A Boy from China: Volume I in China

By Richard T. Cheng

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669869856

Richard T. Cheng

Richard Tien-Ren Cheng was born in June 1934. Since the age of three, he had been suffering from the war between China and Japan and the Chinese civil war between the nationalists and the communists. He moved frequently to escape the war and suffered immensely from losing his close relatives. At the age of fifteen, he escaped the mainland China to Taiwan, where he grew up and completed his undergraduate education. He was married in Taiwan. When he decided to go to the States for his master's degree, he left his wife, a son, and another son. When he arrived at the school, he had thirty dollars to his name. He struggled for ten years in between studying and working. When he finally finished his doctoral degree, he became an educator in the effort to develop computer science programs for various institutions of higher education. He was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor to full professorship in six years and to eminent professorship in another three years. In 1985, he decided to give up his position as an eminent professor and chairman of computer science at Old Dominion University to establish a small company. Through less than five years of struggle, he achieved the goal of making it a multimillion-dollar company. In 1991, he received the largest contract the IRS awarded to a small company, which was for $240 million over six years. He has been active in the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Committee of 100, and the Chinese-American Foundation for Americans. He also has done a lot of philanthropic work that benefit to several universities.

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Copyright © 2023 by Richard T. Cheng.

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Rev. date: 03/09/2023

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CONTENTS

Preface

Part 1. Escape the Mainland

Chapter 1.     My First Escape

Chapter 2.     The War Casualties

Chapter 3.     The Poorest Place on Earth

Chapter 4.     Schooling in Wartime

Chapter 5.     The Most Treacherous Road

Chapter 6.     The Crash of a Fighter Plane

Chapter 7.     A Rice Paddy Fisherman

Chapter 8.     It Was Beginner’s Luck

Chapter 9.     Japan Surrenders

Chapter 10.   Money from the Sky

Chapter 11.   Return to the Ruins

Chapter 12.   The Execution of Mr. Yang

Chapter 13.   My Three Dogs

Chapter 14.   The Calm between Storms

Chapter 15.   The Flames of the Civil War

Chapter 16.   Goodbye, Mainland

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1: At the Age of One in Nanjing.

Fig. 2: With My Grandma and Sister in Nanjing.

Fig. 3: With My sister in Nanjing.

Fig. 3A: My Parents in a Nanjing Park.

Fig. 4: With Grandma in Nanjing.

Fig. 4A: Father in 1939.

Fig 5. With Grandpa and My sister in Nanjing.

Fig. 6: My Sister in a Nanjing Park.

Fig. 7: Uncle Chao Shuan with My sister.

Fig. 8: At Age Four in Chungking

Fig. 9: With Grandpa and Father at Grandma’s Burial.

Fig. 10: With Grandpa, Father, Mother, and My Brother.

Fig. 11: At Age Fourteen in Foochow

Fig. 12: With Uncles Jan and Ming, and Lion.

PREFACE

This book, A Boy from China: Escape the Mainland, truthfully describes events that happened in my youth. It spans a period from the time I was three years old until I was fifteen years old, during which I lived a hash life and moved involuntarily sixteen times. The final move was from the mainland to Taiwan.

The hash period of life I endured took place when China was in war with Japan for eight years and during the civil war with the Communists for four years. I almost lost my life to illness and an ill-intended deed by a neighbor. And in the middle of running away from the Japanese, I was separated from my mother in a big city.

My father was a military man, always away for the war. I lived with my mother in a mud hut and eating meager food until I became a rice paddy fisherman when I was ten so my mother and I could eat fish, snails, and eels every day.

When the war with Japan ended, we returned to Nanjing and found that our former home was a pile of rubble. There was peace for two years, and then we had to run from the Communists.

We moved from Nanjing to Shanghai, stayed for a few months, and moved to Foochow, where my ancestors were from. We had lived in Foochow for six months when the Communists were closing in. My father went to Taiwan with the troops. Three days later, in the darkness of the night, mother, I, and Lion escaped the city of Foochow to board a junk and then a troop carrier that sailed to Taiwan.

PART 1

Escape the Mainland

CHAPTER 1

My First Escape

Images of that hot and muggy summer afternoon in Nanjing still float by hazily in my mind and in my dreams. I remember strangers in our house hastily packing trunks and noisily pushing aside furniture. Two horse-drawn carriages pulled up to our gate, and the larger luggage was hoisted on top of the roofs, while the smaller pieces were tucked inside the cabins. I can still hear the voices shouting inside the carriages and the steel-rimmed carriage wheels rumbling on the cobblestone streets, drowning out the clickety-clack of horseshoes landing on pavement.

I remember getting out at a strangely unlit riverfront landing area in the dark of the early evening. Mother, Grandmother, Grandfather, his assistant, my older sister, and our nanny, Ming, crammed into a small wooden boat with several people from Grandpa’s office and some strangers. After moving swiftly off, the boat stopped suddenly out in the water, far from shore. In the darkness where I could not see, I felt strangers holding me high above their heads and passing me from one set of hands to another from our small boat to a larger boat, where I was finally lowered gently into Ming’s lap.

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Fig. 1: At the Age of One in Nanjing.

