that I had ever known, to return to the old world of China. It was a warm and windy day when the train took us to San Francisco where we boarded a large passenger ship for the long voyage to China.

But -- we didn't really go to China, as 'China' was known in those times. We made our new home in Hong Kong. At that time Hong Kong was part of the British Empire. It had been a an important British colony for almost 100 years. It was considered by the world to be a part of Great Britain, and not a part of China. From the deck of the ship as we slowly steamed into Victoria Harbor I saw the grey and green hills -- they looked like mountains to me -- and square white buildings set in their slopes. At our farm home in Stockton, the earth was flat, flat for as far as you could see. But in Hong Kong, homes were built on the sides of mountains! I had never seen anything like this and at first I thought it was some sort of illusion. When we departed the ship we pushed our way through crowds of noisy passengers and baggage porters and rickshaw pullers -- there were more people on the docks than in all of Stockton, it seemed -- and all were speaking Cantonese! There were so many new and strange sounds and sights and smells everywhere we went. And the first time my parents took us on the tram up to 'the Peak', I felt my heart pounding and a rush of dizziness from the excitement. These were my first thoughts and experiences when we arrived in Hong Kong.

With the money saved from his years of toil under the California sun my father bought a four-story concrete building on Hennessy Road. There were three bedrooms and a spacious bathroom on each of two uppermost floors. There was a living room, a kitchen, maid's quarters and a dining room one flight up from the street. The dining room was very large -- space enough for four large dinner tables. On each floor there was a balcony that extended out over the street below. The balconies became play areas and in good weather my brother and sister and I pretended we were pirates searching for treasure or other such adventures for hours at a time. From the top floor balcony one could study the buildings of Kowloon across the harbor, or gaze down at the great British warships and the passenger ships and all the smaller boats coming and going across the waters. My father hired two ahmas to help mind the household. One cooked and did laundry and the other one did the housework and watched over us three kids.

The next year in the summer of 1933 my father decided to return to his family hometown of Xinhui.

Your mother and I have been discussing a new place to live, my father advised one day when we came in from play on the balcony. There were papers and a map spread on the table. We will keep our home here in Hong Kong, and we will also build a new house in Xinhui.

Xinhui was a small village in Jiangmen district in Guangdong Province. It is located in a very scenic region called 'Tianhu', where there are many rivers and the summer climate is very hot and moist. Father wanted to spend more time with his first wife and his son, Diyong, who still lived there. At the time it was an all day journey over rutted roads by motor bus from Hong Kong to Xinhui. If the bus broke down the journey could take two days.

My mother happily told us, You will go to school in Xinhui. You will meet many new friends. And you will have the opportunity to learn traditional Chinese customs.

My mother Cora warmly approved of this plan for a new house. If she had any doubts, she kept these feelings hidden. Father and mother made drawings