Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

  Everyone who went in and out was searched. The soldiers living inside the complex spent most of their time gambling and drinking. Sometimes prostitutes were brought in and the officers would hold a dance in a makeshift club. My mother told Hui-ge she wanted to go and have a look at the dancing, and he agreed without asking any questions.

  The detonators were handed to my mother the next day by a man she had never seen. She put them into her bag and drove into the depot with Hui-ge. They were not searched. When they got inside, she asked Hui-ge to show her around, leaving her bag in the car, as she had been instructed. Once they were out of sight, underground operatives were supposed to remove the detonators. My mother strolled at a deliberately leisurely pace to give the men more time. Hui-ge was happy to oblige.

  That night, the city was rocked by a gigantic explosion.

  Detonations went off in chain reactions and the dynamite and shells lit up the sky like a spectacular fireworks display.

  The street where the depot had been was in flames.

  Windows were shattered within a radius of about fifty yards. The next morning, Hui-ge invited my mother over to the Ji mansion. His eyes were hollow and he was unshaven. He had obviously not slept a wink. He greeted her a little more guardedly than usual.

  After a heavy silence, he asked her whether she had heard the news. Her expression must have confirmed his worst fears that he had helped to cripple his own division.

  He said there was going to be an investigation.

  "I wonder whether the explosion will sweep my head from my shoulders," he sighed, 'or blow a reward my way?" My mother, who was feeling sorry for him, said reassuringly: "I am sure you are beyond suspicion. I'm certain you will be rewarded." At this, Hui-ge stood up and saluted her in formal fashion.

  "Thank you for your promise!" he said.

  By now, Communist artillery shells had begun to crash into the city. When my mother first heard the whine of the shells flying over, she was a lit He frightened. But later, when the shelling became heavier, she got used to it. It became like permanent thunder. A kind of fatalistic indifference deadened fear for most people. The siege also broke down Dr. Xia's rigid Manchu ritual; for the first time the whole household ate together, men and women, masters and servants.

  Previously, they had been eating in no less than eight groups, all having different food. One day, as they were sitting around the table preparing to have dinner, a shell came bursting through the window over the kang, where Yu-lin's one-year-old son was playing, and thudded to a halt under the dining table. Fortunately, like many of the shells, it was a dud.

  Once the siege started there was no food to be had, even on the black market. A hundred million Kuomintang dollars could barely buy a pound of sorghum. Like most families who could afford to do so, my grandmother had stored some sorghum and soybeans, and her sister's husband, "Loyalty' Pei-o, used his connections to get some extra supplies. During the siege the family's donkey was killed by a piece of shrapnel, so they ate it.

  On 8 October the Communists moved almost a quarter of a million troops into attack positions. The shelling became much more intense. It was also very accurate. The top Kuomintang commander, General Fan Han-jie, said that it seemed to follow him wherever he went. Many artillery positions were knocked out, and the fortresses in the uncompleted defense system came under heavy fire, as did the road and railway links. Telephone and cable lines were cut, and the electricity system broke down.

  On 13 October the outer defenses collapsed. More than 100,000 Kuomintang troops retreated pell-mell into the center of the city. That night a band of about a dozen disheveled soldiers stormed into the Xias' house and demanded food. They had not eaten for two days. Dr. Xia greeted them courteously and Yu-lin's wife immediately started cooking a huge saucepan of sorghum noodles.

  When they were ready, she put them on the kitchen table and went into the next room to tell the soldiers. As she turned her back, a shell landed in the saucepan and exploded, spattering the noodles all over the kitchen. She dived under a narrow table in front of the kang. A soldier was ahead of her, but she grabbed him by the leg and pulled him out. My grandmother was terrified.

  "What if he had turned around and pulled the trigger?" she hissed once he was out of earshot.

  Until the very final stage of the siege the shelling was amazingly accurate; few ordinary houses were hit, but the population suffered from the terrible fires which the shelling ignited, and there was no water to douse the flames.