Grandpa was telling us all to shush—that Japanese spies could be out here and could be looking for us, and that we must not make a noise. Tall, strong men powered the bamboo poles and oars. When we reached the narrows of the river, with its swift, rushing water, we were towed by groups of men on shore with a fat, heavy rope. I still remember the disturbing, unfamiliar sounds of them chanting in unison. It was not at all like the soft hums of my grandma when she would hold me in her lap until I would fall peacefully asleep back home. I longed to turn around and go back there, to be tucked into the warmth of my own bed instead of being in this scary darkness with water all around and no bed to sleep on. An oil lamp hanging from the middle of the ceiling of our cabin swung back and forth constantly, casting spooky shadows on the wall. I squirmed against Ming and pestered Mother continually, but I did not cry. I did not want to make a sound.

It got even darker on the river. The poles and oars resumed their rhythmic motion. When the boat pulled ashore later that evening, I was gently swooped up again and passed by hands out of the boat, and I was surprised when my feet landed on solid ground. Someone carried me while my family walked until we finally entered a building—a hotel, Mother called it. When I looked around the room curiously, I spotted a half-open desk drawer. Peeking inside, I stumbled upon a box of my favorite cookies.

Look what I have found! I shouted to Mother and my sister. When I offered some to her, she quickly grabbed some.

At daylight, we were back in the boat, heading farther up the river. Sailors steered clear of huge rocks and floating debris. I was tired and tried to nap in Mother’s or Ming’s lap, still wishing I was back in my own bed or playing in my own backyard. Grandma and Grandpa hovered close to the small table with a hot teapot and cups, drinking tea constantly. When we hit more of those narrow places in the river, I watched intently as a thin rope was tossed from our boat to people in the water. After they swam ashore, they tied that thin rope to a fat rope. When the men pulled that fat, heavy rope on their backs, our boat seemed to move faster than when it was powered by the oars and bamboo poles. We were towed several times like this during the day. Mother said a different group of men towed us each time because they all had their own territories and made a living that way. Of course, I could not understand what that all meant.

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Fig. 2: With My Grandma and Sister in Nanjing.

Before dark, we stopped on shore again and headed for another hotel. I ran ahead into our room, where I came upon another half-open drawer containing another box of cookies—my cookies. It was like magic! That is how I remember the days that followed: another hotel, the next room, the next drawer, and the next box of cookies. For twenty days total, I was never once disappointed.

When we reached shore for the final time, the boat docked on a huge pier. A long board was extended from the boat to the deck of the pier. I watched my sister walking down that board by herself without any help, ahead of me. Though quite scared, I wanted to be just like her, so I volunteered to walk on my own too. When I made it to the pier, I was wishing Father were there to see me, knowing he would be proud of me, but he had stayed behind in Nanjing, where he was a cadet in the Huang-Poo Military Academy. Mother told my sister and me that he would be joining us in a few days.

Grandpa hired several rickshaws, and our luggage was hauled from the boat and placed in them. I rode in one rickshaw with Grandpa, and my sister rode in another one with Mother.

This is Chongqing, Mother said before we boarded, our new home, the war capital.

We had just completed our first escape from the growing dangers of war in China. It was August 1937. I was three years old.

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Fig. 3: With My sister in Nanjing.

I was born into a military family shaped by war and military missions. Chuan Cheng, my grandpa, was a teacher at a prestigious school in the early 1900s when he heard the call of revolution. He soon organized a group from Fujian Province to join the forces of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in his campaign to topple the Qin dynasty. Grandpa first served as commander of all revolutionary forces in Fujian and then was promoted to military commissioner under Dr. Sun. A few years after the revolution succeeded and the Republic of China was established in 1911, Grandpa was appointed senior editor for the Central Historical Commission, where he wrote and edited important documents and historical records about the major events of the revolution and the new republic.

A slender, bespectacled man with a goatee, Grandpa had always been very devoted to Father. As an only child in a well-to-do family, Father had always gotten everything he asked for. With Grandpa’s permission, Father had attended the Central Police Academy with plans to become a detective and had even studied hypnosis under the most famous hypnotist at the time before enrolling in a medical school in Shanghai. But when the war with the Japanese began to heat up, Father decided to become a soldier to defend our country. He passed the rigorous entrance examination of the Huangpu Military Academy, where seven hundred cadets were selected from over ten thousand applicants, and became a cadet in 1933, the year before I was born.

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Fig. 3A: My Parents in a Nanjing Park.

Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, was still in a relatively peaceful state before 1937. We lived with my grandparents in a large, comfortable house in an upscale neighborhood, with friends and followers of Grandpa frequently stopping by to swap stories. Sometimes they would ask for assistance, and Grandpa was always willing to lend a helping hand.

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Fig. 4: With Grandma in Nanjing.

While Father was attending the Huangpu Military Academy, he came home only during weekends. Military artifacts and pictures of major historical figures and events adorned many of the walls of our house. Mother told me that while she was pregnant with me, she would frequently walk among the historical memorabilia because Grandpa told her that what she saw then would be passed on to me. She regarded his collection as the most positive influence.

4A.jpg

Fig. 4A: Father in 1939.

Up in Northeastern China, the Japanese already occupied Manchuria, where they had established a puppet government—the Manchukuo—after fabricating an incident in 1931. A section of thirty-nine inches of a railroad owned by the Japanese was damaged by a small explosive charge on September 18, 1931. Blaming the Chinese, the Japanese immediately attacked. They were able to beat the defending Chinese forces and occupy city after city and finally the entirety of Manchuria. Upon entering each new city, the imperial army torched buildings, raped women, and killed numerous civilians in what was known in China as the 9-18 Incident. The cruelty of Japanese invaders already was well-known by all the people of China after they had entered Manchuria.

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Fig 5. With Grandpa and My sister in Nanjing.

