Memories of a Troubled Era (6)


		山西平定 \| 亂世紀往\| 亂世紀往手稿版 \| 紀年 \| 紀年手稿版 \| 西鎖簧村 \| 漢口購地日記手稿版 1946.7.20-11.1 \| 旅漢日記 1946.11.5-12.19 \| 旅漢日記 1946.11.5-12.19 手稿版 \| 赴蘭日記 \| 赴蘭日記手稿版 \| 台灣日記 \| 新竹 \| 暮年拾零 \| 家庭 \| 海峽彼岸 \| 子玉書法 \| 食譜剪報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 (6) We traveled through the towns of Qingjuguan, Bishan, Shehong, Suining, Santai, Jian'ge, Zhaohua to arrive in Guangyuan, where we stayed at a guesthouse of the China Travel Service. When I played with my son Xiaojun in the guesthouse, I accidentally dislocated his arm at the elbow. After treatment by a local medicine man specializing in disjointed and fractured limbs he fully recovered. From Guangyuan the three of us boarded a bus operated by the Yuwen Company, run by a native of my home province Shanxi, and set out for Lanzhou. After passing through the towns of Ningqiang (of Sichuan), Hanzhong (of Shaanxi) and Shuangshipu (of Shaanxi) we crossed the border into Gansu province. When our bus approached Liangdang, we heard that on the previous day a bus had been robbed by bandits in that area. When the bus entered the vicinity of the Niangniang Temple, we saw someone rushing away on the road. The passengers on our bus immediately suspected him to be a bandit and became very jittery and unsettled. Only when the bus arrived in Hui county did the passengers relax a little . It took us 8 or 9 days to travel from Chongqing to Lanzhou, crossing 3 provinces--Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. Once we crossed the border into Gansu, we were greeted by a forlorn landscape, with mountains and hills unadorned by any vegetation, no trees and not even weeds orgrasses. The region was very dry, with little precipitation. Even if there was a pouring rain, the land would instantly be as dry as before because the soil was unable to absorb or retain the water. There were deep caverns in the hollows among the hills, into which the rain water would be sunk and go underground. Drinking water was hard to come by all the way. When our bus reached Qin'an, we were shocked by its murky drinking water and the dark color that characterized all its restaurant fare. We set out again from Tongwei; ahead of us was the highest point on our itinerary: Huajialing. As the bus slowly climbed higher, we did not feel the steepness of the ascent but it was a long climb. Although it was mid-June on the lunar calendar at the height of summer, it was already very cold where we were, especially when the bus went downhill. We shivered even in our wool sweater or padded quilted jackets. Upon arrival in Lanzhou we temporarily stayed at a guesthouse of China Travel Service in Lanzhou. Xiaojun accidentally fell from the bed and injured his forehead. The swellings on his nose and around his eyes took a month to heal. When informed that I had arrived, Zhu Maicang, president of the Gansu Provincial Bank, came to the guesthouse to see me. A few days later we moved to our new lodging in the Xiyuan New Village compound of the Bank. The office of the banking supervisor had already been established in the compound. Yijun got a job at the office. Across from our place in the compound lived Mr. Qu Tonggang, who was chief of the economic research section of the Bank We got along very well. His wife specialized in painting flowers employing a careful realist technique. They had a private collection of boxes of paintings and calligraphy works and other art objects from the Qing and Ming dynasties, which they had acquired in their Beiping (also called Beijing, Peking) days. The collection featured a number of original works by Dong Qichang, Tang Yin (both Ming dynasty artists) and some Song dynasty artists. I was told the Song paintings bore no seal marks but had the names written in small regular script in an unobtrusive corner of the paintings. In his collection was a painting of a boy leading a horse by Zhang Mu (childhood name Zhang Sikai), who was active in the late Qing dynasty and was a native of my hometown Pingding. Mr. Qu's daughter Qu Jinfang was married to Mr. Gao Shiming of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They had one daughter by the name of Lianlian and one son by the name of Longlong, who was a year older than Xiaojun. Our neighbor to the right was a Mrs. Wang, from Fuzhou of Fujian province. They were all on cordial terms with Yijun. The neighbor on our left was Mr. Wang Luzhou, who was a managing director of the Gansu Provincial Bank and engaged me in conversation from time to time. The position of chairman of the board of the Bank was at first held concurrently by the then chief of the