The Great Flowing River

by Chi Pang-yuan

  With so much friendly advice, I returned my ticket and prepared to move to the singles dorm.

  At that time, the university, like so many government organizations, was still in the process of “accepting.” The letter of temporary appointment written with a brush on fine paper would probably have some “documentary” value today. Personnel and School Property didn’t have any rules in writing, so a teaching assistant such as myself could in fact formally succeed to a professor’s apartment in the singles dorm. I had applied for a room in a military-style singles dorm that the university had recently built out of concrete beside the Liugong Ditch. Each section contained eight rooms, but they were already full. Hua Yan, an economics teaching assistant, and Pei Puyan and Liao Weiqing, both Chinese professors, all lived there.

  The morning I moved to Wenzhou Street, Junxian came to help me. Actually, I didn’t have all that much to move—a small leather suitcase, a quilt and pillow I had purchased a couple of days before at Rongding, the makeup case with a mirror and three drawers in which I could keep small items as if I were playing house, and which I had purchased shortly after arrival from a Japanese kneeling with goods spread out on the ground for sale under the arcade. Hide-san hauled everything over for me. When Uncle Guo lived there, I had never been over for a visit. The first time I saw the Japanese-style room with no tables, chairs, or bed (Uncle Ma had a bed and other furniture), I felt really sad.

  Junxian arrived in the morning, accompanied by Luo Yuchang. Glancing at the room, he said a few words to Junxian and then left, saying he would be back soon. Before noon he returned with a thick and heavy tatami to serve as a mattress, a kettle, a thermos, two cups, and an enamel basin. In the small shared kitchen, he boiled a kettle of water and filled the thermos. I had never ever bought such things and never thought of them as basic to life.

  At noon, the Ge family invited us to lunch. I went out and purchased a few necessities and returned to Uncle Ma’s for dinner. Junxian and Yilie took me back to Wenzhou Street. After they left, I looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window at the garden and saw the artificial mountain in the deep shade of the big trees along the wall. The first time I slept on the tatami, I could hear the wind in the trees outside and didn’t know what to do with myself throughout the long night. In those days, I experienced the same fear at the onset of night that I had felt in the sanitorium on West Mountain. I lived in the room farthest to the right, which was about forty-eight square feet with a hallway outside, and at a slight distance from the other rooms. I rarely saw anyone, even during the day. Two months later, husband and wife assistant professors moved into the room nearest mine. The sound of their baby crying became the sweet human tidings for which I waited every evening.

  A few days later, Luo Yuchang and a couple of classmates came to see me. He brought a wooden radio he had built himself. They said he was well known among their circle of friends as one who could fix a radio. He said that the electrical engineering department at the university was divided into electric power and telecommunications, and he had majored in the latter. Before he had arrived in Taiwan he had passed the test to be a communications technician in the Ministry of Economics. He volunteered for the railroad because when he was in Sichuan, he had been teased by his classmates about never having seen a train. Then and there he decided to work in railway transportation and not go to work for the power company. At the time, it was much better to work for the power company than the railroad, as the railway transportation equipment was rather backward. In his free time, he built radios for fun and helped others fix their radios for free.

  The one he gave me was probably one of the more successful ones, and could receive the programs from the Taipei Radio Station. It contributed a great deal to dispelling my feelings of solitude. Every night there were news broadcasts, music, and classical Japanese music and songs that the Japanese had left behind. One of the most unforgettable songs I listened to at night was “Night in the Ruins.” While listening, I forgot that it was a Japanese song and I would sometimes recall the time we fled as refugees, listening to the wind blow and dogs howl on the deserted outskirts of town, and think about the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who had died on the battlefield after invading China. Although we detested the enemy, they did have families waiting through cold nights for them to return home. When I first arrived in Taiwan, I saw Japanese all over the place awaiting repatriation; shivering and timid, they knelt on the sidewalks selling their belongings. I didn’t really feel sympathy for them, but I didn’t feel that they should repay a blood debt either.

