The Great Flowing River

by Chi Pang-yuan

  After dinner, Yuchang would go work on his tube radios while I read books that I had brought home from the university. Sometimes I would write in my diary. Every time I took up my pen, I would be filled with worry and grief. A few days later, I would look at what I had written and tear it up as not being up to snuff.

  After about two months spent in this fashion, we suddenly received a letter from my father saying that my mother and sisters would be coming to Taiwan in the middle of the month for a visit, as life in Shanghai was becoming increasingly difficult.

  A few days before Christmas, my mother arrived with my youngest sister by plane, while my younger sister arrived later on the Taiping steamer, accompanying Uncle Han Chunxuan and his family along with their luggage. Although living in our small house was far from comfortable, it was the first time I had been able to spend time with my mother, eating what we liked and experiencing a full range of emotions, since I had left Chongqing in 1944 for my second year of college at Leshan.

  There was no hope of going back to mainland China. A friend of my father’s in Taipei helped with the paperwork to enroll my two sisters in Taipei First Girls’ Middle School partway through the term. After winter break, Ningyuan began her third year of middle school and Xingyuan her first. The situation in Nanjing and Shanghai was becoming more unstable and the government moved to Guangzhou to handle official business, but the decision to move to Taiwan had already been made. My father boarded the last plane to Taiwan.

  1948: DAYS OF MEETING SHIPS

  Starting from about the end of 1948, I became very busily engaged in a “life of meeting ships.”

  Almost every time the Chung Hsing or Taiping arrived from Shanghai, Yuchang would take a truck from the Taipei Communications and Signal Division to Jilong Harbor and come back carrying a load of luggage. At the height, more the a hundred pieces of luggage were piled in another warehouse. Among the new arrivals were those from the older generation who had attended my wedding banquet, those who worked at Time and Tide, and those who after victory had returned home, some of whom were elected to the Legislative Yuan while others served as members of the National Assembly. Some came to teach or to work at newspapers and magazines. Almost all of our old acquaintances came to Taiwan. My father ordered us to do everything we could to help. The provincial government also ordered military transport units to assist, so when Yuchang requisitioned a truck from the Railways Administration, that too fell within its purview.

  Our house, which was only three hundred yards from the train station, became the most convenient place of contact. That small twenty-four-square-foot living room was always full of those waiting for others or for the truck carrying their luggage. At first, Mother always had people stay and eat; later we couldn’t cope with it, but we always had hot tea ready and waiting for any new arrival. Countless contact addresses for inns in all cities and government offices were pinned on the bagasse board walls. It was very similar to when we had fled to Hankou ten years earlier, except there were no air-raid sirens or bombs falling on Taipei.

  From the joy of victory to the present state of affairs, few ever thought they would spend the rest of their lives on the island. The fortunate ones brought their parents, wives, and children, while others came alone to first have a look-see, after which they remained forever, separated from their loved ones, their homes amounting to a few pieces of luggage in the Communications and Signal warehouse.

  The last time I went to Jilong to meet a ship was Lunar New Year’s Eve in 1949. We went to meet Uncle Deng Lianxi, the chief editor of Time and Tide (Aunt Deng had arrived earlier to give birth and had brought their other children), together with my father’s best revolutionary comrade, Xu Zhen (born Xu Shida; he served as chairman of Liaoning Province after the war) and the six members of his family. Early in the morning, we took the train to wait for the nine o’clock arrival but never saw a steamship enter the harbor. We asked at the shipping office, but they hemmed and hawed and said that two ships had collided the night before, all communications had been cut, and they had probably sunk. The Taiping tragedy was difficult for Pacific Steamship; today, sixty years later, the two of us standing on the wharf at Jilong feeling shocked and sad seems just like yesterday.

  This stage of our “life waiting for ships” made newly married life very special. In the beginning, the two of us, who were so very different, had come to this island for our own reasons and had met, but we still had not gotten to really know each other or begin to live a normal family life. Then we were swept up in the tide of my father’s final “revolutionary act.” The revolution against Japan he had helped organize and mobilize after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1931 had come to naught. Some of his comrades said that under his leadership they had gone to Taiwan to rise again. My father viewed his son-in-law’s efforts to do everything to help those coming to Taiwan as no different from my mother’s efforts to look after the Whampoa students on weekends or to help care for the defeated and wounded volunteers. At the time, I watched as Yuchang ran back and forth between Jilong and Songshan Airport as the pile of luggage in the warehouse reached the ceiling, moved in and out by the workers; how he directed and arranged everything, without ever once complaining to me; and how he got along with my mother and sisters. This was not the situation I had foreseen when we married, and it laid the foundation for our “comradeship,” which I termed the first deposit in our “stabilization fund.”

  My father finally arrived in Taipei that year, and my elder brother followed the Central News Agency to Guangzhou and also arrived in Taiwan with his new wife, Wang Xufen. After they ended up in our small house for a while, they pooled their resources, and with more than ten taels of gold got a Japanese-style house in a lane off Jianguo North Road. It was slightly larger than my dorm room and sectioned off with bagasse board. Two generations lived together until the Legislative Yuan allocated a concrete bungalow in the new Ziqiang Development in Banqiao to my father. The house on Jianguo Road was let out and the proceeds were used to resume publication of Time and Tide in Taiwan. My father still optimistically believed that there was a future in the struggle.