Department of Civil Affairs of the provincial government, who unfortunately fell to his death on an inspection tour in the south of Gansu to survey the progress in the ban on poppy cultivation. His successor to the post was Ding Yizhong, general secretary of the provincial government. The board of the Bank was composed of the managing directors Wang Luzhou, Chen Jinglie, directors and supervising directors Zhang Xinyi (chief of the Department of Construction), Zhang Wei (speaker of the provincial senate), Zhao Longwen (chief of the Department of Civil Affairs), Tian Kunshan (member of the Central Committee, deceased), Wang Tinghan (chief accountant of the provincial government), Pei Jianzhun (local gentry) and Mr. Wang, chief of the Finance Department, the president of the Bank Zhu Maicang, and the assistant president Sun Runan. The board of the Bank met once a week; I attended as an observer. More than half of the shares of the Gansu Bank were held by the Finance Ministry. The Ministry once appointed Cui Weiwu as president of the Gansu Bank, but the latter was soon removed by the board of directors in a board meeting, which I attended. Mr. Cui was present at the meeting, and the board asked him to recuse and remove himself according to regulations. He soon left the Bank to return to Chongqing. The governor of the province at the time was Gu Zhenglun. During my tenure at the Gansu Bank, I enjoyed a number of perks. In addition to housing provided by the Bank, I was assigned a cook, a servant and a carriage driver, as well as a rickshaw, for my use when I needed to go into town on official business. I went to the Bank every day to report for work. In view of my situation and the special circumstances of the Bank's operations, I did not choose to review every one of the loan applications, and adopted a more or less laissez-faire attitude in this work. But I never missed a chance to attend the board meetings as an observer. Sometimes I overstepped myself at the meeting. At one such meeting of the board, the president of the Bank Mr. Zhu proposed a Mr. Kong, president of the Jiangjin branch of the Agricultural Bank, as chief of personnel at the Gansu Bank. I pointed out that he was involved in a warehouse scandal and had not been cleared, and that this was reported in the Ta Kung Pao. The proposal was as a result vetoed by the chairman of the board Mr. Ding. I felt contrite afterwards. The northwestern region of China had an extremely dry climate. When I first reached the city walls of Lanzhou, I already felt a soreness in my throat that caused an unpleasant sensation when I swallowed food or drink. But I got acclimatized after a couple of months. Its latitude being lower than that of my home town, its summers should have felt hotter and its winters warmer than in my home town. But the fact is its plateau was much higher than that of the plateaus in the mid-section of the Taihang Mountains around our home town, and therefore summers were cooler in Lanzhou than in my hometown and the winter temperature was not that different. The people of Lanzhou had a nickname among non-natives of "sha guo" (crabapples) because their cheeks were always a palette of red and white, like the colors of crabapples. People of my hometown acquired the nickname among non-natives of "sha guo guo" (pottery casseroles) because my hometown was a major producer of pottery casseroles, which were sold far and wide. This "sha guo" is not that "sha guo." Lanzhou boasted a wide variety of fruits. The most famous among them was its summer zui gua (literally "intoxicating melon," a variety of cantaloupes, Cucumis melo L.) with a reticulated ("cracked porcelain") peel. The zui gua's flavor was situated somewhere between a russet apple and a banana. It is called an "intoxicating melon" because it has a winey taste and is very juicy. Hami melons and Wallace melons (honeydews of American origin) were also available in Lanzhou, and had longer shelf lives than the zui gua. The bell pepper of Lanzhou, big as a rice bowl, was grown in gravel-covered fields. The application of gravel was particularly suitable for crop cultivation on the loess plateau characterized by macroporous strata, just as the qanats were favored by farmers in Xinjiang. The technique consisted in locating land assured of plenty of irrigation water and covering it with a mixture of pebbles the size of eggs and coarse sand harvested from riverbeds. These fields were tilled and fertilized every year and were mostly used for planting vegetables and fruits. The fields thus treated could last for about 30 years, after which they would become alkalized