Nine Memorable Decades

Table of Contents
Foreword: An Uprooted Osmanthus Tree

Smart Architectural Designs with fascinating flairs in My CanalWoven Hometown

10
Chinese New Year's Customs in My Hometown

18

Homemade Dim Sum for Chinese New Year

22

Unforgettable Kites in My Childhood

25

Married Daughters' Return on the Second of the Second Lunar

Month
28
Shepherd's Purse in the Spring Field of My Hometown

30

Spring Splendor on the Grounds of My Ancestral Estate

32

The Dragon Boat Festival in My Hometown

39

Summer Activities in My Hometown

43

Harvest Season & Ghost Month in My Hometown

50

Incredible Magic Tricks in the Country

53

Vibrant Autumn Colors in My Ancestral Villa

56

Homemade Osmanthus Sugar

59

Special Customs for the Moon Festival & Double Yang Festival in
My Hometown
61
Remembering My Grandmother

64

Magnificent Memories of Nanjing

69

Interesting Incidents at Henan University

75

Becoming a District Attorney

79

The Beginning of the Anti-Japanese War

82

Working as the Leader of the Eighth District

86

The Battle of Huangqiao

88

Wang Ching-Wei Regime

90

Almost Arrested by the Japanese

94

Recovering the Legal System of Jiangsu Province

98

Dreamlike Days of Joy in Suzhou

102

Relocating to Jiangxi

105

Escaping from the Chinese Civil War

108

Why the Nationalists Lost Mainland China in 1949

113

Near-death Experiences

118

Paradise Never Regained

122

Afterword: Legacy

125

Appendix: 24 Chinese Weather Periods in a Year

128

Foreword
An Uprooted Osmanthus Tree
By
Crystal Tai

He was a lawyer. He was an artist. He was my maternal

grandfather.
Because of him, the Asian Moon Festival used to be my favorite
holiday. As his birthday happened to coincide with the harvest
moon, I had his birthday cake in addition to Chinese moon cakes
for dessert every Moon Festival when he was around. However, it
wasn't just my sweet tooth that made me enjoy celebrating the
traditional Chinese holiday and his birthday at the same time. It
was more about the boisterous gathering of the extended family on
my mother's side.
We all admired him like looking up to an evergreen tree. Given his
clear eyesight, sharp hearing, and excellent health through his 80s,
I ardently hoped and seriously believed he would become a
centenarian, until he was diagnosed with lung cancer in late
August of 2005, less than a month before his 90th birthday, or 91st
birthday by traditional Chinese standards, which would count the
nine-month gestation time as one year and add it on.
The diagnosis came right after my GRE exam, for which I had
visited him less frequently for a few months. I thought I had to
spend more time studying for a while. I told myself that there
would be plenty of time after the exam for me to resume my
normal routine of visiting him once a week. How wrong I was!

Guilt grabbed me. I began to blame myself for taking his longevity
for granted. Why did I so firmly believe that he would be a
centenarian in 2015? How come it never crossed my mind that he
might not live longer than 90?
My mother's untimely death hadn't taught me enough about the
fragility of life. I was too caught up with my own grief to see how
much more devastated Mom's parents must have been! When I
went to see them, I just quietly watched TV with them. I didn't feel
like talking. I didn't know I was wasting quality time I could have
spent comforting my maternal grandparents.
If only I could turn the clock back, I would seize every moment of
my visits to ask them about their younger years. Had I done that,
they would have told me stories, which could have been uplifting
for all three of us.
Looking back, what hurts me most is: I knew Granddad was
writing his memoirs but didn't show my enthusiasm about it.
Meanwhile, I actually did have a strong interest in what he was
writing. That was the spring of 2004. Grandma just passed away
from a heart attack. I felt too depressed to read anything in-depth. I
thought I could wait until putting my own life back on track to
learn about his past. Ironically, even after losing both Mom and
Grandma, I still stubbornly assumed that I would have all the time
in the world with Granddad.
During Granddad's writing process, I only asked him once to show
me a little bit of his manuscript. Then I read a passage about many
lovely plants on the grounds of his ancestral estate. His vivid
depiction of them reminded me of the garden he had created within
his former property in Taiwan, essentially my favorite place
through childhood and adolescence. So, I said, Those trees and
flowers in your garden in Taiwan were beautiful, too. It's a pity
that they are gone, too, with the house sold to a land developer.

Speaking of the garden no longer in existence, we both sighed. His

sense of loss must have been twice as deep as mine, because he
had lost two beloved gardens. The first one, in his ancestral villa,
had been burned down during the Chinese Civil War.
He re-established himself in Taiwan and raised his own family
there. The single-family home he purchased in Taipei County
(Today's New Taipei City) became a rarity by 1990, as
overpopulation in Taiwan led to high-density housing. Around
then, my mother told me that Granddad was turning down all the
land developers approaching him, and I was happy to hear that,
given my deeply rooted love for Granddad's gorgeous garden.
However, he eventually sold the house in 1994, after deciding to
permanently reside in the United States.
To him, giving up his second garden must have been paradise lost
again. When I brought it up in 2004, I really should have been
more sensitive about it. Now, I can only hope that he understood
6

how much I missed that garden in Taiwan and took it as a

compliment on his gardening skills.
When I handed those few pages about his childhood favorite plants
back to him, I said I would wait until the completion of his writing
project to read the entire manuscript. I also told him that I would
get his memoirs published for him in either 2014 or 2015 to
celebrate his 100th birthday. Then, I was puzzled to see a sad smile
on his face. He didn't say anything. I didn't understand what he
was thinking, but didn't try to find out. I was too preoccupied with
my own current issues and future plans.
Today I am fulfilling my promise by publishing his memoirs right
before his 100th birthday, but he is not here to receive the present.
What I initially planned to do for him has turned out to be
something for his descendants, including myself, and it's to me that
it is probably the most meaningful. Through reading his memoirs
and translating excerpts from it, I am making up for the wasted
time during my visits with him in 2004 and 2005.
I should have read his memoirs when he was alive and asked him
questions. Then I would've obtained more details. Reading the
memoirs without him around can't compare with that, but I still
deeply appreciate the autobiography, which miraculously takes me
through the time tunnel to watch him play in his family's gardens
as a cheerful child and see him participate in the underground antiJapanese activities as a young man during World War II.
He belonged to the Chinese equivalent of America's Greatest
Generation but hardly ever mentioned the history he had
experienced. Without reading his memoirs, I would have no idea
of his heroic deeds during the war that took place long before my
birth.
Since reading his memoirs, I've come up with a new metaphor for
him. Instead of an evergreen tree, I now compare him to the
magical osmanthus tree on the moon, which, according to Chinese
7

mythology, will always heal itself perfectly after being axed.

Given Granddad's birthday coinciding with the harvest moon and
the flowering season of osmanthus trees in the fall, nothing works
better to symbolize his life.
Using this symbol, I've written a poem in memory of him, titled
The Moon Festival in San Francisco.
Family members reunite at a dining table
As round as the full moon's circle.
Steamed crabs and moon cakes aromatize the banquet
For the Moon Festival.
Also tasty are long noodles and a cake for Granddad's birthday
That coincides with the holiday
Marked by the eighth full moon of the lunar year,
Celebrated by all Chinese in every way.
An auspicious birthday!
More than eight decades ago he heard fortune tellers say.
The harvest moon at birth signifies a lifetime of abundance;
Come what may!
What came year after year was war after war,
Too much gore.
He fled farther and farther away from home
With only his mother's pearl ring from the idyllic life before.
The pearl resembles the full moon shimmering over California
And the full moon that delighted his youthful years in China.
The same moon had silvered the Silk Road
Across Eurasia.
The eternal moon has accompanied the uprooted osmanthus tree
To transplant to the Western territory.
She continues to bless his golden years
Nostalgically.

This poem can serve as a preview of my maternal grandfather's

memoirs. If you like the synopsis, you will love this book.


Smart Architectural Designs with Fascinating Flairs
in My Canal-Woven Hometown

My hometown Taizhou is next to Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province. It

has always been a canal-woven area, as poetically and
picturesquely scenic as the famous county of Yangzhou. Thanks to
the fertile land, villages in eastern Taizhou County had many
highly educated families that lived on their inheritance, as if
enjoying the shade of the trees planted by their ancestors. These
families didn't pursue further prosperity. They stayed where they
had been for generations and treated tenant farmers kindly. They
charged less than one third of the income from each year's crops
while providing all the farming tools for tenant farmers.

Tenant farmers in my hometown all had neat and clean houses.

They lived a stable life in harmony. Our village was in a remote
area, so we were fortunately unaffected while warlords were
fighting one another. During World War II, the Japanese once
invaded Taizhou City but never made it to our village. Before the
Chinese Civil War, which already began by the end of World War
II, villages in eastern Taizhou County remained outside of the
chaotic world, as peaceful as paradise.

10

In the serenity of the canal-woven village, tenant farmers' small

houses dotted the farmland, with little bridges over each canal.
Landlords' mansions were built by canals as well. My ancestral
home, called the Chi's Villa, was a good example. It took about
nine acres of land in a rectangular shape, surrounded by canals,
which allowed boating. Along the canals were mulberry, beech,
elm, and willow trees. A little further from the canals were cypress,
sycamore, osmanthus and ginkgo trees. From a distance, one
would see hills approaching the sky; coming closer, one would
enjoy the ground covered with greenery. The view was majestic.

Our main house was located near the northern side of the estate,
close to the pier, convenient for people to get on and off the boat.
The northside canal was where traffic went in and out of the Chi's
Villa, because it flew into a river. No rivers or creeks were
connected with the other three canals along the eastern, western
and southern borders, which were only meant to provide water for
tenant farmers' irrigation, washing, and drinking.

To enter the Chi's Villa by land, one had to go through the

southeastern entrance and turn west to travel dozens of kilometers
on a shady wide road with lush willow trees along the left side and
huge mulberry trees along the right side. Then the person would
turn right to face the plaza in front of the gate of the main house.
This route provided quite a grand view.

11

The main house looked like a square from the outside. The front
gate faced east, with a finely carved stone drum on each side. The
hallway on the inner side of the gate was very spacious, wide
enough to park two sedan chairs in the centuries before
modernization, with a pair of stools on the side for sedan bearers to
sit down. On both sides of the hallway were rooms for guards to
sleep overnight. Passing through the hall, one would see a big
courtyard. The wall the person would be facing was decorated with
little statues of Chinese folklore deities. On the right side of the
wall was the second gate, which visitors had to walk through
before entering the large courtyard in front of the living room.

In my hometown, all the country homes had cornices that stretched

out. They not only looked pleasant but also shielded summer
sunlight and winter snow. We attached a funnel to each corner of
the cornice in order to conduct rainwater into the vat placed right
under the cornice. We used the rainwater to make tea. It tasted as
fresh as the purest water from a famous spring.

In front of our living room was a hallway going to both sides. The
western corner had a small door leading to the west-side
greenhouse. Our nearest and dearest would take the hallway to
enter the greenhouse and the adjacent home library to have a chat
in an ambiance more relaxed than the formal atmosphere of the
living room.

12

The front facade of the living room contained 16 wooden frames,

each with many divisions. We filled the divisions with thin cotton
paper in spring and fall to let the light in, but replaced it with thick
leather-like paper in winter to block the cold winds. In summer, we
took off the frames and installed railings there. We also hung
bamboo curtains there to let winds come through, bringing in some
cool air.

In the back of the living room, a screen at the center displayed a

huge painting. We had to change the painting according to the
season. During Chinese New Year, it was a painting of messengers
from heaven giving people blessings. For the Dragon Boat Festival
(the Chinese summer solstice), our Chinese ink painting featured a
large dragon. For the Moon Festival (also known as the MidAutumn Festival), we used a painting of pine trees and a crane.
When winter came, there had to be a pine tree, a bamboo plant,
and an ume tree in our painting. On each side of a painting was a
long strip with expert calligraphy on it to form a couplet that
worked like captions for the painting. Matching the couplet with
the painting required profound knowledge of classical Chinese
literature.

13

In front of the painting and couplet was a long table, on which

there were vases of flowers and antiques. The long table was
behind a loveseat which had satin cushions on them and a mini tea
table between the two seats, as well as a step stool in front of each
seat. The loveseat held the most privileged position in our living
room (though it could be two fancy chairs and a tea table in
between in another traditional Chinese living room). There were
eight more seats in the living room, all fancy redwood chairs with
silk drapes and satin cushions, four on each side. Between every
two chairs was a small tea table, convenient and elegant at the
same time.

14

Behind each line of chairs, on each side of the living room was a
set of table and chairs, above which there were perfumed lanterns
in traditional style. The front facade of the living room also
displayed a row of lanterns. During Chinese New Year or for other
celebratory occasions, we added pearl ornaments and silk fringes
to the bottom of each lantern, making them magnificent.

Behind the living room was a courtyard leading to our family

room, where three family alters featured the memorial tablets of
our ancestors among incense burners and candles. We burned
incense every morning and evening there to pay tribute to our
ancestors.

15

There was a short cut between the family room and the westside
greenhouse, so we didn't have to go through the living room. There
were walls and gates between the family room and the east wing or
the west wing of the main house. It was very secure.

With four distinct seasons in my hometown, we experienced snow

in winter and heat in summer. Our buildings had to be solid to
block cold air or heat. When there was no concrete, laborers mixed
lime powder into glutinous rice soup to concoct something similar.
The glue-like mixture lasted thousands of years. It was indeed
stronger than concrete. Besides, whether the roof could block the
cold or heat would depend on the thickness of the tiles. Wellconstructed houses in my hometown had each tile placed semivertically, called standing tiles. This way of construction
consumed more materials, but it worked very effectively!

How many years ago was the villa first built? I don't know. I just
loved it whole-heartedly. The only thing calling for improvement
was the way mice and bugs hid in our ceilings and floors. Given
today's advanced technology, it's no problem at all to exterminate
bugs and mice, but my ancestral home is no longer in existence.
How can my heart stop aching for it?
Translator's note: Where the Chi's Villa used to be is no longer
part of Taizhou County but part of Haian County instead. Haian
used to be a district of Taizhou County, but it's now a county on its
16

own.

