by Janie Chang
I know how much you want to stay at Minghua, but you must come home before it gets even more dangerous to travel. Your mother is worried. Leave before Minghua University evacuates Nanking. Buy a train ticket and let me know the date.
His father had signed the note as usual with his seal, a red stamp with his name, Liu Sanmu, in traditional li-shu-style script. Unconsciously Shao picked up his own chop from the desk and rubbed his thumb across the cylinder of polished white jade, identical, but for the carved signatures, to the ones his father and older brothers carried.
Your mother is worried.
An oblique reference to his mother’s state of mind was always a cause for concern and always effective at ensuring his obedience. She could be withdrawn one day, vivacious with wit and charm the next. Shao recognized his own impulsiveness as one of his mother’s traits and always tried to keep it in check. He’d inherited little else from her. Like his brothers, his height, thick brows, and clean, square sweep of jawline were his father’s.
He read his father’s words for the third time and identified the sentence that bothered him.
Leave before Minghua University evacuates Nanking.
Not “in case Minghua University evacuates Nanking” but evacuation as a statement of fact. The Liu family owned Xinwen Bao, one of Shanghai’s major newspapers. Shao’s father was the paper’s owner and editor in chief, privy to information from a wide network of contacts. Liu Sanmu was careful never to criticize the Nationalist government, not even in private. But in advising his son, he had let something slip.
His father didn’t believe the Chinese could hold on to Nanking.
WHEN CHANCELLOR ZHAO called an assembly, Shao suspected it was to announce their evacuation. Some of the students in the large auditorium grumbled, especially the ones whose hometowns were now occupied by the Japanese. They wanted to stand their ground. Some of Shao’s classmates had already dropped out and enlisted. Angry voices around Shao echoed his own hatred and feelings of helplessness.
The army would never let Nanking fall, it’s our nation’s capital.
I don’t care what my parents say, I’m enlisting. I can join our defenses at the city walls.
Women are volunteering too. First aid, couriers, emergency services.
In Tientsin, the Japanese had bombed Nankai University, then set fire to what remained of the campus. During a press conference with foreign journalists, the Japanese press officer had insisted it had been necessary to target Nankai University because it was an anti-Japanese base. In fact, they considered all Chinese universities anti-Japanese bases.
When Chancellor Zhao took the stage, a respectful but reluctant silence replaced the clamor. The announcement was as they’d expected. The Ministry of Education had ordered universities to get out of the enemy’s path. The government wanted students to continue their education in safety, far from the front lines. Schools must evacuate to cities inland where the government was setting up temporary campuses.
Minghua’s interim campus, they were told, would be in the city of Chengtu, deep in central China. They would take only what they could carry on this journey of a thousand miles.
A traveling campus, Shao thought. No, a refugee campus.
Then Chancellor Zhao cleared his throat. “I know how badly some of you want to enlist and defend our country. But war threatens not just people and places. It destroys knowledge, culture, and history. If we want China to have a future, we must save our cultural and intellectual legacy.”
“He’s going to tell us to stay in school,” the student beside Shao muttered.
Murmurs of protest rose from the audience then faded when Zhao held up a hand for silence. He paused to take a deep breath and Shao realized the elderly gentleman was trying to hold back tears.
“My dear young friends,” the chancellor said, “I can’t forbid you to enlist, but I ask you to consider that your educated minds will be the most valuable resource you can give our nation once this war is over.”
Exiting the auditorium, the students were quieter and more thoughtful than they’d been fifteen minutes earlier. Shao found the chancellor’s uncharacteristic display of emotion disturbing because it meant the situation was more dangerous than they’d all chosen to believe.
Outside, under the late summer sunshine, Shao suddenly felt as though he was seeing Minghua’s campus for the first time, the flower beds and lush green lawns of the quadrangle, the neatly raked gravel paths shaded by sycamores. He had been awed by the stately halls of stone and brick when he’d first arrived. Now there was the distinct possibility he would never see this campus again, not the way it stood today. He winced at the memory of Shing An Road, the flames roaring above shattered buildings. He hoped their beautiful campus would escape ruin.
“Were you planning to enlist?” a voice beside him asked.
It was Wang Jenmei, a fourth-year student who made no secret of her sympathies for the Chinese Communist Party. Shao’s roommate, Pao, had taken Jenmei to a movie once and found her too outspoken, her manners too casual. Too much of her conversation had been spent trying to persuade Pao on the benefits of a socialist system. Despite her bold beauty, Pao had never taken her out again.
Shao shook his head. “My father forbids it.”
“The government is right about one thing,” Jenmei said. “We must think of China’s future after the war. We must protect our students.”
“So the Communist leadership doesn’t want students to enlist either?” he said, just to tease her.
“Most of China is illiterate.” Jenmei waved her hand, an airy gesture. “Finding a hundred thousand raw soldiers is easy. But university students are much harder to come by. So yes, on this particular issue the Communist leadership agrees with the government.”
She turned and ran lightly down the steps to the quadrangle. His eyes followed her shapely figure, her graceful movements. She joined a small group of students and immediately took over the animated conversation.