and need to be replaced with a new application. Hence the local saying: gravel fields are laid by the grandfather, reaped by the father and rejuvenated by the grandson, when the fields lose their efficacy. Lanzhou is situated in a river valley. To its south rises the Wuquan Mountain and to its north towers the Baita Mountain. The Yellow river flows through the north of the city from west to east. The steel truss bridge across the Yellow river built when Sheng Yun was viceroy in the Qing dynasty still stood to this day. Few rivercraft were seen on the river, except for some rafts supported by inflated animal skins and water wheels dotting the river shores. There were cowhide rafts and sheepskin rafts. They were made by hollowing out a whole animal and scraping off all hair. The skin is permanently sealed with cords tying up the openings at the neck and the four limbs. After inflation, these animal skins are secured to a wooden platform, about ten skins to a platform. They resembled a modern inflatable rubber raft. The water wheels dotting the banks of the Yellow river were built when Zuo Zongtang (General Tso) was viceroy there, in the Qing dynasty. They are about ten meters in diameter and are often called giant water wheels. These contraptions had to be giant to carry water up to the high bank from the low river level. All our drinking water came from the Yellow river. The water when drawn would be murky and ocher in color, but after being treated with potassium alum, the water would clear up and become potable. Before I left Chongqing, I left some cash I could spare with Guo Qixian, who was from my home province, so that he could buy some Tiger balm and Balashin Sai Breath Fresheners and send them to me in Lanzhou. I did it as a hedge against the rapid devaluation of money. I waited almost four months without receiving any shipment. The weather was turning cold and we did not bring any warm enough clothing such as leather coats when we arrived from Sichuan. I was left no choice but to sell the shipping invoices for the medicines to a friend, who later received the medicines that eventually arrived, kept them until spring and sold them for many times the amount he paid me for the consignment. All I got from him was barely enough to buy us warm clothing for the winter. While I am not a superstitious believer in fate, what happened was a wakeup call for me: I must not covet excessive profit and easy gains. As the Chinese currency steadily devalued, pay stagnated. Although the Gansu Bank provided us with housing and servants, our finances became strained. We had to consign our clothing and books to the Nan'guan Auction House for sale to make ends meet. Before going home every day I would check with the auction house to see if anything had been sold, so that I could get some cash for the following day's groceries. I was unable to add anything to my wardrobe and Yijun made her qipao from coarse cloth made by local Muslim minorities. Xiaojun wore clothing made from coarse yarn. We had come to the end of our tether. At the time Shi Yaoyuan came to Lanzhou for a short stay because the Yongyu Trading Company had a branch in Lanzhou. He invited me to meals from time to time. Other compatriots from my home province also did the same, but to my deepest regret I was too financially strapped to return the favors. Mr. Nan Yinggeng, the banking supervisor, had a habit of reprimanding and mocking his subalterns in the presence of others. I once invited Mr. Nan and some other colleagues to a dinner. Mr. Nan publicly criticized the food at the table. Take the example of Mr. Liu Qingyu, a commissioner of the office. He was also publicly chided numerous times for neglecting the backlog of cases. As a result, when the office was closed down and Mr. Nan invited Mr. Liu, the commissioner and Guo Mingji, the auditor, who came from the same home province as he and had been his colleagues for a long time, to work at a tax agency in Henan province, they flatly refused. Both agreed to take a lower-ranking job at the Central Bank branch in Lanzhou. In 1944, Xiaojun started attending the kindergarten operated by the Gansu Bank, also located inside the Xiyuan New Village compound. On January 2, 1945 on the lunar calendar, Xiaoyuan was born. Neighbors, including Mrs. Wang, helped in the process. All went well except that the umbilical cord was said to be wrapped around his neck three times. It was obviously not a smooth birth. Yijun developed acute mastitis in the first month after the birth and underwent a surgical procedure at Xibei Hospital, which failed to heal the sores. Her condition