17


Chinese New Year's Customs in My Hometown

Nowadays Chinese New Year's greetings are very simple, so it

may be hard for today's people to imagine how many rules there
were about saying Happy New Year in China's past. In the old
days, my family routinely had everyone get together on Chinese
New Year's Eve to bid farewell to the year that was ending. On
Chinese New Year's Day, we gathered in our family room in the
morning and formed two lines, with the eldest in the front and the
youngest in the back, to kneel down and bow to Grandma, who
was sitting in a fancy chair. After that, we would individually bow
to our parents, uncles, and aunts. When we were done with
greetings within our family, our accountant, housekeeper, and all
the male and female servants came to say their New Year's
greetings. In the meantime, lamps and candles brightened the
scene. Incense was burning on the family alter. Firecrackers were
going off. It was indeed very boisterous.

The second of the first lunar month was the day tenant farmers
came to give us their New Year's greetings. All day long, we
treated our tenant farmers lots of food and drinks. We played chess
and majiang, a Chinese board game. We were having a blast. It
would be in the evening when we said good-bye, all full and a
little tipsy. In my memory, landlords and tenant farmers never had
18

any confrontation. We were always like a family.

When relatives and friends came to say Happy New Year to us,
my family followed local customs to make tea and serve
refreshments that came in a fancy box from Fujian, a province
widely known for producing the best lacquerware. The box could
be square, round or in the shape of a five-petal ume blossom. On
top of and around the box were colorful patterns, perhaps painted,
perhaps made with seashells. Such boxes were just gorgeous. Each
box was divided into sections, five in a small box, seven in a big
box, and nine in an even bigger box. Each division was filled with
dried longan (a type of tropical fruit), dried dates, lychee, powdery
white cookies, peanut candies, black sesame candies, white sesame
candies, and soybean candies. Every time we served our guests
some candies, we would say a well wishing phrase, like pass
three exams, have a child soon, great luck and long life, live
long and never age, etc. These words were meant to enhance the
happy mood of the New Year's get-together. They were customary
but sounded graceful at the same time.

If a new in-law or an elderly relative came to visit us, we would

19

present three rounds of tea ceremonies to show our respect. First

we served them longan tea. The next was lotus seed tea and a box
of candies. The last was green tea with dim sum, including rice
cakes, savory buns, and spring rolls. If the guests stayed for dinner,
our family-style banquet might feature shark fin, fish maw, or sea
cucumber as the biggest main dish. Each banquet might have 16,
12, or eight cold appetizers. The cold appetizers would include
fruit. Warm dishes could come in big bowls, medium bowls, or
small bowls. A less expensive banquet was called six bowls,
which meant it only included six main dishes. No matter it was a
dinner banquet or a casual supper, the chicken soup or pork soup
would come last, unlike Chinese restaurants in the West, which
serve soup first, following local customs.

Chinese New Year's events came one after another. We welcomed

the God of Fortune on the fifth of the first lunar month. We lit up
lanterns on the 13th of the first lunar month in preparation for the
Lantern Festival coming on the 15th of the first lunar month. It was
a full-moon night with ornate lanterns as bright as daylight in our
well-manicured gardens. The splendid lanterns stayed around until
the 18th of the first lunar month. Then we took them off, removed
all the offerings from the family alter, and put the portraits of our
ancestors back in storage. That was when we finally felt we had
completed our Chinese New Year's celebrations.

20


Homemade Dim Sum for Chinese New Year

In my hometown, we used to make rice cakes from scratch for

Chinese New Year. The main component of the steamer was a
square wooden frame with many divisions. We also needed a
square piece of white cloth, a square bamboo screen, a wooden
ruler, and a big wooden board carved with auspicious words such
as luck, promotion, longevity, joy, wealth, prosperity, and good
fortune as well as decorative celebrations of peony and
pomegranate flowers.

To make the rice cakes, we laid the wooden board flat first, with
all the carvings face-up. Then we placed the wooden frame over it.
We matched each section of the wooden frame with a word or a
picture on the board. When they were all matched precisely, we
poured in dried rice powder. Then we used our wooden ruler to
press the rice powder, to make sure it settled in each section of the
wooden frame, not too fluffy and not too tight. Next, we covered
the wooden frame with a piece of white cloth, on top of which we
added a piece of bamboo screen. The white cloth and bamboo
screen should be tightly tucked in. After that, we used both hands
to raise the steamer very high and quickly turned it upside down to
21

place it on top of a boiling pot for steaming. We let steam rise

through the holes of the bamboo screen into the steamer. In the
meantime, the white cloth would prevent the rice powder from
trickling down.

Once the steaming was done, we took away the wooden board and
the frame. The task was successfully completed then. The top of
each rice cake would show printed flowers or Chinese words. We
often placed one rice cake on top of another and put a red dot on
top. That was meant to symbolize doubling good fortune.

We made rice balls as well. We mixed ground glutinous rice with

ground long-grain rice and then added water to make dough. We
used either a sweet or savory filling to make a round or pillowshaped rice ball. Each ball would be covered with clean grains of
glutinous rice. Then we steamed the rice balls.

As well, we used pure ground long-grain or short-grain rice to

make rice pancakes. We either steamed them or pan-fried them.
Sometimes we added some vegetables and at times we mixed in
some sugar.

We used wheat flour to make savory buns and plain buns, too. The
fillings of our savory buns might include meat, or they might be
vegetarian. We never pan-fried them. We steamed them all.

22

We made lots and lots of these refreshments, because we had a

large family and needed to host guests, including tenant farmers,
neighbors, relatives, and friends who came to give us their New
Year's greetings. If there were leftovers after the first lunar month,
our family had two ways of preserving them. One was to sun dry
them. The other was to soak them in water, seal them in an urn and
place the urn in a shady, cool area. Both methods helped to
preserve the refreshments for a long time.

The best use of these preserved refreshments was for temporary

helpers during our busiest times on the farm, either for planting or
harvesting. When they helped us on the farm, we heated up
delicious refreshments in the afternoon and asked them to take a
break. Then people would gather in small groups of three or five to
enjoy the refreshments as well as green tea and pipes. We talked
and laughed loud, getting along very well. It was a happy scene on
the farm, utterly unforgettable.

23


Unforgettable Kites in My Childhood

In my hometown, where there are four distinct seasons, the sun

begins to gradually warm up the ground after the 15-day
celebration of Lunar New Year. During this time of year, wild
horse-like children would not stay indoors anymore. Adults would
feel like outdoor activities, too. My second uncle loved to fly kites.
He worked with our family accountant, Mr. Yang, to make
octagonal and heptagonal kites. Their octagonal kite was as big as
eight square feet. The heptagonal one was four feet tall. Whenever
it was sunny and windy, they asked our tenant farmers to come
along. Five or six people cooperated to pull a huge kite. They ran
to let the lines of the kite straighten. They waited until the gigantic
thing rose up very high in the sky to tie the lines around the thick
trunk of a tree. They left their kites out there for days without
bringing them down at night. We the children learned to make
octagonal and heptagonal kites as well. Then we competed with
one another when flying our smaller kites.

24

One year in the first lunar month, I saw a hawk-shaped kite at a

department store in Qutang (a small town with a poetic name
which means winding pond, located in Jiangsu Province). The
hawk had grayish black feathers with some brown highlights, as
well as yellowish green eyes. He looked magnificent, just like a
real hawk! I insisted on buying the kite. The price was one Chinese
dollar and 20 cents. Back then, a bucket of rice only cost two
Chinese dollars. How could I waste so much money on a toy?
However, I was too young to understand the value of money. I
refused to take no for an answer and kept fussing. Eventually,
Grandma had one of our servants buy it for me.

I was full of joy! Holding my kite, I took a boat back to our

village. I didn't even want to eat dinner. I just went to our east-side
garden with my older brother to fly the kite. However, the dusk
winds were unexpectedly strong. A whirlwind abruptly broke the
line of the kite, which fell on top of a mulberry tree. The hawk
seemed to be struggling very hard for his life, only to get himself
broken into pieces. A few male servants climbed the tree and used
a saw to cut down the top of the tree before they were able to bring
the kite down. At this point, the kite was only a bamboo skeleton.

How could a young boy not be heartbroken when facing the

destruction of his favorite toy? My mother saw how miserably I
25

was crying. Then she took out some extremely soft and thin cotton
paper. She cut the paper to match the size of each hole of the
broken kite, glued the pieces of paper to the bamboo frame in
order to fill all the holes, and began to paint a colorful hawk. The
hawk turned out to look even more awe-inspiring than it had been!
I never knew until this moment that my mother was a talented
artist, but, as a married woman, she put down her paintbrush to
take care of family duties and her children. Regretfully, she buried
her talent, which she had inherited from her mother. My maternal
grandmother Yiu Wang Pei-yun, nicknamed the Elderly Lute
Player, was actually a famous artist in our hometown. Her
paintings of flowers and birds were widely circulated.
Unfortunately, they were all lost in wartime. I was unable to keep
even one of them. What a deep regret!

As for the hawk kite, although it was completely fixed, I didn't

dare to fly it again. I only hung it up on the wall to appreciate it
like a piece of art. This incident became an interesting story.

26


Married Daughters' Return on the Second of the
Second Lunar Month

A ballad in my hometown of Taizhou goes, When the second of

the second lunar month comes, / Every family rows a boat taking
married daughters back to their moms. / Those not taking married
daughters home are bums. So, we know married daughters in my
hometown visited their parents on the second of the second lunar
month, not on the second of the first lunar month, as people say
today. The second of the first lunar month is within the first three
days of the Chinese New Year's celebration. Married women in my
hometown were too busy to visit their own parents then.

In my childhood, every time my parents took me and my siblings

to visit my maternal grandparents, some housemaids followed
along. We went through the back door to board a large rental boat
on the canal behind our mansion. The journey was only 45
kilometers long but went through waterways in different widths, so
it was a winding path that took two days. On the boat were
bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. The bow of the boat was
wide enough for us kids to play around. However, our housemaids
had a hard time watching us. They needed to pay attention to us
every minute to prevent us from falling into water. Along the way,
teal currents reflected pink apricot blossoms while birds sang
27

through slender willow leaves, though we were too young to

appreciate the serene scenery.

Once we arrived downtown, our favorite place was the fair in front
of the Town Guardian's Temple. There were many vendors at the
plaza, selling mostly snacks and toys for children. Every time we
went, we left with a full load of things.

The City of Taizhou had tea markets, which didn't exist in our
village. In the tea markets, they served tofu noodles with fresh
ginger and garlic as a dim sum item. Other popular dishes included
deep-fried eels, crab buns, fish noodle soup, cured pork cubes, and
air-dried chicken. In addition, along the northeastern moat, where
it was wide and quiet, wild birds came during the flowering season
of peach trees. Later in the fall and winter, some migrating wild
ducks would pass by. These wild birds and ducks were the most
superb game meats.

Sesame oil from Taizhou is famous nationwide. In the past, it was

made from sesame in a small stone mill pulled by a little donkey.
For the refined grinding job, sesame oil workshops and tofu stores
raised donkeys, so cooked donkey meat was often seen at vending
stalls. It was fresh, tender and tasty, and unavailable anywhere
else.

28

Sesame oil is more than a cooking oil. It can work as a natural

preservative. In eastern Taizhou County, where our village was
located, there were fresh-water shrimp which looked entirely clear
in their soft white shells. They were the best of the best, SO tender
and delicious! In the past, there were no refrigerators. Therefore,
after cleaning the shrimp, we placed their entire bodies in a glass
jar and soaked them in sesame oil. Then we sealed the jar and
brought it to my great uncle in Yangzhou City or my maternal
grandmother in Taizhou City. Months later, the shrimp heads
would still be intact. Their freshness and tenderness would remain
as well!

29


Shepherd's Purse in the Spring Field of My
Hometown

In the second lunar month (roughly coinciding with March),

apricot trees blossomed everywhere in my hometown. Spring rain
was the most enjoyable, just as precious as oil in our view. During
that time of year, it was usually just sprinkling. Everything looked
romantically misty. The almost invisible sprinkles hardly wet our
jackets when they lightly touched us on their way to make grasses
and trees sprout, painting the field in juicy yellow and tender
green. When willow trees extended their eyebrow-shaped long
leaves, creeks were full of crystal clear water. Peach and plum
blossoms were entering a beauty contest. Their fragrance
enthralled every pedestrian when it was breezy. The field rolled
out a green carpet. Then village girls and housewives joined one
another to go sightseeing. They were also seeking wild vegetables.

The wild vegetable I miss most is shepherd's purse. It has a

particularly pleasant scent and tastes superb. It's small. The tallest
stem of its kind won't exceed two inches. Its leaves are tender and
roots grow deep into the soil. If you grab it by hand, you will
either break it or crush it. So, village girls had a smart way to deal
with it. They would take off a metal headpiece from their hair and
insert it into the soil near a shepherd's purse plant about a half an
30

inch deep. Then they pressed it down and tilted it up. The pressure
would push the entire plant to come out of the soil. At this
moment, it would be easily picked up without any damage.

...

There were many ways to eat shepherds purse in my hometown:

stir-fried shepherds purse with bamboo shoots, pan-fried tofu with
shepherds purse, shepherds purse spring rolls, shepherd's purse
won-ton, shepherds purse buns, etc. There are too many of them
for me to name all of them. Shepherd's purse has to be picked up
when it's tender. Once it starts flowering, especially when it
reaches fruition, it won't taste good any more. A ballad in my
hometown goes, When the third of the third lunar month comes, /
shepherd's purse flowers outshine peony blossoms. The song
describes the beauty and bounty of shepherd's purse flowers in my
hometown. Given the fertile land, mild climate, and lush
vegetation in the local area, shepherd's purse just naturally grows.

I remember shepherd's purse was not only made into dishes but
also used as an herb in my hometown. It can help the body get rid
of pathogens. It's especially good at expelling the invading wind
and cold. Eating shepherd's purse frequently can prevent the
common cold. If shepherds purse could be widely available, it
would benefit many people.

31


Spring Splendor on the Grounds of My Ancestral Estate

The eastside garden of my ancestral estate used to be where we

enjoyed wine, tea, flowers, and the moon. This garden had more
peony flowers than anywhere else within the estate. The peony
flowers were planted in four levels of crescent-shaped flower beds,
with the lowest level as the front row and the highest in the back,
so none of the plants was blocked from view. When the peony
flowers were in bloom, every single one of them was visible. They
came in a variety of colors, all glamorous and glorious.

I remember our servants used to bury pig intestines into the soil in
the flower beds every winter. Then they covered the soil with dried
leaves and straw stalks. Since it was freezing, rain and snow
concealed the soil, which would not smell. The roots of the peony
plants were kept warm and nourished, so their flowers naturally
turned out to be huge and splendid in the next spring.

