亂世紀往補記

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

Addendum

by Lee Ruoyuan

In November 1946, I returned to the factory from Hankou. In the six months I was in Hankou, Xiaoyuan came down with a bad case of malaria. The disease was not identified at first until he was reduced to a bag of bones. He got better with treatment. During that period, the extra work of taking care of a sick child exhausted my wife. Fortunately Xiaojun was healthy and as high-spirited as ever. That was a relief to me.

Not much had changed at the factory. It started to manufacture green-tipped matches made with phosphorus sulfide. The product was marketed under the labels of "Patriot," "Bell Tower" and "Stork Pagoda." The labels were all printed in Shanghai and shipped by air to our factory for use, and they looked much nicer than those of other manufacturers of matches. The Zhongnan Match-manufacturing Company was originally founded by Mr. Liu Hailou, from Hunan province. He sold it to Mr. Feng Shangwen when its business went downhill. During the War of Resistance, there was a shortage of all goods and therefore people preferred material goods as they lost faith in money. Zhongnan took out low-interest loans from banks to purchase materials for the mass manufacture of matches. Soon these matches were selling well and the company thrived.

After my return from Hankou to our factory, I still worked in accounting. The company no longer just marketed its matches inside the province of Shaanxi but expanded its sales to Shanxi and Henan provinces, with frequent shipments to Luoyang. But its efforts to expand sales to the west did not pan out. One reason was that places like Gansu province were too far from us and long-haul transportation of bulky goods such as matches cost too much. The only acceptable alternative to motor vehicles was the so-called "la la" carts with two rubber-rimmed wheels drawn by four mules. The other reason for the lackluster sales was Gansu had its locally produced matches, which, though way inferior to our products, were good enough for the people in these fringe regions, who had simple needs.

Mr. Feng, the CEO of the company, wrote to Mr. Zhang Shixin, president of the company in Xi'an, to discuss with him the matter of expanding sales toward the western regions. I was sent west to explore the possibilities. Having lived in Lanzhou for some years, the prospect of revisiting the city was attractive to me. Having developed connections in the governmental and business circles in Lanzhou during my years there, I should be a better choice than others in marketing semi-processed products. After putting up some token resistance, I accepted the task and took a bus on the Northwest Highway to Lanzhou.

The Northwest Highway started from Xi'an, extended west through Yili of Xinjiang and the further west we went the more forlorn and arid the scene became. Only the Jing-Wei plains showed some fertility. Once we were in Gansu province, all we saw was bare hills with no vegetation. Rain was scarce on these hills with thick soil and even when there was a pouring rain, the water would soon be swallowed up and leached deep underground.

In Wuchang, across the Yangtze from Hankou, there were several textile mills on the riverbank. The Xujiapeng Airport was downstream from those mills. The Zhongshan Park on the outskirts of Hankou was a famous tourist attraction; an equestrian statue of Chiang Kai-shek that used to stand at its gate had been destroyed by the Japanese troops. I bought a photograph of the bronze statue, in which Chiang looked magnificent on the steed. There was a small lake in the park on which people could row boats that were for rent. The park was dotted with numerous pavilions. In the back of the park was a swimming pool and a large, level sport field.

Hankou was served by the Beijing-Hankou railway and the Guangzhou-Hankou railway but traffic on those rail links was not as busy as transportation on waterways. The city was linked to other cities and provinces by steamboats sailing on the Han river and the Xiang river, not to mention passenger and cargo traffic on the Yangtze. Waterway travel was thus very popular. Traffic between Wuchang and Hankou was often cut off in the aftermath of storms on the Yangtze, therefore a bridge spanning the river to connect the two twin cities was desperately needed. While Hankou was hot in the warm season, it snowed just like in the north in winter. I set out for the north just as it began to snow heavily. At that time travel on that route was still possible, but following the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, travel to the north became more of a problem and car traffic thinned because large areas of rural China remained in the hands of Communist troops.

On the morning of August 13, 1948, I took a flight operated by the China National Aviation Corporation and arrived the same day at the Xujiapeng airport. Once I got off the plane I felt like having entered a steaming pot and sweated profusely. The airline shuttle took the passengers to the riverbank where they took a ferry across the river to Hankou. Along the riverbank one could see clusters upon clusters of people stripped to the waist cooling off in the streets, although one failed to see how they could cool themselves when there was not a breath of air blowing by. It admittedly beat staying indoor.