gradually improved only after a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner gave her acupuncture treatments. In the autumn of the same year the United States of America dropped atom bombs on Japan, forcing it to surrender, making possible the final victory in China's 8-year-long War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. As a direct result of this victory the office of the banking supervisor was dissolved. The job of the assistant supervisor accredited to the Gansu Bank however was retained. In the latter half of the year I returned the rickshaw assigned to me by the Bank and we moved to the Bank dormitory in Daosheng Lane. In early spring in 1946 by orders of the Finance Ministry the position of the assistant banking supervisor was removed also. From the summer of 1942 to early 1946, I had been accredited to the Gansu Bank for about 3 years now. Not proud of my performance during my tenure there, I did not expect nor dare hope to be transferred to a position in the Ministry. I had no prior knowledge of the removal of my post and having no connections in the Ministry I was left no choice but to seek employment elsewhere. At the time I had a family of four to feed and support, myself, my wife and my two sons. I often woke up at night and couldn't fall back to sleep because of deep anxiety. To shoulder the responsibilities of supporting my family I frantically looked for a job. I wrote separately to Mr. Peng, president of the Northwest Industrial Company, who had returned to Shanxi to take back the operations of the company, and Mr. Feng Shangwen, president of the Zhongnan Company in Xi'an, to inquire whether they could offer me a job, while I went on an earnest job hunt locally in Lanzhou. Fortunately fate smiled on me and I received replies from both Mr. Feng and Mr. Peng. Mr. Feng generously offered me a job at the Zhongnan Match Manufacturing Company. Mr. Peng also urged me to return to Taiyuan to work again in the Northwest Industrial Company. I was greatly relieved upon receiving these replies. As I received Mr. Feng's reply first, I immediately took up his offer. When I subsequently received Mr. Peng's offer, I had to decline it with regrets. I remain to this day compunctious about having to write that apologizing letter to Mr. Peng. In March 1946 I, my wife and our two sons, took a ride on a vehicle of the Gansu Bank that happened to be sent on business to Xi'an, where I would start on my new job. On the first day when we reached Gancaodian, the car broke down, and we had to overnight in an inn to wait for the car to be fixed. About 9 am the following day we set off again eastward. While in Lanzhou Mr. Ding Yizhong, president of the board of the Gansu Bank, offered assistance in my job hunt. But my new job awaited me in Xi'an so I couldn't wait in Lanzhou for the outcome. Later when I was already in Xi'an I received letters from Mr. Ding Yizhong and Mr. Wang Tinghan, chief accountant of the Gansu provincial government, offering me an accountant's job at the municipal bank of Ganzhou. I wrote back to thank them and decline the offer since I already started working as accountant at the Zhongnan Company. When I earlier resigned from my job of chief accountant at the Relief Works No. 1 of the Disaster Relief Committee in order to take up the job of assistant banking supervisor accredited to the Gansu Bank by the Finance Ministry, I left in too much of a hurry to complete the transfer of duties and dossiers to my successor. Not long after my arrival in Lanzhou I received a cable from the accounting office of the Disaster Relief Committee calling on me to return as soon as possible to Jiangjin to complete the transfer of duties. I explained the reasons for my inability to return to Sichuan, including the great distance to be traveled. Then the Comptroller's Office sent a memo to Mr. Wang Tinghan, the comptroller of the Gansu provincial government, asking him to urge me to travel to Sichuan. I requested Mr. Wang to send a memo in my behalf to ask the Comptroller's Office to give up on the idea of having me go back to Sichuan to complete the transfer of duties to my successor at the Relief Works No. 1. The matter was thus laid to rest. And in that difficult period Mr. Wang wrote to me offering to help me find a job. He had been really good to me and I remain grateful to him all my life. After the truck of the Gansu Bank was repaired, we set off again on our eastward journey. The previous day when we stayed at the inn we made a brazier with charcoal taken from the truck to keep warm in the bitter cold. When I blew at the fire I got a spark into