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山西平定西鎖簧村李若瑗回憶錄

 [Introduction][1][2][3][4][5][6][Addendum][Chronology]

Memories of a Troubled Era

by Lee Ruoyuan

(5)

The Birth of Xiaojun

In October I developed symptoms of gastrointestinal bleeding and went to the Renji Hospital on the south bank in Chongqing for examination. After being told I had recovered, I returned to Chengdu. A compatriot from my home town Pingding by the name of Wang Shenhe was on the staff of the hospital working in its lab. He had followed the missionaries to Chongqing after our home town was invaded by the Japanese army.

After my return to Chengdu, the Zhongya Company formally declared its dissolution in November. Cao Mingfu returned to Qiulin in Shaanxi. Rong Boshen, after his arrival in Chongqing, accompanied Zhang Guangyu to Lanzhou (of Gansu province) to work in the cement plant operated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Guo Naiying and Zhang Jincheng did brisk business by selling their hand-made printing ink. The staff of the dissolved company dispersed: a few technicians went to Japan to pursue further studies, a few stayed in Chengdu to distill alcohol; some went to the west of Sichuan to work in distillation from timber or to make worship (joss) paper from bamboo. In recognition of my neat work in sorting out the accountancy issues, Mr. Zhou planned to transfer me to his Jianye Construction Company. Through the intercession of company president Mr. Zhang, it was agreed that I should have the job of chief accountant. Shortly after, Yijun and I took public transport to Chongqing, where we temporarily took up residence in a dormitory provided by the Zhongyuan Company in Lijinju Lane.

In January 1941, Yijun got transferred to the telecommunications office in Chongqing, and I started work at the Jianye Construction Company. We lodged at the company housing. By this time we had been engaged about half a year, our finances became increasingly strained, what with the trips back and forth between Chongqing and Chengdu. So we thought of the savings that could be achieved if we got married. On the 10th anniversary of the New Life Movement, we got married in a group wedding on February 19. 24 couples took their vows in that simple but solemn ceremony. The bridegrooms all wore a western suit and the brides wore a dark purple qipao and held a bouquet in their hand. There was no formal attire, no wedding gowns. The ceremony was recorded with a movie camera and we all featured in the documentary.

After the group wedding on the 19th, we invited friends and relatives to a dinner at the Xiayulou Restaurant, making up about 6 or 7 tables. A colleague of mine at the Xinchang Company forced me to drink a lot of liquor, so I was already drunk by the time the dinner was over. The next day we went to a photographer's to have a picture taken of us dressed in wedding outfits.

After getting married we rented a room in a building near the Erlang God Temple in the neighborhood of the Qiansi Gate. Since we both worked and ate at work, we did not use the kitchen of our apartment. Mr. Cai, another tenant, who lived upstairs, worked at a Central Bank branch in the city. He was from Canton (Guangdong) Province and lived in the apartment with his wife. Both were very nice people. In May and June, however, our peaceful life was disrupted by the intensifying Japanese bombing. Every time when my wife and I came out of the shelter after the air raid alarm was over, we would first check to see if our home near the Erlang Temple still stood. From the tall building of the China Bank we could see a corner of our apartment. One day when we came out of the shelter and turned our eyes toward our apartment, it was no longer there. We hurried to the Erlang Temple neighborhood and found our building razed to the ground by the Japanese bombs. Luckily there was no fire after the bombing and an old lady was pulled out of the rubble alive. All our clothing and belongings, however, were scattered and irretrievable. A thermos bottle miraculously survived the bombing. Our books remained intact but every page was incrusted with sand and dirt that could not be easily removed.

I recall once seeking shelter, during a Japanese air raid, inside a cavern (grotto, tunnel), under about 10 meters of hard rock. A huge bomb fell on top of the cavern with a deafening din followed by a gust of strong air current rushing into the tunnel. Then we smelt a strong stench of gun powder and were enveloped in swirls of smoke. Several people near the entrance were not hurt by shrapnel but were killed in a collapse of rocks. Earth blown up by the exploding bombs and splattered on the walls outside and inside the cave was so incrusted that it couldn't be pried off by hand. The nearby trees and bamboos were completely flattened by the air rush generated by the bombing.