  Several months later, we were allocated an apartment in the concrete dorms that the Railways Administration had built behind the train station. We joyfully moved in and lived there three days or so, only to find out that each time a locomotive was changed, black coal smoke would flood the apartment and before it had time to dissipate, the next engine was there filling the place with smoke again. My cough returned, so we couldn’t stay and had to flee back to our bagasse house, but could not reapply for staff housing.

  Living there for the time being wasn’t a long-term plan. I was growing weaker by the day. At that time a famous doctor from mainland China by the name of Han Qifeng was in Taipei. During the War of Resistance, he had contributed an airplane to defend the country and had opened a clinic in front of the train station. My father didn’t think Chinese medicine was scientific enough, so my mother had to drag me to see him. He easily read my pulse and said, “Things were insufficient previously and later you suffered imbalance.” My mother nodded and said, “Right, right, she was premature and often sick as a child.” He had me take his famous black-bone chicken white phoenix pills and said I would grow more robust. I went home but wasn’t serious about taking them, and soon I only weighed about ninety pounds. Just before the New Year I discovered I was pregnant and needed a fixed place to stay.

  A YOUNG COUPLE UNABLE TO RETURN HOME

  Mainland China fell in 1949, and Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China, with its capital in Beijing (it had been named Beiping with the success of the Northern Expedition in 1928), and announced the intention of “liberating” Taiwan. Taipei became the capital of rumor; at the height of our “life meeting ships” (actually, sixty years later, it is clear that this was the nadir for the Republic of China) a number of Central News reporters, who were friends of my brother’s, came and went from our bagasse living room. T
hey graduated in the year of victory against Japan and had a very optimistic outlook about the future of the country. Everyone believed that after fighting the War of Resistance for eight years, the Communist Party coming out of Yan’an wasn’t a big issue. These young reporters were looking forward to having opportunities like those of the famous Central News reporter Lu Hongqi, whom they so admired. At the beginning of the War of Resistance, he had braved shelling by Japanese ships on the Yangtze River and a hail of bullets, following the defending troops through gunpowder smoke and ruins, through Qiaokou, which soon was on the point of destruction, to pen his famous “A Temporary Farewell to Wuhan,” in which he encouraged the people: “We vow to defeat the Japanese though the War of Resistance might last a long time.” The piece was carried by practically every newspaper in the country, becoming a best-seller in an instant.

  Chen Jiaji and my brother were among a generation of reporters embedded with the troops in another war, a civil war. They saw famous generals such as Du Yuming, Guan Linzheng, Sun Liren, Zheng Dongguo, and Liao Yaoxiang lead the troops into battle and witnessed the sufferings of and sacrifices made by tens of thousands in harsh winter conditions. Yang Kongxin, who was a great friend of the family, had left home on his own during the Chongqing days and gone to behind the lines to study. He was a classmate of my brother’s in the Foreign Relations Department of National Zhengzhi University and a frequent guest in our house at Shapingba, one my mother worried about, afraid that he might be hungry or cold. Later he was dispatched as a special envoy to Paris and London; when he returned to Taipei on official business, his visit to our home was like a homecoming. Zheng Dong was another person everyone in the family liked. After the war, he was sent to the embassy in Greece as second secretary to Ambassador Wen Yuanning, the famous literary translator, where he acquired a sound foundation in speech and diplomacy. Unfortunately, his fate followed that of the nation, and he lacked ample opportunity to develop. He didn’t return to Taiwan and worked and drifted around abroad, unable to extend his career.

  Chen Jiaji, who went to the northeast with my brother as an embedded reporter, was a straightforward guy from Hebei, but his Mandarin didn’t meet the standard of Beijing, and he was a bit slow in doing things as well. He liked to delve deeply into things and loved nothing more than a debate. His debating style was unique and unforgettable. He would argue without resting and if he lost, he’d be back the following day for another exuberant go at it, but he never hurt anyone or was unkind. After arriving in Taiwan, he was unable to forget what he had seen in the northeast as a war reporter. He wrote Elegy for White Mountains and Black Waters, Dethroned Emperor with a Hero’s Tears, and Warning Signals in the Northeast, among other books. In 2000 he published A Record of Changes in the Northeast at his own expense, in which he organized the historical facts he had witnessed and reported into a detailed, accurate, and objective historical account. In the preface he wrote,

  I’ve been retired for many years, and in the blink of an eye I find that I’m now eighty. Every time I close my eyes and daydream, it is usually about past events in the northeast. While writing A Record of Changes in the Northeast, I would lay aside my pen and sigh, thinking about how the northeast had changed when it shouldn’t have. The first mistake was the Soviet Union breaking its word, the second was the mediation by the United States, and the third was the generals being at loggerheads … which led to 300,000 troops rapidly collapsing in western Liaoning.