  A NURTURER: MR. GE FUJIANG

  For the few dozen students studying foreign languages and literatures at NTU, the most important classes were still being taught by two Japanese professors, who never came to the department office. As I moved books downstairs to the library room, I saw a number of middle-aged people coming and going, but no one introduced us or said hello. Soon only one Japanese was left, and he was repatriated the following year.

  Every weekend I’d go back to Qingtian Street. Professors newly arrived from mainland China were frequently guests at Uncle Ma’s; some of them were also friends of my father. They ate in the medical school cafeteria, where the chef had recently been brought in from the mainland; he was quite famous in Taipei. There were few places that served authentic mainland cuisine, so eating at the medical school cafeteria was always a pleasure.

  Sometimes I’d visit the Ge family and have a home-cooked dinner. At that time, Yilie and Juanxian were just getting hooked on playing bridge (later they represented the Taiwan Sugar Corporation and the Taiwan Power Company, competing all over the island and frequently winning). I had learned to play in my senior year in college from some teaching assistants in the fellowship. Naturally, I wasn’t a great player, but they patiently invited Luo Yuchang and me as a pair. Sometimes when Ge-san was free, he and some classmates would set up another table. With my studious concentration I joined in and read some books on the subject, and my interest increased until I moved to Taichung, where it came to an abrupt end.

  One weekend in April of that year, I went to the Ges’. When I entered, Junxian told me to come and look at Yilie’s room. I said, “Hasn’t he already moved to the Taiwan Sugar dorm?”

  Just then, Ge-san came out of another room and pulled open the shoji door. I was startled by what I saw: the eight-tatami-mat room was covered with chirping baby yellow chicks.

  Ge-san, who had been secretly busy these days, had been expecting the first batch of incubated eggs to hatch. We were fortunate enough to be the first to witness this dramatic success. For the Chinese who had known hunger, these little chicks that were hatched in wooden crates under warm lights were as good as gold.

  Two years later, Ge-san quit his job as a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at NTU and at the age of forty went to Taiwan Sugar and established the newest scientific pig farming business. Using the materials from the sugar production process, he produced animal feed and with American help, set up the Cyanamid Company for research on livestock products and yeast powder to prevent epidemics, the improvement of breeds for large-scale export to Japan and Hong Kong, and increasing the pork production in Taiwan. While mainland China was smelting iron in traditional ways and millions were dying of famine, Taiwan was implementing nine years of compulsory education, and the salaries of all middle school teachers for the entire province were paid for by taxes on pork.

  Ge Fujiang (1913–1983) was from Hebei Province and a graduate of the School of Agriculture at Henan University, specializing in livestock products. In 1946, after coming to Taiwan, he joined the Department of Agriculture and Forestry and established the Animal Husbandry Research Institute and the Animal Husbandry Company. As the national representative to the United Nations in their plan for the development of animal husbandry on mountain slopes, and being a successful researcher in Taiwan with an international reputation, he became involved in international scientific exchange quite early. Subsequently, he
established the Animal Husbandry Institute of Taiwan Sugar, the Institute for Scientific Pork Raising, and a cattle breeding station in Zhubei, to all of which he devoted thirty-six years of his life. Owing to the many years of hard work, he suffered from chronic asthma, which, if it acted up at night, would prevent him from sleeping. Despite this, he remained active during the day, running to Zhubei to check on his experiments, examining and evaluating the results.

  After retiring in 1981, he lived in California, believing the climate there would be beneficial for his chronic asthma. Unexpectedly, he died two years later from coronary thrombosis at the age of seventy.

  I was deeply saddened by the shocking news. Many years later, we returned to Zhubei and entered the Fujiang Building erected in his memory by the students (later demolished under new planning). We could almost see the big and robust Ge-san coming to greet visitors and hear his resonant laughter, the same as in 1970 at the founding of the research institute, when he explained his ideals to us, ideals that I shared in my life and the glorious fruition of which I witnessed.