Along the border between Manchuria and the northern provinces of China, Japanese troops constantly harassed Chinese border guards and civilians in a plot designed to create tension and eventually provoke incidents to justify a full invasion of China. On July 7, 1937, the imperial Japanese troops did indeed fabricate another incident. They claimed that one of their soldiers was missing and used it as an excuse to attack China at Lugou Qiao (Marco Polo Bridge), near Beijing. In a swift succession of military maneuvers, the Japanese invaded Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, and other coastal cities. Leaders of the Chinese government knew that Nanjing was going to be the next target. In anticipation of the attack, the government decided to abandon Nanjing as its capital and establish a temporary war capital in Chongqing, some five hundred miles to the west in central China.

Orders were issued for important government agencies and operations, including both the historical commission and the Huang-Poo Military Academy, to be moved from Nanjing to Chungking well ahead of the Japanese advance because of their strategic importance. As a key member of the historical commission, Grandpa and our family were among the first to leave in the evacuation, which involved several other government officials. Father would join us a few weeks later when the academy was moved.

We had fled Nanjing by manually powered boat under the cloak of darkness on that muggy August night in 1937 because of fears of what the Japanese would do if we traveled any other way. If we went by train, they might bomb us. A larger steamboat would have made us an easier target, especially with Grandpa and other important government officials aboard. The main group of Japanese troops was still two hundred miles from Nanjing when we were evacuated, but their spies were active everywhere.

We completed that passage up the Yangtze River safe and sound, although leaving home came at a high personal cost. Grandpa, who had become wealthy in real estate trading before the revolution, had to leave behind his extensive properties in Nanjing and Foochow. But with the Japanese zeroing in on Nanjing for its most forceful invasion, and the subsequent mass killing, my family’s rushed departure clearly turned out to be a stroke of good fortune for us.

In December 1937, just a few months after we were evacuated, the Japanese stormed into Nanjing with full fury. After twenty-seven days of fierce fighting against Chinese forces between Shanghai and Nanjing, the Japanese occupied the entire city. Even with inferior equipment, brave Chinese soldiers killed more than 50,000 Japanese soldiers and wounded more than 200,000 others before Nanjing was lost. Our own losses totaled some 120,000 killed and 240,000 wounded. In the next several weeks, with no active resistance from the civilians who had stayed behind in Nanking, the Japanese slaughtered more than 300,000 men, women, and children in the city alone—a third or more of the city’s total population who had chosen to stay or could not leave.

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Fig. 6: My Sister in a Nanjing Park.

The terrible stories of the despicable acts of the Japanese soldiers between December 1937 and February 1938 in Nanjing began to filter through my family’s friends and acquaintances, the government officials, and some news accounts. At first, people did not want to believe what they were hearing. People thought the stories were too dramatic and might be government propaganda. But as time went by and similar accounts rapidly multiplied and spread, with additional photos in newspapers as proof, people began to realize the stories were all real.

Specific stories related incidents of imperial soldiers testing their samurai swords and techniques by beheading thousands of innocent citizens. Photos showed Japanese soldiers raising their military swords and chopping heads off and stacking victims’ heads in a line while standing around laughing. Other victims were shot by rifles or machine guns by singular soldiers or by firing squads. The dead were pushed into mass graves. Photos also showed groups of Chinese who had been burned to death by gasoline poured on them by Japanese soldiers. Thousands of women and girls, some as young as twelve, were raped and then bayoneted to death. Photos showed the soldiers had shot arrows into women’s reproductive organs after raping them. Such extreme cruelty was shocking to our people, from old to young. We also saw photos of blocks of houses and city buildings being torched and burned to the ground.

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Fig. 7: Uncle Chao Shuan with My sister.

The atrocity came to be called the Rape of Nanking and was one of the most shocking episodes of horror against humanity during the entire World War II era. I do not profess to know everything about the events of war in my country in those years, but I am clear about one thing: if my family and I had not been evacuated from Nanjing, we most likely would have been among the victims there.

CHAPTER 2

The War Casualties

My sister, whose given name was Tien-Tang, scampered out the door of our first-floor suite in Chungking and headed for the main gate to our large, rectangular residential building. She quickly climbed the high threshold and scurried down the street that ran along the Yangtze River, Ming frantically chasing after her. This scene was repeated almost every day. Sometimes my sister would reach the nearby shops before Ming could reel her back in, often stopping to buy candy to appease her. Although I was only a year younger than my sister, she never swept me along on her great adventures, no doubt fearing that her smaller brother would slow her down. Father called her the brave soul of the family and was proud of her.

One day back in Nanjing, when I was about two years old, Father tested my own bravery. He stood stoically on one side of a single-board bridge over a ditch that was about two steps for an adult, ordering me to walk to him from the other side.

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Fig. 8: At Age Four in Chungking

Come. Walk over the bridge, he said as he extended his right arm.

But the board looked so narrow and the ditch so deep that I was afraid I would fall in and never get out. My feet would not move when Father repeated his order.

Why do you not walk over to me? Father demanded.

I am scared, I replied.

What do you do when you are scared?

I just cry, I said.

Cry? You are not brave like your sister, Father proclaimed. He later told Mother that I was the weakling of the family. Indeed, I had seen my sister hopping over the single board several times without any hesitation.