one eye, which greatly bothered me along the way. It got better when we arrived in Pingliang. Once past Pingliang, it was downhill all the way and the truck traveled very fast. We arrived at the Zhongnan Company after seven days on the road. Upon arrival I paid a visit to Mr. Zhang Shixin, president of the company, and other colleagues, and we moved into company housing in the Zhongnan compound. By that time my suit was in tatters and Yijun wore a qipao made of earth-colored coarse cloth, looking quite unpresentable. Fortunately the pay at Zhongnan was decent and our life started to improve. Leaving public service to work in a civilian factory had long been a wish of mine. China's perennial weakness had its main cause in lagging far behind the West in material civilization. Industrialization was a prerequisite in in the race to catch up with the West in material civilization. Importing materials from abroad to create a superficial prosperity that belied underlying backwardness and weakness was putting the cart in front of the horse. The factory of Zhongnan was located on the Wudao Crossroads outside the Zhongshan Gate to its left. The Zhongnan New Village compound opposite the factory was where the staff lived. The workers' dormitory, the canteen, the basketball court and the reading room were located nearby. The factory employed about 500 workers. The entire match-manufacturing process was done on premises, including the making of the matchboxes, the match sticks, the dipping of the sticks in phosphorus and the packing. The procurement of timber was done by a separate plant built in the Zhongnan Mountains to harvest timber and process it for use by the match-manufacturing plant. Some raw materials needed by the factory were procured on the market; others, such as phosphorus sesquisulfide and glue, had to be manufactured by the plant. The matches used in the provinces of the Northwest were mostly made with phosphorus sesquisulfide. Safety matches had not been popularized at the time, for reasons including their higher cost, in the poverty-stricken regions of the Northwest, where their sales remained stagnant, because the ordinary people simply couldn't afford them. The Zhongnan staff were lodged in three groups of company housing, i.e. the Zhongnan New Village, the buildings of the original clothing and bedding factory outside the Zhongshan Gate to its left and a place next to the residence of the factory doctor Zhai Qianzi. While there were advantages in living in collective housing, there were disadvantages also. Gregarious living could bring more fun and friendly contact but the flip side is it could also mean more gossip and idle rumors. Intimacy often led to friction and grievances. The Zhongnan Company paid well and provided housing to staff families as well as food allowances for the staff members. There were two kinds of year-end bonuses: open ones and secrets ones. The latter bonuses were awarded on merits. Normally one saw a bunch of cash, but one did not know who got how much. By temperament I was blunt and irascible and was poor at socializing. I had few close friends with 3 or 4 exceptions. First of all I came to the job at Zhongnan because I needed to feed my family and I didn't particularly mind what title or position I got at the company. I was at first responsible for overseeing the cost accounting work in the accounting department, where I did not get along very well with other colleagues due to my personality. When Mr. Feng Shangwen went to Beiping to take up a job at the office of the Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, he wrote me a letter telling me to go to Hankou to buy land for building a match-manufacturing plant there. In the summer of 1946, I set off for Hankou. I took an eastbound passenger train on the Longhai Railway to arrive in Shanzhou, where I had to transfer to a long-haul bus bound for Luoyang because the war-ravaged railway had not yet been repaired in its next section. The bus traveled on roads that had been repaired in a preliminary way, leaving a wake of yellow dust that hung in the air for miles. It was a bumpy ride. Once in Luoyang I stayed in a Japanese-style inn, a legacy of the Japanese invasion. I visited numerous points of interest in Luoyang, such as the Temple of Duke Zhou and the Tomb of Guangong, reputedly where his severed head was buried. I also visited the bank of the Luo river, where Lady Zhen of the Three Kingdoms and Cao Zhi sojourned. At the time of my visit a concrete bridge already spanned the river, which all traffic to Longmen had to pass. I also took a bus to the Longmen Grottoes, reputedly