  MARRIAGE

  The gatherings at the Ge house grew in size, because Xie Wenjin and Meng Baoqin arrived in Taiwan with their two-year-old son. Xie was a good friend of Junxian’s and taught English at Jianguo Middle School in Taipei; Meng, her husband, worked in maintenance at the Railways Administration and lived in the singles dorm, where Luo Yuchang lived. The situation on the mainland was deteriorating and increasing numbers of people were arriving in Taiwan.

  Luo Yuchang frequently came to visit me on Wenzhou Street, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, and nearly every morning would phone me at NTU. In those days there were only two phones in the College of Liberal Arts—one in the head’s office and one shared in common in the Office of General Services. Each time the call would come, Chen, the middle-aged secretary, would step out in the hall and shout: “Call for Miss Chi!” I felt very uncomfortable under everyone’s watchful eyes and didn’t know what to say. One day we arranged to meet in the Chaofeng Coffee Shop across from the Sun Yat-sen Hall (perhaps it was the only, or one of the few places that had classical music). In all frankness, I said that in the two years since victory I had been incapable of forming new emotional bonds and that I had come to Taiwan because I was dissatisfied with the political situation in mainland China. My parents lived apart, one in the north, one in the south, and I was on my own here and was clearly aware of the many inconveniences, but even though I felt self-exiled, I was happy in my solitude. I said that during the summer break I was thinking of returning to live with my parents, and that I could not accept his good intentions.

  A few days later, he wrote a long letter in which he said he had cried while watching the movie Madame Curie and that he had admired her perseverance and unwavering strength. He wrote of his ideals and having a plan to realize them: how life ought to have a center and one should strive and conserve one’s energy, including cutting back on meaningless conversation.

  This attitude toward life was one that I had not encountered before, and his proclamation, accompanied as it was by strong words of love, was very different, even interesting, to the young bookish person I was in those days. Going through a lifetime of letters after sixty years together, I realized that at that time I didn’t know anything about life. When we first became acquainted, Yuchang was already able to clearly articulate his attitude toward handling things in life; I, on the other hand, was very different with my sensitivity, curiosity, propensity to mull things over, and imaginativeness. But, having supped enough on the bitterness of my own sentimentality and finding myself in a difficult position, I did envy the strength and reason of others and was willing to accept their protection.

  All my friends in Taiwan, including Junxian, Wenjin, and Cheng Keyong, who worked at the Jilong Port Authority, felt that Luo Yuchang was stable and reliable and urged me to have fewer illusions about life and settle down soon. As the summer break of 1948 was nearing, I wrote to my father to come to Taiwan to see for himself what sort of person Yuchang was.

  In my letter, I wrote:

  Mr. Luo is twenty-eight years old and an electrical engineering graduate from Wuhan University and works for the Taiwan Railways Administration, where he is a section chief in the Communications and Signal Division. He lost his father when he was nine and the family lived in straitened circumstances. He has four sisters and one younger brother, and his mother lives at home in Zizhong County in Sichuan. He has worked hard to get ahead and is strong willed.…

  On two occasions my father had planned to visit Taiwan, but ultimately had to cancel both times. With the arrival of summer break, I had to decide whether or not to stay at NTU the following semester. By then, my mother had finally left Beiping for Shanghai, and even my perennially optimistic father had to admit that the situation in China was not very hopeful and told me that there was no need to come home and look for work, and that I should take the NTU contract. My mother hoped that I would come home during break to discuss things and said that I couldn’t get married on my own in Taiwan.

  So I returned to Shanghai in August and, after receiving my parents’ consent, I visited Pastor Ji Zhiwen at the New Tian’an Church in Shanghai to ask him to officiate at the wedding. Three days before we were married, Yuchang was baptized. By then many people had come to Shanghai from the north, some of whom had been sent to the northeast by the government to take control of various things but had been unable to fulfill their duties (either because the Communists had already taken control or the battles were still seesawing). Not knowing where to go or what to do, most just lived in sorrow. Prices in Shanghai changed from morning to night, and the currency was so devalued that a whole bag of money couldn’t buy anything to eat, so goods were being hoarded. Our wedding rings were 14 karat gold, because nothing finer could be had. The wedding guests filled the church (we passed on having a wedding reception in a restaurant, because a head count in double figures couldn’t be fed and would have to be served in two batches, which would have been embarrassing). Among the guests were the last six of the “ten great heavenly kings” of the anti-Japanese underground resistance. After my parents passed away, I went through their belongings and found “The Noise of Drums and Gongs Fills the Air,” written by Wang Feifan while he was in jail, with the following inscription:

  Revered Tie, I love and respect you and fifteen years have been but like a day.