  The sky was completely obscured by thick, dark smoke and it was impossible to see more than a few yards, even in daytime. The noise of the artillery was deafening. My mother could hear people wailing, but could never tell where they were or what was happening.

  On 14 October, the final offensive started. Nine hundred artillery pieces bombarded the city nonstop. Most of the family hid in an improvised air-raid shelter which they had dug earlier, but Dr. Xia refused to leave the house. He sat calmly on the kang in the corner of his room by the window and prayed silently to the Buddha. At one point fourteen kittens ran into the room. He was delighted: "A place a cat tries to hide in is a lucky place," he said. Not a single bullet came into his room and all the kittens survived. The only other person who would not go down into the shelter was my great-grandmother, who just curled up under the oak table next to the kang in her room. When the bat He ended the thick quilts and blankets covering the table looked like a sieve.

  In the middle of one bombardment, Yu-lin's baby son, who was down in the shelter, wanted to have a wee-wee.

  His mother took him outside, and a few seconds later the side of the shelter where she had been sitting collapsed.

  My mother and grandmother had to come up and take cover in the house. My mother crouched next to the kang in the kitchen, but soon pieces of shrapnel started hitting the brick side of the kang and the house began to shake.

  She ran out into the back garden. The sky was black with smoke. Bullets were flying through the air and ricocheting all over the place, spattering against the walls; the sound was like mighty rain pelting down, mixed with screams and yells.

  In the small hours of the next day a group of Kuomintang soldiers burst into the house, dragging about twenty terrified civilians of all ages with them the residents of the three neighboring courtyards. The troops were almost hysterical. They had come from an arfllery post in a temple across the street, which had just been shelled with pinpoint accuracy, and were shouting at the civilians that one of them must have given away their position. They kept yelling that they wanted to know who had given the signal.

  When no one spoke up, they grabbed my mother and shoved her against a wall, accusing her. My grandmother was terrified, and hurriedly dug out some small gold pieces and pressed them into the soldiers' hands. She and Dr. Xia went down on their knees and begged the soldiers to let my mother go. Yu-lin's wife said this was the only time she ever saw Dr. Xia looking really frightened. He pleaded with the soldiers: "She's my little girl. Please believe me that she did not do it… '

  The soldiers took the gold and let my mother go, but they forced everyone into two rooms at bayonet point and shut them in so they would not send any more signals, they said. It was pitch-dark inside the rooms, and very frightening. But quite soon my mother noticed that the shelling was decreasing. The noises outside changed.

  Mixed with the whine of bullets were sounds of hand grenades exploding and the clash of bayonets. Voices were yelling, "Put down your weapons and we'll spare your life!"

  there were blood-curdling shrieks and screams of anger and pain. Then the shots and the shouts came closer and closer, and she heard the sound of boots clattering on the cobblestones as the Kuomintang soldiers ran away down the street.

  Eventually the din subsided a bit and the Xias could hear banging on the side gate of the house. Dr. Xia went warily to the door of the room and eased it open: the Kuomintang soldiers had gone. Then he went to the side gate of the house and asked who was there. A voi
ce answered: "We are the people's army. We have come to liberate you." Dr. Xia opened the gate and several men in baggy uniforms entered swiftly. In the darkness, my mother could see that they were wearing white towels wrapped around their left sleeves like armbands and held their guns at the ready, with fixed bayonets.

  "Don't be afraid," they said.

  "We won't harm you. We are your army, the people's army." They said they wanted to check the house for Kuomintang soldiers.

  It was not a request, though it was put politely. The soldiers did not turn the place upside down, nor did they ask for food or steal anything. After the search they left, bidding the family a courteous farewell.

  It was only when the soldiers entered the house that it sank in that the Communists had really taken the city. My mother was overjoyed This time she did not feel let down by the Communist soldiers' dust covered torn uniforms.

