China My Other Country

CONTENTS

Chapter 1. My Paradise

Chapter 2. My Pets, The Giant Panda And The Porcupine

Chapter 3. Camping Expedition To The Remote Kham Region Of Tibet

Chapter 4. My Feudal Relatives From Zhizhou

Chapter 5. Paradise Lost

Chapter 6. My School In England

Chapter 7. Cambridge University, England

Chapter 8. My Chinese Student Friends

Chapter 9. My Father

Chapter 10. My Aunt Liu-Li

Chapter 11. Eating Snails

Chapter 12. On A Roundabout

Chapter 13. A Modern Cinderella

Chapter 14. Heartbreak

Chapter 15. The Splendor That Is Paris

Chapter 16. Au Revoir, Paris

Chapter 17. Follow Up

Chapter 18. Epilogue

ILLUSTRATIONS

[1] Memorial of my grandfather Yang Du

[2] A Chinese waterwheel for irrigation

[3] An ancient Chinese waterclock

[4] A Himalayan bamboo suspension bridge

[5] A Himalayan Confucius temple

[6] Gioietta at age 14, entering Badminton school

[7] Gioietta with her father, London, 1965

[8] Painter Chang with painter Pablo Picasso, Valauris, France, 1958

[9] Aunt Liu-Li as Madame Butterfly in the opera by Puccini: ‘Madame Butterfly’ at Opera Comique, Paris, 1958

[10] Aunt Liu-Li with singer Frank Sinatra, Cannes film festival, France, 1966

[11] Aunt Liu-Li with painter Pablo Picasso outside her restaurant, Cannes, France, 1966.

[12] Bust of Gioietta by a renowned Chinese Parisian sculptor - Madame Pan Yu-Ling, Paris, 1958

[13] Gioietta and Goran kissing a watermelon, Serbia, 1958

[14] Adriatic island of Mljet

[15] Camping on Mljet with Goran, Gioietta and friend Mado

FOREWORD

In 1938, my father, who was an official in the Chinese government led by General Chiang Kai-Shek in Nanking, China, went on a state visit to Italy. Benito Mussolini, then the leader-dictator of Italy, gave his delegation an effusive welcome. My father was very impressed with Mussolini’s achievements, such as, which by now is legendary, making the Italian trains run on time. After returning home, I was given the first name - ‘Gioietta’, after a little girl in Mussolini’s entourage, some say his illegitimate daughter. My original Chinese name was replaced by a literal phonetic translation of ‘Gioietta’, which is: ‘Gio-Yi’. It so happened that my father chose two very simple Chinese words for ‘Gio-Yi’, simple in the sense that they are written with only 4 strokes and 6 strokes respectively. According to father, elections in the old days in China sometimes required the voter to write in the candidate’s name. A simple name like ‘Gio-Yi’ would have obvious advantages. My brother was given the name ‘Benito’. With the start of the Second World War, when Mussolini sided with the Nazis led by Adolf Hitler, the name ‘Benito’ went out of favor. Just as many opportunistic parents who had named their sons ‘Adolf’ were scrambling for other alternatives, my father also cast his eyes around for another ‘safer’ name not subject to any political whims. He found an excellent replacement and my brother was renamed ‘Genghis’, after the great 13th century Mongolian warrior - ‘Genghis Khan’.

Chapter 1

MY PARADISE

My parents

My father came from a landlord family in a small market town, Zhizhou, in the middle of Sichuan province, half way between Chengdu and Chungking. He was born with the century in 1900. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance apart from his big mouth and when he was a small boy, he was found to play with himself by putting his fist into his mouth. Folklore says that he who can put his fist in his mouth is a lucky man. It turned out to be true. So now, in addition to the expression ‘foot in the mouth’, we can add ’fist in the mouth’! It was a marvel that with sheer drive he managed, from his backwaters, to get a French scholarship to study at the Sorbonne in Paris when he was merely 20 years old. Returning home with a PhD in education enabled him to make a meteoric career in the Chinese government headed by General Chiang Kai-Shek in Nanking. Around 1936, the entire Chinese government moved to Chungking, Sichuan province because of Japanese aggression. My father was then appointed to the post of minister of education for the province of Sichuan, his home province. This is how I came to my child’s paradise.

My mother was the eldest daughter of the first concubine of Yang Du, a key politician, scholar- calligrapher and revolutionary who was foremost a patriot, dedicating his life to finding the best political system for the betterment of his people.

Born in Xiangtan, Hunan (1875 -1931) to a well off landlord family, he distinguished himself in his early years in all nation contests in poetry. While studying in Japan at age of 25 he became a leader of the overseas Chinese students. He wrote a famous poem ‘Song of Hunan Youth’. One particular line is China will not perish until the last Hunanese is dead. It was widely read in China. He was also an expert on Buddhism and an outstanding calligrapher.