As I watched my sister scamper over the threshold of that gate of the big house now, I secretly imagined my own excursions to come. Of course, I longed for a male playmate to come along with me, so I was quite happy when my brother, Tien-Tse, was born not so long after we settled in Chungking. This younger brother arrived prematurely by a month but was healthy. I loved to get close to him when he was awake and just look at him, marveling at the way he smiled. I had many plans for what we would do together.

I liked our new home better than I had expected. Across the street, a concrete-and-stone wall about three feet high separated the street from a steep cliff that hung over the Yangtze River. The city proper of Chungking loomed on the other side of the river. By day, I would gaze across at its many buildings a distance away; they were clumped together like a massive gray-and-black carpet covering the entire mountainside. At night, I watched the city glowing with thousands of dazzling incandescent and neon lights, which looked like hundreds of tiny candles on a big cake.

Father came home from the relocated military academy in Chungking only on weekends, and Grandpa’s friends from the government started coming by again, as they had in Nanjing. When my sister was not testing Ming with her outdoor escapades, she would be inside reading her picture books. Mother said my sister’s reading was quite advanced for a five-year-old, and she had already learned many of the Chinese characters when she was only three and a half. Grandpa constantly brought home new books for her about birds, animals, plants, and the planet.

Come. Sit down, and let me read the story to you, my sister would say as she waved her book in front of me. But each time, I would refuse her and run off to play with the boy on the second floor.

One day not long after my brother’s birth, I heard Mother tell Grandpa that my sister’s forehead was warm to the touch, and she feared that a fever had set in. I saw the tired look on her pretty face, her normally sparkling eyes dull and listless. Grandpa was knowledgeable about Chinese medicine, so he formulated an herbal medicine that mother cooked and fed to her. But my sister’s fever had not gone down by the next day, and she began to cough frequently. Grandpa took her across the river to the city proper to see a doctor, who gave her only the most basic cold medicine and then sent her home.

Grandpa, however, was not convinced that my sister had only a cold, so he took her to another doctor, who diagnosed her condition as pneumonia. But as so many supplies had been cut off from the west because of the war, he could offer no effective medication for my sister. Grandpa was upset and disappointed, but he had no option other than to take my sister home without any proper treatment.

I was not allowed to enter my sister’s room, and Mother told me I must be quiet so she could rest and get well. As I waited anxiously for my sister to come bouncing out of her door again, I remembered playing with her in the snow back in Nanking. She used to point up at the huge icicles hanging from the gutters of our house and say, Ice pagoda, because the formation looked like a pagoda hanging upside down.

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Fig. 9: With Grandpa and Father at Grandma’s Burial.

I watched Grandpa pace the floor, anxiety mounting behind his eyeglasses. He had sought help from his friend high in the government and searched throughout Chungking for a source of proper medication but had not found any. The medicine simply could not come through, because of the Japanese embargo. In desperation, Grandpa formulated an herbal medicine from items he bought at the local drugstore and cooked it for my sister, but he told Mother the medicine might not be strong enough to cure pneumonia. Mother worked to keep my sister comfortable, holding her, rocking her, and humming to her. But within three days of her fever starting, my sister lacked even the strength to cough. Looking as peaceful as if she were sleeping, my sister died in Mother’s arms just a week after the fever was detected.

Mother wept openly, and Grandpa sobbed. Grandma did not come out of her room for the entire day. Grandpa arranged for my sister’s funeral, and I was kept home with Ming when she was buried.

Where is my sister? I asked when she did not come home with Mother.

Your sister has died, she cried.

I could not understand why.

When Father came home, he stomped his heavy boots on the wood floor several times, tears running down his own face. He used to call my sister the jewel in the palm of his hand.

When will Sister come back, Mom? I asked after not seeing my sister for a few days. I missed her so much, and I wished I had agreed to sit with her and listen to her read those picture books to me when she had asked. I was hoping for another chance.

When people die, their spirits will go to heaven and will not come back again, Mother explained, tears streaking down her cheeks. Your sister will stay in heaven and never come back.

I did not really understand about heaven, so I asked Mother again the next day, and she gave me the same response. So, I asked again the next day and the day after that, and every day until I forgot why I was asking.

Your sister was so smart. Your father thought she was a genius and would become a scholar, Mother said one day. Now she is gone. We have only you and your brother. I hope you two will be good sons to us.

Grandma continued to spend more time in bed. My fifty-eight-year-old grandmother had suffered with high blood pressure and had been sick for years. She was quite strict and cold with most of our family, with a quick temper and a harsh tongue that kept others out of her way. But to me she seemed quite different. At night, she used to hold me in her arms and hum to me, helping me to fall asleep. But now that my sister had died, when I wanted my grandma most, she no longer held me at all. Mother said that she had been in shock from my sister’s death, and that since the move to Chungking she had had to use less-effective substitutes for her medication.

I worried about Grandma and became more dedicated to the task Mother had assigned to me. Most mornings, as was the custom, I would go to Grandma’s room and formally ask her to have breakfast with the family. Now I made an extra effort to always be at her door on time—as soon as everybody was seated at our dining table.

Grandma, please get up! Time for breakfast! I yelled as loudly as possible one morning.

She did not respond. I opened the door, walked to her bedside, and pushed her firmly several times. When she did not move an inch, I rushed to Mother.

Mom, Grandma did not wake up when I pushed her!

Your grandma has also gone to heaven now. She will not be with us anymore, Mother said, sobbing.

I cried with her too. At four years old, it was difficult for me to understand how one after another of my loved ones would just disappear from our home, never to come back to us again.