After the peony season, Chinese herbaceous peony presented

thousands of beautiful blooms which were similar to peony
flowers, but these plants were herbaceous. They had a different
flair. Our flower beds had nearly 100 Chinese herbaceous peony
plants. When their stems and leaves withered in winter, we
32

wrapped them with straw stalks to keep them warm and protect
their roots. Then they received a natural fertilizer, namely pig
stool, in the evening. After one night of frost and snow, the
nutrients of the fertilizer entered the soil. The herbaceous peony
flowers slowly absorbed them, so their flowers looked particularly
plump and vibrant in the next spring.

As for why we gave peony and Chinese herbaceous peony

different fertilizers, I have no idea.

In the eastside garden, there was a magnolia tree standing dozens

33

of meters tall. The white flowers all over the tree were as big as
bowls. When evening came, under the light from the windows or
the moonlight, the tree looked like a snow-covered tower from a
distance. Besides, there was a tall iron terrier begonia tree with
plentiful branches and lush leaves. Hanging down from the tree
were clusters of flowers in bright pink with red highlights,
extremely vibrant.

Among the trees in the eastside garden, the jade plum tree offered
the tastiest fruit. It had a thick trunk and strong branches, covered
with snow-white flowers in spring to rival the iron terrier begonia
tree across from it. A jade plum came in the same color as goat
cheese, with a slight hint of green and yellow, radiant and
translucent. It was juicy, fragrant, and sweet, much tastier than
ordinary green or purple plums. Besides, loquats and peaches from
the eastside garden were bigger and sweeter than those from the
westside garden. It must have been the fertilizer meant for the
peony and herbaceous peony that also benefited the fruit trees.

However, the westside garden had nepenthe, evergreen plants,

hyacinths, and lilies all over the ground, as well as bulky gardenia
plants sending us their marvelous fragrance. That was where I
played most frequently through my childhood. The western wall of
the westside garden was covered with climbing roses. Every spring
and summer, they bloomed in high density like embroidered
flowers. Tens of thousands of them formed a flower wall that
absolutely deserved its name!

34

Among the fruit trees in the westside garden, there were a few
banana trees, the same as those in the tropics. However, because of
colder winters in my hometown, our banana trees didn't bear fruit.
With that in mind, we tied straw stalks around our banana trees to
keep them warm in winter. A couple of years later, our banana
trees indeed blossomed splendidly and then bore fruit, but only
two or three bananas per tree. My elder brother was anxious and
curious about them. He picked one, and then found it to have no
flesh but just some sweet juice inside. That made us lose interest.
We never experimented with the banana trees again.

Among all our fruit trees, we loved citron trees in the eastside
garden most. Their citrons were about the size of a pomelo, but
they were rounder, with a particularly subtle, long-lingering scent,
which made it an offering for Buddha at our family alter. We
always collaborated to pick some of them and then brought them
to Grandma, to win her praise.

Another type of fruit from there was steel tangerines. They were a
little bigger than ping pong balls, as hard as steel. They would not
break when we dropped them onto the ground. That's their
namesake.

There were Chinese mahogany trees in the southeastern corner of

35

the eastside garden. Their tender sprouts were fragrant and sweet.
We chopped them and used them as an ingredient for scrambled
eggs or fried rice, making the dishes taste special. If you preserve
the sprouts with salt, you can sprinkle them on raw tofu, and that
will be a great appetizer for cocktails. Chinese mahogany sprouts
come in red or green. The green ones tasted bland, not as good as
the red ones.

According to Chinese classics, Chinese mahogany trees could live

8,000 years. That's why we use Chinese mahogany age as a
metaphor for longevity, and why the Chinese used to figuratively
refer to the father of the family as the Chinese mahogany in our
garden. Some people said that using Chinese mahogany to make a
beam could help the building avoid fires. This legend sounds
absurd, but it must have been the longevity of Chinese mahogany
trees that gave people the idea.

Taiwan did not have aboriginal Chinese mahogany trees, but their
seeds were brought in and cultivated successfully. I obtained four
mahogany seedlings and planted them in my garden in Zhonghe, a
district of the former Taipei County (today's New Taipei City).
They grew into big trees within a few years, greatly exceeding my
expectations.

36

The Chinese mahogany trees on the grounds of my ancestral estate

no longer exist. Neither do those I had in Taiwan. Since my family
had to move far away, the plants we left behind were later
destroyed by others. What a sorrowful regret!

37

Translator's note: There is a short Chinese poem written by my

granddad in the painting. Below is my translation.
When spring is splendid, a pair of swallows keep themselves busy.
Purple clusters of wisteria trigger my dreamy memory.
No longer recognizable is my ancestral mansion's old glory.
With whom can I talk about the rise and fall of my country?

38


The Dragon Boat Festival in My Hometown

During the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth of the fifth lunar
month, my hometown differed from most other places in China by
not having dragon boat races. That was probably because our
waterways were not very wide and our farmers were all boating
experts. Dragon boat racing was not challenging enough for them.

My family always hung an ink painting of a dragon in the living

room for the Dragon Boat Festival. The huge dragon roared in the
painting, half hidden in the clouds and mist coming out of his
mouth, about to bring on winds and rain showers, making us feel
the heat around us disappearing, leaving us cool and comfortable.

Speaking of dragons, Chinese people have always regarded them

as semi-gods, but no one has ever seen a real dragon. We've only
seen their images in pictures. However, some elderly farmers in
my hometown said they had seen a black dragon drinking water.
One summer day right after the Dragon Boat festival, my brother
and I were playing under an arch of wisteria outside of the back
door. All of a sudden, our servants came to tell us to watch black
dragons play with water. We quickly ran to the river bank. Then
we saw a black dragon and a white one in the northeastern sky, far
away from us. They were tumbling and twisting, sometimes
thicker on top and thinner at the bottom, sometimes thinner on top
39

and thicker at the bottom. It was a marvelous view!

In the meantime, winds became stronger where we were. Leaves

of the trees around us were trembling. A rain shower seemed to be
looming. In more than 10 minutes, the two dragons disappeared.
We only saw the dragons' bodies, not their faces, but we were
content about it. Later, as I grew up, I realized the phenomenon
actually had been a typhoon.

People in my village loved dragons. They made a special leafwrapped rice dish, dragon zongzi, which was a few feet long,
with a thick head and thin tail, just like a green dragon. It was
difficult to make those leaf-wrapped rice dragons. Only those with
specialized skills were able to produce them as traditional wedding
gifts. They did not use ordinary bamboo leaves to wrap glutinous
rice when creating the dragon shape. Instead, they used leaves
from a special type of reed. Such plants grew densely along the
canals surrounding my family's villa. Their leaves were thin and
large, with a particularly refreshing scent. These leaves were used
not only to wrap those super-size rice dragons but also for regular
zongzi consumed during the Dragon Boat Festival.

40

My hometown had some special rules for the Dragon Boat

Festival. For instance, all the family members weighed themselves
on this day. It was meant as a reminder for people to take care of
their health while summer heat might affect their appetite and
cause fatigue. After weighing themselves, children had to sit on the
threshold of the door, and each of them would be given a boiled
egg to eat there. The boiled egg eaten that way was believed to
help children grow faster. I don't know where or how the
superstition started.

Chinese people say the Dragon Boat Festival is when all the
41

poisonous pathogens come out. On this day, every household of

my hometown tied some calamus and wormweed stalks onto the
windows for their anti-pathogenic capacities. People also filled a
container with dried wormweed leaves, poured in a little realgar,
and then burned the contents. They placed such a container in
every room, with the door closed to let the smoke permeate the
room.

Children were not allowed to drink realgar wine, so adults would

dab some realgar wine on each child's forehead to draw the
Chinese character wang, which means king, to empower the
child against pathogens. In the meantime, each child was wearing
a vest with a tiger, a snake, or some bugs embroidered on it.
Babies were also wearing shoes and hats decorated with tigerhead-shaped ornaments. People in my hometown believed such
outfits could make children invincible to all kinds of poison.

Chinese culture, being five thousand years old, is very complex.

There's too much to learn about it. Even weird customs are worth
mentioning here, as they have spiced up country life.
Translator's note: The Chinese believe realgar is a universal
antidote to poison.

42


Summer Activities in My Hometown

I have heard that rice sprout songs were once popular in Mainland
China. I have no idea where those songs came from, but there were
rice sprout songs in my hometown. Whenever summer heat
gradually rose, evaporating water from our rice paddies, a lot of
irrigation was needed. Our old cows pulled the water mills too
slowly, so families came out to operate the water mills. The stifling
summer heat tended to tire people out. That was why we sang rice
sprout songs to energize ourselves. I only remember those songs
sounded nice, but at the time I never thought of trying to
understand their lyrics or melodies.

After pedaling the water mills, we the children sometimes cut off a
thin bamboo branch, tied a thick thread onto it, attached a hook
which had been made of a needle, and used grains of cooked rice
as the bait to go fishing by the creek. We enjoyed watching big fish
and small ones try to surpass one another to reach the food. In the
meantime, children in my hometown also captured cicadas and
birds, but I hardly joined them.

Once I had a starling as my pet. Our tenant farmer Nan-tze gave it

43

to me. It had a feathery crown on its head. When it raised its head
to sing high notes, it definitely looked majestic! Its entire body
was shimmering black, but when it spread its wings, two pure
white round shapes would appear. With its golden eyes, it just
looked adorable. It was absolutely clever. After half a year of
training, it would remember the way back after flying out of the
cage. I often kept the cage open, letting it come and go freely.

One day I closed the cage and hung it in the shade of a peach tree
in the eastside garden. Inadvertently, I forgot to bring the cage
indoors in the evening. It was summer, but the winds and
dampness of the evening were too much for my starling. It froze to
death. I was heart-broken. The sad scenario still clearly appears in
front of my eyes today.

In the middle of the summer, my family always built a temporary

pavilion by the main road near our southern entrance. We placed a
big bucket of tea there for pedestrians to take a break and quench
their thirst. The pavilion would also shelter them from rain
showers that happened most frequently in summer.

The northern border of our villa had tall neem trees along the canal
on both sides of the pier. The neem trees stretched out their dense
and long branches with symmetrical pairs of leaves looking like
fanned-out tails of peacocks. These green leaves provided dense
shade to keep us from sun exposure while we were getting on or
off the boat. Our family accountant, Mr. Yang, even hung a scale
44

on a branch of a neem tree to let farmers weigh their rice. One

bucket of rice was 35 to 40 kilograms. That showed how solid the
neem branch was.

Mr. Yang really knew how to grow lotus flowers. He planted

several pots of them in one of our courtyards. The way he did it
was, he first used stacks of bricks to raise a large urn, at the bottom
of which he laid cooked soybeans and mixed in mud from a nearby
stream, and then he buried lotus roots down there. He let the soil
sun-dry and waited until little sprouts came out to add water. In the
meantime, he used thin bamboo branches to make a round frame
with numerous divisions and placed it on top of the urn. Later,
when lotus flowers and leaves grew very tall, they would go
through the holes of the bamboo frame, which would keep them
growing straight up, protecting them from being blown down or
broken by the wind.

The lotus flowers planted by Mr. Yang came in pink and white.
They were as plump as those in the pond, and they bore seeds
which tasted very fresh and subtly sweet. However, we didn't dare
to pick any. We only wished for faster growth of the seedpods and
kept waiting for Mr. Yang to give us some lotus seeds to satisfy
our craving.

45

We often ran to the eastern area of our villa for a large bamboo
grove with dense leaves covering the sky like green clouds. In hot
summer, we played in the cool bamboo grove, watching those red
and black dragonflies fly. We ran over fallen bamboo leaves which
felt as soft as a carpet when we stepped on them. We were running
around, playing hide-and-seek.

During the seasonal transition from summer to fall, there were

more golden crickets in the bushes. They sang lovely songs. We
the children caught many of them and kept them like little pets.

46

Outside of the bamboo grove, there was a sycamore tree standing

more than 30 kilometers tall. It looked magnificent and ethereal.
The texture of sycamore wood is light but dense. Worms cannot
survive in it. That explains why the Chinese lute was made of
sycamore wood. Chinese intellectuals have always looked up to
sycamore trees.

Sycamore blossoms are white, in the same shape as lotus flowers.

Their seeds are round, like brown pearls. We compressed those
seeds for cooking oil. Meanwhile, given the glue-like nature of
sycamore sap, people in my village shaved long and thin pieces off
47

sycamore wood and called them shaved flowers. Women often

cut a small slice of a shaved flower and placed it in water for its
sap to melt into the water. Then they used the sticky liquid as hair
mousse. It was economical and effective.

About sycamore trees: One more point worth mentioning is that

ancient Chinese meteorologists assigned 24 weather periods to
each calendar year. Whenever the weather period called the first
signs of autumn came, one leaf always fell off the sycamore tree
in my family's villa. It never missed once in so many years. No
wonder ancient Chinese people said, We can tell autumn is here
by looking at one falling leaf. That makes great sense and
deserves admiration!
Translator's note: The 24 weather periods mentioned above, also
known as solar terms in English, were determined by the
movement of sunlight and meant to help farmers decide what to do
on the farm. These weather periods belong to a Chinese almanac
which is still in use in the Chinese world today. The almanac
defines the four seasons somewhat differently than modern science
does. Each season comes about six weeks earlier on the almanac
than it does by modern definition. This is because ancient Chinese
meteorologists considered the first signs of a season the onset of
the season. As illustrated in the paragraph above, the weather
period called the first signs of autumn coincides with the first
leaf falling from a sycamore tree every year. That happens in early
August, when the weather is still hot. It's natural for Westerners to
look upon August as a summer month. However, the Chinese
weather periods make logical sense, too. It's interesting to look at
the disparity in how to define the four seasons between the East
and the West as an example of cultural difference.

48

49


Harvest Season & Ghost Month in My Hometown

In my hometown, when the first signs of autumn (see the

translator's note in the previous chapter) appeared, it was time to
harvest rice. Our rice paddies all looked golden then. Farmers were
busy harvesting. A pleasant scent of raw rice spread everywhere.
So did bursts of joyful laughter. Children often competed with one
another to pick up rice panicles left in the field after the harvest. At
this time, old cows didn't have to pull water mills any more, but
they had to pull rice-grinding stone mills.

We, the children, understood that we had to give our hard-working

old cows credit for our harvest. We liked the stable and eventempered cows very much. Cows contributed immensely to farm
work, and they were raised like members of each farmer's family
for years. Words could not describe the special feelings between
farmers and their cows. So, the killing of cows was forbidden. Our
villagers didn't eat beef, either.