Yang Du’s political Proposition was constitutional monarchy. In 1907, the Qing government assigned him 4th level officer for promoting constitutional monarchy. So he rejected Sun Yat-Sen’s offer to join him in the revolution to overthrow the Qing dynasty. But the revolution was soon successful and China became a republic for the first time in its history in 1911.

Subsequently, Yang Du was a pivotal political figure in making peace between the various querulous factions in the new republic during the turbulent years following 1911. He became disillusioned with the workings of the new Chinese democracy and came to the conclusion that China needed an enlightened despot and he was the eminence grise in bringing to power General Yuan Shi-Kai as Emperor in 1916. After 83 days, the Yuan monarchy failed and Yuan died. Yang Du then believed that Sun’s democratic constitution could strengthen China and he launched into the democracy’s left.

After Chiang Kai-shek betrayed Sun and butchered the left in 1927, he was very disappointed with Kuomintang. At this point he believed that China’s salvation lay with the Communist party which he joined in 1929. He worked closely with Chou En-Lai in underground work in Shanghai and died while being pursued by Chiang Kai-Shek agents in 1931.

At his death bed, Premier Chou En-Lai said that China owes a great debt to Yang Du for his selfless work and that he should be well remembered.

In 2010, Yang Du’s eldest son, Professor Youlong Yang, donated a 5 meter high granite statue of Yang Du. There is an outstanding artisanal 20 meter long engraving wall behind the statue.

[Illustration 1] Memorial of my grandfather Yang Du

It is located in the famous Rain Lake Park of Xiang Tan, Hunan. The opening ceremony was very well attended and grand.

The marriage of my father and mother was not arranged because my father professed to be a modern democratic man. He came to the house of Yang Du looking for good connections. It is said that Yang Du told his daughter:

Marry this man, Kuo, he is crafty, you will never starve with him.

To starve or not to starve? That is the question. Indeed, this is something that is forever lurking at the back of the mind of the Chinese psyche.

So, even though the marriage was not arranged, it was not a free marriage either.

Chengdu

If one were given only 10 years of happiness in one’s whole life, I believe all those who live their lives with some degree of introspection would choose the first decade of life, for these are the most vulnerable and also the most formative years, which effect greatly what is yet to come. I am very lucky to have had the most wonderful 12 first years, thanks in part to the Second World War, when my father was posted to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan.

The province of Sichuan is one vast basin of red soil in south west China, surrounded by the foothills of the Himalayas in the west and spectacular gorges which have been carved out by the giant Yangtze river as it flows east. Its area is about the size of France, and like France, it is extremely fertile. Blessed with a mild climate, it is the only province in China to produce citrus fruits, so in that sense, it is comparable only to California. Beautiful and heavily scented flowers grow in abundance, attracting constant swarms of colorful butterflies which we used to catch. The winter is extremely balmy, with may be only a few days of snow. Early in the spring, the sight of delicate peach or cherry blossoms on a background of snow has inspired generations of Chinese painters.

Chengdu, on the old silk and caravan route, lies nestled in the Himalayan foothills and is only 40 miles from highlands rising up to 10,000 ft in altitude in the north west direction. It is also a very important market town serving the whole of the northern agricultural region of Sichuan.

The waterwheel

[Illustration 2] A Chinese waterwheel for irrigation

We lived in a semi-detached brick house on a university campus which actually was guest to 5 different universities, all evacuated to Sichuan during wartime. The campus is full of greenery. In fact Chengdu is often called the flower capital, because of the abundance of flowers. If I were to climb the wall at the bottom of our garden, I would see, in the west, towering year round white Himalayan peaks and in the east, a huge torrential muddy brown river, with a giant rickety water wheel perched on its bank. I liked to sit by the wheel and watch it go round. To understand what it does, I would imagine myself as a small drop of water, flowing happily along with the rest; then along came a bucket behind me, which scooped me up and carried me way up into the sky; When the bucket has gone round to the other side, it would dump its contents, including me, into a irrigation ditch taking me all the way to some soya bean field. What a marvelous contraption!

Blue ghost

We were not allowed to wander beyond the vegetable garden wall for there is a graveyard with many open graves that is without coffins, about 200 ft away. A short cut from the town to the waterwheel by the river exists in the form of a footpath winding through the small mounds marking the graves. One evening, there was a hurried knock on our back door and in came a teenager with a frightened look on his pale face, panting and asking to see his father, our cook. When the boy saw his father, he more or less collapsed into a heap in front of him:

Baba, I just saw a ghost.

Nonsense, there is no such thing as a ghost.

Said the father unconvincingly, for he himself was superstitious and was mortified of ghosts, but he felt he had to put on a brave face for his son.