What was left of my family seemed turned upside down by this second tragic death, except that Father did not act so sad as when he found out about Grandma’s death. Even before Grandma’s passing, I had heard him muttering to Mother about how Grandma used to scold him in front of others for his wrongdoings when he was young and how she compared him unfavorably to his two older cousins. He would say that his mother had treated those two sons by her older sisters far better than her own son. He complained bitterly about her lack of motherly tenderness and even questioned whether she was his real mother.

For many days after Grandma’s unexpected death, Grandpa just sat and stared into the emptiness. I climbed onto his lap and tried to make him laugh, even tugging at his goatee, but I could not even raise a hint of smile from him. I missed his calming voice and his stories more than ever, but I began to play outside more now that I, the oldest child, was able to go out without a nanny. Ming was a very pretty girl in her early twenties. She stayed inside and became much more attentive to Grandpa. His spirits gradually lifted from the extra attention, but Mother was worried.

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Fig. 10: With Grandpa, Father, Mother, and My Brother.

I do not feel comfortable seeing Daddy and Ming get so close, Mother told Father when he was home for one of his weekends. Something might happen between them, and that would be bad for Daddy, Mother said.

You are imagining things! Father disagreed. What makes you say that?

Well, she is so young and attractive, and he is lonesome. Why do not we find a nice young man for her to marry? Mother asked.

I do not think so, Father responded. "Daddy needs someone to take care of him. Besides, he is sixty-three years old, and Ming is only twenty-one. I do not believe anything could happen between them."

I did not understand exactly what they meant, but the question was quickly dropped, just as it was whenever Father and Mother had a disagreement. Father always had the final word. My parents had been married by the old Chinese tradition. A matchmaker had made the arrangements for the two prominent families, though both sets of their parents were old friends. Father and Mother had never even met before the day of their wedding in Shanghai back in 1932. They were both seventeen.

The dark cloud of sadness in our house slowly began to lift. Mother told me we were still fortunate to be living in one of the richest cities in the richest province of China. I was simply happy that we lived next door to a general store, where I would often go with Ming or Mother to buy candy. But air-raid sirens warning of approaching Japanese bombers sounded almost daily. Most of the time, it was the city proper of Chungking across the river getting bombed. We could see the bright flashes and hear the muffled booms. Sometimes the bombers would bomb targets in the vicinity of our house. I can remember times when Grandpa held me in his arms as he paced our suite. When he heard loud explosions nearby, he would cover me with his body close to an inner wall, so I was protected on both sides.

While I was still waiting for my brother to get old enough to play with, I found two boys from our building to join me. They soon became my best friends, but as I was quickly learning, nothing I liked would stay the same for long.

Father graduated from the Huang-Poo Military Academy and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the army. His first assignment was to serve as an instructor in the Army Artillery Training Command in Du-Yung, a major city in Guizhou Province some five hundred kilometers from Chungking. Our family, wanting to stay together, had to move with him. I would be leaving my friends behind.

In the spring of 1939, I got on a bus with Mother, Grandpa, and my brother, and rode for three full days to our new home. But Grandpa would not be staying with us in this new city. He had been riding with us only to make sure our journey was safe, and he had to return in a day or two to Chungking, where he still worked as the senior editor in the historical commission and carried some new responsibilities in his life.

I had that hunch, but you did not believe me, I heard Mother saying to Father not long before we left Chungking when they learned that Ming was pregnant.

There was nothing I could do to change the situation, Father replied. Anyway, other than the age difference, I do not think there is anything wrong with them getting married.

When we arrived in Du-Yung, Mother and Father started arguing about our new living situation. Father’s army base was five miles away from us, and he would be able to come home only on Sundays before leaving on Monday mornings. With Grandpa and Ming back in Chungking, Mother would be home alone with my brother and me most of the time.

I really do not like Du-Yung and the whole Guizhou Province, Mother said.

Why? What is the problem? Father demanded.

Well, this is the poorest and most uncivilized place to live, she said, and I have this bad feeling about the whole province.

You have only heard people talking about it. You really do not know if what they say is true. You just must find out for yourself, Father said.

Two days after our arrival in Du-Yung, Mother carried my brother and me to the bus station to see Grandpa off. I hugged my dear grandfather goodbye, and he gently patted my head and bent down to kiss me on my forehead. I felt incredibly sad to see him go, but I did not cry. Grandpa was such a gentle, caring person. Everyone in our family loved him dearly, and he was very fond of me as his first grandson. Our family seemed to be growing smaller all the time.

On the way home, I thought about all the new kids my age I had already seen in the neighborhood and thought I would have a lot of fun playing with them. When we got back, Mother warned me to be extra careful in this new city.

There are many kidnappers on the street, so you just stay in the backyard, she said. Do not talk to any strangers or take candies from anyone. It is dangerous.

Yes, Mom. I hear you, I said.

Do you know why kidnappers would come and snatch a kid away? Mother asked.

I shook my head.

They will sell the kid to become a slave, and he will live a very harsh life.

What is a harsh life, Mom?

Well, they do not have enough to eat, no candies at all, and they must work very hard all day long.

A few days later, I was busy playing hide-and-seek and cops and robbers, as well as engaging in straw-simulated cockfights, with the neighborhood boys in our debris-filled, weed-infested backyard. We had to stay in the back because the narrow stone-and-rock road in front of the house was too hectic, with the deafening noise from the steel-rimmed wheels of the passing animal- and human-driven carts. We played the same games in the back of the house over and over, and the day seemed awfully long.