Shao couldn’t help but contrast Jenmei with Lian. One so bold and confident. The other cautious as a bird. Lian had clung to his hand all the way back as they made their way through the chaotic streets. Once he’d glanced down and she had looked up at the same time. She had a kittenish face with a small chin. Her eyes were the same color as the smoky topaz his mother wore at her throat. That he should remember her eyes so clearly caught him by surprise.
Shao pushed his way past groups of clustered students. He was a tutorial leader and had to set a good example and get to the room on time, even if most of the students were still milling about outside. Across the quadrangle, he saw a slim figure carry a bucket and mop up the steps of the Faculty Building. As if she could sense him watching, Sparrow Chen turned around for a moment, then continued through the double doors, her bucket swinging.
Chapter 3
Lian had the dormitory room to herself now. Her roommate had gone home several weeks ago, taken away by her parents shortly after Peking and Tientsin fell. Lian cherished her solitude. Without a roommate the plain room felt like a sanctuary, a place where she could dispense with any pretense of enjoying her classmates’ company, avoid the puzzling, intricate protocols required to feign friendship.
Lian dosed herself each night with syrup of poppies. The nurse had given her a small bottle to help her sleep. Even so, she woke up several times, jolted out of dreams that left cold sweat on her brows, ghostly images from the railway station curling like burnt paper at the edges of her mind. She turned over to try and sleep again but the silence disturbed her. Nanking was under blackout and nothing moved on the streets outside Minghua’s walls. Not the familiar rumble of farmers pushing handbarrows on their way to market or the cries of night soil collectors. No laughter from revelers reeling their way home.
Yet there was something about the silence, an expectant stillness that felt like the hush of a theater audience waiting for the star performer to appear. Lian rolled over just as brightness flared at the window, outlining the
blackout curtain. Its brilliance was not that of early morning. Awake enough to be curious, Lian got out of bed and raised one edge of the drapes. To the east, the barest hint of morning colored the horizon. To the west, the sky was steeped in darkness, dim hues of blue and gray flecked with stars, a low-hanging half-moon.
The light came from the courtyard below.
It was a girl. She stood with her back to Lian. Her head was turned up to gaze at the heavens and her slim silhouette gleamed with a cool, clean radiance. She lifted one hand to the sky as if in greeting. Then a scattering of clouds dimmed the constellations and light drained from the courtyard as the girl walked away, vanishing into the shadows.
Lian climbed back into bed and pulled up the blankets, wondering what she’d just seen, or if she had seen anything at all. By the time she fell back into sleep, it seemed to her that the shining figure was merely the memory of a dream, brought on by syrup of poppies.
AT HER FIRST class the next morning, Lian’s instructor gave her a note. Professor Kang wanted to see her in his office. Lian hurried across the quadrangle, almost at a run, partly because she didn’t want to keep the professor waiting, but mostly because she didn’t know what to make of the attention from other students she encountered on her way. Students who knew her asked how she was feeling; the ones who didn’t nodded friendly greetings. Her narrow escape at the railway station had given her new distinction among her peers.
She pushed open the heavy double doors of the Faculty Building and climbed the steps to the second floor. At the top of the staircase she paused, a moment of fatigue. One of the cleaning staff, a young woman, was mopping the floor. Lian recognized Sparrow Chen, and they exchanged smiles.
A half-dozen other students were also waiting in Professor Kang’s office, leaning against the walls. One was Liu Shaoming. She berated herself for not responding to his friendly smile of greeting with anything more than a nod. There were two girls, Yee Meirong and Wu Ying-Ying, who were both second-year classmates. She also recognized Shorty Ho, whose round face and innocent smile belied his reputation as a troublemaker. The others Lian didn’t know. When Professor Kang came in the room, they all straightened up.
Kang was revered, the dean of literature and a recognized authority on classics of the Tang Dynasty. Most professors at Minghua dressed in Western suits and ties but Kang kept to traditional garb, a long scholar’s gown, high-necked, and always in a plain, dark fabric. With his wispy gray goatee and round cap, he wouldn’t have looked out of place in an old woodcut. He was how Lian pictured a scholar from the imperial era of a hundred years ago.
Kang peered over the half-moons of his lenses.
“You’re the last of our students whose parents wanted you home,” he said, “but the situation has changed drastically over the past few days. It’s no longer safe for you to travel. The university is responsible for your care, so when Minghua University evacuates Nanking, you’ll be coming with us to our wartime campus in Chengtu.”
“But what will I tell my father?” Shorty Ho asked. “He’s expecting me on the weekend train to Hangchow.”
“You can telephone,” Professor Kang said, “or we can send a telegram if your family doesn’t have a telephone. Also, if you have any money in bank accounts here, take it out. You’ll need it in the weeks to come.”
“What will we need to buy, Professor?” Meirong said.
“Stationery and supplies,” he said. “Small personal items such as soap and toothpaste. The government will cover our food and lodgings, but we shouldn’t count on all the arrangements falling into place right away. It’s best if you also have your own funds.”
When the other students left Kang’s office, Lian stayed behind. The professor gestured for her to sit on the chair by his desk.