The first signs of autumn as a weather period usually coincides

with the seventh lunar month. At this time of year, Altair and Vega
were particularly bright stars in the evening. A story was therefore
made up about them, calling them a couple in love, with Altair as a
cowboy and Vega as a weaving goddess. They had a long-distance
50

relationship across the Milky Way. Only on the seventh of the

seventh lunar month, magpies would come to form a bridge by
lining up and each holding the preceding one's tail by mouth. Then
Altair and Vega would meet on the magpie bridge.

When these two stars appeared, unwed young ladies in my

hometown would display fruit and sewing kits outdoors. Then they
prayed to the sky. This ritual was called praying for deftness,
which means they wished to become more clever and deft, to do
better needlework.

Meanwhile, the seventh lunar month is called ghost month in

Chinese culture. After our harvest, we always performed an
outdoor ritual to thank gods for the crops. Then the 15th of the
seventh lunar month marked the Ghost Festival, during which we
would pray to our ancestors, thinking of them like the source of
water we were drinking. On this day, my family routinely cleaned
up the entire villa and widely opened our front gate as well as the
second gate. We moved five sets of dining tables and chairs to the
living room and placed banquet dishes on the tables during lunch
time. Our family members took turns to bow to the tables and
chairs respectfully as if seeing our ancestors sitting there. We
poured wine for them and burned fake currency bills for them as
money they could spend in the next world. After worshiping the
ancestors, we did not forget those pitiable homeless ghosts. The
30th of the seventh lunar month in my hometown was therefore the
day to help homeless ghosts do better.

51

On the 30th of the seventh lunar month, there were rituals on water
in my hometown. People lined several wooden boats up and tied
them together to place a platform between every two of them.
Each platform carried seven or nine Buddhist monks chanting
Buddhist classics. In the meantime, workers rowed the boats to
slowly slide on the wide or narrow waterways while the person at
the stern of each boat lit lotus lamps made of color paper and
placed them on the water. This ritual came from a Buddhist belief
that there is a seven-color lotus pond in the Buddhist heaven,
namely Nirvana. It's hard to imagine what the seven-color lotus
pond looks like, but those beautiful lotus lamps always glow in my
childhood memories, which I keep revisiting through my life.

52


Incredible Magic Tricks in the Country

That was in the early to mid 1920s. After our autumn harvest, our
village enjoyed abundance and leisure. Groups of jugglers
therefore came to stage their shows.

In my childhood, my favorite performances were magic and fire

tricks. The clown performing fire tricks wore a weird costume and
had a funny facial expression. He put a handful of shredded paper
into his mouth, and then another handful, until his mouth was full.
Next, he put on airs, opened his mouth, and surprisingly grabbed
one line out of it. Some little flags were attached to the line. As the
line came out longer and longer, more and more small flags
appeared. Once they were all out, smoke and fire suddenly shot out
of his mouth. In an instant, the fire burned away all the flags
without leaving a trace!

A little later, an elderly man appeared on stage, wearing a Chinese

men's gown. He was holding a large piece of black cloth to show
the audience that there was nothing hidden in it. Then he laid it flat
on the ground but used his thumb and index finger to pinch the
center of the cloth. He raised it up a little, and his other hand went
underneath the cloth to bring out one plate of food after another. In
53

the end, he abruptly pulled away the black cloth to reveal a huge
jug of Shaoxing rice wine.

The elderly man said, This is a banquet with all the great dishes
you could possibly get, but we don't have any fruit. Then he
summoned a boy about seven or eight years old, and threw a rope
into the air. To everyone's astonishment, the rope stood up
vertically by itself! He ordered the child to climb the rope all the
way up into heaven, to steal a few Saturn peaches from the peach
orchard that belonged to Queen Mother of Heaven for the
audience.

The child said it would be too dangerous and he wouldn't dare to

do it. However, the elderly man forced him to go and told him that
he would be handsomely rewarded. The child had no choice but
climb up. Then there was silence for quite a while.

The elderly man totally panicked. He was murmuring to pray for

the child's safety.

All of a sudden, a few peaches fell down. Everyone in the

audience cheered. However, immediately following our excitement
about the child's success, we unexpectedly saw broken arms and
legs drop from above. The elderly man started crying. He said he
just wanted to please the audience, but his grandson died for that,
and in the future he would have no one to rely on!
54

His production assistants all came out to comfort him and asked
everyone to show some compassion for him. At this time, audience
members didn't give it a second thought before taking out their
wallets. No one tried to figure out the mechanism of those magic
tricks. Everyone just marveled at them, and commented that it
would be nice to give the traveling jugglers a little support. This
demonstrated how innocent and hospitable my fellow townspeople
were.

It has been decades since then. Looking back, I still can't figure out
how those magic tricks were put together in an era when
technology was backward.

55


Vibrant Autumn Colors in My Ancestral Villa

In ancient China, the government had four ministries: of ceremony,

of defense, of justice, and of labor. This was meant to match
politics with seasons: the ministry of ceremony with spring for its
warmth, the ministry of defense with summer for its heat, the
ministry of justice with fall for its harshness, and the ministry of
labor with winter for its calmness. These all make sense, but
autumn may not appear desolate! In my ancestral villa, there were
thousands of autumn blossoms, glorious and gorgeous, nothing
less than the spring flowers preceding them!

In the beginning of fall, balsam flowers in a variety of colors were

all over the corners and by the roads. My elder sister always
picked some of their petals, placed them in a porcelain bowl, and
crushed them with chopsticks for some juice. She and my younger
sister often brushed a little balsam juice on their fingernails and
wrapped them up with strips of cloth. In the next morning, they
took off the strips, and their fingernails had turned pink. The color
would last for a week. Those who preferred deep red just needed to
apply the juice a few more times. The shade of the color could be
easily adjusted based on everyone's preference, and the dye looked
naturally radiant!

56

Useful autumn flowers also included hibiscus. By an old water

well on the grounds of my ancestral estate, there were eight
hibiscus plants in a row, with flowers in pink, lavender, butter
yellow, and ivory. Once their flowers withered and leaves fell, we
cut off their stems and soaked them in water until their surface
skin rotted. Then we obtained lots of long fiber to make ropes,
which would appear in the finest hue of white.

In the courtyard in front of our main house, our family accountant,

Mr. Yang, created a flower hill with potted chrysanthemums in
various colors, with many different names. Before planting the
chrysanthemums, he grew wormwood first. Once the wormwood
plants were big enough, he cut their stems open, inserted
chrysanthemum stems, and tied them together with a linen thread.
He left them in a cool, shady place for the wormwood and the
chrysanthemum to grow into one. Then he took the linen thread
off. Perhaps because wormwood thrived easily, the
chrysanthemums grew faster than usual. They were tall and plump.
Each bloom had a diameter of four to five inches. To keep the
chrysanthemums from being too top-heavy, he used bamboo
branches to support them. Then he laid bricks underneath each
flower pot to raise them to different heights in any way he liked.
His arrangement of the potted chrysanthemums was very eyecatching, and will always be unforgettable to me.

57

Translator's note: Below is my English translation of the Chinese

poem titled In Praise of Chrysanthemums, from The Dream of
the Red Chamber, a classical Chinese novel.
The Muse of lyric poetry keeps haunting me night and day,
Making me murmur while walking around the fence or leaning against a
rock on my way.
My writing brush depicts the beauty of chrysanthemums as I scribble by
the frost-covered wooden window;
My open lips catch the fragrance of chrysanthemums when I chant to the
moon-lit Milky Way:
A full page of self pity to express my regrets from the distant past;
A brief phrase for which person to understand my feelings about this
autumn day?
Since the famous writer Tao commented on chrysanthemums,
For millennia, their high resilience has won compliments, which remain
today.

58


Homemade Osmanthus Sugar

There were many osmanthus trees on the grounds of my ancestral

estate. The ever-blooming osmanthus tree in the westside
greenhouse did bloom all year round to deserve its name. The gold
and silver osmanthus trees blossomed in the fall. The gold
osmanthus blossoms were deep yellow with a tint of red. The
silver ones were light yellow with a tint of white. People could
smell their fragrance from 10 miles away. Bakeries far and near
would deliver white sugar to our villa in exchange for osmanthus
blossoms, which they would use to make desserts such as
osmanthus cakes, osmanthus rice balls, and osmanthus-garnished
lotus roots. Our family produced our own osmanthus sugar, too,
not only for our own consumption, but also as gifts for our
relatives and friends.

It was complicated to manually produce osmanthus sugar. First, it

required fresh blossoms. Fallen flowers from the night before or
those with rusty stains could not be used. Our eastside garden had
a gold osmanthus king, with a thick trunk and strong branches to
reach the sky, resist winds, and absorb dews, also with particularly
plump blossoms, which were the best material for osmanthus
sugar. Our servants always spread a reed mat under the tree before
climbing up to shake it. Then the blossoms fell like rain. It was
easy to get a full load of them.
59

We placed the fresh osmanthus flowers on the kitchen table. Each

of us used the right index finger to press a flower stem, lightly
pushing forward or backward, and then the flower would detach
itself from the stem. It was time consuming to process the flowers
one by one like this, but it was necessary, because the stems were
too bitter for us to eat.

Once we removed all the stems, we put the flowers into a huge
bowl and added some alum. Then we used a pestle to carefully
crush the flowers into a paste. The finer the texture, the better the
results. We subsequently wrapped the flower paste with clean cloth
and pressed it very hard until the bitter juice all came out. This was
when we mixed the paste with white sugar. The sugar was more or
less in an equal amount as the osmanthus paste. As soon as we
stirred the mixture evenly, we let it sun-dry. It had to be
completely dry for a long preservation.

When the osmanthus sugar was for certain thoroughly dry, we used
a porcelain grinder to grind it into powder. Then we kept the
ground osmanthus sugar in a tightly sealed glass jar. This would
preserve its color and fragrance forever.

60


Special Customs for the Moon Festival
& Double Yang Festival in My Hometown

The 15th of the eighth lunar month is my birthday, and it was the
happiest day for villagers in my hometown. At this time of year, all
the crops had been harvested. Chickens were plump and ducks
meaty. Water chestnuts, lotus roots, all types of fruit and
vegetables, fish, shrimp, crabs and turtles (1) were all in
abundance. They all tasted extremely delicious!

Everyone ate well and dressed well. Then we greatly enjoyed the
poetic and picturesque night with the brightest and fullest moon. In
the meantime, we were delighted about our family reunion (2).

All Chinese eat Moon cakes during the Moon Festival. In my

hometown, we had one more dim sum item on this holiday: sticky
cakes. We made them from scratch by grinding glutinous rice into
powder first. Then we added water to the ground glutinous rice
and created a dough. We also made a savory filling (3) by stirfrying green vegetables, pork, black mushrooms, and bamboo
shoots. Each sticky cake was about the size of the palm. We used
low heat to slowly bake the sticky cakes in a pan. They tasted
much better than moon cakes.

61

Customarily, married daughters in Taizhou returned to their

parents' house on the 16th of the eighth lunar month to eat sticky
cakes. I'm not sure how this custom originated. However, I think
moon cakes might have evolved from sticky cakes (4).

Another traditional Chinese holiday in the fall is the Double Yang

Festival (5) on the ninth of the ninth lunar month. According to
legend, there was an elderly man named Huan Jing, and he met a
fairy sage who said to him, A disaster will happen to you, but if
you go to a high place on the ninth of the ninth lunar month, you
can avoid it. Huan Jing did climb a high hill on this day and did
survive the crisis. He became a centenarian. So, the Double Yang
Festival is also known as Senior Citizen's Day.

My hometown is located on a plain. We had no high mountains to

climb, so we ate rice cakes for the pronunciation of the word
cake being the same as height in Chinese. The rice cakes were
meant to substitute for mountain climbing. In the meantime,
villagers made many flags with color paper and displayed them
everywhere to keep bad luck away. That was superstitious, but
quite interesting to watch.
Translator's notes:
1. Chinese people eat turtle meat.

62

2. The Moon Festival is a Chinese holiday for family reunions.

3. According to web sources, some people in Taizhou make sweet
fillings for sticky cakes.
4. Moon cakes and sticky cakes are about the same size, but
instead of ground glutinous rice, wheat flour is used to make
dough for the crust of each moon cake. Usually, moon cakes come
with sweet fillings to be served as dessert during the Moon
Festival.
5. The ninth of the ninth lunar month is called the Double Yang
Festival because number nine is considered something related to
yang, which roughly means active force in Chinese. The origin
of the holiday, namely Huan Jing's story, has some variations.
According to another version, which is more popular, it was a
Taoist priest who told Huan Jing to go hiking. No one can prove
which version of story is the most accurate. However, Huan Jing
went hiking in all of the versions, and that was the beginning of
the hiking custom for the Double Yang Festival.

63


Remembering My Grandma

My grandmother saved my life. In the first moment after my birth,

which coincided with the Moon Festival of 1915, I suddenly fell
onto the floor and hit my head. A bump as big as an egg yolk
emerged from the upper right corner of my head. My whole
family was shocked and scared! Fortunately, one of my great
uncle's tenant farmers had a son who practiced surgical
acupuncture. His family name was Sun and his given name Tseshih. My grandma immediately decided to have him treat me,
promising him a big reward. Three days later, the bump softened.
Grandma asked Dr. Sun to burn some incense and pray to the
family alter before piercing the bump with a little copper knife.
He squeezed pus and static blood out of the bump. Then he took
great care of the incision. It turned out to heal completely!

At the time my great grandfather Hsin-po, grandfather Langhsuan and great uncle Yao-hsuan had all passed away. Grandma
was the head of the household. Grandma came from the
prestigious Chung family living on Zuowei Street in Yangzhou
City. Her brother Yang-Chi was a tycoon in the salt industry.
64

Grandma was very kind and loving. In my childhood, I never saw

her lose her temper despite the stress she bore. Our family had a
rice business, a private bank, and rice paddies, with many other
quotidian things going on. My great uncle in Yangzhou also
owned some fertile land in our village. His barn was north of our
villa. Our family helped him with all he had to do for his tenant
farmers, such as farming tool maintenance and money
transactions. Grandma calmly took charge of all these matters and
kept everything organized.