One day, Mother received a bag of dried lychees from my maternal grandmother, who lived in the city of Foochow in Fujian Province. Mother gave me a few and kept the rest in a jar. They tasted so good and so sweet that I went back to the jar to get more as often as I could. Within a few days, the jar was empty. When Father came home that weekend and discovered the empty jar, he became quite upset.

Son, do you know that stealing is very bad? he roared.

Dad, what is stealing? I could not understand why he was so angry.

Stealing is when you take something without permission. The lychees were for your mom to eat because she is still weak from giving birth to your brother. Did you ask Mother for them?

No, I did not ask Mother, I said.

That is stealing, and I must punish you so you will remember.

Father grabbed a wooden stick about a foot long. I was very scared of the stick; that was the first time Father wanted to punish me.

Show me which hand you used to take the lychees, he ordered.

I extended both hands because I had used both at different times.

He hit both my hands several times. It was very painful, and I cried. Between each smack, Mother handed me a hot towel to dry my tears and clean my face.

I must tell you a story now to help you understand, Father said, still not happy but not as angry as before he hit my hands. All right?

Yes, Dad, I muttered fearfully.

Many years ago, there was a boy about eighteen years old who did many bad things and was going to be executed by the police, Father began. My sniffles ceased, and my curiosity took over. "Just before the police shot him, he made a request to talk to his mother. He was granted the request. When the boy got close to his mother, he asked her if he could have a last drink of her milk. His mother agreed.

The boy pretended to suck his mother’s milk, but instead he bit off her nipple. While crying in pain, the mother asked her son why he had done this to her. He said to his mother that the reason he was going to be killed today was because she never told him right from wrong and never punished him for the bad things he had done along the years. Son, I want you to remember this story and think about what you are about to do before you do anything in the future.

I did not understand the full meaning of the story, but I did know that I did not want to do anything to make Father hit me again. And I sure did not want to do anything to hurt Mother like the boy in that story.

When Father was away with his troops, Mother would spend special time with my brother and me before bedtime. First, she would sing beautiful songs in her Fujian dialect. The soothing tune and words made me feel peaceful and secure, and the songs quickly put brother to sleep. Then Mother would move on to tell a story for me.

Besides cooking three hot meals a day for us, Mother also sewed and knitted all our clothing. She would sometimes visit the other housewives of military officers, but she never joined them for the popular mah-jongg games. She told me that gambling was bad and that anyone who gambled, drank, or used drugs could destroy the good life of his or her family.

When Father came home for short weekend breaks, he would bring many of his associates from the training camp. The house was full of loud talking and the boisterous singing of military songs, just as it had been with Grandpa’s friends. I loved to run among the guests and try to draw their attention. They liked to poke fun at me for the disproportional size of my high forehead. Father nicknamed me Big Head and often teased me by singing, Big head, big head, rain is not my fear. While others have umbrellas, I have my big head.

I did not mind that joke a bit and laughed at it with Father and everyone else.

My brother and I shared our own small bedroom, but when Father was away at the base, we slept in the same bed with Mother. I slept at Mother’s feet on her left, while my brother slept at the other side of her feet. Mother kept a small tung-oil lamp on the nightstand next to her. The lamp was a small dish-like container with a one-quarter inch-wide channel on one side. Lamp straws were used to burn the lamp oil, with the light intensity adjustable by the number of straws used. To save the tung oil, Mother usually used only one straw, leaving a dim light for us to see if we had to get up in the middle of the night.

One warm summer night, just as I was trying to close my eyes, the flame of the lamp, just a yard from my feet, flickered wildly. Then, up in the air and just outside the bed to my right, I saw the image of an old man with a mustache and goatee floating slightly up and down. I tried to talk to Mother but could not make a sound. I soon fell asleep, but when I awoke, I remembered the image and rushed to mother to tell her about it.

Mom, I saw Chiang Wei Yuan Tsang floating up and down to the right of the bed last night! I shouted excitedly.

General Chiang Kai-shek was the head of the Chinese government, and we often referred to him as Chiang Wei Yuan Tsang (chairman of the military commission). I recognized him from seeing his pictures in buildings, on many bulletin boards, and on street walls everywhere.

Do not say nonsense like that, Mother said sharply. You were just dreaming.

But Mom, I was not dreaming. I saw him, I insisted.

You were falling asleep and thought you saw something, but it was not there. Go out and play, and do not tell people about your dreams. You hear me?

I nodded my head, but I knew I was not dreaming.

The very next night, the same dreamlike image floated beside me in the air next to our bed just when I was falling asleep. Again, I was unable to speak or move while I studied it. The next morning, I again told Mother about my experience. But this time, her face turned paper white.

Ren, stay here with your brother and do not go out of the house. I will be right back, she said abruptly. She had never left the two of us alone before.

Where are you going, Mom? I asked.

I must go to see Dad. I will come back right away. Just stay inside and lock the door.

I nodded.

Mother rushed off toward Father’s base, and I locked the door. My brother was sleeping soundly, and I looked out through the window at my friends playing in the backyard. I waited nervously for what seemed like an exceedingly long time. Finally, I heard a knock at the door and mother’s voice telling me to open it.

I told Dad what you saw for two nights in a row, and at first he was quite disturbed, she said. You know that Grandpa wore a mustache and goatee that made him look much like General Chiang, and we wondered if this image you saw could have been telling you something about your grandfather. But he finally just dismissed it all as just the dream of a little boy. We must forget about it now.

