Escape from Shanghai

by Paul Huang

  Shaoguan was, after all, less than two hundred miles by air from the nearest Japanese airfield in Canton. The Japanese flew regular reconnaissance flights over the Shaoguan area, looking for Chinese troop movements and General Li’s field Headquarters. Consequently, Li didn’t sit still. He would periodically and randomly move his tents, if not himself. He wanted to keep his personal location a secret. Few people knew his whereabouts, including Uncle Jin.

  Uncle Jin could get us to the Shaoguan area, but after that it was up to us to find General Li, or he to find us. In either case, Jin would notify the general that we were on our way. And, he warned that there was always the chance that the message would not get through.

  There were no modern means of communication between Uncle Jin and his contacts. Uncle Jin didn’t have a radio. Messages were all delivered by trusted hands.

  Luckily, we had a fall-back position. My paternal grandparents lived somewhere west of Shaoguan. We had the name of the small, riverside village (whose name Mom has long forgotten) and a description of the location of their house, but there were no maps to guide us. My mother expressed some concern about our ability to find the village, but Uncle Jin assured her that the local boatmen would know how to find it. In any case, we had no choice. We would have to depend on the locals. “The people who work the waterways will know how to get you there. Don’t worry, we’ve been doing this for generations,” Jin said with a confident smile.

  Mom wasn’t so sure. But she trusted Uncle Jin.

  About a week into our stay, he handed us some well-worn and patched peasants’ clothing. The disguise was meant to make us look like family members living on a cargo junk. Our role was to act like the daughter and grandson of the boat owner in case Japanese patrol boats stopped to question us.

  Mom dressed me in what she called “my costume.” We were going to live on a junk and pretend to be members of the Wu family.

  At dawn one morning, a shallow-draft-cargo junk came slowly and silently alongside. The vessel was about forty-feet long with a ten-foot beam at its widest point. An overlapping series of semi-circular, woven-bamboo arches covered the cargo hold. These half-moon shaped bamboo roofs were rigid, waterproof and able to resist the strongest monsoon winds. There was a narrow foot-and-a-half-wide deck that ran fore and aft on both sides of the cargo hold.

  Amidships, a section of the sliding bamboo roof opened. A crewman stepped out of the cargo hold onto the narrow deck. He wrapped one end of his rope to a cleat on the junk. When the junk came alongside the houseboat, he jumped aboard. He pulled on his line to bring both vessels together. When the opening in the junk lined up with a door in the houseboat, he tightened the line around a cleat on the houseboat and the slow-moving junk stopped.

  The man looked up and down the river. No Japanese patrol boats in sight.

  Mom and I had been hiding in the doorway waiting for this moment.

  “Go,” the crewman ordered.

  She threw our two small bags to another crewman hidden under the covering. He held out his arms and beckoned me to him. I ran into his open arms. Mom quickly followed. The roof slid shut behind us. The boarding process took just a few seconds. We sat under the protective cover hoping that no one had seen us come aboard.

  Meanwhile, in the stern of the junk, the owner made a big show of delivering a small canvas bag of salt. Uncle Jin thanked him and paid him as if this were a normal part of a routine business transaction. That done, the crewman unwrapped the line from the cleat and returned to the deck of the junk.

  The cargo junk didn’t have an engine or a sail. What it did have were the two narrow walkways on both sides of the vessel. To propel the boat, the crewmen would spear their twenty-foot-long-bamboo poles into the water until it found the river bottom, then they would put the front of their shoulders against the pole and push their way toward the stern. In this manner the men would push and walk the boat through the water.

  When one crewman reached the stern, the second man would start his push from the bow. The returning crewman would raise his twenty-foot pole over his head in order to squeeze past the man pushing his way to the stern. The two men worked like a pair of well-choreographed dancers pushing their way endlessly back and forth. Two crewmen were assigned to each side of the boat. They worked in unison to make the boat go straight upstream.

