Escape from Shanghai (7 page)

Three major rivers, the East (Dong) River, the North (Bei) River and the West (Xi) River, fed the Pearl River Delta like a three-pronged fork. A system of natural tributaries as well as man-made canals criss-crossed these flatlands. This interlacing waterborne highway system carried a wealth of goods from the interior of the country to the port cities of Canton and Hong Kong.

Historically the bulk of the opium trade during the 1840’s took place here. When Great Britain defeated China in the Opium Wars (1856-1860), it acquired Hong Kong precisely because of this
network of waterways. After all, Hong Kong sat at the mouth of the Pearl River where it flows into the South China Sea. From Hong Kong opium flooded its way up the three rivers to poison millions of people in the interior of China, while gold and silver flowed down the rivers into the British banks.

What happened to the civilized western nations that they would abandon all moral propriety to sell opium to the Chinese? The answer begins with Marco Polo. He found the Chinese living in unbelievable wealth. They wore silks; read printed books; ate from finely crafted porcelain plates; and drank tea out of delicate little teacups while the average European wore itchy, coarse wool, had no printed books, and ate from wooden bowls.

After several hundred years of countries like Britain buying Chinese silks, porcelain, and tea, the balance of trade was overwhelmingly in China’s favor. What to do about this imbalance? Great Britain’s answer was to sell opium grown in colonial India to the Chinese. By 1860, the surplus that China had accumulated over several hundred years of legitimate trade was gone. When the Empress Dowager Cixi died in 1908, China was effectively bankrupt, and it was because of the opium trade.

Now, the Japanese invaders had arrived, only their goal was not to sell opium, but to take China’s
rice. The Pearl River delta is one of the most fertile, rice-producing areas in China.

Uncle Jin’s family fortune came from this vast, vibrant area. His family controlled and coordinated much of the commerce in the Delta. The family business connected the inland producers with the wholesalers in Hong Kong. Conversely, imported goods out of Hong Kong went inland through his network of shippers. His business dealt with hundreds of family-owned cargo junks. These cargo junks were the Chinese version of the independent truckers of today.

His job in the underground resistance was to send people and intelligence to the Chinese Armies fighting in the interior. Unfortunately, our sudden and unexpected appearance made life more complicated for Uncle Jin. We had been scheduled to live in Grandpa’s Canton house to await Jin’s call. Now, he was under pressure to get us out of Japanese-held territory. For security reasons, contact between underground agents was not allowed, unless, of course, they were on the same mission. But my mother had not been assigned to a group operation. She was to operate independently. Her job was to be the Private Secretary-American Liaison Officer for GovernorGeneral Li Hanhun of Canton Province. (Or Quangdong Province. Or Guangzhou in pinyin. It’s
very confusing, that’s why I’ve been using Canton, the original name for both the city and the province.)

Mom’s job initially was to act as a translator-interpreter between General Chennault’s famous Flying Tigers (a volunteer force of American fighter pilots) in his Kunming office as well as American Army Headquarters located in Chungking, the wartime Capital of China. She would be responsible for any and all English communications that arrived or left Governor-General Li’s Office. More importantly, General Li thought that it would be more politic if his requests to the Americans for supplies and equipment were written in English rather than in Chinese. Li’s Army had to acquire weapons, ammunition, gasoline and an untold variety of equipment to fight the war. And America was the only ally that could provide these supplies.

Thus, when Uncle Jin sent my mother’s resume to the Governor, he immediately agreed to interview her.

Officially, Li Hanhun had multiple titles: 1938 to 1939, Deputy Commander in Chief 8th Army Group; 1938 to 1945, Chairman of the Government of Canton (Quangdong) Province; and 1939 to 1945 Commander in Chief 35th Army Group. And he was the Chairman of the Nationalist Party in Canton Province.

As decorated and as powerful as he was, Governor-General Li could neither read nor speak English. And he had no one on his staff who could communicate effectively with the Americans. There was an urgent need for a person with Mom’s bi-lingual skills.

