That July was unforgettably hot. Our family of five had to give up our cats, but kept one dog when we moved from our spacious Japanese-style house with a big yard to a tiny apartment on Jinhua Street rented by the Taiwan Railways Administration. It felt as if we had been squeezed into a steam pipe (there was no air conditioning in those days). The three boys lost their space to spread out and grew constantly annoyed and impatient. And right after getting settled, I was immediately going to set off across the sea for an “academic ideal,” something they didn’t understand then and perhaps still cannot understand and forgive even today! Many years later, all I can remember is the unease of that ordeal and being unable to see the stars on that awful summer night.
SAINT MARY OF THE WOODS
Per the ticket with which I was provided, I boarded a Northwest Airlines flight on August 30 and more than twenty hours later arrived in New York via Anchorage and Seattle. A friend in the USIS in Taipei had reserved a hotel room for me in New York and had reassured me that the cabs there were among the safest and most reliable in the world. The following morning (the last day for the interviews) I headed over to the Council of Learned Societies for my interview. Later they sent me a letter at my sister’s house informing me that they couldn’t support my plan for obtaining an advanced degree. Thereupon I decided to go to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Terre Haute, Indiana, west of Indianapolis.
The world works in mysterious ways. That year I had gone to teach at Providence University, where I met the English teacher, Sister Mary Gregory, and Jeanne Knoe, a Fulbright Exchange Scholar. Sister Mary Gregory knew of my plans to go abroad and had encouraged me to study at Indiana University, where she had obtained her Ph.D. three years earlier. At that time, the Department of Comparative Literature at IU was the first and strongest in the United States. Masters of comparative literature theory of German descent, Ramak, Nina Weinstein, Horst Frenze, and Newton P. Stalknecht, all taught brilliant classes that, chances permitting, were not to be missed. She also loaned me several books on the topic. She was the first to do a Ph.D. in English on Dream of the Red Chamber. At the end of April 1967, she knew that I had not yet decided on where to teach for my Fulbright, so she invited me to Saint Mary in-the-Woods College, the school that had founded Providence University, to teach a course on Chinese literature and another on a specific topic of my choosing. The school was only seventy miles from Indiana University, so while teaching, I could prepare to register to take classes at IU and study both English and comparative literature. For me, this unexpected invitation was a compassionate arrangement made by the Good Lord.
Saint Mary of-the-Woods was a Catholic order in the United States, with the convent situated on three thousand acres of forested land in Indiana. The female college was founded in 1940 and was a famous and prestigious school in the area.
Ten years earlier, I had learned about America, a vast land rich in resources; this time, in a small school, I felt the actual strength of the land even more. That endless green forest was nothing less than a Shangri-la! To the right was a pear orchard, to the left an apple orchard. The apples ripened starting in October, but they seemed to go unpicked, and so they fell into the grass, making it look as if it were covered with red flowers. The first time we saw this, we cried aloud, bent over, and pick up the biggest red apple we could find. Later we learned this was just a drop in the bucket. The people who picked the fruit drove small trucks, their tires rolling over the fresh red of millions of apples. Each year when the longan tree in my small garden in Taichung bore fruit, the neighborhood kids would get a long bamboo pole, cut a fork in the end, and then reach over the wall to pick the fruit. My sons would rush out shouting and scatter the children. Everyone was very excited, and it became an annual autumn ritual. When I saw the tires soaked with apple juice, I wondered what the kids would have thought had they seen the apple orchard.
One evening shortly after arriving, I noticed that the forest beyond the cafeteria window was edged with maple red and that the light mist rising from the forest was illumined by the setting sun. It was like some marvelous world captured in a traditional Chinese landscape painting. I left the cafeteria with Han Yunmei, a student from Providence University in Taiwan, hoping to get a closer look at the maples. As we were admiring the scene, a police car pulled up and took us back to the dorm. I asked them how they could not pause and enjoy such a beautiful scene. Frowning, the head of the campus police replied that the forest was huge and it was their responsibility to protect the girls and see that they did not wander off and get lost.