One day I went into a shelter in Central Park (of Chongqing) during a Japanese air raid. I was holding a lit candle in my hand and as I went deeper into the shelter, the candle flame dwindled to the size of a pea because of the paucity of oxygen. As my breathing became labored I struggled my way to the entrance of the shelter. 3 hours later, before the air raid alarm had been declared over, a girl in the shelter was found dead of asphyxiation due to lack of air and excessive heat in the interior. I offered some of the "Shi Di Shui" (literally "10 drops of water") I had with me , a liquid Chinese medicine treating heat strokes, to some of the evacuees nearby, and shouted at the top of my lungs: "Fan the air toward the interior of the shelter with your hand fans!" Then we could feel a stir of fresh air flowing back into the tunnel and there were no more casualties that day in the shelter except for that poor girl.

This was the start of the Japanese "exhaustive bombing," bombing intended to overwhelm and demoralize. It was later learned that more than 160 people perished for unclear reasons at the other end of the tunnel. It was only later that the cause of death was determined to be lack of oxygen.   

One evening I went in a cavern located between Chuqi Gate and Wanglong Gate. In the wake of the mysterious deaths reported for days in shelters, the residents preferred natural caverns to shelter constructions. Since I witnessed the depletion of oxygen in a bomb shelter, I also decided to shun bomb shelters and opted for this cavern. This time the air raid lasted for 6 hours before the all clear siren was sounded, to the great relief of the evacuees. Those who dozed off in the cavern finally got to go home. This evening had a very different feel: not many areas were bombed, but the air raid alarm lasted for a long time. When I emerged from the cavern, I saw flares and tracer rounds lighting up the sky in an eerie silence that fell over the city. People only learned the next morning that about 10 thousand people died overnight of asphyxiation in the tunnel (bombing shelter) near the entrance of a theater. Trucks were seen carrying corpses form there to the riverside, where the dead bodies were ferried across to the south bank for burial. Often multiple bodies shared one casket, and it was not uncommon to find some bodies exposed. The bodies that I saw had an unhuman look of having been carved out of wood. It was a gruesome sight.

After our apartment near Erlang Temple was razed in the Japanese bombing, we picked up what belongings we could from the rubble and moved into the staff dormitory of the Jianye company. Shortly after, the company moved to the community of Dongjia Xi on the bank of Jialing River. I moved with my company and lodged in a small staff dormitory there, and my wife would join me during the weekend and leave on Monday for her job at the Telecommunications office. During the "exhaustive bombing" raids, I sought shelter in a small cavern on the bank of the stream. Across the river could be seen Shangqing Temple and the seat of the Nationalist government. During the raids, the Japanese planes would fly over where I sought shelter, with a frightening roar. Except for a scattering of bombs that fell near the river bank, the Dongjia Xi community proper was relatively unscathed. Sometimes the air raid alarm would last for a day and a night, but with street vendors peddling their stuff across the community, there was not a serious interruption of food supplies.

In the period of the Moon Festival in 1941, I was feeling out of my element at the Jianye Construction Company, whose workforce consisted mostly of natives of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and of Shanghai, about whose habits and cultural backgrounds I was quite ignorant. Besides Zhang You and Xu Xihan, who were on cordial terms with me, I didn't get to know the rest of the staff (all from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai) in any meaningful way. At the time Mr. Zhou told me that a schoolmate of his had numerous construction projects in hand and he planned to lend (second) me to him to help with those projects, but I declined. I asked Fan Weizhang to find out if he could get me into the Ministry of Grain Products (established during the War of Resistance to ensure food supplies, especially to the armed forces). I was at the same time accepted by the Ministry of Transport to fill a section chief vacancy and by the Disaster Relief Commission to fill a chief accountant vacancy. I decided to take the latter offer. Soon I submitted my resignation to Jianye and reported for duty at the office of the Disaster Relief Commission in the Datianchi district of Geleshan Hills, then I returned to the Commission for a month of training before being sent to its Relief Works No. 1 in Jiangjin to serve as chief accountant at the jianren ("recommended") rank in the civil service ranking system.

