Memories of The Chinese Elders
In the May 15, 2005 issue to Yazhou Zhoukan (Asia Weekly), Lee Oufan wrote an article about Lien Chan's visit. Lee opened the essay with the statement that he has never ever written anything on behalf of a politician or political party in his very long career as a cultural scholar. But this time, he was moved by the live-televised Lien's speech at Beijing University to write this essay.
Here is the section about Lien's speech:
Before the speech began, I warned my wife: Lien Chen is not a good speaker; he usually reads from a script and is extremely boring. Unexpectedly, Lien did not look at a script at all and his speech was one continuous flow with nary a dull moment. He was also quite emotional in parts, especially when he spoke about the time when his 96-year-old mother attended Yenching University. But the most moving part was in response to a student's question: How is the China that he saw sixty years ago different from the one that he sees today? Lien seemed unable to hold back his childhood memory. He said that his childhood was spent in Xian looking for air-raid caves for shelter every time that the sirens went off.
Here is the section about Lee's memories of his own childhood:
I was born during the War of Resistance in a small and poor village in the western part of Henan province. We lived in terror every day, because we were afraid that the "Japanese ghouls" would come over. One morning, my four-year-old little sister and I were playing in the nearby woods. Suddenly, a group of people appeared at the top of the hill, and there were sounds of machinegun fire. My mother raced over very quickly. I don't know where she got the strength from, but she grabbed one child under each arm and ran back inside the house to take cover ... when I remembered this scene, I found that my eyes were teary. It was the first time in my life that a speech by Lien Chan caused me to associate my own memory.
Although Lee does not consider himself to be a political person, he was nevertheless motivated to write the following commentary:
Afterwards, I thought about it and realized that Lien Chan and I came from the same era and we have similar backgrounds. At a time when the rightwing government in Japan is deliberately revising the educational textbooks, the collective memories of our generation is invaluable and unforgettable. The older generation in Taiwan also has another tragedy -- the 228 incident. But they seemed to have developed amnesia with respect to the bloody suppressions under Japanese occupation, and only the descendants of the aborigines seem to remember.
What about the young people? They were born in security and happiness, and their historical memories are getting shorter and shorter, sometimes even inverted. For example, a young Beijing University who came to Harvard University told me: "During the June 4 student movement, the students were wrong and the government was right!" During a Prague Spring memorial service in Prague, a young man told me: "This was an internal affair among the Communists, and it does not concern me." There are numerous examples in which history gradually disappears from memory through forgetting and revisions.
Enough about other people. What about my own family elders? Most of them did not leave any written or oral histories about their times during the War of Resistance years. The only exception might be the letters written by my maternal grandfather Fong F. Sec collected in the memorial volume. These English-language letters were written to his American friends. I am going to list the two war-time sections here, one before and one after the fall of Shanghai. I will point out that this man is self-effacing and humble to the extreme and his "not doing so much to help" must be seriously understating his actual contribution [brief note: Fong F. Sec held senior positions with the Y.M.C.A. of China; the Institution for the Chinese Blind; the Chinese Ministry to Lepers; the Chinese National Child Welfare Association; and the Rotary Club].
[October 21, 1937]
Mrs. Fong and I are not doing so much to help the war at this time. In face of the great need for medical supplies, a few friends and I sent cable messages to some friends abroad appealing for help for the wounded. The response has been very gratifying and supplies are coming right along. At the time we sent those messages, we were thinking in terms of the needs in Shanghai, but since then air raids have been so widespread throughout the country that the need is many times greater. Mrs. Fong and I are not in charge of any hospital.
The war situation in Shanghai is full of uncertainty. A few weeks ago our streets were crowded with refugees, and wounded soldiers were being brought into the International Settlement and French Concession by the hundreds. Now thousands of refugees have been repatriated, and many thousands are housed in refugee camps. Therefore, our refugee problem has improved. However, as winter comes on, the people in refugee camps need warm clothing and bedding, so there is still a great deal to be done to look after them. Most of the Chinese wounded soldiers are not transported to base hospitals in the interior. The fighting for the most part is some distance away from our city. We hear the boom of cannons in the distance and occasionally the rattle of anti-aircraft guns during air raids. Almost every day we hear the explosion of aerial bombs that Japanese planes drop in the vicinity of Shanghai. The war has been going on for over two months, and the Japanese are now putting on their fifth big push; but they have not succeeded in making much headway. It was generally thought that the Chinese soldiers would withdraw to their defense lines farther up the country so as to get away from the big funs of the Japanese warships; however, they are still holding their ground at the outskirts of this city. It is surprising how they have been able to hold up the Japanese army in spite of the superior equipment of the latter.
[January 29, 1938]
Now that the fighting is shifted inland, the situation in Shanghai is quieter, though there is uncertainty as to what will become of this city. It is about two months since the Chinese soldiers withdrew from Shanghai, yet I have not been able to get back to our home because I am Chinese. Friends who have seen our place lately reported that the roof is damaged by a shell and the house looted. I am most anxious to attend to the repair and see what things can be saved yet, but I cannot get permission from the Japanese authorities. This is Japanese friendship for the Chinese people.
The Fong house (date unknown)In spite of the war the members of my family had a Christmas made happy because we were able to gather around a Christmas tree at our married daughter's home in an unbroken circle. This was the first time we were able to do so in eight years, ever since our children began going to study in Yenching University, Peiping. Each year some of our children were in the North for Christmas; were it not for the war Mary and Mae would be in Yenching this winter.
Mae is my mother. She is the little girl on the left in this 1930 family portrait of Fong F. Sec, his wife and their five children. Due to the war, Mae would end up attending St John's University in Shanghai and never went to Yenching University. However, Mae would eventually marry a Yenching University graduate, who is my father.
That last letter ended this way:
On January 6 Mrs. Fong and I observed our 30th wedding anniversary quietly. We were glad that all our children and our two grandchildren could be with us on this happy occasion. As we look back over the years we are grateful for the many blessings along the way.
I admit to crying my eyes out when I read this paragraph. I am so sorry that I never knew my maternal grandfather.
This post complements the blogpost Grassroots Anti-Japanese Protestors in China for understanding anti-Japanese sentiments in China today. In the case of my maternal grandfather, who passed away in 1938, I cannot imagine a single thought of hatred or rancor for Japan or the Japanese people today for he was a Christian in the truest sense of that word. Yet, I don't know whether he would turn the other cheek if he read that a Japanese school textbook now claims that the Japanese Imperial army came to China to liberate the Chinese from the western imperialists and to bring economic prosperity to China.