  All the people who had been sheltering in the Xias' house were anxious to get back to their houses to see if they had been damaged or looted. One house had in fact been leveled, and a pregnant woman who had remained there was killed.

  Shortly after the neighbors left there was another knock on the side gate. My mother opened it: half a dozen terrified Kuomintang soldiers stood there. They were in a pitiable state and their eyes were gnawed by fear. They kowtowed to Dr. Xia and my grandmother and begged for civilian clothes. The Xias felt sorry for them and gave them some old clothes which they hurriedly put on over their uniforms and left.

  At first light Yu-lin's wife opened the front gate. Several corpses were lying right outside. She let out a terrified yell and ran back into the house. My mother heard her shriek and went outside to have a look. Corpses were lying all over the street, many of them with their heads and limbs missing, others with their intestines pouring out. Some were just bloody messes. Chunks of flesh and arms and legs were hanging from the telegraph poles. The open sewers were clogged with bloody water, human flesh, and rubble.

  The battle for Jinzhou had been herculean. The final attack had lasted thirty-one hours, and in many ways it was the turning point of the civil war. Twenty thousand Kuomintang soldiers were killed and over 80,000 captured.

  No fewer than eighteen generals were taken prisoner, among them the supreme commander of the Kuomintang forces in Jinzhou, General Fan Han-jie, who had tried to escape disguised as a civilian. As the prisoners of war thronged the streets on their way to the temporary camps, my mother saw a friend of hers with her Kuomintang officer husband, both of them wrapped in blankets against the morning chill.

  It was Communist policy not to execute anyone who laid down their arms, and to treat all prisoners well. This would help win over the ordinary soldiers, most of whom came from poor peasant families. The Communists did not run prison camps. They kept only middle- and high-ranking officers, and dispersed the rest almost immediately. They would hold 'speak bitterness' meetings for the soldiers, at which they were encouraged to speak up about their hard lives as landless peasants. The revolution, the Communists said, was all about giving them land. The soldiers were given a choice: either they could go home, in which case they would be given their fare, or they could stay with the Communists to help wipe out the Kuomintang so that nobody would ever take their land away again. Most willingly stayed and joined the Communist army. Some, of course, could not physically reach their homes with a war going on. Mao had learned from ancient Chinese warfare that the most effective way of conquering the people was to conquer their hearts and minds. The policy toward prisoners proved enormously successful. Particularly after Jinzhou, more and more Kuomintang soldiers simply let themselves be captured. Over 1.75 million Kuomintang troops surrendered and crossed over to the Communists during the civil war. In the last year of the civil war, bat He casualties accounted for less than 20 percent of all the troops the Kuomintang lost.

  One of the top commanders who had been caught had his daughter with him; she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. He asked the Communist commanding officer if he could stay in Jinzhou with her. The Communist officer said it was not convenient for a father to help his daughter deliver a baby, and that he would send a 'woman comrade' to help her. The Kuomintang officer thought he was only saying this to get him to move on. Later on he learned that his daughter had been very well treated, and the 'woman comrade' turned out to be the wife of the Communist officer. Policy toward prisoners was an intricate combination of political calculation and humanitarian consideration, and this was one of the crucial factors in the Communists' victory. Their goal was not just to crush the opposing army but, if possible, to bring about its disintegration. The Kuomintang was defeated as much by demoralization as by firepower.

  The first priority after the battle was cleaning up, most of which was done by Communist soldiers. The locals were also keen to help, as they wanted to get rid of the bodies and the debris around their homes as quickly as possible.

  For days, long convoys of carts loaded with corpses and lines of people carrying baskets on their shoulders could be seen wending their way out of the city. As it became possible to move around again, my mother found that many people she knew had been killed; some from direct hits, others buried under rubble when their houses had collapsed.

  The morning after the siege ended the Communists put up notices asking the townspeople to resume normal life as quickly as possible. Dr. Xia hung out his gaily decorated shingle to show that his medicine shop was open and was later told by the Communist administration that he was the first doctor in the city to do so. Most shops reopened on 20 October even though the streets were not yet cleared of bodies. Two days later, schools reopened and offices began working normal hours.