Even more memorable things occurred when you went from the enchanting forest into the college. One of the most amazing things to me was the status of my friend Sister Mary Gregory.
I’ve always been somewhat obtuse when it comes to official positions. In Taichung, when she invited me to come to her school and teach, she held an umbrella while Sister Frances, who was in charge of Providence University, vigorously offered her support. I thought it had to do with her authority and the way she did things. What she said carried weight. But Sister Mary Gregory was a friend with whom I discussed literature, merely the person who extended the invitation. In September, I flew from New York to Indianapolis and then took a Greyhound bus to Terre Haute. She had dispatched Miss Hu Hongrui, who worked in the library, to meet me at the bus station. Seeing me worn out from traveling and carrying a suitcase, she rushed over, gave me a welcoming hug, put my suitcase in the car, and then drove the thirty minutes or so to the woods. The campus was not big, but the large red brick buildings were imposing. A short distance away was a small courtyard and the small, pale green building of the teachers’ quarters where I would live comfortably for a year. She carried my suitcase and led me into a cozy suite. She suggested that I rest a bit and she would have Miss Hu (Janet) take me to the dining hall at six.
The dining hall, which was situated deep among some trees, was high-ceilinged and spacious, capable of seating the nearly one thousand students and teachers. The area in front of an altar to Saint Mary holding the sacred child was reserved for the faculty, and also served as the site for administrative meetings. Here I was able to get a good picture of the changes in a Catholic religious order in the 1960s, the debates in the process as well as the conflicts and pain.
Upon entering the dining hall, we sat in the second row of long tables. Dinner was quite formal. An elderly nun, after leading everyone in a prayer of thanks, said to all assembled, “The school president shall now introduce a new teacher.”
At that moment, I witnessed my friend Sister Mary Gregory rise from the center seat and motion me to come forward, where she introduced me to everyone. I’m sure I was confused and tongue-tied, not knowing what best to say, because I had no idea that after she left Taichung, she returned to the United States to serve as school president (the former president had signed my letter of appointment). No one had informed me of this before arriving at the dining hall, nor had she mentioned anything in our talks and communications. Inviting me to teach a course on Chinese literature was part of her “new administration.”
I thoroughly discussed the course content and materials with her, making sure they were of the appropriate level, so as to avoid any difficulties for either one of us. About twenty students signed up for the course, which was considered a good number. Shortly after I started teaching, an Asian cultural exhibition was held, which added more depth to the literature class. As for my daily life, Sister Mary Gregory looked after all the details. Miss Hu Hongrui was a fine Chinese cook and the new school president, a Korean student by the name of Chong Yeong-hye (later I learned she was the daughter of Chong Il-kwon, the Korean prime minister) along with two Chinese nuns (one of whom, Cai Yingyun, has worked at Providence since returning home) were often our honored guests. She also located several Indiana University teachers who drove regularly to the Bloomington campus and could take me with them, but arranging times wasn’t particularly easy. There was no regular bus service between Terre Haute
and Bloomington. For Americans, driving seventy miles is nothing, but for me it was seemingly an insurmountable obstacle. When I visited Professor Horst Frenz, chair of the comparative literature program, I mentioned my difficulties. I returned to the woods with a course listing, accepting my fate and deciding to focus on teaching and see about taking classes the following semester.
Those four months were the beginning of a lifetime of systematic reading. Saint Mary of-the-Woods College took a professional attitude toward scholastics and was not focused on just producing refined young ladies. Although the library was not large, it was of high quality with a substantial collection. For my course, I read all the books in the library on Chinese literature and looked over their holdings in modern Chinese literature, which included a few volumes by Lu Xun, Spring Silkworms by Mao Dun, Family by Ba Jin, Camel Xiangzi and City of the Cats by Lao She, as well as Communist works such as The Golden Road, but nothing from Taiwan. Of course in those days, nothing from Taiwan had been translated into English—this also planted a seed in me that would become my later avowed aspiration to see Taiwan literature translated into English. I also unexpectedly witnessed the process of “modernization” of the form and content of the Catholic nuns’ system.