My ancestors used to work as government officials in the Ministry

of Education during the Qing Dynasty. When the Republic of
China was new, old customs remained, so my family still
appeared high-class. I remember we had a tutor, an accountant, a
housekeeper, guards, a chef, kitchen assistants, farm workers and
servants, comprising a total of more than 20 people. The eldest of
them was the chef, the Fourth Great Uncle Chang. He was my
great grandfather's page boy, following my great grandfather to
many different places. When my great grandfather resigned from
his government job and returned home, the page boy was
promoted to chef. He had been in charge of our family's meals for
65

four generations. To show our respect to this elderly man, we

called him the Fourth Great Uncle Chang. He had a stubborn side.
When men's long hair was no longer in vogue, he kept his long
queue and wouldn't cut it off. He was very fond of children.
Whenever he made special gourmet dishes for Grandma, he would
give some to us. He would also let us have lots of the steamed rice
cakes and pancakes made for Chinese New Year or other holidays.

Besides the Fourth Great Uncle Chang, Granny Hu received the

most respect. She waited on my grandma for decades, paying
attention to every detail. Every evening, the Fourth Great Uncle
Chang went through Granny Hu to ask Grandma what to cook for
her the next day. The rest of the dishes were all up to him to
decide.

In Grandma's room, there were many porcelain containers filled

with all kinds of candies, cookies, and snacks. Granny Hu always
grabbed a bunch of the goodies and showered us with them.

Although Grandma had an aristocratic lifestyle, she was capable

of handling hardships. In 1927, warlords were fighting and people
were scared. Grandma led our whole family to temporarily move
to our accountant Uncle Yang's hometown, which was surrounded
by waterways and only reachable by boat. Over there, we stayed
in a hut, drinking low-quality tea and eating plain rice. Grandma
was perfectly fine with that.
66

After returning home, Grandma purchased some long guns, each

of which contained nine bullets, to equip our guards for self
defense. Whenever army deserters came, she gave them some
money and advised them to disarm themselves and return to farm
work. My hometown therefore never had any arson, homicide, or
robbery, all thanks to my Grandma.

Grandma moved to the eastside garden of our villa in her last

years, studying Buddhism every day. During my summer break in
1934, I also slept in a room by the eastside garden to keep her
company day and night. On July 18, Grandma woke me up before
dawn. I took her arm and helped her sit down on a recliner. By
this time Granny Hu had come to us. She told me to get more
help. I rushed to the west-wing rooms to tell my father, second
uncle and second aunt. That was before the break of dawn. We
suddenly heard ethereal music from the sky. It was a Chinesestyle symphony of wind and string instruments. It was mellifluous
and pleasant, making us forget all our concerns and feel joyful.
More than 10 minutes later, the music became more and more
distant. It gradually faded away, leaving only silence. That was
when Grandma quietly passed away in her seated position.

67

Looking back, I find the tune I heard around my grandma's

passing superior to any other piece of music. Thinking it was
before dawn and there were no other households around, I'm sure
the ethereal music was coming from heaven to welcome my
grandma. There should be no doubt about it!

...

Before the completion of my grandma's 49-day memorial service,

school was about to start. To leave for Henan University in
Kaifeng City, I had no choice but bow to bid farewell to my
grandma's coffin. I graduated in the summer of 1936. Grandma
had been resting in our family cemetery in a nearby village named
Ma's Meander, right beside my granddad. I made a special trip to
the cemetery right after my graduation. While kneeling in front of
her grave, I told her that I had finished college and expressed my
deep gratitude to her. Verdant were the cypress trees providing
lush shade for the cemetery. That beautiful and emotional scene
still stays on my mind. I've never forgotten it at any moment...
Translator's note: It's a Chinese tradition for a deceased person's
descendants to stay nearby for the memorial service taking place
at a Buddhist temple for 49 days.

68


Magnificent Memories of Nanjing

Nanjing used to be called Jinling. It was the capital of six

dynasties. Picturesque were countless relics of those glorious
dynasties and the willow-tree-lined Qinhuai River in the mist.

I was attending Culture University, part of which was located

around Hu's Temple in the Crouching Dragon Sub-district inside
of the West Han Gate. There were traditional-Chinese-style
chambers and pavilions on campus, with green mountains behind
and the Black Dragon Lake in front. The view was superb! To the
east of the temple, there were newly built Western-style
classrooms. This area was next to Crouching Tiger Gate as well as
Mount Cool (the phonetic translation of the name is Qingliang).
The terrain did look like crouching tigers and dragons to me.

On top of the peak, there was a pavilion named Panoramic View.

Looking out from the pavilion, one would see no boundaries. The
river ran down powerfully, surrounded by mountains and old
palaces. The view resembled a landscape painting. Around the
pavilion were Mount Zijin (which means purple and gold),
69

Mount Tang, Mount Niushou (meaning bull head), Yuhuatai

(rain and flowers) Hill, Xuanwu Lake, Mochou (no more
melancholy) Lake, Northernmost Chamber, Swallow
Breakwater, the Stonestown, and relics of ancient palaces. There
were countless historical sites.

The Crouching Dragon Sub-district was on the western side of

Mount Cool. The Stonestown region was right beneath it. The
Yangtze River once ran right by this old town, but later changed
its course and moved north. The area where the river had been
was just marshland. The misty wilderness with wild grasses
provoked my thoughts of history.

I often went stair climbing from the Crouching Dragon Subdistrict to the historical Cool Temple. In front of the temple was
the Leave Sweeping Chamber, which was grand with colors and
fragrances from history. I leaned by the railing of the chamber,
looking far out into the distance. Above me was the endless sky
and beneath me Stonestown. Yuhuatai was on my left and the
Yangtze River on my right. I was facing Mochou Lake, feeling as
if I were a hermit in the green mountains. It was such a serene and
ethereal place. I loved it deeply.

70

I remember a long couplet hanging in the chamber. It read:

Who gave the Cool name to this peak? It watched the rise and fall
of several dynasties, lamenting on the losses of many splendid
dreams.
I share these tender feelings with that person. I see the far and
near around this chamber, listening to the sounds of some falling
leaves.

The main road of the Crouching Dragon Sub-district, starting

from the West Han Gate, went along a peripheral wall of the old
town, and looped around Mount Cool to reach the Crouching
Tiger Gate, which embraced green mountains on the left and a
lake on the right. It certainly deserves its name! Every evening
after dinner, I took a walk with some classmates at dusk. We
climbed the stairs to the top of the old town's wall. The top was
wide enough for automobiles to run. When we were at the top, we
saw what seemed thousands of miles, ancient palaces and
chambers beneath. We looked west to the Yangtze River, which
came like a huge waterfall from the sky! The magnificent view
was very rare to come by.

At the time, my second uncle on my mother's side was a famous

lawyer in Nanjing. When he first moved to Nanjing, he lived in
71

Hu's Villa at Mingyang Street in the southern area of the city. The
garden of the villa had dozens of peony plants. During their
flowering season, bountiful purple and red blooms brightened the
garden and perfumed the beaded curtains around the mansion.
This villa first belonged to Sir Xu Da during the beginning of the
Ming Dynasty before becoming the Hu family's property. Walking
into the garden, I saw artistically displayed rocks and many
buildings on my right, as well as a huge lake on my left. The lake
was surrounded by hills, woods, and chambers. The layout of the
estate resembled that of the Grandview Garden in The Dream of
the Red Chamber (a critically acclaimed and widely popular
classical Chinese novel, briefly mentioned earlier in this book).

Later my second uncle purchased a home at Qianzhang Alley. It

did not have hills or a lake but came with three gardens where
flowers, trees, pavilions and terraces fascinated visitors. The main
house had carved beams and painted pillars, all in classical
Chinese style. The grand mansion was at once opulent but
tasteful.

During my two years in Nanjing, I sometimes stayed with my

uncle and sometimes lived on campus. I did not know how to
work hard as a young man. I only wanted to have fun. Whenever I
returned home for my winter or summer break, I first took a train
from Nanjing to Zhenjiang and stayed at a hotel there for the
night. The next day I boarded a ship to cross the Yangtze River,
passing Yangzhou, to stop in downtown Taizhou overnight. On the
72

third day, I took a boat to Qutang (a suburban town with a poetic

Chinese name, which means winding pond). Then my family
would send someone to pick me up, or our private bank in Qutang
would have someone give me a ride to my country home. That
demonstrated how much my grandmother and father spoiled me.

Culture University in Nanjing was founded by warlords Yan Hsishan and Feng Yu-hsiang. Although it once had Yu You-jen, a
senior officer of the Nationalist Party, as its chancellor, it
encountered some lingering political prejudice. The university
kept waiting for the Nationalist government's official recognition,
and that seemed to have a negative impact on the students' future.
So, I asked the Ministry of Education to give me a qualifying
exam which would make me eligible to transfer to the junior class
of any public university. When I was thinking about which
university to transfer to, my grandmother passed away and a
fellow townsman, Liu Hsing-chen, came to her funeral. Dr. Liu
(Liu was his family name, given the surname-first Chinese name
order) had earned his doctorate in France. He was teaching
economics at Henan University. When we talked about my
education, he suggested that I apply for Henan University. Since
school was going to start soon, I was unable to stay until after
completing the 49-day mourning period for my grandmother. That
was a real regret. However, I easily passed the transfer exams.
That must have resulted from my grandmother's blessings.
Translator's note: Nanjing is also known as Nanking because
73

there are two systems of translating Chinese names into English

words phonetically. The old name Nanking came from the WadeGiles system. This book uses the new system, pinyin, for all the
Chinese city names in order for the reader to find them in the
current map of China. However, Wade-Giles is applied to the
English transliterations of most Chinese people's names in this
book because they lived in the era when the old system was in
place.

74


Interesting Incidents at Henan University

When I transferred into Henan University, it had Schools of

Humanities, Sciences, Medicine, Agronomy, and Engineering, six
of them in total. It was a grand university with many talented
faculty members. My dorm room was in a new three-story
building with clear windows and clean furniture. It was spacious,
too. There were supposed to be two students to share each room,
but my roommate didn't like the restrictions of dorm life and
chose to commute, so I had the room all to myself. How lucky I
was! Such a nice environment was tremendously helpful for me to
concentrate on my studies.

The main campus of Henan University was located in the

northeastern corner of Kaifeng City. The huge campus had various
sports fields on the left and an affiliated hospital on the right. It
was well-known nationwide for its large number of buildings. In
the meantime, there were shady trees and particularly vivacious
roses on campus.

People in Henan Province ate noodles or wheat buns as their

staple food, but the university cafeteria provided rice for students
from the south. They placed clean rice in a big bowl and steamed
the rice along with wheat buns. Although that was quite easy for
75

them to do, the students asking for rice had to pay double.

North of the campus was the famous Iron Tower, built during the
Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). It's a 13-story building.
According to history, this tower was initially located on top of
Gun Hill, but it was already on the ground level when I visited.
Gun Hill disappeared because the Yellow River overflowed many
times, bringing lots and lots of sand to raise the land to the height
of the hill. An old Chinese metaphor, sea areas turned into
mulberry fields, can be used to describe the inevitable change,
which made me sigh.

I once climbed to the top of the tower to view the terrain of

Kaifeng. The Yellow River came from the Loess Plateau and
brought large quantities of mud and sand, raising the bed of the
river day by day. It routinely overflowed every year. I saw sand
bags at the gate of the city and strategic locations. They were
meant to prevent disasters from happening.

Beside the Iron Tower was the Big Buddha Pavilion, which was a
historical site, too. The bronze statue of Buddha was dozens of
meters tall and weighed thousands of tons. It was known as the
largest statue of Buddha in China. During World War II, Kaifeng
was for a time occupied by the Japanese. It was rumored that the
Japanese attempted to take the bronze statue of Buddha away, but
failed. Was it because Buddha used his power to stop them?
76

The two years I spent at Henan University were right before

China's Anti-Japanese War. At the time, Henan University had a
student government and all types of student clubs. I joined the art
club and did some paintings whenever I felt like it.

When the New Life Movement was promoted nationwide, a few

of my classmates and I were recruited onto the Committee of New
Life Movement Promotion. Governor Liu Chi supported us to
establish Henan Province's first drama club. We named it the New
Life Drama Club. Our club members included Lu Chiu-hsin, Liu
Ching-tse, Wei Yu, Pan Ling-chun, Hao Shu-ying, and Chiang
Yiu-yan. We produced and performed many plays, such as The
Female Store Owner, Returning to the South, The
Thunderstorm, a Chinese translation of Resurrection, a
Chinese translation of Lady Windermere's Fan, and Jealousy.
We put numerous plays written by Mr. Chang Tao-fan (18971968) on stage, too. All these plays received waves of critical
acclaim. News about our success spread to major cities like
Beijing and Shanghai.

That was when the touring drama group led by Mr. Tang Huaichiu (1898-1854) was in Beijing. When Mr. Tang heard about us,
77

he decided to bring his group to Kaifeng. We helped him make it

happen. Mr. Tang once studied aeronautical engineering in France,
but pursued a career in drama for his personal interest. His wife
Wu Ching, his daughter Juo-ching, and his protgs including Pai
Yang, Tai Ya, and Chang Man-ping, were all exceptionally
talented. We got along with them like a family. We performed for
a few weeks and received phenomenal feedback.

Later, Pai Yang was the only one of us going into the movie
industry. She became famous as the leading lady of the movie
The Spring River Runs East.

Time flies like an arrow. Decades have passed. This exceptional

beauty of my generation has perished, too, leaving me a sorrowful
sense of loss.

78


Becoming a District Attorney

Before the Anti-Japanese War, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek

recruited talented individuals by having the Ministry of Education
select a thousand highly accomplished college graduates from
classes of 1934, 1935, and 1936 nationwide for two training
sessions held by the Executive Yuan (a yuan is a division of the
Chinese central government that consists of certain ministries). I
was assigned to the second training session. After the six-month
training course, I was assigned to the District Court of Jiangdu in
Jiangsu Province.

The president of the court, Kuo Wei, was a law scholar with many
publications. He assigned me to help a magistrate named Yu Chitang handle backlog cases. Mr. Yu was an elderly man with less
energy. He seemed utterly happy and relieved to see me clear all
his backlog cases within a month.

The city named Jiangdu at the time used to be called Yangzhou

(and is called Yangzhou again today). It has always been famous
for its picturesque scenery and refined culture. It was also where
my grandmother lived before marriage. I went to Zuowei Street in
79

Yangzhou to visit her family members. Her nephew Chung Hsinfu, whom I called second uncle, visited me at the court, too.

A typical work day of the court was from 7 am to 1 pm. After

work, I often went boating on the Slender West Lake. I was too
young and ignorant to plan for my career advancement.

I only worked in Yangzhou for less than two months. All of a

sudden, I was reassigned to the District Court of Rugao. Later I
learned that it was because they were understaffed in Rugao and
my old friend Chi Yiu-min worked there. He persuaded the
president of the court, Tsao Pao-chen, to request my transfer.