“Sir, I can’t go with you,” she said. She leaned forward, hands clutched in her lap. “My mother’s on her way to Shanghai and I’m supposed to meet her there. I have no way of contacting her. I must get to Shanghai.”
“You can’t go on your own, not anymore,” he said gently. “Do you know when your mother will get there? Where she will be living?”
Lian shook her head. “She was about to flee Peking when she wrote to me. But she told me to go to a foreign mission, the Unity Mission School, and wait for her there.”
“When your mother wrote that letter, she didn’t know the Japanese would attack Shanghai,” the professor said. “Nor that refugees would be pouring into the International Settlement. The refugee centers are overflowing. If the Mission can’t take you in and you can’t afford to pay for a room, you’ll be living on the streets. Our university is responsible for your safety. I can’t let you go, my dear.”
His words, so kindly meant, struck her like a blow across the face. The professor had voiced what Lian didn’t want to acknowledge. That her mother was traveling alone at the mercy of a transport system in chaos. That her mother had to cross stretches of occupied territory before reaching Shanghai. That unlike her classmates from Shanghai, Lian and her mother lacked a fixed address there. Could Lian count on the Unity Mission to take her in? And for how long? She had no relatives or friends in the city, so even if she made it to Shanghai on her own, her small cache of funds would soon be spent.
Lian’s chest felt hollowed out. “But what happens when my mother gets to Shanghai and I’m not there?”
“Write to your mother care of the Mission,” Kang said. “Tell her you’ve evacuated with us to Chengtu. When your mother writes back, we’ll assess the situation. If there’s a way to get you safely to Shanghai from wherever we are, I promise we will.”
“But how will she even know where to send a letter?” Lian said. She wouldn’t cry in front of the professor. She was no longer a child.
“We’ll be making stops along the way,” he said. “There will be towns the Ministry of Education assigns for longer-term stays. They’ll publish lists of those places as well as all the universities’ final destinations so that families can know where to send letters and money.”
Lian could only hope her mother knew to look for the lists. She never should’ve left her mother’s side. She should’ve gone to university in Peking instead. Guilt and fear hardened into a lump just below her rib cage.
“Now there’s something we need to do, and I’d like your help,” the professor said, his voice brisk. “With the Library of Legends.”
The Library of Legends. Her reason for coming to Minghua. Lian leaned forward in her chair, intrigued despite her distress. “Help with the Legends?”
“We’re bringing the books with us,” he said, “and I need volunteers to wrap them up for transport. Can I count on you?”
“Of course, Professor,” she said. “How will the Legends be transported?”
“By wagon, donkey cart, handbarrow,” he said. “On our backs if necessary. We’re not leaving such a treasure behind.”
Chapter 4
The army officer organizing their evacuation had advised the university to leave the campus after dark, when there was less risk of aerial attacks. The entire school couldn’t all leave at the same time, so they divided into groups with students, professors, staff, and laborers in each. Army vehicles looped between Minghua’s campus and the ferry terminal on the Yangtze River. From there, barges carried staff and students to docks on the other side of the river. Waiting riverboats and barges took them farther south and west, where they would continue the next leg of their journey.
The next evening, another group. Five nights, five groups.
If all went well, the professor hoped all groups would meet up within the week and from there, the entire campus could continue their journey together. Due to the war, only a third of Minghua’s students remained. This made evacuation simpler, but it was still a daunting challenge to move some five hundred people.
Kang was leaving Minghua University with the fifth and final group. As the most senior member of faculty traveling with the group, the professor was in charge. He was also respo
nsible for the university’s most important possession. While every group included wagons with crates of library books, the fifth group would be bringing the Library of Legends with them. To his shame, sometimes the professor caught himself worrying more about the Legends than his students.
Out on the playing field, carts and wagons waited for the army trucks. The students would get into the trucks, the wagons would fall in line, and Minghua’s last convoy would leave the campus. Inside the auditorium, nervous excitement rippled through the ranks of students. The professor paused for a moment to touch the crates before stepping out to the middle of the stage. He signaled his assistant, a graduate student named Shen, who hurried over and blew three times on a whistle.
“Attention,” Shen shouted. “Attention. Professor Kang has something to say.”
Kang regarded his audience with gentle, myopic eyes. “We begin a very long journey tonight. We have many miles of walking ahead of us and our country is at war. I cannot predict all the hardships we will face, but I know there will be more than we can imagine.”
“We don’t mind, sir!” a voice called from the audience.
“I want you to know our group bears a special responsibility,” the professor continued, “because we carry with us something as valuable as your lives and just as irreplaceable.”
He turned to Shen, who handed him a book. It was bound the old-fashioned way, a plain blue paper cover stitched to pages of soft rice paper. When Professor Kang held it up, some of the students nodded knowingly.
“This is a volume of the Jingtai Encyclopedia, a masterpiece of scholarship documenting China’s art, culture, and literature,” Kang said. “During the Ming Dynasty nearly five hundred years ago, the Jingtai emperor commissioned this work. The encyclopedia originally consisted of 11,000 volumes. We carry with us 147 volumes, the section known as the Library of Legends. The Library of Legends records our myths and folklore. It is all that remains of the Jingtai Encyclopedia. We are guardians of a national treasure.”