The next day, Mother received a telegram for Father from Ming in Chungking. It stated,

YOUR FATHER IS IN COMA FROM A MASSIVE

STROKE CAUSED BY BOMBING. PLEASE HURRY!

The telegram came two days late because it was sent to Du-Yung’s telegram office and had to be hand-delivered to us. The day Grandpa suffered the massive stroke was the very same day that I first saw the old man floating next to me! Father was immediately granted leave to rush to Chungking. Father’s eyes were bloodshot, and I had never seen him so somber. As he swiftly packed his small suitcase, I wanted to ask him about Grandpa, but I was afraid he was not in the mood to talk to me. I watched Mother help him fold his shirts and underwear and pack the small suitcase.

Please take care of yourself on the road, she said. Do not worry about us here. Take your time to finish what you need to do.

I will be fine. What do you think we should do about Ning-Hwa if Ming does not want to keep her? Father asked, referring to the baby girl born to Grandpa and Ming. Father never asked Mother for her opinions, so I knew he must be deeply concerned.

Well, you can bring her back here, and we can take care of her. I would not mind a little girl in the house again, Mother said.

Yes, I feel the same way, Father said. But I also think about the war and my responsibilities. It may not be fair for her to live in places that might be even worse than where they are now. If Ming does not take her along, I think I will send her to that state-funded orphanage for government officials in Chungking. It has a good reputation, and we can always bring her home after the war.

Mother nodded in agreement.

Father took a bus to Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou Province. With borrowed money, he bought a plane ticket for the earliest flight. With no telephone in our home or anywhere in town, we simply had to wait for news until Father returned.

That night, I lay in bed, not knowing what had happened to my beloved grandpa and feeling frightened and sad. As I closed my eyes while Mother began her story, a fleeting memory of a night back in Nanjing flashed before me. I had been crying nonstop for a long time, until someone held me for a while and handed me to Grandpa. I felt his beard as he held me in his arms and walked me around a large, dimly lit room. He pointed to many pictures, and in his gentle voice, he told me stories about them. I could not understand what he was saying, but my eyes stuck on the sight of a long sword with a golden handguard hanging from one wall. I felt so assured and peaceful in the arms of this calm, determined old soldier that I soon fell asleep.

When Mother finished her story, I asked, Was there a sword hanging from the wall in our house in Nanjing?

There sure was! she said with a look of surprise. That sword was a gift to your grandpa from the government to honor his services in the military. It represented bravery and a solid character in a man.

Mom, when we were in Chungking, did Grandpa tremble sometimes when he held me?

Yes, he would tremble when you were in his arms. But when he was fighting the Qin dynasty, Grandpa would lead his soldiers through a rain of bullets without any fear. But when that siren sounded to warn us of a Japanese attack, he was just afraid for you. He was trying to protect you from the bombing and did not know where to go to ensure your safety. The public air raid shelters had been bombed and destroyed; you see.

And now a bombing raid on Chungking had triggered his stroke, no doubt, as he attended to his new baby girl. I closed my eyes again, and Mother touched my forehead.

Listen. You know you are the first grandson, she said. Your grandpa loves you more than anything else in this world. His heart is always with you. When he is in distress, he wants to be with you. Maybe that’s why you saw those images. I could feel the moisture of her tears.

Mom, is Grandpa going to heaven now and never coming back, like my sister and Grandma?

I do not know yet, but I am afraid so.

Grandpa had died only hours before Father arrived at his house. After taking care of the funeral and Grandpa’s estate, Father came back about a week later. When he told us about Grandpa’s passing, the three of us cried together. Mother was relieved when Father told her that Ming had gone back to her hometown with the baby and that it had been arranged by her family for her to marry a middle-aged man in her village. While we were still mourning Grandpa, Mother told me that during our boat trip from Nanjing to Chungking, it was Grandpa who had made sure to place a box of my favorite cookies in the desk drawers of all those hotels. For days, I kept thinking of that sword with the golden hand guard hanging on the wall back in Nanjing.

Not long after Dad came back from Grandpa’s funeral, he received an order from headquarters that he was going to be promoted to captain and head a company of Battalion Two of the training command in a place called Brown Mud Hills.

CHAPTER 3

The Poorest Place on Earth

Father and Mother set off on foot along a muddy country path not even wide enough for an oxcart, while soldiers from Father’s new command carried my brother and me on their shoulders. Three other sweaty soldiers toted our luggage by bamboo poles under the sweltering summer sun. Cookie! called out my brother, who always seemed hungry for snacks. The soldier carrying him pulled out another cookie from the bag mother had given him. Father pushed forward ahead of our group and then slowed down to allow Mother to catch up. She was walking as fast as she could while trying not to slip on the clay, which was wet from the recent rains.

Let us stop for a rest now, Mother said, and we all sat under a group of trees.

Mother passed around military canteens full of cooled boiled water. It was the early summer of 1939, and we were on the move again, now forging ten miles into the countryside from Du-Yung. Father had been promoted to army captain and assigned the command of an artillery training company near the farming village of Brown Mud Hills. He had insisted we follow the shortcut he had heard about because it would save an hour on the road, even though only the local farmers and their animals used the path.

As we got up and started back down the path, I admired the beauty and serenity of the countryside. How nice it was going to be to live in a place where I did not have to worry about kidnappers! My brother and I would have so much space to play in the hills and fields. Back in Du-Yung, Mother had kept my brother inside, so all we could do together was throw paper planes or engage in simulated cockfights with straw. I wanted my brother to grow up so Mother would let him come outside with me.