  The most immediate problem was food. The new government urged the peasants to come and sell food in the city and encouraged them to do so by setting prices at twice what they were in the countryside. The price of sorghum fell rapidly, from 100 million Kuomintang dollars for a pound to 2,200 dollars. An ordinary worker could soon buy four pounds of sorghum with what he could earn in a day. Fear of starvation abated. The Communists issued relief grain, salt, and coal to the destitute. The Kuomintang had never done anything like this, and people were hugely impressed.

  Another thing that captured the goodwill of the locals was the discipline of the Communist soldiers. Not only was there no looting or rape, but many went out of their way to demonstrate exemplary behavior. This was in sharp contrast with the Kuomintang troops.

  The city remained in a state of high alert. American planes flew over threateningly. On 23 October sizable Kuomintang forces tried unsuccessfully to retake Jinzhou with a pincer movement from Huludao and the northeast. With the loss of Jinzhou, the huge armies around Mukden and Changchun quickly collapsed or surrendered, and by 2 November the whole of Manchuria was in Communist hands.

  The Communists proved extremely efficient at restoring order and getting the economy going again. Banks in Jinzhou reopened on 3 December, and the electricity supply resumed the next day. On 29 December a notice went up announcing a new street administration system, with residents' committees in place of the old neighborhood committees. These were to be a key institution in the Communist system of administration and control. The next day running water resumed and on the 31st the railway reopened.

  The Communists even managed to put an end to inflation, setting a favorable exchange rate for converting the worthless Kuomintang money into Communist "Great Wall' currency.

  From the moment the Communist forces arrived, my mother had been longing to throw herself into working for the revolution. She felt herself to be very much a part of the Communist cause. After some days of waiting impatiently, she was approached by a Party representative who gave her an appointment to see the man in charge of youth work in Jinzhou, a Comrade Wang Yu.

  6. "Talking about Love"

  Revolutionary Marriage (1948-1949)

  My mother set off to see Comrade Wang one morning on a mild autumn day, the best time of year in Jinzhou. The sum
mer heat had gone and the air had begun to grow cooler, but it was still warm enough to wear summer clothes. The wind and dust which plague the town for much of the year were deliciously absent.

  She was wearing a traditional loose pale blue gown and a white silk scarf. Her hair had just been cut short in keeping with the new revolutionary fashion. As she walked into the courtyard of the new provincial government headquarters she saw a man standing under a tree with his back to her, brushing his teeth at the edge of a flowerbed. She waited for him to finish, and when he lifted his head she saw that he was in his late twenties, with a very dark face and big, wistful eyes. Under his baggy uniform she could see that he was thin, and she thought he looked a lit He shorter than herself. There was something dreamy about him. My mother thought he looked like a poet.

  "Comrade Wang, I am Xia De-hong from the students' association," she said. "I am here to report on our work."

  "Wang' was the nom de guerre of the man who was to become my father. He had entered Jinzhou with the Communist forces a few days earlier. Since late 1945 he had been a commander with the guerrillas in the area. He was now head of the Secretariat and a member of the Communist Party Committee governing Jinzhou, and was soon to be appointed head of the Public Affairs Department of the city, which looked after education, the literacy drive, health, the press, entertainment, sports, youth, and sounding out public opinion. It was an important post.

  He was born in 1921 in Yibin in the southwestern province of Sichuan, about 1,200 miles from Jinzhou. Yibin, which then had a population of about 30,000, lies at the spot where the Min River joins the Golden Sand River to form the Yangtze, the longest river in China. The area around Yibin is one of the very fertile parts of Sichuan, which is known as "Heaven's Granary," and the warm, misty climate in Yibin makes it an ideal place for growing tea. Much of the black tea consumed in Britain today comes from there.