  This continuous process, where one man pushed to the stern while the other walked back to the bow, would repeat itself hour after hour throughout the day. The junk moved through the water at the speed of the crewmen’s steps. It was a slow arduous job, but one that had been practiced for a few thousand years.

  The owner, Mr. Wu, worked the tiller, always reading the river currents in search of the path of least resistance.

  His junk had been divided into three sections. “These,” he said slapping the flat of his palm on the hard sacks of salt “will be your beds. My wife and I sleep in the back, and the men sleep in the front. You will have privacy here.” Our suitcases and bedding had been placed in the mid-section of the junk. The bags of salt were piled so high that there was barely enough room for an adult to crawl under the curved bamboo covering, but the height suited me just fine.

  Our quarters measured six by eight, more than enough space for our makeshift beds and the few possessions that we had. Bamboo partitions separated us from the Wu’s and the crew. And of course the half-moon shaped woven bamboo cover protected the salt, and us, from the wind and the rain.

  The aft section was the center of life for the eight people on board. The space was only six-feet long but it ran the width of the junk. Here, Mrs. Wu cooked all of our meals in her brick-lined wood-burning stove. The stove was a compact efficient appliance with a 12-inch circular hole for the round-bottomed wok. Next to the wok were two smaller openings; one for steaming rice and the other for boiling water. Here, she made three meals a day. And boiled water for tea was always available. No one drank water from the river without first boiling it.

  The stove and a small worktable had been built into the starboard side of the cabin, facing the shore. This location facilitated the loading of foodstuffs and firewood. The rest of the space was the living/sleeping area for the Wu’s.

  The Wu’s cabin design was compact and utilitarian. Just enough sleeping room for two people. The removal of a few woven-bamboo panels opened the cabin to fresh air and the open sky.

  Just behind the cabin was the narrow deck that Mr. Wu stood on to work the tiller.

  The cargo occupied the entire hold of the boat up to the aft section.

  There wasn’t a toilet on board, and the only running water was over the side of the boat. Generally, we would use the toilet facilities on shore. These waterways have been used to transport agricultural and finished products since before the time of Christ. Consequently, all sorts of businesses lined the banks of the river to cater to the needs of the boat people. This included toilets and bathhouses. Significantly, human waste was collected and converted into fertilizer.

  On one calm, quiet day when we were slowly moving up river, I suddenly felt the urgent need to move my bowels. There was no time to stop the junk or go ashore.

  “Hang on to those two handles, lower your pants, then go,” Mom instructed.

  There were two vertical handrails built for this purpose, but they had been built for adults. They were spaced too far apart so I couldn’t hold them and squat at the same time. My arms weren’t long enough. I looked desperately at Mom for help.

  “Just grab one and hold on tight,” she instructed.

  Mr. Wu stood nearby, watching with a bemused look on his face.

  I grabbed a handrail with one hand and lowered my pants with the other, squatted down and my did business. That done, I took one hand off the handrail to pull up my pants. Only my pants wouldn’t budge because I was still in a squatting position. I started to stand up to free my pants. The upward thrust of my legs put too much pressure on my hand. Unable to hold on, I dropped into the river. Luckily, the platform w
as only a foot above the water. I didn’t have far to fall.

  Mr. Wu let go of his tiller, took two steps, reached down and grabbed me by the hair. He saw what must have been a funny look on my face because when he pulled me aboard he threw his head back and laughed. Shocked and shivering from the chill in the air, seeing him laugh made me feel as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Wu handed me to my mother and asked his wife to give me some hot tea. Then he casually went back to work.

  From that day on, Mom always made sure that I went to the bathroom on shore. After all, there was no speedy way to turn the junk around. If Mr. Wu hadn’t caught me by my hair, then I probably would have drowned.

  Mom taught me how to swim.

  This was a story that the entire crew would tell, over and over, generating new laughter with each telling. Eventually, I took pride in the event. My misadventure had made them laugh.

