The Great Flowing River

by Chi Pang-yuan

  I returned to Shanghai. Through Sun Jinsan at Time and Tide Literature and Art, I applied for an assistant tutoring job at National Central University in Nanjing, but they kept only their own graduates. If I were to teach in Shanghai, I’d need to speak the Shanghai dialect, and my functional English was insufficient. I didn’t want to think about it, so never applied. Besides, I didn’t really like the false prosperity and the pomposity of Shanghai.

  August went by, then half of September. I was in Shanghai and had no idea where I should go or what I should do.

  One day I suddenly saw Uncle Ma Tingying among all the coming and going guests. At the start of the War of Resistance, he had quit a seventeen-year career in Japan as a geology scholar and come home to serve his country. He had served as principal of Northeast Middle School of Shenyang when it moved south. Starting in 1937, whenever he came to Nanjing or later to Chongqing, he would stay at our house. Since he was single, my mother would pay particular attention to his food and clothing. He was a big man with a resonant laugh, and we all liked him and felt close to him. He once gave me a small bag of clamshells, the first I ever saw. He told me about diving under the sea to see the coral reefs, which really opened my eyes. He didn’t marry until he was forty and had a son and a daughter. His son’s name was Ma Guoguang; later he became a writer in Taipei, under the pen name Liang Xuan.

  When I saw him again in Shanghai, it was like old times. He saw me looking confused and hesitant at the edge of ten li of red dust of Shanghai. He said he had just arrived from Taipei and was looking for professors for the School of Science of Taiwan University, and had heard that the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures was looking for teaching assistants. “They have no one, just a couple of Japanese professors waiting to be sent home! Why not go and be an assistant?”

  My father and my uncles at Time and Tide all thought it impossible and didn’t approve of a single girl crossing the strait to Taiwan, which had recently experienced the upheaval of the February 28 Incident. To my mind, going alone to the south meant personal exile, but at least I’d be able to break free from the deadlocked situation of wavering between one city in the north and one in the south. Moreover, the whole country was caught up in a political whirlpool in which if you weren’t left, then you were right, and there was no place put your head in the sand like an ostrich. Everyone told me to go and see and experience a new place. Look around and then come back—everyone gave me an ample road for retreat. At the end of September 1947, I ventured across the sea to Taiwan with Uncle Ma, to see an unknown new world.

  My father bought a round-trip ticket for me, but I knew I would be buried in Taiwan.

  6

  TAIWAN

  Trials and Hardships

  IMPRESSIONS OF TAIPEI

  My first trip across the Taiwan Strait by prop plane in October 1947 was very exciting, because the name of the body of water was from a geography book and I felt as though I were flying across a map, arriving quickly in a matter of a couple of hours.

  The name Taipei was quite unfamiliar to me, and there wasn’t much to the airport, which was probably just “temporary.” Taiwan was said to be a small island, so I ought to have the immediate opportunity to see the “jidangao” (chicken egg cake), with which everyone was familiar (Jilong, Danshui, Gaoxiong, as we were taught in Wu Zhenzhi’s geography class). At least one of the first things I could do was see real bananas and pineapples.

  My first view of Taipei was not what I had expected—no beach with waving palm trees or small colorful buildings, just a small grayish city with a few two-story concrete buildings among a host of single-story Japanese-style wooden houses. There was little or no greenery to speak of, nor was there a public square. I stayed at the home of Uncle Ma Tingying.

  Uncle Ma Tingying, styled Xuefeng, was born into a farming family in Jin County, Liaoning Province, in 1902. As a young man, he decided to serve the country through studying science. He tested and was admitted to the Tokyo Teachers College in Japan to study natural sciences, and upon graduating first in his class entered the geology department of Tohoku Imperial University in Xiantai, where he studied with the famous paleontologist Dr. Shikama Tokyo, specializing in the growth rates and changes in coral reefs and other related subjects, such as paleoecology, paleoclimatology, paleogeography, and plate tectonics. He published many outstanding papers and received two Ph.D. degrees, one from Berlin University in Germany and one from the Imperial Academy in Japan. In 1936, he overcame Japanese obstructions to use what he had learned to repay the nation, becoming a professor in the geology department at National Central University. The following year, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the inland provinces lacked salt, so at the behest of the government, Uncle Ma traveled to survey the coastal and other salt-producing areas and directed the mining of well salt and rock salt, thus successfully facilitating the national administration of the people’s livelihood during the War of Resistance.