Rugao is a small county with Nantong to its south, Dongtai to its

north, Taizhou to its West and the sea to its East. At first, I lived in
a room within the compound of the court. Later, as Shanghai fell
to the Japanese and the enemy advanced north to occupy Nantong,
we did not dare to stay in the City of Rugao. We moved out of the
northern gate and rented rooms from some civilians' houses,
which made it easy for us to run upon hearing air-raid sirens, and
to get ready for withdrawal any time.

The generalissimo ordered us to allow bail-outs for all the

80

prisoners who had been charged with petty crimes. Although

Japanese warplanes continued to scout the area, we worked as
usual to release those prisoners. I remember the day before the
enemy's attack. Two warplanes flew over that morning. We saw
them drop four bombs, which were glistening in the morning sun.
We thought a miserable disaster was going to happen, but then we
didn't hear anything. We went out to look for the location where
the bomb had landed. They didn't explode because they fell into
the soft soil of rice paddies across the creek from our residence.

Mr. Tsao disbanded the District Court of Rugao. One of the

district attorneys, Hsi Kuo-chang, was from Shanxi Province. He
and his wife found the wartime situation too dangerous for them
to return to their faraway hometown. So, I invited them to stay at
my house for a few months. Before they found a way to return
home safely, my father treated them like VIPs. He never blamed
me for not asking him before bringing the couple home.

The crisis was resolved so easily. I believe it was my grandmother

protecting us from above. I cannot think of any other explanation
for this miracle happening in such adversity.

81


The Beginning of the Anti-Japanese War

In the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, the enemy didn't come

to my hometown because their tanks were unable to reach the area
where roads were too narrow, with creeks crossing. However, the
war interrupted the transportation of resources from cities, so our
village had to return to a pre-modern lifestyle. For instance, when
kerosene was unavailable, we used vegetable oil, soybean oil, or
sycamore seed oil for our lamps.

At the time, Taizhou had not fallen into Japanese hands. The
District Court of Taizhou still kept its downtown location.
According to an order from the Ministry of Judicial
Administration, all the employees from wartime-disbanded courts
could go to work for courts in the areas not occupied by the
Japanese. These employees wouldn't get paid as much as before
but would receive a stipend of 30 Chinese dollars per month.
Since the war had forced my employment with the District Court
of Rugao to end, I went to the District Court of Taizhou and
stayed with my maternal grandparents.

82

My maternal grandparents' family name was Yiu, and the Yiu

family was prestigious in Taizhou. Their ancestors worked as
military officers and were rewarded with land for their victories.
My maternal grandfather Wang-san was once president of the
local court toward the end of the Qing Dynasty. My first uncle on
my mother's side, Si-tsung, graduated from St. John's University
and once joined the Revolution Party to overthrow the Qing
Dynasty. He taught English. My second uncle Hsian-tsu graduated
from Peking University and became a famous lawyer in Nanjing.
However, both of these uncles passed away in their prime years.
My mother Chi-hua and second aunt Shu-hua also left the world
before age 40. However, my third uncle Huai-tsu, who did not
pursue fame or profit, and my third aunt Ji-hua both survived
wartime turmoil. Decades later, both of them lived into their 70s.
It's puzzling to think about why my mother's siblings had such
various life spans.

I only worked at the District Court of Taizhou briefly. Soon I was

recruited into the civil and military law enforcement of Jingjiang
County. At the time, the City of Jingjiang had fallen into enemy
hands. The county government was relocated to a small suburban
town called New Town, with a self-defense team of merely around
100 members. After the central government's withdrawal from
Nanjing, the 89th Army was understaffed. They accompanied the
83

Jiangsu Provincial Government to flee to the northern end of

Jiangsu, near its border with Shandong Province. The central
government issued an order to allow people in the Japaneseoccupied zones to form Chinese armies in order to fight the
Japanese. Then many deserting soldiers and local gangsters
claimed some land and relied on their guns to make themselves
rulers. The fleeing provincial government was unable to control
them and could do nothing but approve all their applications for
positions.

The Japanese announced that they had to eliminate those local

armed forces. They called the action clearing the countryside.
Wherever the Japanese went, they raped women and robbed
households. There was nothing holding them back. As soon as
those local Chinese armies heard that the Japanese were coming,
they ran far away. Ironically, they became a magnet of disaster to
the civilians. Some of those armies even fought one another for
land, but what they were fighting over was not in the Japaneseoccupied zones! How lamentable that was!

In the winter of 1938, a gangster with the surname Zhu gathered

dozens of men and called himself a regimental commander. He
blatantly asked the provincial government to appoint him Sheriff
of Jinjiang County. The provincial government, without finding
out what was going on, approved his request! To avoid working
with such a shameless gangster, I resigned and went home.

84

In 1939, I married Chien-nung, the eldest daughter of the Chu

family from Taizhou City. Even though we were living in a
disastrous world, our wedding was formal and boisterous. In fact,
my family had gone through serious financial trouble with our
private bank, and paid for the funerals for my aunt, my mother,
my great aunt, and my grandmother, as well as my elder brother's
and elder sister's weddings, plus my father's second wedding, all
in the preceding decade. We were overextended and not as
wealthy as we seemed. However, my father did everything he
could to pay for my college education and the betrothal gifts for
my wife's family without any reservation. He was as loving as a
bull licking his calf. His love is unforgettable to me, always
remaining in my thoughts as well as in my dreams.
Translator's note: My maternal grandmother was initially named
(which means a pearl in the palm of one's hand, often used
as a metaphor for a beloved daughter) when she was born in 1921.
However, my granddad renamed her for her beauty, as
means gorgeous and signifies curvaceous in Chinese.

85


Working as the Leader of the Eighth District

In 1939, the Counties of Taizhou, Taixing, Dongtai and Xinghua

had not fallen into Japanese hands. Former Jiangsu Governor Han
Kuo-chun and Supreme Court magistrate Han Tao recommended
me to work as the leader of the eighth district of Taizhou County.

At the time, the eighth district was also known as Haian (today's
Haian is a county by itself). The budget for the district was only a
little over 100 Chinese dollars, barely enough for the staff
members' salaries. I looked into the records and found that former
leaders of the district office had kept all the money supposedly
going through here into small towns and villages. They used the
money to cover the district's expenses. Village heads and smalltown mayors in the area never protested against the former district
leaders. However, the public expenses of those small towns and
villages had to come from the people. I thought this was
unreasonable and illegal. So, I gave each small town and village
the amount they were supposed to receive every month.
Meanwhile, I did everything I could to save the expenses of the
district office. That brought me a high reputation in the region.

However, for my clean reputation, I deprived myself. I was unable

86

to support my father or my wife. That was embarrassing. In the

meantime, Haian was only 15 kilometers away from Rugao, a
county occupied by the Japanese. The strong enemy was so near,
making me worry day and night. I was physically and mentally
exhausted. Fortunately, I was too young to understand the real
sadness of the world. I comforted myself by telling myself that I
was serving my country.

In 1940, just when I was happy to see the district's infrastructure

all repaired and local people all living a stable life and making a
decent living, I unexpectedly heard that the Chinese Communists'
New Fourth Army was about to cross the Yangtze River, moving
north and coming this way. Jiangsu Governor and the commander
in chief of Jiangsu and Shandong Provinces, Mr. Han Te-tsin, sent
the 89th army, which was led by Li Shou-wei, to stop the
Communists. The 117th division of the 89th army came into Haian,
led by Liu Man-tien, a cocky man who bullied local people to
satisfy his own desires. His troops had no discipline. I attempted
to talk him into changing his behavior, but he avoided me all the
time. Therefore, I abruptly resigned. Then I returned to the
Superior Court of Jiangsu Province to work as a district attorney
again.

87


The Battle of Huangqiao

A week after I resigned from the eighth district leader's position,

Li Shou-wei's troops fought against the Communists' New Fourth
Army in a small town called Huangqiao. Li's troops were
completely eliminated. This became well-known as the Battle of
Huangqiao in Chinese history.

In fact, not so many Communists crossed the Yangtze River. After

the fierce battle, they were almost out of supplies of food and
ammunition. They therefore bluffed by spreading rumors that
more of their troops were coming. They also fired some guns from
the East and the West to pretend that they were encircling the
Nationalist troops. Li didn't know he had a strong chance to win.
He ordered his troops to withdraw. Then the Communists went
after him, shouting all the way. Li was madly fleeing on a fast
horse. While attempting to jump over a deep creek, he and his
horse fell into it and drowned.

At this time, because the US asked the Nationalist government to

make peace with the Communists, the two parties announced that
they would cooperate to fight the Japanese. Then a tax police
corps was still stationed in my village. Everything was in order.

88

The tax police corps was initially in the area near the Huai River
and salt field along the coast of the East China Sea to prevent
smuggling or tax evasion. It belonged to the Ministry of Finance.
The number of their members was between two and three
regiments. Their commander Chen Tai-yun had no official
connections with the military. However, when the Japanese
invaded Nanjing and the central government hastily withdrew, the
corps was trapped north of the Yangtze River. They were strictly
disciplined and got along well with local civilians while being
stationed close to the Japanese-occupied zone. Whenever the
Japanese or their collaborationist troops came to the countryside
to harass people, it was quite dangerous to them.

Our judicial system of Jiangsu Province was able to survive in the

area north of the Yangtze River for quite a few years, all thanks to
the protection we received from the tax police corps!

89


Wang Ching-Wei Regime

In 1940, Wang Ching-wei established a government in Nanjing,

recruiting guerrillas and some Nationalist armies left in the
Japanese occupied areas to form a military force called the Peace
Army, which received ammunition and weapons from the
Japanese. They seemed formidable. At the time, the commanderin-chief of the guerrillas of Shandong, Jiangsu, and Anhui
Provinces, Li Ming-yang, was stationed in Taizhou City,
controlling Nantong and Yangzhou. He had enough power to
summon all the local guerrillas to rival the Peace Army. However,
he was feeling too insecure to fulfill his responsibilities. He told
his vice commander, Li Chang-chiang, to join the Peace Army and
to protect him on his way escaping to a village. Then he only kept
the name of the commander-in-chief. That forced the Superior
Court of Jiangsu Province and the District Court of Taizhou to
withdraw from the Japanese-occupied zone. We moved to a small
town called Qintong.

90

While Wang's Nanjing regime came into being, the exiled central
government in Chongqing (the city name was translated as
Chungking back then) called it a puppet government. However,
Wang's government did not establish any Japanese system or
promote any Japanese education. The government's flag was the
same as the Nationalist flag, only with a yellow triangle added to
the top. The government's employees were the same as those in
the old central government in Nanjing. The laws used by Wang's
government were also from the old central government. Although
the Chongqing government condemned Wang, called him a traitor
and sent lots of spies out to assassinate him, Chinese people in the
Japanese-occupied regions held a different view, knowing Wang's
regime was established after the Japanese occupied most of
China's territories. Apparently, Wang didn't give away any land to
Japan in exchange for his own prosperity.

After the Rape of Nanjing (also known as the Rape of Nanking),

many Japanese troops killed Chinese civilians, set fires, raped
women, and robbed households. Not a day passed by without their
violent acts. However, as soon as Wang's government was
established, the Peace Army came into the picture for just about
everything. The Japanese no longer had direct contact with
Chinese civilians. It's impossible to count how many people's
lives and assets were saved because of that. Whenever the
Japanese were attacked by guerrillas, they always used clearing
the countryside as an excuse to seek revenge. However, the
Peace Army always leaked the news to the villages where the
Japanese were going. Then the Japanese went there in vain, only
to bring back pigs, sheep, chickens, and ducks as gifts from
peasants.
91

The Peace Army consisted of the central government's troops that

had not withdrawn in time to follow the exiled government. They
were recruited into the Peace Army because they had no other
ways of making a living. They still loved their own country. How
could they have been content with assisting the tiger-like enemy?
They actually helped the self-defense team of my hometown
purchase guns and ammunition. On the contrary, those guerrillas
with numbers assigned by the exiled central government didn't
deserve their names. They were leeches to begin with, and they
only occupied land and demanded food and tax payments from
civilians.

Wang's government and the Peace Army helped civilians return to

their normal routine in the Japanese-occupied regions.
Businessmen were able to travel between big cities and small
towns without harassment from the Japanese.

When Henan University professor Liu Hsing-chen became the

head of the Finance Department of Zhejiang Province in the
collaborationist government, his brother Chia-hsin strongly
advised me to work there. I was holding on to a traditional
Chinese concept that a loyal government official should never
defect to a rivaling ruler, so I declined the offer. However, it's
92

undeniable that Wang's Nanjing government saved people as if

rescuing them from a flood or fire. As for what was right and what
was wrong during this historical period, later generations will
certainly make a fair judgment.

93


Almost Arrested by the Japanese

When the Superior Court of Jiangsu Province and the District

Court of Taizhou simultaneously withdrew from the Japaneseoccupied zone and moved to a small town called Qintong, we
lived a more difficult life. In the beginning of the Anti-Japanese
War, the central government once sent airplanes to deliver money
to us. Those planes landed in Dongtai. However, it was a long
route. On their way back, the enemy often shot them down.

One day in 1943, I had a coded telegram with me and planned to

have a military radio station send it to the Ministry of Judicial
Administration in Chongqing to discuss our budget issue. While I
was passing through Qutang, the Japanese and collaborationist
troops stopped me and found the telegram on me. At the time, I
thought for certain I was going to die but pretended to be calm
and refused to go to the Japanese intelligence agency with them.
Both sides argued for quite a while. All of a sudden, I noticed that
94

the collaborationist troops didn't seem to know the Chinese name

of Chongqing on the telegram (many Chinese soldiers were
illiterate then), so I tried my luck by lying that it was a telegram
for a division of the Peace Army, and said it was urgent, not to be
delayed. These words reminded my rickshaw driver that I had
been the leader of the eighth district. Then he told the
collaborationist troops that I was his regular customer. He also
said a battalion commander and a company commander of the
Peace Army had been my subordinates. The collaborationist
troops therefore believed I was one of them. Then they informed
the Japanese of that, so I was released. It was such a near escape. I
found it absolutely incredible.