Uncle Jin quickly arranged transport for us to go to Shaoguan, the wartime capital of Canton Province where the governor had his headquarters. Li had moved his capital to Shaoguan in October 1938 when the Japanese took Canton.

Shaoguan was about one hundred and seventy-five miles, as the crow flies, north of Canton. But it was closer to 250 miles by boat up the winding rivers and canals. Most times, it would take two weeks to get a message up the North (Bei) River to Shaoguan and another three days to get a reply downstream. Given the time constraint, communication with Li’s headquarters before our departure was impossible. And to complicate matters, his headquarters was repeatedly relocated to avoid Japanese bombing attacks. Governor-General Li was afraid of being assassinated by the Japanese.

Shaoguan was, after all, less than two hundred miles by air from the nearest Japanese airfield in Canton. The Japanese flew regular reconnaissance flights over the Shaoguan area, looking for
Chinese troop movements and General Li’s field Headquarters. Consequently, Li didn’t sit still. He would periodically and randomly move his tents, if not himself. He wanted to keep his personal location a secret. Few people knew his whereabouts, including Uncle Jin.

Uncle Jin could get us to the Shaoguan area, but after that it was up to us to find General Li, or he to find us. In either case, Jin would notify the general that we were on our way. And, he warned that there was always the chance that the message would not get through.

There were no modern means of communication between Uncle Jin and his contacts. Uncle Jin didn’t have a radio. Messages were all delivered by trusted hands.

Luckily, we had a fall-back position. My paternal grandparents lived somewhere west of Shaoguan. We had the name of the small, riverside village (whose name Mom has long forgotten) and a description of the location of their house, but there were no maps to guide us. My mother expressed some concern about our ability to find the village, but Uncle Jin assured her that the local boatmen would know how to find it. In any case, we had no choice. We would have to depend on the locals. “The people who work the waterways will know how to get you there. Don’t
worry, we’ve been doing this for generations,” Jin said with a confident smile.

Mom wasn’t so sure. But she trusted Uncle Jin.

About a week into our stay, he handed us some well-worn and patched peasants’ clothing. The disguise was meant to make us look like family members living on a cargo junk. Our role was to act like the daughter and grandson of the boat owner in case Japanese patrol boats stopped to question us.

Mom dressed me in what she called “my costume.” We were going to live on a junk and pretend to be members of the Wu family.

At dawn one morning, a shallow-draft-cargo junk came slowly and silently alongside. The vessel was about forty-feet long with a ten-foot beam at its widest point. An overlapping series of semi-circular, woven-bamboo arches covered the cargo hold. These half-moon shaped bamboo roofs were rigid, waterproof and able to resist the strongest monsoon winds. There was a narrow foot-and-a-half-wide deck that ran fore and aft on both sides of the cargo hold.

Amidships, a section of the sliding bamboo roof opened. A crewman stepped out of the cargo hold onto the narrow deck. He wrapped one end of his
rope to a cleat on the junk. When the junk came alongside the houseboat, he jumped aboard. He pulled on his line to bring both vessels together. When the opening in the junk lined up with a door in the houseboat, he tightened the line around a cleat on the houseboat and the slow-moving junk stopped.

The man looked up and down the river. No Japanese patrol boats in sight.

Mom and I had been hiding in the doorway waiting for this moment.

“Go,” the crewman ordered.

She threw our two small bags to another crewman hidden under the covering. He held out his arms and beckoned me to him. I ran into his open arms. Mom quickly followed. The roof slid shut behind us. The boarding process took just a few seconds. We sat under the protective cover hoping that no one had seen us come aboard.

Meanwhile, in the stern of the junk, the owner made a big show of delivering a small canvas bag of salt. Uncle Jin thanked him and paid him as if this were a normal part of a routine business transaction. That done, the crewman unwrapped the line from the cleat and returned to the deck of the junk.