After lunch, three days after my arrival in the woods, the nuns cast a historic vote in which they decided to get rid of the habit. After the vote, there was a debate full of sound and fury, and the group of young nuns who had advocated getting rid of the habit was victorious, with some even whooping for joy, while the older conservative faction was visibly saddened and angry. A few days later, it was decided to raise the hemlines to three inches below the knee. Soon nuns in the new habits were seen walking briskly around the campus, their unchanging faces even more serious looking. Additionally, the rules governing their lives in the convent were relaxed quite a bit. The following summer, many young nuns left the order and returned to secular life. Western culture and religion are closely related, and I was fortunate to witness the shift in form and content up close; as someone from an ancient culture, I found it emotionally exciting. I also made a number of lifelong friends from a Catholic order with whom I can share knowledge and ideas, as well as real life. A year later, I would return to the woods from Indiana University to teach another semester, feeling much like I was returning home.
BLOOMINGTON
Since there was no way to overcome the transportation issue of that difficult seventy miles, I quit my teaching job at the beginning of January 1968 and went to Indiana University in Bloomington, where I registered for classes and concentrated on my studies. When I was in Taipei to apply for my visa before going abroad, I ran into Guo Zhichao, a student of mine who was teaching translation at Tunghai University. Coincidently, he too was going to Indiana University to study, so he knew I was first going to Saint Mary of-the-Woods College to teach. Later, he helped arrange dorm housing for me in the married student quarters, owing to my age and status as a scholar. When I moved in during that cold month of January, I saw a note in Chinese tacked to my door that read: “Teacher Chi, we are friends of Guo Zhichao’s. He is away today, so we will come see you at eleven o’clock. From Xu Xiaohua and Cai Zhongxiong.” Once inside, I looked out the large window and saw two young Chinese men in their twenties carrying a large basket, trudging over the snow-covered hill toward my place. These two young men, who became lifelong friends, were carrying a basket filled with pots and pans, bowls, cups, a teakettle, cans, and jars, as well as curtains—everything a person could possibly need.
My single dorm room had a large window. A lawn extended from my window to the foot of the hill. There were always a number of birds with red breasts about the size of pigeons that walked there. I was told they were robins, but from my readings of English literature I thought robins were small, intelligent birds. Perhaps the grain in the American Midwest had caused them to grow so large, making it difficult for them to fly.
1968 was the most exhausting year of my life, but also the most enriching. From January 8 onward, anyone coming across that grassy slope would see me sitting at the window, hunched over a book or typing. I knew better than anyone that each day was stolen from my dual occupations of wife and mother! In one semester and during the summer session, I took six classes: Comparative Literature and Theory and Background and Development of Western Literature were required courses, while Literature and Modern Philosophy, Literature and Culture, Western Literature Before the Seventeenth Century, and American Literature: The Age of Emerson were my elective courses.
Professor Mueller taught Literature and Culture and spent half the time in class asking “Why?” in order to push the students into pondering the deeper significance of a book. For example, what cultural changes are evident through Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which rewrites the theme of Goethe’s Faust? His method substantially influenced my own teaching. In American Literature it was through Emerson’s “self-reliance” that contact was made with everything of a higher existence, which propelled American literature to a higher realm. He spoke fully, accurately, and movingly. I was always prepared for class and took in every word. That was a precious time of seeking knowledge; the only other time I had experienced it was at Leshan during the war, but now I was mature and calm; I knew what I wanted and strived for it each and every day. The literature classes at Indiana were among the best in the United States, so I was extremely attentive in class, taking copious notes, and always felt that a fifty-minute class was too short.