The following day I paid a visit to Mr. Zhang You at his home to discuss the matter of obtaining the deed for the land purchased for the company. He told me everything was almost ready. In a few days I had the deed in hand and sent it via registered airmail to Mr. Feng, CEO of the company, at the company office in Shanghai. Soon after that I received a letter from him, telling me to return to the factory in Xi'an. I bought a plane ticket and boarded a plane flying to Xi'an. It was in the afternoon and the plane was flying north. I saw the shadow of the plane tail on the left wing. A short while later the shadow appeared unexpectedly on the right wing. The enigma was explained when a note was passed around by cabin staff, saying that "The plane received a cable from Xi'an while flying over the Lao Hekou airport notifying us that the airport was flooded and not ready for landing. The plane is now heading back to Hankou." It soon landed at the Xujiapeng airport. I stayed at the Pearl River Hotel in Wuchang to wait for the next available flight to Xi'an.

On the day of boarding the next flight, when my luggage had already been loaded, the public address system paged me saying I had a phone call. It turned out to be from Mr. Zhang You. He told me that Mr. Feng, the CEO of my company, instructed me to travel to Shanghai instead of to Xi'an. I asked the cabin staff to unload my luggage and I returned to Hankou to take a boat (the Jiangning) to Shanghai. We were traveling downriver and the wind was calm so we sailed at a clip. I saw Yangtze finless porpoises (dark-skinned) chasing each other in the river. I also saw a black river anaconda with a girth as thick as a rice bowl swimming in the Yangtze, going in and out of water. When the boat passed Andu, the river widened so much that the two banks were no longer visible.

After arriving in Shanghai, I went in to see Mr. Feng, the CEO of the company, and later went around with Mr. Pu, division chief, to familiarize myself with the operations, and got ready to travel to Jinhua to see to the shipping of marble (or fluorite) to Japan. Soon I was dispatched to Taiwan to be an accountant at a factory making MSG. It was a time when the new legal tender called the Jin Yuan Quan (Chinese gold yuan) was rapidly devaluing, its value dropping several times a day. My planned trip to the West Lake thus went up in smoke because I could no longer afford it. So I took a boat (named the Taiping) and cast off to Taiwan. It was my first experience of taking an ocean boat. When we barely emerged from Wusong Kou (where the Huangpu river flows into the Yangtze), an American battleship sailed by, sending huge waves our way. I had my first taste of seasickness and nearly threw up. I staggered to the main deck to see what was happening and immediately felt better. But I couldn't very well just stand there, depriving myself of food and sleep! Once the boat was on the Yellow Sea, the waves could be 10 meters high and 20 meters wide on the dark ocean, looming like small hills. The Taiping had a tonnage of about 3000, it rocked and rolled, and sometimes its funnel was seen to lean at a 50-degree angle. We arrived in Keelung after a voyage of more than 48 hours. From there I took a train to Taipei and went to our office in Taiwan at 57 Dali Street. Another colleague traveled on the same boat with me.

I arrived in Keelung on October 29, if my memory serves me. After debarking we learned that there was a medium-strength typhoon alert on the Taiwan Straits. It was a close call. We were blessed and very lucky to be able to land safely in Taiwan. This same boat, the Taiping, later sank after colliding with a boat carrying coal, which also sank, leaving few survivors.

In November, with the help of Mr. Feng and Mr. Zhang Shixin, respectively the CEO and the president of the company, Yijun, Xiaojun, Xiaoyuan and Sanmao were able to travel to Taiwan to be reunited with me. This was no easy feat, particularly when the children were so young and needed much care. The boat they took was called the Haiqian, which was small and water got into the boat, soaking bedding and clothing. Xiaoyuan, who liked to monkey around, nearly fell into the sea. Also traveling on the same boat were the Jia and Zhou families of the MSG factory.

We moved onto the factory premises in Hsinchu in lunar December (at 336 Zhonghua Road in the south district of the city). We moved into a room which was used to make yeast and had a low ceiling and was barely penetrated by daylight. We spent the New Year Spring festival in Hsinchu. The following summer, Sanmao developed skin sores all over his body and Yijun was afflicted with rheumatic heart disease. It was first misdiagnosed as tuberculosis by Dr. Zhan. We switched to Dr. Hsu, who was an internist. The "yeast room" was deemed unhealthy for living. In order to give Yijun and the children a better living environment I decided to lease the Japanese-style house at 485-1 Zhonghua Road as our new home. In a few months Yijun's health improved and we could dispense with the maid we had used to help with household chores.　

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

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