I was taking the short cut to get to the river through the cemetery to deliver an urgent letter for my boss. I know I was not supposed to go through the cemetery at night, but I thought once would not hurt specially since I was in a hurry. I kept strictly to the path and half way through I saw a blue ghost rising up from the top of a mound. It had a big head and not much of a body. When it saw me it started to follow me. I was so scared that I ran as fast as I could but the faster I ran the faster the ghost ran too to catch me up. Not until I had passed beyond the cemetery did I dare look back and I saw the ghost just fizzled out into thin air

My boy, if it is any comfort to you, I have heard similar stories from other people. That is why I told you to keep off the cemetery.

Is there an ill wind which accompanies the sighting of the ghosts? Clearly our cook thought so, but he tried not to pass his fears to his son. To comfort the boy, I went to my father and asked if he would allow the boy to spend the night with his father. Next morning he went off to work in cheerful mood. I think that it was the father who was more affected by the story for superstitions tend to grow with age.

This story was formidable enough that we children were never tempted to check it out. In fact, none of our servants would ever be curious enough to find out for themselves either. It is interesting that 10 years later, while a student of inorganic chemistry at Cambridge university, England, I found the real reason for those blue ghosts - the decay of human bones releases a fair amount of phosphorus, this combines with hydrogen to form a gas called phosgene (PH3), which escapes the mound and burns bright blue in the atmosphere at the tip of the mound. On a still night the flame would follow the draught created by one’s walking and the faster one runs the faster would the ghost follow, creating the perfect ghost story in which the ghost is animated.

Our house

Our 4 bedroom semi-detached house sits on a narrow driveway which leads off the main road and serves six exclusive houses in all. On our right, our neighbor was Miss Hutchinson, an English missionary and on our left was an American missionary family whose last name was Roy. The main campus of the universities was on the other side of the main road. So our house, which is about 200 ft from the road, is in a very sheltered position with almost no traffic passing by. Every now and then, however, there is quite some traffic on the road in farm animals being taken to market. For some reason a goose or a duck would get detached from the rest and end up in our yard. That was the time when we could look forward to a delicious roast for dinner. My family occupied 4 bedrooms, together with living, dining, study and breakfast rooms. We were on one side of a small courtyard which measured about 20 ft x 30 ft. On the opposite side are servants’ quarters and a kitchen. We had about 10 servants, comprising a cook, butler, nanny, chauffeur, 2 gardeners and 2 rickshaw men. For transportation we had a rickshaw and an old Chevrolet. We were very fond of our nanny who slept in the same room with my 2 brothers. She had been with us ever since she came as wet nurse when my youngest brother was born. While we all had mattresses of some sort, I discovered one day that she literally slept on a bed of straw. One night, I heard some strange noise from her room after my brothers had fallen asleep, so I went to investigate. I found her covered to the top of her head in her sheet while singing/weeping at the same time. After several nights like this, I went to my mother and asked her to explain why nanny cried. She said that very likely the nanny was homesick for she had left her own son behind to come to us and there was no return date to look forward to. I felt quite helpless and I was too young to even appreciate fully just how inhuman this was, separating a mother from her new born baby.

The waterclock

[Illustration 3] An ancient Chinese waterclock

There were no sewer systems. All waste was recycled in the vegetable garden. Water is drawn from a well, about 15 ft down in the middle of the courtyard, with a bucket tied to a long bamboo pole. It is then filtered through a cascade of 3 tanks, each containing about 2 ft in depth of fine sand. The water trickles down the sand of the top tank, then drips very slowing into the middle tank and so on. It turns out that the filtration rate was very constant. This fact was used by ancient Chinese to make a ‘water clock’- calibrated by means of the sun and stars. Joseph Needham, the great British sinologist, has written extensively about such inventions in his work on the ‘History of Science and Technology in China’. His works would make very interesting reading if it were not for its sheer size and scope, which extends to 50 erudite volumes! From him, I learned that most of the ancient inventions ended up in the court of the Emperor, who tinkered with them. Apparently, if a gadget should go wrong, most often through tinkering, the Emperor would send a few soldiers to find the inventor in his village and bring him to Beijing. In the case the inventor was no longer alive, they would simply grab the closest substitute, his son, kicking, screaming and proclaiming his ignorance all the way to Beijing. I used to find this story extremely amusing and could not seriously believe that it could be true. But, on reflection, it seems quite reasonable. Since the inventor most probably worked in isolation at home and not in a modern day giant laboratory with many collaborators, his son really would be the most likely person to know what went on. As to whether he can repair the gadget, that is another matter.

To school in a rickshaw

Every morning, my two younger brothers and I would pile into our 2 seater rickshaw and get taken to school. Starting from our driveway, the barefoot rickshaw man had