Later, the exiled government in Chongqing sent bamboo rafts

down the Yangtze River to bring money to us quite a few times.
The sealed packages were attached to the bottom of the bamboo
rafts. If they were bombed, the money would fall into water and
the Japanese would not find it. Some money was delivered to us
without being discovered by the Japanese. That enabled us in the
Jiangsu Superior Court and the Taizhou District Court to continue
working for a few years despite moving around. In spring 1944,
all our money ran out. We were unable to ask our colleagues to
stay and starve themselves, so they all left. Only Mr. Han, chief
staff attorney of the Superior Court, put his duty above everything
and didn't want to see our judicial system disappear. I happened to
know the terrain of the local area very well as the chief
administrator of the District Court of Taizhou County. So, I helped
him find a temple in the Baimi (which means white rice)
95

District to set up his office there. He was like the only pillar
supporting a collapsing building. The judicial system of Jiangsu
Province was preserved this way.

Soon the enemy occupied Qintong. The tax police corps came to
stay at the temples in my village. Initially, they were not in
conflict with the Japanese, the collaborationist troops, or the
Communists. The local region was stable.

That year my eldest son Tai-sheng was only three years old. He
suddenly became bloated. An odd disease made him want to eat
burned coal and broken bricks. Chinese medicine practitioners in
our village were unable to cure him. I immediately told my wife
Chien-nung to bring him to her parents' house in Taizhou City,
where they hired a Western doctor to treat him. This treatment
didn't work, either. He died in a little over a month. Chien-nung
and I were extremely devastated.

In August 1944, it was already apparent that the Japanese would

lose the war. At that point, the Communists attempted to get an
upper hand. They invaded random villages and killed those who
were not with them. The tax police corps was isolated without any
aid. Eventually, they were all eliminated after their heroic defense.
It was deeply saddening.

96

During the fierce battle, my family escaped, with only one layer
of clothing on each of us. We ran to my in-laws' house in Taizhou
City. At this time, there was no more money from the central
government. The District Court of Taizhou was penniless.
Fortunately, I had generous relatives such as my third uncle Musheng, great uncle Chen Shih-sheng, brother-in-law (my elder
sister's husband) Ting Hsien-ting, and a distant relative, Li Chisun. They all gave me financial assistance, which helped my
family survive while I was unemployed for a year. In August
1945, China won the Anti-Japanese War. I returned to the judicial
branch of the Nationalist government and planned to reciprocate.
However, the Nationalist government's finances collapsed within
a year, so government employees could barely make a living.
Once the Chinese Civil War broke out nationwide, I went farther
and farther away from those relatives. With a heavy iron curtain
between us, we had no communication for decades.

When the Communist government launched reforms and opened

up, those relatives who had helped me had all passed away. My
humble wish for returning their favors has become an everlasting
regret, which will make me clench my teeth every time I think of
it for the rest of my life!

97


Recovering the Legal System of Jiangsu Province

Although the Anti-Japanese War dragged on for eight years,

putting people through flood-and-fire-like perils, victory came too
suddenly. The central government was far away in Chongqing
then. How to recover the lost land seemed like something the
exiled government was not ready to handle.

Chief staff attorney Han Tao led us to Zhenjiang overnight. We

took the train to Suzhou and stayed at the Citizens' Hotel on
Daoqian Street to wait for the Jiangsu Superior Court of the
collaborationist government to turn everything over to us. On our
way to Suzhou, because resources were scarce in the entire
country, the train was full of merchants who were traveling with
their goods. It was intolerably crowded, making our journey quite
tough. Fortunately, the military and police officers in Suzhou
fulfilled their duties by keeping the city in order.

Mr. Chu Huan-piao, president of the Jiangsu Superior Court, was

far away in Tunxi County of Anhui Province. He did not come to
meet us, so we took over the operations of the superior court on
his behalf. Once everything was on track, the Ministry of Justice
98

sent Sun Hung-lin to work as the president of the Jiangsu Superior

Court. They were probably unhappy about the fact that Mr. Chu
had irresponsibly left his position. During the Anti-Japanese War,
Mr. Chu was with us for a while, but perhaps he was scared of the
Japanese, or perhaps he could not endure poverty. We didn't know
exactly why he left us. As an old saying puts it, A chaotic world
will test one's loyalty. That is really worth contemplating.

Mr. Han had moved the Jiangsu Superior Court around during the
eight years of war. He had lived through difficult times but never
thought about his own safety. He firmly held his position and
remained loyal to do all he could for China. His high morals and
brilliant virtues in particular should make him a role model for
later generations.

Under Mr. Han's leadership, we hurried to the Superior Court of

Jiangsu Province and its branches as well as district courts of the
region to take over their daily operations and put everything in
order. I had to admire the way Mr. Han took charge calmly.
During the recovery of Jiangsu Province, the judicial offices were
the first and the earliest to return to the Nationalist government,
and the transition went most smoothly. We took over the superior
court in August 1945 and started working there a month later.

After settling in at my new job, I brought my wife and children

from Taizhou to Suzhou. We lived at 26 Jianjinqiao Alley. That
was a two-story house.
99

At first, I worked for the Human Resources Department of the

District Attorney's Office of the Jiangsu Superior Court. In 1946, I
transferred to the District Court of Suzhou and worked as a
district attorney, but also served as the chief administrator of the
Jiangsu Superior Court. I upheld my principles while fulfilling my
duties. I refused all kinds of gifts. I declined everyone who asked
for personal favors. I would not play favorites for anyone I knew.
That caused endless resentment. At the time, there was a lot of
corruption in the government. The chief staff attorney of the
Shanghai Superior Court was an example. When paper fans with
famous artists' calligraphy and paintings were in vogue and
expensive, he had hundreds of them. He used a different one every
day to show off his wealth. That damaged the clean image of us
judicial officers.

In the meantime, those who wanted Mr. Han's position spread lots
of libelous letters around. Most shocking of all, the main hall of
the superior court was suddenly engulfed in a destructive fire.
That was strange and inconceivable, sending chills down
everyone's spine.

The fire started in the main hall of the superior court at night. The
chief staff attorney's office, his bedroom, and some other dorm
rooms were all destroyed. I suspected an arsonist had set the fire.
100

It was probably not an accident caused by a broken wire.

However, this was a big issue. It would not have been appropriate
to expose it to the world. That would have just scared the public
and generated a lot of gossip.

I did everything I could to have the building restored like the

original within a few months, the shortest time possible. It turned
out to look the same as before. Since then, time has been fleeting
swiftly. More than half a century has gone by. Who does the
building belong to right now? Is it still a government agency? Or
has it been burned down and turned into ashes again? Whenever I
think of it, I feel an endless sense of loss.
Translator's note: Despite Shanghai's location in Jiangsu
Province, the Nationalist government set up a superior court for
the cosmopolitan city independent from the province, due to the
city's large population.

101


Dreamlike Days of Joy in Suzhou

Suzhou is located south of the Yangtze River, east of Lake Taihu.

Historically speaking, it was the capital of the Wu Kingdom
during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC). With canals
and creeks crossing the area, and small lakes dotting the town like
chess pieces on the board, it naturally came with smooth water
transportation, including boating in the city. When I was there, the
city also had many scenic gardens, with ponds reflecting trees,
pavilions, and terraces.

Famous gardens in Suzhou include Zhuozheng and Wangshi.

Their previous owners inducted canal water to build ponds and
accumulated rocks to make hills. Bamboo groves provided dense
shade in the gardens while flowers and trees posed beautifully
around traditional Chinese buildings with winding corridors.
Walking ten steps would bring the visitor to an intriguingly
different view; rotating four seasons would provide the gardens
with distinctively seasonal enjoyments.

In the suburbs, there were scenic spots such as Mount Lingyan

(which means Spiritual Rocks), Mount Guanyin (which refers
102

to a female deity), Jian (which means sword) Pond, Shengong

Rock, the Maple Bridge, Hanshan (which means Cold
Mountain) Temple, Xiyuan (which means Westside Garden)
Temple, Five Hundred Arhats' Hall (an arhat is a Buddhist adept
who no longer goes into reincarnation), and Huangtian Lake, all
historical sites for at least a thousand years, all spectacular. In
particular, the five hundred arhats all had different poses and
facial expressions. They looked so real.

When summer came, lotus leaves filled Huangtian Lake and

spread all the way to the horizon. Among thousands of acres of
green clouds, pink or white lotus flowers bloomed in thousands as
well. They wavered in the breezes, with dews crystallizing on
them and fragrances coming out of them to enter people's lungs.
This place was indeed an ideal location for a summer retreat!

Suzhou is blessed with magnificent mountains, resplendent water

bodies, and abundant produce. The awe-inspiring environment
cultivates smart people, many of whom are artists. In terms of
handicrafts, sandwood fans and musical instruments were very
refined in Suzhou when I was there. The most beautiful of what I
saw was Suzhou embroidery, also known as double-sided
embroidery. They used colorful threads to embroider pictures on
thin pieces of chiffon. The picture would look the same on both
sides. It could be viewed from either side. The amazing product
seemed like something made in heaven!

103

Suzhou cuisine has always been distinguished, with a lot of

attention paid to the color combination, aroma, and flavors of
every dish in order to create something unique. Banquet dishes in
Suzhou must have outnumbered those in other places nationwide
when I was there. Also famous was the so-called boat cuisine.
That originated because Suzhou women loved to take an
artistically painted boat on a day trip. From dawn to dusk, there
was a feast on the boat. The dishes, desserts, and fruit on the boat
came in abundance from the local land and water.

Just because life in Suzhou was so enjoyable, all the Chinese

judges wanted to work in the Superior Court of Jiangsu Province.
They competed fiercely with one another on the surface and under
the table. Some spread rumors against their competitors and wrote
libelous letters. They made me feel cold even in my teeth!

104


Relocating to Jiangxi Province

In 1948, the Nationalist government was losing its battles with the
Communists. The political situation was shaky. The Minister of
Judicial Administration, Hsieh Kuan-sheng, took advantage of the
chaos by promoting officials from his home province of Zhejiang.
He moved two leaders from the Zhejiang Superior Court to the
Jiangsu Superior Court and reappointed Mr. Han as the chief staff
attorney of the Jiangxi Superior Court. Mr. Hsieh euphemized the
transfers as keeping officials from working in their home
province. The transfers caused people a lot of trouble and cost a
fortune. Moreover, he totally disregarded the ongoing battles
everywhere and the collapsing financial system!

By this time, my ancestral home had been burned down by the

Communists. My family members, therefore, had moved to
different places. My father and elder sister Ching-fen lived in
Taizhou City. My younger sister Te-fen worked at the District
Court of Zhenjiang. My elder brother Yu-yong was employed by
the Judicial Department of Yangzhong County. My wife and
children were with me in Suzhou. When I helped Mr. Han
complete the paperwork for his transfer, I intended to stay in
105

Jiangsu Province for my family. However, Mr. Han's eldest son

Chung-mo was packing to leave for graduate school in the United
States, and he was concerned about his father not having enough
assistance. He said he could not go to the US if I would not
continue to assist his father. Then I felt I had to sacrifice my
personal preference. I agreed to transfer to Jiangxi Province as a
district attorney of the Nanchang District Court and the chief
administrator of the Jiangxi Superior Court. Since my wife Chiennung was pregnant and unfit for travel, I left her and our children
in Suzhou.

The City of Nangchang had been burned in a widespread fire

during the Anti-Japanese War. The original building of the Jiangxi
Superior Court was razed without even a tile left. After China's
victory, only a two-story building was constructed to serve as the
Superior Court of Jiangxi Province. The upper level consisted of
offices, and the lower level of court rooms. It looked very humble.
Colleagues from local areas seemed quite cold to us, not friendly
at all.

A few months later, I accepted a transfer to the Nancheng District

Court and was promoted to the position of chief staff attorney
there. Nancheng was a small town in a mountainous region, with
pathogens circulating through the damp air from the jungles. I saw
the debris of buildings everywhere when I arrived there, because
the Chinese troops during the Anti-Japanese War had a policy of
burning some places during their withdrawal to the Southwest, in
order not to leave anything of value to the Japanese. The District
106

Court of Nancheng was located in a remodeled building which

had been torn down. It didn't look like a courthouse at all. The
high altitude and the excessively bright light through the whitepaper-paned windows made me feel very uncomfortable.

In one of the cases I reviewed in Nancheng, our prosecutors

confiscated a boat the defendant had boarded when he was
arrested. I thought the boat was not the so-called object used for
committing a crime, so I ordered my subordinates to return the
boat to its owner. I was thinking about how to make the
prosecutors of Nancheng do everything legally and reasonably,
not to punish anyone innocent or acquit anyone guilty. I wanted
our prosecution team to be the best in the entire country, but didn't
expect the civil war to suddenly take a turn for the worse. Mr. Han
sent me an urgent telegram, asking me to go to Nanchang to take
care of his staff while he was going to Nanjing to ask for the
central government's instructions. Soon after my arrival in
Nanchang, I received a document that recommended me to
become the chief staff attorney of the Nanchang District Court.
But before that, I had asked the Jiangxi Superior Court to wire
money to Nancheng for the small district court's urgent needs. I
felt deeply happy about doing that for Nancheng.

107


Escaping from the Chinese Civil War

In 1949, when the Ministry of Judicial Administration moved

from Nanjing to Guangzhou, I was the chief staff attorney of the
District Court of Nanchang. Although Nanchang was not a war
zone, we felt a storm looming. I followed Mr. Han, chief staff
attorney of the Superior Court of Jiangxi Province, to Guangzhou
to ask the central government what to do next.

During our trip, Nationalist troops were withdrawing from Wuhan

City. Crowds as huge as mountains were fleeing like surging
waves of the ocean. Countless people died. I worried day and
night, losing my appetite and unable to fall asleep. Then I went to
the blind Wang, a famous fortunate teller in Changsha City of
Hunan Province. His fees were usually very high, but I only gave
him what I could afford, two silver coins, and told him clearly that
I just needed him to tell me about bad things he could see in my
future. He said, Go with the flow. There will be a way out.

At the time, all the ships traveling on the Yangtze River had
108

stopped, temporarily docked on Lake Dongting. Several managers

considered that inappropriate. They decided to have those ships go
upstream to Sichuan Province and invited me to tag along for free.
I first said yes, but later had a second thought because I didn't get
assigned to work in Sichuan by the Ministry of Judicial
Administration. I was afraid that I might be unemployed in
Sichuan, so I changed my mind and courteously declined their
offer. I stayed in Changsha to wait and see instead. A few days
later, I unexpectedly heard the news that those ships had run into
bandits in the western area of Hunan Province. All their assets,
including their clothes and shoes, had been taken away. Had I
been with them, I would've had no way to escape.