What are those big animals? I asked the soldier carrying me as I pointed to several large grayish animals in the distant fields.

Oh, those are water buffalo, he said.

I turned my head toward my brother, who was riding on the soldier just behind us.

"Di-Di [younger brother], look! Water buffalo!" I said excitedly.

Oh, he replied as he just kept on eating.

As we approached the village, the dirt road changed from gray black to a brownish yellow. In the distance, I noticed a group of mud piles that looked like houses.

Those are the mud huts the farmers live in, Father said.

I was relieved that we were not moving into one of them, as we headed instead for a large wooden house. After we were settled in an apartment in the big house, Father sent the soldiers back to the company compound, and Mother handed them some money as a gratuity. As mother began unpacking and Di-Di fell instantly to sleep, I looked outside at a few people in torn rags working in the fields. Father sank into the apartment’s only chair and sipped hot tea between puffs of his cigarette.

Now I believe what they said about these villages outside Du-Yung. This must be the poorest and most backward part of all of Guizhou, Mother observed. It is no wonder that people say of Guizhou, ‘There are not three sunny days in a year, no plain field wider than a mile, and people have fewer than three pennies to their name.

Father tried to calm mother’s fears. Well, people here are poor, for sure. But I am certain it is going to be all right for us. It is just a bit inconvenient. That is all.

We all quickly learned why they called it Brown Mud Hills. The oxcart paths, the walkways, the rice paddies, and the exposed hillside that the village partly rested on were all covered with the same yellowish-brown clay. Even the water from the small river winding through the village displayed this same murkiness.

Father did a study of the water the next day and took us to the river to show us what he found. Villagers were scooping up water with buckets and taking it home because it was the only source of water in the village. Some used a bamboo pole to carry two buckets at once. The water looked like yucky soup or lightly creamed coffee.

People who drink this water can get ill or even die from it, Father warned us as he bent to scoop some from the river. He smelled it, took a close look, and then wiped his fingers on his handkerchief from his pocket.

It is badly contaminated, and we must be very careful never to use it without treatment, he said.

Father began to explain that the river originated in a remote mountain region, collecting water from small streams formed by rain and fountains in the vast wilderness. That water feeding the river contained large amounts of soil particles washed from the riverbanks, as well as germ-carrying contaminants from the waste products and decayed remains of animals and even humans. Father said that the villagers buried their dead in very shallow graves on the slopes of the small hills. Coyotes and wild dogs would dig out the remains of the dead, eat part of the flesh, and leave the rest to rot. When it rained, those rotted remains, together with germs that caused death, were washed down to the river.

All the farmers here still drink the water straight from the river because their ancestors have been doing it for thousands of years and they do not know any better, Father hissed. But we will avoid these bacteria, and so will the troops.

Oh my God, Mother said. I used the water from the landlord’s water tank to wash dishes and clothing yesterday.

Well, if you boiled the water, it should be fine. Now you need to rewash the dishes with boiled water until we get a supply of cleaner water, Father advised.

The next day, I watched proudly as Father led dozens of soldiers from his fourth company in digging for a deep well. The excavated brownish clay was put around the well to form a wall, leaving an entrance to the well’s edge. When they finished it, the well was about twenty-five feet deep with an opening about five feet in diameter. A wooden frame and rope formed the water bucket hoist. Then Father guided them in constructing a filtering system made of wood panels and wax paper used as lining to prevent leakage. Soldiers hoisted water from the well with the bucket, dumped the water into a carrying bucket, and carried the buckets up several steps to the filtering system intake trough at the top of a platform that stood a bit taller than an adult. The water passed through several layers of sand, ranging from coarse to very fine, and then through a final layer of active charcoal particles and another layer of fine sand before being guided to a large water tank at the lower end. The resulting water was as clear as crystal, but Father still told people to boil the water before drinking it.

All the soldiers and the officers’ families used the filtered water, but the villagers refused the offer. They said their god was offended by the digging of the well. One morning, soldiers reporting for duty at the filtering system found the well filled in with dirt by the villagers. After two hard days of work, the well was excavated again. Father ordered armed soldiers to stand guard there twenty-four hours a day. There were no more problems from the villagers.

At home, mother was even more careful not to touch any of the river water. But about ten days after our arrival, our entire family came down with dysentery anyway.

It must be from that food served by the welcoming committee we ate, Father told Mother. They used the river water to cook that food and used dishes washed in that water. We should never have accepted the food that day. But by then it was too late; disaster had struck our family again.

Mother and Father recovered within a few days. But while most of the local children had developed strong enough immune systems to fight off at least some of the deadly bacteria, my brother and I were quite unprepared. We both suffered from watery diarrhea, high fever, and extreme weakness. I felt so sick I could not get up to go to the bathroom on my own. With no hospital or medicine in the village, Father and Mother took us to the battalion clinic to see the military physician. He gave us some medicine that looked like sugar crystals. It tasted awful when I swallowed it with the cooled boiled water Mother had set before me, but I did not complain.

My brother was not so cooperative. As my parents forced the medicine down his throat, he screamed and looked toward me. I tried to comfort him by telling him the medicine did not taste too bad, and he became more cooperative. Father directed soldiers to carry us back to the clinic the next day and the day after, but the doctor said he did not know what else he could do for us. The medicine he administered was inadequate and was useless for severe illness. I was a bit stronger and chubbier than my brother. While I became skinny, I saw his small body shrink even smaller, and he was shriveling from dehydration.