There were more than twenty students speaking more than five languages in Western Literature Before the Seventeenth Century. Under that sort of competitive pressure, we were mutually consoling. One big-bearded Russian classmate, who was an expert in French, German, and Latin, was envied and referred to as “the monster” by students and teachers alike. One time, he asked Professor Gross Louis, who had recently received his Ph.D. from Harvard, who King Alfred was. This was as embarrassing as a Chinese person asking who Qin Shihuang was. The classmates from other countries sitting next to him nearly pushed him off his seat and onto the floor.
Not only were the class discussions invaluable, so were the lists of reference works, some just a few pages, others as long as eighty pages. After I returned to Taiwan these lists were invaluable teaching resources. This was especially true in the case of The Background and Development of Western Literature. The teacher was a big-name professor from the English department. He had a white beard and made everyone feel secure. His class, which was full, was held in a large lecture hall. In three months’ time he provided a framework, a structure for the comprehensive development of my somewhat random knowledge and thoughts. From then on, my studies were more systematic. He also awakened in me my lifelong love of studying epic poetry and utopian literature. Go to the fountainhead first, and then proceed.
Before the semester ended on May 20, I spent day and night at the typewriter, churning out three reports. After an exam, I went home and fell into bed and slept soundly until around midnight. When I awoke, a bright moon hung in the sky, which made me think of a scene in Dream of the Red Chamber when Bao Yu awakens to see the same sort of moon. I, a modern woman, feeling guilty about leaving my family, living in a small room on campus in a foreign land, could not really feel at ease with myself. I got up and in tears wrote a letter to my parents, telling them of my sadness (my parents were nearly seventy, and I don’t know why I had to burden them even more!). The next day, I walked down the hill and dropped the letter in the mailbox and started back, but about halfway up the hill, I couldn’t take another step. I sat down on the grass, my head lowered, and cried for some time. At the time, the poem “A Moonlit Night on a Spring River” was swirling in my mind: “Last night he dreamed that falling flowers would not stay, Alas! He can’t go home, although half of spring is gone.” At that very moment, my young friend Cai Zhongxiong and Mr. and Mrs. Xing Ji drove by. They picked me up and drove to behind Ballantine Hall. The road was lined with Chinese mahogany trees in full bloom, with
red and white flowering trees alternating, growing densely but uncrowded, with each limb spread beautifully in quiet elegance. It was a poetic dreamland.
A few days later, I went to the department office to pick up my report card. I received an A in four classes and an A- in one class, for a 4.0 GPA. I asked my other young friend Xu Xiaohua, who had just received his Ph.D. in physics, what the 4.0 meant. He replied straight A’s, to the honor of the Chinese! I replied that it was a rather tardy honor, and that just having begun their lives, they couldn’t understand how much it had cost for me to study a little so late in life. During the summer session, famous teachers from all over arrived. As usual, I took three difficult courses. Bearing the guilt of leaving home and having such a precious opportunity, I didn’t want to waste a day.
During that period of hard study, my world was limited to the sight of the ever-changing clouds in the sky outside my window. News from Taiwan arrived in letters from home and the Central Daily News a week late. That humble room in Bloomington was the closest thing to heaven in my life.
My social circle at that time was limited to a few Chinese students and their families. There were about three hundred Chinese students at IU at the time, 90 percent from Taiwan and the other 10 percent from Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. There were no students from mainland China, as the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution had just started. The political situation in Taiwan had not yet devolved into the division between the Taiwanese and outsiders from other provinces, and everyone was a little simpler and looked after one another. Those leaving would place usable household goods into cardboard boxes, which would be given to new students at the beginning of the next semester. Outside of Bloomington were a number of small lakes surrounded by trees, and I was often invited to go along by those driving there. One time, in order to make a match between Yang Qiaoxia and Zeng Ye, who had once lived with me, six carloads of us went out to one of the lakes to “view the moon” and sing Chinese songs. It was very late and we were dispersed by the police. On a number of occasions, I went by car with Xu Xiaohua, Cai Zhongxiong, Hu Yaoheng, and others to Chicago, Ohio, and Iowa. On those trips, I came to experience the vast breadbasket of the American Midwest, which made me yearn for the endless expanse of fertile land that was the homeland of my forefathers.
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