  The scope and treachery of what he saw in those three years formed the unforgettable history of blood and tears for another thirty years.

  Of course these Central News reporters had a tumult of stories, some of which could be printed and others that couldn’t: unconfirmed reports were that the Communists had said when they liberated Taiwan, they would force those who refused to surrender into the sea at Danshui in the north, at Xinzhu in the central area, and at Oluanpi in the south. Peng Tingde, a friend of mine from the Christian fellowship at Wuhan University, had been unable to find suitable employment in Taiwan and planned to return to Shanghai. Yuchang and I saw him to his ship at the wharf at Jilong. The shipped was so packed with people that some had tied themselves to the stern, hanging half overboard, to keep from falling, just to get back to Shanghai so that they could at least face what was coming with their families. We had stable jobs and had already decided to stay in Taiwan, so we gave him six silver dollars, which was all the money we had, for his traveling expenses, never thinking that we would never see each other again.

  After losing everything and coming to Taiwan, these friends were not yet thirty and couldn’t know that they would never be able to write anything glorious. My brother’s wife gave birth to a girl when Taiwan was at its most chaotic. To deal with the change, he rented a small wooden building on Nanchang Street in Taipei to open a rice-husking mill (while fleeing from the southwest, my brother saw that despite the changes, rice-husking mills could provide a livelihood). There was also a relatively low second floor to the building, so a number of his good friends and we would visit them after dinner. Their debates would be as lively as a chess match. Reporters had access to many materials and were full of opinions about the past and present, and they spoke sharply. The lofty sentiments of those young people overflowed the small room. Sometimes as a visitor was descending the wooden stairs, the debate would continue as they turned their heads back. Around dusk the following day, they would return and find temporary relief from their grief, indignation, and anxiety. A half century later, looking back on those days actually brings warm memories. Later, everyone set up their own households and we all went our separate ways, never again to experience those gatherings of talented persons.

  TAICHUNG: THE AGE OF TRAINS BELCHING SMOKE

  My workload at NTU grew heavier. More teachers arrived from mainland China, and Shen Gangbo took over as head of the College of Liberal Arts (Qian Gechuan returned to mainland China and later went to the United States), and Ying Qianli became the head of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Ying, who came from Furen University in Beiping, was alone in Taiwan and at first didn’t keep regular hours. Every morning I would open the door and every evening I would lock up. All department memos and teaching materials went through my hands, as I was responsible for typing and distributing them. The newly arrived teaching assistants Hou Jian and Dai Chaosheng worked downstairs in the research office.

  NTU had taken over a number of small Japanese houses for faculty housing down a lane off Zhoushan Road and Roosevelt Road. Teaching assistants with “seniority” could apply. Hua Yan in the Department of Economics received one and told me to apply quickly. I was the only senior teaching assistant in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, so I was eligible for one. The full-length windows of that small room with tatami mats opened out onto a nicely planted garden. I was very happy to give Yuchang the good news, hoping to also make him happy, but he unexpectedly grew silent when he heard the details. The following day he spoke to me in a serious manner, saying that a newly married husband such as himself could not become dependent on his wife. The two of us, a teacher and a civil servant, could have only one lodging supplied by the government. If he went and lived in NTU housing, he would subsequently be ineligible to apply for Railways Administration housing. More importantly, he worked all year round and had to keep the railroads open and unimpeded, and couldn’t be expected to take two buses and get to work on time. He would have to rely on a bicycle to get around (my dowry included a Feilipu bicycle, a lovely thing that would be the equivalent of a new car today), but if emergency work had to be done, it would take half an hour for him to ride from Jingmei to the Taipei Station, and he would hold up official business. The over one hundred miles of rails in the Taipei area was a great responsibility, so he was not in favor of moving to the NTU housing. My father was in complete agreement with him, and after leaving Shanghai to return to Taiwan wrote repeatedly, saying, “You cannot delay your husband from his work and you must r
espect his dignity.”

  Shortly thereafter, the post of head of the Taichung Communications and Signal Division of the Railways Administration became vacant. Yuchang wanted to transfer to Taichung, so he discussed it with me. He felt the division chief’s housing there would be very good with a large yard, which would make it a good place to raise children; in Taipei the workload was heavy, with a lot of duties only aggravated by the many personal matters at work and outside. In addition, Taiwan was facing a political situation that was worrisome. By moving to Taichung, we could have some peace and live our own life, calmly read, and think about the future. If Taiwan were to stabilize and pursue development, the central part of the island, not Taipei, would be the pivotal point for railway operations, and perhaps the Communications and Signal Division would be in charge of more than just maintaining the power poles and communications along the railways.

  When he asked to be transferred to Taichung, everyone in the Railways Administration said, “Old Luo is a strange guy. He’s done a good job in charge of Taipei, the biggest division, but now he volunteers to be transferred to a lesser division!” When I handed in my resignation at NTU, Wang Guohua, the previous head of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, said, “Miss Chi, no one resigns from NTU.” Throughout my life, my work has followed that of my husband, and so I followed him to Taichung, where we stayed for seventeen years.