Escape from Shanghai (12 page)

In time, both myths became accepted truths in her circle of friends. Madame Li couldn’t have felt prouder as the employer of a member of the Sun family.

Mom found this situation disturbing and hypocritical, but she didn’t say anything. She told me that this situation benefited us, though we didn’t deserve it. The soldiers in the army revered Dr. Sun and we got special treatment because of Madame Li’s belief. And Mom was not one to contradict her. As it turned out, this situation would benefit us as the war wore on.

More importantly, Madame Li wanted her children to learn English. It was her ambition for them to study in America. And if she could have her way, she would go to America, too. She thought that by getting on Mom’s good side it would somehow help her achieve those goals.

In 1938, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the man who ruled China, had appointed General Li Hanhun to protect the gold bullion stacked in the vaults of the Bank of Canton. To do this, Chiang also gave Li the additional title of Governor of Canton (Guangdong) Province as well as the Chairmanship of the Nationalist Party in the province. These promotions meant more power and better pay. As a General, Li commanded the 35th Army Group that defended Canton. As the governor, he was in charge of all the civil servants. The governor set policy, collected taxes, issued permits of all kinds, enforced the law and performed all the necessary duties to operate the business of the province. In short, Li had been given absolute control over the province—an area that bordered such important international cities as Hong Kong and Macao, not to mention one of China’s oldest commercial cities, Canton itself. (Now Guangzhou.) Most of the foreign trade to southern China was funneled through this ancient port.
When Great Britain defeated China in the Opium Wars (1856-1860), she acquired Hong Kong for the very same reasons that Japan wanted Canton. Only Japan was more ambitious. She wanted all of China.

Strategically, Japan’s long-range plan was to control the major ports in China. If she controlled the ports, then she would control trade, and control China, too. So, Japan attacked Canton just months after taking Shanghai. Shortly thereafter, the rest of the Chinese ports fell. What made the situation worse was that Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s armies could do nothing to stop the Japanese invasion. The only thing left for the Generalissimo to do was to save the gold locked in the vaults of the Bank of Canton. And that’s what Governor-General Li did. The general moved the gold to his new provincial headquarters in Shaoguan.

When we got to Shaoguan in 1942, our assigned living quarters was a store on a narrow cobblestone street. In fact, all the stores on this long block of one-story row houses had been emptied. The former residents had been relocated. They had been evicted to make room for the arrival of the government’s employees.

These gray brick houses with gray tiled roofs were roughly sixteen-by-forty feet with hard dirt floors and a high-pitched ceiling. It was one big open, empty room. Two small windows hung on the back wall, but they didn’t have glass in them. Instead, white,
lacquered paper covered the openings. Six tall movable panels made up the front of the shops. The entire front of the building could be opened to the street. Merchandise could be displayed in the front portion while the owner’s family lived in the back.

The army had furnished the one room with two army cots, a small field table and a bamboo-folding chair. The sparse furnishings sat in the middle of this large cavernous room. The setting only served to emphasize the desolation and emptiness of war-torn China.

Officers on the general’s staff and civilian bureaucrats occupied the other houses on the street. The provincial bureaucrats were particularly noticeable because they didn’t wear khaki uniforms. They wore Mandarin robes, usually black or dark blue. Wherever Governor Li established his headquarters, that place would also be the temporary capitol of Canton Province.

The governor’s family and servants occupied a large house with a circular pond in front, not far from where we were. I used to fish there in the summer.

As the war wore on, the center of power began to unravel. Lacking food, money and a cohesive plan to manage the operations of the area under Li’s command, local politicians, minor warlords, and civic leaders bombarded the governor with requests for aid.
Each wanted their share of the province’s tax money. Mom spent much of her time dealing with these requests. Most of the letters pleaded for money and food while many addressed grievances concerning corruption and the unconscionable behavior among the upper ranks of the bureaucracy. Mandarins and bureaucrats demanded outright bribes to get permits and other necessary official documentation. No bribe, no permit.

People with cash could buy government approval for anything they wanted. It appeared that the Governor-General was neither acting as a bona fide governor nor was he conducting himself like a true military commander. General Li was content with the status quo. As long as the Japanese made no moves, he was content. He could continue to collect taxes and run the province as he wished.

Mom could do nothing with the requests for food or money. The government storehouses were down to emergency reserves, she had been told. And paper money held little real value. Those with tangible and real assets to sell could not see their way clear to exchange their goods for pieces of printed paper. Especially when that paper is backed by a corrupt and possibly bankrupt government. But this was just part of the currency problem. Since Japan controlled trade in the coastal cities, any goods purchased in
Japanese-occupied territory had to be paid for with occupation money. Once these goods reached free China for sale, they were bought with Chinese money.

Neither side would officially accept the other side’s currency. Black market money changers exploited the situation and played one currency against the other. The value of the Japanese currency would increase with each victory, while the Chinese currency would decrease in value as the country fell into further disarray.

This situation gave the currency traders a field day. No matter what happened, they made money. The situation was so complex that few government officials had the ability or inclination to deal with it. So they let the situation fester.