The qualifying examination I took was administered by Nan Yinggeng, chief of the third department of the Commission. Section chief Liu Qingyu was a colleague of mine at the Northwest Industrial Company; his good rapport with people greatly facilitated his work. 

The night I arrived in Datianchi, I couldn't fall asleep for a long time because of the chilling temperature. When I finally drifted into dreamland, I was dazzled by a bright light amid much pomp and circumstance. The vision was still vivid in mind when I woke the next morning.

In the spring of 1942, I traveled to Jiangjin to report for duty as chief accountant at Relief Works No. 1. Jiangjin is situated on the south bank of the Yangtze river in its upper reaches. The nearby town of Baisha is a major producer of rice. My friend Ren Zhongxue, who was a native of my home province Shanxi, moved to Baisha to attend school. The Relief Works of the Relief Commission stood on the bank of the Yangtze in the eastern part of Jiangjin's county town. It sat at the foot of a small hill, on which was situated the Sport College. The Relief Works was located in a quiet environment, with a fish pond in front, which had a small pavilion in its middle. The sport field of the Jiangjin High School lay to its right. The Relief Works employed about 300 refugee-workers to make towels and terrycloth blankets. The manager of the factory Wu Shufang was a native of Danyang of Jiangsu province. The accounting office had 8 staff members, half of them young females. The monthly accounting records were usually compiled in a week's time, but there was no daily checking and reconciling. As a result there was inadequate time in the 27 days of the month, outside of the 7 days of recordkeeping, to reconcile all the accounts. A huge backlog became a regrettable impediment to my job of bringing the accounting work up to speed.

I lodged in a small private house in the vicinity of the Relief Works. The landlord Liao Kunchi was a rich local landowner with an affable manner. Two other colleagues working at the relief factory also lived in that house with their family and we got along well. Later Yijun came to join me there from Chongqing. She was pregnant then and was unwell for a whole month. She had to request leave from the Telecommunications office and stayed in our place in Jiangjin. We had an old woman, a native of Anhui province, cook our meals. We were not that financially strapped at the time.

On May 2, 1942, Xiaojun (our firstborn) was born in Jiangjin. Everything was declared normal in prenatal examinations performed at the county health clinic, and both mother and baby were healthy after the birth.

Two months after being born, Xiaojun grew very chubby and was always in high spirits, an adorable boy! About this time Nan Yinggeng, chief of the third department of the Relief Commission received an appointment as banking supervisor of the Finance Ministry  in the Lanzhou area. Liu Qingyu was appointed commissioner under him in his office, Gao Zhongyu, Guo Mingji and I were appointed as auditors. By that time I had worked in Jiangjin for quite some time and I was worried that if friends I made in that period left for other jobs, I would be left to fend for myself, without any support. I therefore made up my mind to take the new job. Subsequently I traveled to Chongqing. In the meantime Mr. Nan had recommended me to the Finance Ministry as assistant banking supervisor accredited to the Gansu Provincial Bank (Kong Xiangxi was Minister of Finance at the time), and the recommendation was approved by the Ministry. I was invited to go to the Currency Department to read up on the official correspondence and memos to prepare myself for the job. Before leaving for the job I paid a visit to Mr. Dai Mingli, chief of the Currency Department. We soon got on a vehicle of the petroleum company heading to Lanzhou. When the vehicle arrived in Geleshan, Xiaojun. who had recently come down with whooping cough, was treated by a traditional Chinese medicine man and recovered after taking several doses of the medicine prescribed by the doctor.

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