The cargo junk didn’t have an engine or a sail. What it did have were the two narrow walkways on both sides of the vessel. To propel the boat, the
crewmen would spear their twenty-foot-long-bamboo poles into the water until it found the river bottom, then they would put the front of their shoulders against the pole and push their way toward the stern. In this manner the men would push and walk the boat through the water.

When one crewman reached the stern, the second man would start his push from the bow. The returning crewman would raise his twenty-foot pole over his head in order to squeeze past the man pushing his way to the stern. The two men worked like a pair of well-choreographed dancers pushing their way endlessly back and forth. Two crewmen were assigned to each side of the boat. They worked in unison to make the boat go straight upstream.

This continuous process, where one man pushed to the stern while the other walked back to the bow, would repeat itself hour after hour throughout the day. The junk moved through the water at the speed of the crewmen’s steps. It was a slow arduous job, but one that had been practiced for a few thousand years.

The owner, Mr. Wu, worked the tiller, always reading the river currents in search of the path of least resistance.

His junk had been divided into three sections. “These,” he said slapping the flat of his palm on the hard sacks of salt “will be your beds. My wife
and I sleep in the back, and the men sleep in the front. You will have privacy here.” Our suitcases and bedding had been placed in the mid-section of the junk. The bags of salt were piled so high that there was barely enough room for an adult to crawl under the curved bamboo covering, but the height suited me just fine.

Our quarters measured six by eight, more than enough space for our makeshift beds and the few possessions that we had. Bamboo partitions separated us from the Wu’s and the crew. And of course the half-moon shaped woven bamboo cover protected the salt, and us, from the wind and the rain.

The aft section was the center of life for the eight people on board. The space was only six-feet long but it ran the width of the junk. Here, Mrs. Wu cooked all of our meals in her brick-lined wood-burning stove. The stove was a compact efficient appliance with a 12-inch circular hole for the round-bottomed wok. Next to the wok were two smaller openings; one for steaming rice and the other for boiling water. Here, she made three meals a day. And boiled water for tea was always available. No one drank water from the river without first boiling it.

The stove and a small worktable had been built into the starboard side of the cabin, facing the shore. This location facilitated the loading of foodstuffs and
firewood. The rest of the space was the living/sleeping area for the Wu’s.

The Wu’s cabin design was compact and utilitarian. Just enough sleeping room for two people. The removal of a few woven-bamboo panels opened the cabin to fresh air and the open sky.

Just behind the cabin was the narrow deck that Mr. Wu stood on to work the tiller.

The cargo occupied the entire hold of the boat up to the aft section.

There wasn’t a toilet on board, and the only running water was over the side of the boat. Generally, we would use the toilet facilities on shore. These waterways have been used to transport agricultural and finished products since before the time of Christ. Consequently, all sorts of businesses lined the banks of the river to cater to the needs of the boat people. This included toilets and bathhouses. Significantly, human waste was collected and converted into fertilizer.

On one calm, quiet day when we were slowly moving up river, I suddenly felt the urgent need to move my bowels. There was no time to stop the junk or go ashore.

“Hang on to those two handles, lower your pants, then go,” Mom instructed.

There were two vertical handrails built for this purpose, but they had been built for adults. They
were spaced too far apart so I couldn’t hold them and squat at the same time. My arms weren’t long enough. I looked desperately at Mom for help.

“Just grab one and hold on tight,” she instructed.

Mr. Wu stood nearby, watching with a bemused look on his face.

I grabbed a handrail with one hand and lowered my pants with the other, squatted down and my did business. That done, I took one hand off the handrail to pull up my pants. Only my pants wouldn’t budge because I was still in a squatting position. I started to stand up to free my pants. The upward thrust of my legs put too much pressure on my hand. Unable to hold on, I dropped into the river. Luckily, the platform was only a foot above the water. I didn’t have far to fall.