  At the start of the war, all the schools of Beiping and Shanghai moved to the southwest, behind the lines. After the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, my father was responsible for running the Northeast Association for anti-Japanese underground resistance and had cordially invited Uncle Ma to serve as the principal of the Northeast Middle School (the school was established in Shenyang, but moved from Manchukuo to Beiping with the teachers and students in tow, unlike the National Northeast Sun Yat-sen Middle School, which was later set up to accommodate those students who had fled). Uncle Ma led the teachers and students through Shanhaiguan to Beiping, then to Nanjing, up mountains and over rivers with great difficulties from Hubei through Hunan and Guizhou to Ziliujing in Sichuan, reestablishing the school at Jingning Temple. After leaving his job as principal, he went back to doing research and during the eight years of the War of Resistance, he conducted research on glaciers, the formation of peneplains, laterization, and the ancient ecology of coral reefs and their changes, completing seven major works.

  After victory in the War of Resistance, he was sent to Taiwan as a special envoy by the Ministry of Education to take charge of the island’s educational institutions, particularly Taipei Imperial University. Having lived in Japan for twenty years and gained a deep understanding of the Japanese mentality, and possessing the open-minded generosity of a Chinese intellectual, he did his utmost to preserve and safeguard the facilities, materials, and system of Taipei Imperial University. The Japanese had not yet been repatriated, and they deeply respected Professor Ma’s academic standing and the way he handled things; however, he refused to accept any government position while setting up the Department of Geology and an oceanic research institute, mentoring students, devoting himself to research, and forming survey teams that visited Lanyu, the Spratly Islands, and the Diaoyutai Islands. His “On the Formation of Oil” had an immense impact on the opening up of Taiwan’s resources. Later, he published a series of nearly twenty articles titled Studies in Paleoclimatology and Continental Drift, offering proof for the theory of plate tectonics, which was discussed and affirmed by international geological circles.

  Uncle Ma’s house was located on Qingtian Street, the old name for which was Number 6 Sanjyoudori, a narrow lane of Japanese-style houses with low walls and wooden gates. There was no need to knock, one had only to push open the gate and walk in. Inside was a small Japanese garden with a small artificial hill and pond, almost toylike, but the row of large trees along the wall was somewhat imposing. The door opened onto a vestibule, and the visitor would be met by a girl who was kneeling (she wasn’t sitting or squatting, but kneeling) and in Japanese rattled off a long string of what were probably words of welcome. Her name was Kinchan, and to this day I can still clearly recall her face, because her serious respectfulness contained an element of craftiness, as did her spoken Japanese, which was something I had never encountered before. Everyone removed their shoes and put on the straw slippers that Kinchan handed to them, entered the room, and walked unsteadily across the tatami mats, which wa
s like walking across someone’s bed, stepping uneasily. She cooked authentic Japanese-style fish, fried or roasted, and miso soup, which was very tasty, for someone trying it for the first time.

  In the hallway outside the kitchen sat an extremely thin, middle-aged rickshaw puller with a white towel at his waist. They called him Hide-san. In the side yard was parked a rickshaw, which was supplied by National Taiwan University for Uncle Ma’s use (at that time he was dean of the College of Sciences). Uncle Ma weighed 180 pounds and was about six feet tall; Hide-san weighed in at about 120 pounds and was about five feet tall. But that was of no matter. What mattered were the wooden pull handles on the rickshaw—the first time Uncle Ma took his seat, they broke. After they had been repaired, he took his seat and they broke again, but he once again took his seat though they couldn’t be repaired. The rickshaw puller was a public employee who clocked in and out every day. After I got there and sought work in the Department of Foreign Languages, Uncle Ma had Hide-san take me to school and return me to Qingtian Street in the afternoon. In this way he was able to “fulfill his duties”; otherwise he would have been dismissed from his job, the salary from which went to support his family.