Regular people, however, were reluctant to accept paper money for goods and services. They wanted gold and silver. Short of that, bartering became a popular form of exchange. At least you knew what you were getting. You could exchange an apple for an orange, which was a lot simpler than understanding the valuations of the two combatant’s currencies.

Mom would brief the governor on the letters that complained of corruption, theft and bribery. She thought that he ought to know, but the governor merely shrugged his shoulders. “What can I do,” he
asked rhetorically. “These matters are best left to the magistrates and the Mandarins. My concern is the Japanese.”

This all too frequent response finally got to Mom. Why didn’t the magistrates and Mandarins do anything about this situation? To find out, she reached out to discover the scope and magnitude of the problem.

What she discovered was much worse than what she had first thought. All the written complaints were mild compared to the one-on-one grievances that she heard. It took courage for these men and women to speak their minds. Clearly, these people were willing to voice their concerns because they feared famine and economic collapse. More important, people were speaking out because they sensed that it was now safe to do it. The complainants included local dignitaries who were already thinking about their positions in life after the war; wealthy families who had been watching their fortunes being taxed away by unscrupulous tax collectors; and the intelligentsia who naturally abhor corruption in government in any form, not to mention the revulsion of the idealistic young. They were all testing the waters.

Unfortunately, the chain of corruption led directly to the governor’s cronies. Which was why the magistrates and the Mandarins did nothing.

To make things more complicated, some people in unoccupied China began to value the Japanese currency more than the Chinese Yuan. They hedged their paper-money positions because the Chinese Armies could not stop the Japanese. (In November, 1944, for example, the people of Kweilin (Quilin) lost everything to the conquering Japanese. Whatever Chinese money they had was suddenly worthless. Kweilin is only about 250 miles from Canton, as the crow files.)

But what bothered people the most was the unequal and unfair taxation. High-ranking government officials arbitrarily imposed taxes wherever and on whomever they thought they could extort money. And these tax dollars did not go to servicing the general good, but disappeared into private pockets.

Responsible, civic-minded people desperately implored their Governor-General to end the corruption, re-establish order and strengthen the currency. They wanted a return to the good old days.

During those good old days, Mandarins achieved their rank and position through the Confucian Examination System, which was created about 2,500 years ago. Theoretically, if you scored perfectly in all of your exams, i.e. from local, to district, to provincial and, finally, to the national level, then you could end up being the prime minister. That’s assuming
that you scored well as you moved up in the level of difficulty. The most difficult exam was at the national level.

Conversely, a low score, at any level, would keep you where you were in the bureaucratic hierarchy with little chance of advancement. Thus, there was a risk to taking the next level of the exam. You could lose face by not scoring well. Everybody would think that you’re a dummy. So the tendency was to find your level and stay there.

This civil-service exam system clearly rewarded the best and brightest. They would get the highest ranks in the government. In theory, according to Confucius, the smartest people in the land would administer and govern the country. Furthermore, they would get an ‘iron rice bowl.’ Once you got a perfect or near perfect score in an exam, nobody can take that achievement away from you. And once you receive your appointment as a high-ranking Mandarin, you would be paid no matter what because civil servants administered and controlled the country’s finances, hence the iron rice bowl. You would always eat.

During the stable, strong, prosperous Dynastic periods, this system worked well. But, by 1938, China was broke. The Japanese invasion made matters worse. It was difficult for a tax collector because
people didn’t have the money. Nevertheless, taxes had to be collected, no matter what the circumstances, otherwise the government couldn’t function.

For the government to function, lower tax dollars meant lower wages for the civil servants. Everybody had to take a cut. This situation was conducive to abuse. And the seeds for this abuse had been sowed ages ago.

One of the ancient Chinese traditions was that if someone did you a favor, you returned the favor by giving that person a gift. The size or value of this gift depended on the value of the favor bestowed. The bigger the favor, the bigger the gift.

Grandpa Sun once employed a man to drive the family’s rickshaw. It was clear to grandpa that this man did not have the aptitude to learn how to drive a car. To help his employee adapt to a new technological environment, i.e., the coming automobile, grandpa encouraged this man to save his money and perhaps buy a farm. Grandpa then helped him invest his savings in a railroad. The stock in the rail company did very well, so much so that the man could buy a farm with his savings. The farm prospered, and every year since, this man would deliver a wagon load of watermelons to grandpa’s house every summer. Grandpa never asked for this annual gift. It was an ancient social custom that was practiced by all, no
matter your social status. The man literally shared the fruits of his labor with grandpa out of gratitude for helping him change his life.

This Confucian ideal of education and civility has permeated the Chinese unconscious to such an extent that it is ingrained into the way we behave and interact with each other.

In Canton Province during the war, high-ranking Mandarins who had been used to a prosperous lifestyle naturally wanted to continue living that way. And since the gift-giving tradition was voluntary, a general decline in the economy meant a corresponding decline in gifts. To maintain their standard of living, some high-ranking bureaucrats began to supplement their incomes by subtly asking for a gift. This was in violation of the Confucian tradition. It was not socially acceptable to do that. And if the subtlety didn’t register, they would go beyond social mores and ask for an outright bribe if you wanted something from the government. And as everyone knows, a government official can make life miserable for you if you got on his wrong side, particularly in the case of a tax collector.