dating from the Northern Wei period. There were several huge grottoes of limestone formation housing thousands of Buddhist statues of different sizes, the tallest of which measured 20 feet in height, and the smallest the size of a finger, all finely carved and in varying postures. The cave ceiling could be as high as 10 meters, covered with steles and inscriptions dating from different eras and in varying scripts, thus the famed 20 Longmen Inscriptions in the Northern Wei Style. I bought some reprints of those inscriptions. When the stone masons first carved those inscriptions into the limestone ceilings, they must have built high scaffoldings and must have needed eye protection against the flying stone chips. I climbed above the grottoes and looked all around and I could see a huge Buddha sitting in the open air, rising to a height of about 12 meters, with a clear stream flowing out of a spring nearby. Opposite the giant statue sat a pavilion housing a stele, bearing an inscription of the calligraphy of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty. A modern building could be seen, where, it is said, Chiang Kai-shek used to stay when in Luoyang; the interior of the building however had been gutted during the War of Resistance. Luoyang had two railway stations, the east and the west stations. Before the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the Central Military Academy had a campus here. The city is located on high ground and had thick, hard soil, and its anti-air raid shelters were well-known for their safety. It had been the national capital in ancient times, but now it was rundown and in disrepair. The saving grace was its vast fertile plains. The parks in the city boasted a wide variety of trees and flowers, which all grew exuberantly, rivaling Chang'an (ancient name of Xi'an) in this respect. The Luo river flowing by the city was a graceful note absent in Chang'an, which had no major rivers nearby. On the other hand Chang'an boasted many more ancient landmarks and points of interest than Luoyang. Mount Hua towers to the east of Chang'an; to its west rises Mount Taibai with its peaks capped by snow that does not melt even in summer. Closer to the city are the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, the Zhou Mausoleum, the Huaqing Hot Springs, the Valley of the Burial of Confucian Scholars, and the Zhongnan and Cuiping Mountains. In its outskirts could be found the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, and the "cold cave," where Wang Baochuan was supposed to have spent 18 years waiting for the man she loved. In the city the Bell Tower sat magnificently atop the ancient imperial walls. Chang'an also had a wide variety of vegetation, but potable water was scarce there. There was no shortage of vegetables but fish and shrimps were in short supply and their prices were very steep. I had to stay several days in Luoyang before taking the train for Zhengzhou. The reason for the delay was the railway bridge at Heilongguan was damaged and needed to be repaired. Along the way I collected samples of matches and sent them to our factory to help the marketing people to plan for expanding our market eastward. The following day I took a train on the Peking–Hankow railway, traveling southward, passing through Xuchang, Luohe and Zhumadian to arrive in Hubei province. All along this section of the railway one was greeted with a forlorn sight of treeless plains extending to the horizon. One could not see a single tree from the train. I was ignorant then, and only learned later the reason for not seeing any trees: during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese army prohibited the planting of sorghum and corn within several miles of the rail on either side in order to deny cover to guerillas fighting the Japanese, who otherwise would have been able to hide in the overgrown fields. These plains, in this part of Henan province, stretched as far the eye could see and no hills were in sight. Once past the Dabie Mountains we entered the country of Hebei province, dotted with lakes, buffaloes, bamboo groves and rice paddies, a scenery familiar in south China, a radical change of scene from north of the Mountains. Soon we arrived at the Dazhimen station in Hankou. The moment I arrived in Hankou I could already feel the oppressive, sweltering heat. There were scarcely any breezes all summer long and the humidity was high. One's skin was always sticky with sweat. The nights were especially muggy, with not a breeze to bring any relief. Before 5 am one was able to get only 3 hours of sleep, and the sweltering heat