  Life aboard this transport junk never varied. Mrs. Wu would prepare breakfast at the first appearance of light. After breakfast, the crew would pole the junk up river for a few hours, then they would take a tea break and a short rest and return to work until lunch time. After eating, they napped or rested. Then a few more hours of work before afternoon tea. The crew worked until late afternoon when Mr. Wu would start looking for a suitable place to anchor for the night. Mrs. Wu would begin to prepare dinner.

  At dinnertime, Mr. Wu anchored his junk alongside the muddy riverbank. To reach shore, two members of the crew dropped a long gangplank over the side. Then they would either drop anchor or tie the boat to a tree. Sometimes, they did both. The tough, muscular coolies wore faded and patched black pants and gray cotton shirts opened in front. They rolled their long, loose sleeves up to the elbows, exposing their dark muscular forearms. They would wash their hands and forearms in the river, chatting and joking, happy that the day’s work was over. They were ready to eat.

  Because the kitchen area was so compact and small, there was no room for everyone to sit and eat. We lined up in front of Mrs. Wu and she would fill a large bowl with food and hand it out to us. We would then find an available space, sit, and eat.

  After dinner, the men smoked, drank tea and talked about the war. The commonality of the conflict brought everyone together. Once in a while, a crewman would go ashore and disappear behind some bushes. Urinating in the bushes was acceptable practice. Number Two was confined to outhouses that dotted the riverside.

  By sunset, we would all be ready for bed.

  At dawn, we woke to the soft chant of men poling the junk through the water. Here, the river ran between low banks along a relatively flat plane of land. It was broad and shallow with a slow current. Judging from the watermark of the bamboo poles, the river was about four feet deep. The beamy, shallow-draft hull was designed to resemble a flat-bottomed barge.

  After a few days of poling, we left the heavily populated waterfront areas. Here, towns and villages were separated by towing paths that lined the river’s banks. The crewmen stowed their poles and put on towing harnesses. They strapped them across their right shoulders then secured the ends of their harnesses to the long towline. The four men were tied to the end of this rope on shore. They were shirtless now, and they had rolled their pant legs up to their knees. Their hard thin dark bodies strained against the towline. Even though the three-inch wide harnesses were padded, the pressure cut into the right side of their necks and bodies. They pulled with their bodies leaning forward, nearly parallel to the ground. The men chanted to keep a steady rhythm. Their bare callused feet gripping the muddy shoreline with each measured step, they pulled the heavily laden junk up river.

  The cluster of straining crewmen was about a hundred feet ahead of us. The long towline hung in the air behind them ending at the top of a fifteen-foot tall mast. This sturdy mast kept the towline high and dry, thus avoiding water resistance. Mr. Wu constantly worked the tiller against the slow-moving current. His job was to steer the junk away from shallow water since the force of the towline tended to pull the junk toward shore.

  We moved up river one step at a time. Meanwhile, Uncle Wu was wondering aloud why we hadn’t seen any Japanese patrol boats. Perhaps they were planning another invasion inland?

  The way we moved up the waterways of China in 1942 hadn’t changed since the beginning of Chinese history. Descriptions of junks being poled and towed on the eleven-hundred-mile Grand Canal date back as far as the Fifth Century B.C. For American-educated people like my Mom and grandpa, this continued use of ancient technology was exactly what they wanted changed. They had seen the future in America and they believed that modernizing China was the answer to the country’s poverty and backwardness. One internal-combustion engine on the junk would have shortened our trip to a few days rather than weeks. But this meant a total reworking of the traditional ways of doing business. And nobody knew how to do that. Up until recently, of course. It took a violent revolution and an evolutionary forty years to make the changes.

  One of the things that has always bothered Mom was the fact that we never quite knew where we were in our travels. We didn’t have any maps and we couldn’t buy any. When the Japanese invaded, maps of China were taken off the market and destroyed. The theory was that the invaders wouldn’t know how to get anywhere. Of course the Japanese had made their own invasion maps, but we weren’t going to make it easy for them.

  So, we went wherever the Wu’s took us. Consequently, I’ll never be able to retrace our old route. At least not Mr. Wu’s route.