  The first two times I rode in the rickshaw, Hide-san spoke in Japanese the whole way (he didn’t understand Chinese), expressing his gratitude to me. After I was “employed,” I turned over all my rice and coal coupons to him, which made a couple of teaching assistants living at Uncle Ma’s place mock me for “showing off my wealth.” The third time I rode in the director’s rickshaw, as I was proceeding down Xinsheng South Road through the fields, I suddenly recalled what my father had told me about not riding in public cars when I was young. I immediately got out and walked.

  A NEW WORLD: FRIENDSHIP

  I arrived at National Taiwan University as a muddleheaded teaching assistant. Landing at Uncle Ma’s house upon arrival, I got an overall picture of the university. Lu Zhihong, who was soon to take over as president of the university, and a number of other professors from those early days who lived in the other two nearby lanes, conversed with Uncle Ma about academic duties nearly every day as they came and went, and from time to time they inquired about the way things were going with the Japanese professors who were still residing on Qingtian Street, awaiting repatriation. Arriving at Uncle Ma’s gate, they frequently heard his resonant laughter. They were all thinking about the big picture for the future, with the most important points initially being to maintain Taipei Imperial University’s strong schools of Tropical Biology and Medicine, and to strengthen the teaching and service at the medical school. That year the foundation, which remains strong today, was laid.

  After three months in Taiwan looking at those two rooms full of books in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, I began organizing the piles, examining each book and roughly classifying them. It was actually a fortunate job that allowed me to forget myself. However, my mind was unsettled. After work, I would walk, following Liugong Irrigation Ditch toward Heping East Road and Qingtian Street, feeling empty, wondering if I should go home to Shanghai during the winter break. If I went home, should I come back? If I came back, was there anything more important for me to do than moving books around? In Taiwan there were probably only six people who even knew of my existence. All alone and filled with worries, I made my way at dusk along the ditch to a strange Japanese-style house with straw mats.

  On Lunar New Year’s Eve, I locked the department door and headed home. It was already dark, and when I got to the lane off Qiangtian Street, a light was already on in a house there. Looking over the low wall, I could see a family sitting around a table, already eating New Year’s Eve dinner, a warm scene that made me think of my mother and sister in Beiping and my father in Shanghai, and as I considered my own inexplicable “independence,” tears welled up in my eyes as I quickly made my way to Uncle Ma’s house, where a number of older people who had come to Taiwan alone were sitting around the dinner table drinking warmed sake.

  One afternoon after the New Year, my solitude was completely disrupted.

  That day it rained without letting up. Bored to death, I put on my heavy raincoat and went to the intersection of Qingtian Street and Heping East Road, where I caught a bus to Rongding (now the area around Hengyang Road, Baoqing Road, and Bo’ai Road) to buy a few things. At that time there was only the number 3 bus in front of the police station (sixty years later, it is still there).

  In the heavy rain, only one other woman was waiting for the bus. She was covered entirely in a raincoat and her rain hat was pulled low. We waited for ages and no bus came. I took a look at her and at that moment I thought I recognized a familiar face. She looked at me and we almost simultaneously asked, “Aren’t you Yang Junxian from Wuhan University?” “Aren’t you Chi Pang-yuan from Wuhan University?”

  Unexpectedly, I had found a link with the past.