started even before the sun came up. Storms were frequent. We usually didn't get any wind but once wind started blowing, it would be so strong that boats were sunk and houses were ripped apart and disaster struck. This phenomenon could perhaps be attributed to the low-lying geography of Hankou, which was not conducive to winds, but would breed storms when temperature rose to a certain threshold. Hankou was graced by numerous magnificent riverside buildings, which were mostly erected when foreign countries established concessions there. The architectural styles varied according to the countries that ran those colonies. I found a 3-story Russian style building in the old Russian concession that I had planned to buy for our company but my proposal was not approved by the company. Mr. Zhang You, my colleague in the Jianye Construction Company, and I went around in search of land on which to build a match-manufacturing plant of our company. We did not find many suitable sites. Places like Xujiapeng were too far from the city center, and would require daily ferrying across the river, which was not ideal. Those sites were not located in industrial areas. The Han river was lined with industrial parks, and those on the east bank suited our purpose more. So we found a lot west of the Erudite Academy (originally founded by missionaries) in the Qiaokou district, which was situated on the east bank of the Han river, and had as neighbors tobacco plants owned by British and American companies. River and land transport was readily available. The lot was about 60 Chinese acres in area. We leased the purchased land to a farmer, who would act as a groundkeeper. Once the company made the decision to build a plant on the lot, the lease would be taken back. The entire process started in summer and ended in winter, when it was decided that no plant would be built there, because Mr. Feng Shangwen in the meantime had won a bid on a factory in Qingdao, and decided to use its machinery and equipment to build a soy sauce manufacturing plant in Tianjin, leading to the regrettable scuttling of the plan to build a match-manufacturing plant in Hankou. I stayed about half a year in Hankou. Most of my effort during that time was devoted to the search of land for building our planned factory; a minor part of my time was spent on buying raw materials for manufacturing matches, including glue. Whenever I had time to spare I would look around and educate myself so that I could offer useful insights once the plant was to be built. The commercial hub of Hankou was in the vicinity of the intersection of Jianghan Road and Zhonghsan Boulevard. After the end of the war and the foreign concessions were taken back by the government, business had plummeted. As a result of the harassment of Communist troops, the Beijing-Hankou railway was often cut off and Hankou completely lost it importance in commerce with the north, so much so that municipal buses could no longer be operated with profit. They gave way to horse-drawn carts and tricycle rickshaws. In that turbulent period full of uncertainties, Hankou temporarily lost its erstwhile glory and prosperity. Wuhan University was located on Luojia Hill southeast of Wuchang. There was a lake called East Lake behind the hill, with water so clear one could see to the bottom. It attracted crowds of visitors in summer. The Yellow Crane Tower (called Stork Pavilion by some) in Wuchang had been rebuilt. It original site had been developed into a park, with a fire alert watch tower. The Kongming Lantern still stood high above the river bank. It was a ancient-looking stone stupa from which projected an umbrella-like top. Looking upstream along the Yangtze, one could see the Parrot Cay, which faced Snake Hill, the cities of Hanyang and Hankou. Looking east one could see the picturesque mist-veiled Yangtze rushing eastward, dotted with white sails. Upstream near the right bank lay the Parrot Cay. The tomb of Mi Heng was said to be located thereabouts, but I did not have a chance to pay it a visit. I did get to visit the Lute Platform in Hanyang, where a stele was inscribed with a poem by the Tang poet Chen Zi'ang: "Before me, the ancients have disappeared And ahead of me, I cannot see the ones who will return Feeling the heaven and earth— remote in time and space Alone mournful the tears are dripping down (Translation by Frank Watson on https://frankwatsonpoet.com/chen-ziangs-song-of-climbing-youzhou/)" I also visited the Gu-de Temple in Wuhan and Gui-de Temple in Hanyang, neither of which offered much interest. [Introduction][1][2][3][4][5][6][Addendum][Chronology] [Back to top]