  What we were able to figure out was that we started our trip on the Pearl River, then we meandered across the Dongping Waterway, and up the Bei (North) River to Shaoguan. At Shaohuan, we turned left to the Wujiang River and up to my father’s birthplace.

  Mr. Wu had docked his junk at a market town earlier than usual that day. The announcement of his arrival brought out the local salt merchant. This was Mr. Wu’s route, one that had been in his family for generations. His junk carried about 10,000 pounds of salt for sale and distribution along his territory. On his return trip, he would carry rice to Canton.

  Wu’s sons had been killed by the Japanese, so he knew that his business would die with him. He decided to devote the remainder of his life to fighting the Japanese. He was just one of many patriots who worked with Uncle Jin.

  Over a cup of hot tea, the local salt merchant would bring him up-to-date on the latest news, then they would haggle over the price of salt. The two men sat and sipped tea. It was a slow, amicable process. They had been doing business together all of their adult lives. Each knew what the other’s profit margin was so the haggling was more of a social ritual than a business transaction. After the crewmen unloaded the one-hundred-pound bags, Wu told them to take the afternoon off.

  Mom and I went with Mrs. Wu to shop for food. We usually ate the fish that we caught in the river, but not today. On this day, she went to the butcher and bought a pork shoulder. She stewed the whole shoulder all afternoon. The meat was a special treat.

  The next morning, we discovered why. First we heard the roar of the water, then, after we rounded a turn in the river, we saw our first white-water rapids.

  There were three junk tied to the shore ahead of us. We became the fourth in line waiting to be towed. After we tied up, the crewmen on the first junk began to pole their junk to the middle and deepest part of the raging river. A two-hundred-foot long hawser was attached to its tall towing mast. On shore, a gang of thirty coolies strained their thin tight bodies against their harnesses, their left arms swinging with each step they took while their right hand pulled on the harness rope to help ease the pressure against their shoulders.

  Though Mom knew that this method of transportation existed on the major rivers in China, she had not expected to see it here. Concerned and frightened at the same time, she asked Mr. Wu whether it might not be better for us to walk along the shore to help lighten the load.

  He smiled at her suggestion. “Your weight makes little difference when compared to our cargo,�
� he told her. “We will stay on board. It is safer. You will see,” he smiled enigmatically.

  Twenty minutes later, the first junk disappeared around a bend. Now the second junk in line poled it’s way to the raging white water. Another gang of thirty coolies began towing the vessel up the rapids. Minutes later, we saw the first group of coolies return. They had delivered the first junk into the calm waters ahead and were on their way back to take the next one in line.

  We were the last and the most heavily laden junk that morning so we had to wait for both gangs of coolies to tow us over the rapids. As we made the left turn into the bend of the river, we came to understand Mr. Wu’s enigmatic smile. The coolies’ towpath wasn’t a path at all. They walked by the side of the river, ankle deep in water over rocks, stones and pebbles. Up until that point, the towpath was wide enough so that three to four men could pull side by side. This large cluster of men worked shoulder to shoulder and step by step up the onrushing water. But up ahead, the path narrowed. One by one, the men would detach his harness from the hawser then reattach it behind the man in front until all of the men were in single file, pulling in unison like a long line of well-choreographed men on the march.

  We could not have walked in that rough, rock strewn riverside. What made it more dangerous was that nothing prevented the men from being pulled into the rapids other than their combined strengths of body and will.

  I sat and watched the men haul us up the river. If just a few men faltered, it would have been over for all of us. But no one faltered or fumbled. They just plodded on and on, step after step.

  By late afternoon, we came through the rapids into a broad, calm bowl-shaped lake. The dark-green waters were ringed on both banks by gentle sloping mountains. The scene looked like nature’s hand had scooped out a handful of earth here and filled it with calm, dark water. The roar of the raging river was gone. The silence reinforced and accentuated the calm. Ahead was nothing but clear blue sky. It had taken us all day to travel just a few miles.