  Yang Junxian had been an economics student two years ahead of me at the university. I had seen her in the girls’ dorm, but we hadn’t interacted. She had come to Taiwan with her sister and was working in the accounting department of the Taiwan Power Company. Yu Yilie, who was from the same class, was also in Taiwan, working in operations at the Taiwan Sugar Corporation. The two were engaged and living at her brother-in-law Ge Fujiang’s (we all called him Ge-san) place in the Japanese-style dorm of the Department of Agriculture and Forestry, in what was probably Lane 9 on Qingtian Street, just three or four lanes away from Uncle Ma’s place. Her older sister, Yang Xixian, taught home economics at the Normal University and had been program head for the previous three terms. Husband and wife were straightforward and welcoming. Their daughter, Ge Dingyu (baby name Ningning), was only four years old and possessed the good humor of her parents, and often sang the new songs she had learned in kindergarten, and even danced. The Ge family gradually became the most appealing of warm families for me. Many years later, when I taught the history of English literature, each time I read Bede’s “The Conversion of King Edwin” and got to the part that describes the situation after he came to believe in Christianity as being like a sparrow flying into a great dining hall where there was food and a warm fire, and how upon flying out, it encountered the cold and a contrary wind, reminded me of those early days in Taiwan.

  After the New Year, Junxian and Yilie invited me to join the Wuhan University Alumni Association in Taiwan. Most of the several dozen people were elder schoolmates from the schools of engineering and law who were either working in government offices or teaching. The head of the alumni association, Li Linxue (a chemistry graduate, highly placed in China Petroleum), did the most to help settle alums arriving in Taiwan. He lived to be very old. Heng Gaoshou you could say was the soul of the alumni association. Knowing that I was a recent graduate who hadn’t been in Taiwan long, he asked me to report on activities at our alma mater over the last two years. I stood up and gave my report as I saw things. Among those present at the time was Luo Yuchang, an electrical engineering graduate now working for the Taiwan Railways Administration. Later he told me that he decided upon seeing me at the alumni association meeting that he would marry me.

  Three or four days after the alumni association meeting, Luo Yuchang and Tan Zhongping (a mechanics graduate whom I had met at the Leshan Christian Fellowship) came to Uncle Ma’s house to see me. We sat in the living room for a while, but I didn’t give it much thought. They came again the following week and invited me to see Yang Junxian at her place, where we talked about the situation of alums recently arrived in Taiwan. The three of them were from the same class, the last class that graduated at Leshan, and were the earliest technocrats to arrive in Taiwan, so they had much in common to talk about. For a student of literature like myself who knew little of the world, they were a bit like an old horse that knows the way home. We have been together in Taiwan for fifty years, and their protective attitude toward me has never changed.

  It was winter break, and ever since I had seen that warming scene of a family sitting down toge
ther for New Year’s Eve dinner, my thoughts kept revolving around the idea of going home. I would go to Shanghai first, and perhaps my parents would finally return to Nanjing to reestablish our home there, and then I could settle down and find a job. I went to the airline office with my return ticket and reserved a seat for a flight a week later. When I returned to Qingtian Street, Uncle Ma said, “The university has hired you as a teaching assistant for one year. You’ve been here one semester, and now you want to leave. It will be difficult for the university to find a replacement. There are fewer than ten in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, so you ought to at least wait till summer break to make things easier for everyone.” Junxian also said, “It’s too bad that you haven’t seen any of Taiwan and now you want to leave.” Two days later, Luo Yuchang and Tan Zhongping showed up at Uncle Ma’s and tried to convince me to stay.

  Just when I was feeling hesitant and indecisive, Professor Guo Tingyi (he taught history at the university and later transferred to Academia Sinica, where he established the Institute of Modern History) came to visit Uncle Ma. He was a friend of my father’s and came to plead with me to stay and help the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures organize those two rooms full of books, and told me that I could read in peace. He said, “The present situation in mainland China is chaotic, with the north being the most volatile. All the universities are in the process of getting reestablished, so you won’t be able to do any studying when you go there.” Uncle Guo was on the point of giving up a room in the singles dorm on Wenzhou Street to move to the dorm for families. He had asked the Office of General Affairs to allocate the room to me so that I could settle down with a short walk to work.