  In fifteen years I have not forgotten you in times of happiness or despair.

  Nor when hungry, cold, crying, smiling.

  Today from afar I wish you good health

  And hope you shine like the autumn moon in all your endeavors.

  Respectfully, Wang Feifan

  Beiping, in the enemy jail

  July 7, 1945

  This was written one month before victory, and I have treasured it to this day. These men risked their lives working for the national government in the anti-Japanese underground in Manchukuo. One in nine died; the remaining persevered until victory. The several dozen hot-blooded men arrived in Shanghai from the vast open spaces of the northeast, and my wedding reception was the last time they would be together as a group to talk loudly about the bad old days and beating the Japanese. From what they saw in Shanghai, it was probably clear that yet another nightmare was about to commence. Those men who raised their glasses to me that year were constantly on my father’s mind late in life, making him shed a few tears each time he raised a wine cup.

  Ten days after the wedding, we returned to Taiwan by ship. Without the least hesitation, I returned to work and set up my own household in what was now familiar Taipei. My parents no longer worried and my friends felt envious of me, leaving Shanghai and going “abroad.” I no longer harbored any illusions about life.

  Upon returning to Taipei, we first moved into the residence of Zheng Zhaobin, a section chief in the Communications and Signal Division of the Railways Administration. About one month later, we brought home the first furniture we ever purch
ased: a table, two chairs, a double bed, and a small chest. We moved into our first home, which was in a Taipei Power warehouse that had been divided into two residential dorm units using bagasse board. We resided in the temporary dorm unit closest to the street, while Li Zhihou, a new section chief, and his family lived in the other. They had six children who were all fine elementary and middle school students.

  Taiwan Sugar produced cane sugar, the sale of which was one of the biggest sources of foreign currency. The extracted cane was a by-product used for feeding pigs and for making bagasse board, both of which contributed greatly to Taiwan’s development. The bagasse board produced by Taiwan Sugar helped solve the housing problem for the countless new arrivals to the island. The only shortcoming was that when the kids next door played and pushed the bagasse board between us, our room grew smaller.

  I remember our new house of three small rooms and an exterior of thick wooden boards, which sat on the busy intersection of Yanping North Road, to the left of the police station and across from the Railways Administration. There was a small street that ran behind the train station, half of which was filled with small stands, most selling fabric and some selling vegetables. After the morning vegetable sellers did their business, the fabric sellers arrived. They shouted in Taiwanese, “One chi, twenty kuai! One chi, twenty kuai! Really cheap!” which was followed by bolts of cloth being unrolled noisily on the stands. A dozen or so voices rose and fell in this fashion until around two in the afternoon, when the shouts of the rickshaw pullers filled my narrow and small room.

  It was even more noisy and confused on weekends when people were off work. Often I just had to get out and take a walk, so I’d head down Yanping North Road to Dihua Street and look to where the Damshui River entered the sea off in the distance. The commercial streets of old Taipei that I became familiar with were quite different from those I had seen as a refugee in Hunan, Guizhou, and Sichuan. The storefronts in Taipei were smaller and the stores were closely packed together, and seldom were there gateways or signboards between. Fabric and gold shops came at the head of the streets, followed by dry goods shops. Sometimes we would walk halfway and then make a right to the traffic circle. We started to enjoy meat soup and fried rice noodles. These dishes were like dumplings for a northeasterner, but for someone from Sichuan, they didn’t count for more than a snack. Each night, we had to cook rice and make a soup in that makeshift bamboo add-on kitchen, and then it would seem like home.