What puzzled me more was, after the Wuhan withdrawal, the

Communists didn't come south to invade Changsha. That was
because Hunan Governor Cheng Chien was secretly
communicating with the Communists. No one knew that at the
time. I bought train tickets for myself, Mr. Han and a few others to
go to Guangzhou. We arrived there safely. What a surprise!

In Guangzhou, I received an assignment to work for the Superior

Court of Sichuan Province. Right before I packed, I came across
someone from my hometown, Mr. Cheng Ta-cheng, who was
working as a director at the Ministry of Finance. He told me that
Sichuan was unstable and advised me to go to Taiwan. Then I
went back to the head of Human Resources, Mr. Ku, and asked
him to change my assignment to the Superior Court of Taiwan
Province. He made an exception for me. Wasn't that destiny?

109

During my time in Guangzhou, there was another unexpected

episode. A brother-in-law of Mr. Han's second son Chung-chao,
Mr. Tsao, sent me an urgent telegram while the Nationalist troops
were withdrawing from Changsha. He said there was going to be
only one airplane flying out of Changsha the next day and asked
me to lend him 20 US dollars for the plane ticket. He told me that
he had killed Communists for the Nationalist government, so he
had to flee. Although I had a tight budget, I remembered a
Buddhist saying, Saving a life gives you more credit than
building a seven-story pagoda. I immediately wired him the
money. The next night Mr. Tsao arrived in Guangzhou.

Mr. Tsao's best friend was a manager of Farmers' Bank in

Kunming City of Yunnan Province. The friend was on a business
trip in Taiwan. He would have a stopover in Guangzhou on his
way back to take Mr. Tsao to Kunming with him. Mr. Tsao asked
me to tag along and guaranteed that I would not have to worry
about making a living in Kunming. However, I didn't want to
burden him just after doing him a little favor, so I saw Mr. Tsao
off at the airport, and I didn't ask him for the money he owed me.
Later, Yunnan Governor Lu Han defected and handed the province
to the Communists. According to some news I received, Mr. Tsao
was arrested, sent back to his hometown and executed there. Had I
flown to Kunming with him, what would have happened to me?
On the journeys of our lives, all the adversities, opportunities,
110

crises, and solutions are beyond our imagination!

Most unexpectedly, while I was searching for plane tickets to go

to Taiwan, I coincidentally came across Mr. Shih Mei-yu, an old
friend of mine. When I first met him in Suzhou, he was a judge at
the Superior Court of Jiangsu Province. Later, a military court was
established in Nanjing to put war criminals on trial, and the
Ministry of Judicial Administration sent an urgent telegram to our
superior court, asking us to recommend someone to be president
of the military court. Mr. Shih was selected. During my three
years in Suzhou, Mr. Shih often returned from Nanjing and visited
me to keep our friendship. I always prepared wine and invited him
to my house for dinner, knowing his great tolerance for alcohol. In
1948, I transferred to Jiangxi Province. Then we never saw each
other again. I didn't expect to see him again in Guangzhou in
1949. At the time, the military court had been disbanded. The
central government didn't reward Mr. Shih with anything. He was
just re-appointed the chief administrator of the Military Law
Division of the Defense Ministry.

Meeting an old friend in an unfamiliar place, we were both

ecstatic. During our long conversation, I learned that the Defense
Ministry had recruited a commercial ship named Nanshan to
111

transport military dependents. The ship was in the harbor waiting

for an order from the Defense Ministry to leave for Taiwan. Mr.
Shih had a younger brother who was the third officer on the ship.
He was allowed to bring his dependents, relatives and friends.
Therefore, Mr. Han, a few others and I followed Mr. Shih to board
the ship. We waited until the Nationalist troops lost Yingde
County and bombed the Pearl Bridge to embark. Three days later,
we landed in Kaohsiung.

Looking back on the tens of thousands of miles I traveled, I

realize that it was a journey full of twists and turns. I was like a
fallen flower on the flowing river, moving or stopping, in perils or
with blessings, seemingly all up to an invisible commander,
totally out of my control!

112


Why the Nationalists Lost Mainland China in 1949

The Nationalist government made many mistakes which helped

the Communists - as if adding wings to a tiger.

For instance, the first mistake was to make laws to punish Chinese
collaborators. When the Anti-Japanese War broke out, the central
government quickly relocated, deserting tens of thousands of
employees. They were unable to bring their whole families to
Chongqing. Nor could they return to their hometowns under
Japanese occupation. It's easy to imagine their difficult
circumstances. Fortunately, Wang Ching-wei established a
government during the war and put them back in their old
positions so that they could at least scratch out a living. That was
excusable, given how pitiful the situation was. Then, after China's
victory, they were not allowed to live a stable life; they were all
labeled as traitors and criminals, no matter whether they were
actually decent people or despicable villains. Those in high
positions were tried and put in jail. Those in low positions were
banned from ever working for the government again. Given the
vastness of the formerly Japanese-occupied areas and the large
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number of former Wang government employees, everyone was

infuriated. That was a severe social problem. Furthermore, the
laws punishing Chinese collaborators gave the government the
power to confiscate their property. One collaborator would put his
entire family through financial hardships. Only those who
defected to the Communists found a way to survive. In fact, the
Communists were controlling villages where food was produced.
They had an upper hand in that way already. The central
government inadvertently forced well-educated people who had
worked for the former Wang government to join the Communists.
This was a terrible mistake in policy making and the first major
cause of the failure the central government inflicted upon itself!

The second cause was related to the troops of the former

collaborationist governments and guerrillas who had fought the
Japanese. After the Japanese surrendered, the central government
didn't assign them into the military, even though their numbers
were huge. Once they were disbanded, they lost the organization
they had belonged to and became homeless. They also had no
choice but join the Communists. That helped the red forces grow
everywhere.

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Third, during the central government's years in Chongqing City of

Sichuan Province, it only ruled the southwestern corner of China,
where there was a shortage of educated, talented individuals.
Once the Japanese surrendered, all of a sudden, the entire country
needed officials to recover Japanese-occupied areas, send
Japanese captives home, try war criminals, take over government
agencies, resume government work, and arrest Chinese
collaborators. Then those coming out of Sichuan Province all
thought they were getting rid of poverty. They took credit for the
victory and went to the formerly Japanese-occupied areas like a
hungry tiger jumping onto a sheep. Everywhere they went, they
took away resources to enrich themselves. People's complaints
multiplied. The Nationalist government officials brought disasters
to cities not occupied by the Communists. Their takeovers became
notorious rip-offs. News about their outrageous behavior spread
nationwide and overseas. The Communists took the opportunity to
call the central government corrupt. In the meantime, the
Communists spent money recruiting employees of the Nationalist
army and the central government to work as their spies to erode
the Nationalist regime from inside. Therefore, within three years,
China's economy collapsed. Then everywhere the Communists
invaded, they received help from their spies in the Nationalist
army. After one more year, the entire country fell into enemy
hands. It hurts my heart to talk about this part of history!

Most reprehensible of all, while the economy was collapsing,

people were starving, enemies were all around and a disaster was
approaching, politicians in the central government still did
everything they could to fight for power and positions. A major
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example was the way high officials forced President Chiang Kaishek to resign. A less notable example was how frequently the
Ministry of Judicial Administration moved employees around, not
taking expenses into consideration, even though the politicians
knew food was under the control of the communists who occupied
villages, and that made rice as precious as pearls and firewood as
expensive as osmanthus wood in big cities while the finances
were in chaos. The currency was called the Legal Tender, the
Customs Gold Unit, and then the Gold Yuan. It was reformed and
reformed again, but still kept depreciating, like a dammed river
diverted yet flowing down for thousands of miles. A government
employee's one-month salary was insufficient to cover 10 days'
meals. People had to get loans to survive!

The situation was as dangerous as eggs falling from the nest, but
the Ministry of Judicial Administration didn't take it into
consideration at all. They only knew how to manipulate their
power by moving leaders of superior courts from one province to
another. It caused plenty of trouble and cost a lot of money.

To cite a personal example of the effect of these policies, in the

summer of 1948, I moved from the Suzhou District Court and
Jiangsu Superior Court to Nanchang City of Jiangxi Province to
serve as a district attorney of the Nangchang District Court and
the chief administrator of the Jiangxi Superior Court. In the winter
of the same year, I accepted a transfer to the Nancheng District
Court and was promoted to the position of chief staff attorney. For
these two relocations, I had to pay all the expenses out of pocket.

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The Central Bank had no branch in the small town of Nancheng.

All the money had to be wired from Nanjing to Nanchang, where
it would be handed to the post office to be put in the mail. It took
a long time before I would receive it. In the meantime, the
national currency kept depreciating. I once calculated my monthly
salary and found it to be worth only 80 cents if converted to the
local currency called Dragon Coins!

Given all these circumstances, how could the central government

last? The regime collapsed with the economy. Civilians and
soldiers all lost their loyalty for the Nationalists. That explains
why the Communists were able to besiege and conquer one city
after another by forcing civilians to march ahead of them into
battle. The central government messed everything up and
expedited its own failure!
Translator's note: According to historical records, in the late
1940s, when Chinese people lost faith in the national currency,
there were local currencies, which people trusted more.

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Near Death Experiences

In October 1949, I took a ship called the Nanshan to go to Taiwan.

On the way, high winds and swells made for a perilously
uncomfortable journey. I occasionally felt dizzy. Whenever I
leaned against the railing to watch rushing winds and surging
waves, I abruptly felt how small I was. All my ambitions had
turned into ashes. I didn't see anything interesting in life.
Sometimes I almost wanted to jump into the waves and perish
from there.

Among the judicial officials of the Nationalist government who

moved to Taiwan, some people did commit suicide, such as
tribunal director of the Supreme Court, Lin Pa, and a magistrate of
the Taipei District Court, Chang Chin-heng. They were in high
positions and didn't have to worry about money. Only because
they lost contact with their families, their souls suffered extreme
pains, which gave them the idea of abandoning the world.

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More unforgettable to me was what happened to my good friend,

chief staff attorney of the third branch of the Jiangsu Superior
Court, Chan Heng-chu. He moved to Chongqing City first. When
Sichuan Province was falling into the Communists' hands, he
passed through mountainous and oceanic crowds to board the last
plane leaving for Taiwan. Then he saw his son pushed away by
the crowds. The boy was unable to join him on the plane. Father
and son were separated. Though they were both alive, most likely
they would lose each other for life. It was extremely miserable for
Mr. Chan that he often appeared inconsolably sad and detached in
Taiwan; so deep were his mental scars. Through the years, he tried
everything he could to look for his son but didn't find any clue.
Eventually, he passed away from depression.

During the catastrophe, countless people shared the same

devastating pains. For instance, Supreme Court Justice Chu-ke Lu
and a magistrate of the Supreme Court, Tai Chun, both became
terminally ill because they felt lonely and missed the families they
had left in their hometowns so much.

Those who have profound knowledge of literature are usually

sentimental. Plus, it's always hard to forget one's beloved family
members. It's impossible to describe what they went through with
my limited writing skills.

I was fortunate to get in touch with my family in Mainland China

through my friends in Hong Kong. Later my wife Chien-nung
took our children to Hong Kong first and then joined me in
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Taiwan. We were finally reunited after a few years of separation.

Before my wife and children arrived in Taiwan, I left the

government and became a private lawyer. I lived at Nanyang
Street in Taipei alone. On the back balconies of the apartment
complex, there were some bamboo rods for hanging clothes and
blankets that needed to be air-dried. When the clothes and
blankets were taken away, empty bamboo rods remained on top of
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the railings of the balconies. One day I passed through the

backyard, a strong wind suddenly blew down a thick bamboo rod,
which hit the first vertebra of my neck. Blood was gushing out. I
went to the hospital and received eight stitches. The doctor said it
nearly missed the head. Had the brain been damaged, it would
have caused death or paralysis! Another dangerous accident
happened when I lived with my wife and children at West Ningbo
Street. I always took a rickshaw between my home office and the
courthouse. One day I was passing through West Aiguo Road on
my way home, a bus scratched the rickshaw, out of which I
bounced. The right side of my forehead hit the ground. A big
bump emerged, but it didn't cause a concussion. Without medical
treatment, the bump healed itself over time.

In all these incidents, there was only a thin line between life and
death. They were more than puzzling. I don't understand why. I
can only attribute them to destiny.

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Paradise Never Regained

In 1990, I asked my nephews and nieces to have a small cemetery

called the Chi's Memorial Park built on Xiangshan (which means
fragrant hill) in Suzhou for my father Shou-ting, mother Yiu
Chi-hua, brother Yu-yong, sister-in-law Chou Wen-hsiu, elder
sister Ching-fen, and younger sister Te-fen. I had tombstones
carved for them, hoping some of our family's descendants with
filial piety would have a place to pay tribute to their ancestors.
The memorial park was not built in our ancestral cemetery
because we were unable to get the land back.

Although the Chinese Civil War was an unprecedented

catastrophe, many buildings in big cities remained intact. They are
not all like the Chi's villa, gone without a tile left, flowers and
trees all turned into ashes. Whenever I think about this, my heart
can't stop aching.

I remember in 1944, the Communists attacked the tax police corps

that was stationed in my hometown. My elder brother Yu-yong
and I left home, respectively. We took our wives and children with
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us. Fortunately, we escaped. According to what we heard later, the

Communists forced our father out of the house, and then they set a
fire to burn it. We had a huge collection of books, with a camphor
wood board between every two of them to keep them from falling
apart or getting eaten by worms. We also had gigantic wood
closets and dressers. They were all burned. Some elderly men
from our village said, The fire went on for three days and three
nights.

Subsequently, the Communists coerced people to occupy the land

and build houses. They filled up the canals surrounding the villa
to erase the borders, intending never to return it to the original
owners.

Since the Communists reformed their politics and opened the iron
curtain, they have used tourism to attract foreign visitors. I think
they should create more scenic spots to help more places prosper.
Since Yangzhou has the Slender West Lake as a tourist attraction
and it's close to my hometown, if they rebuild the Chi's Villa like
the way it was, it will have Phoenix Hill and the ancient town of
Hailing to its east, as well as Tai Hill and several old temples to its
west. There will be more than 10 scenic spots around it. Naturally,
it will become a new scenic zone with extremely valuable cultural
elements, which can boost the economy in the neighboring
counties of Nantong and Rugao.

123

With this in mind, I asked my nephew Han and niece Yi-zhen to

visit the location of the former Chi's Villa. Then I learned that the
site had been occupied by many people. They had built houses on
the land and were farming there. I took a step back and requested
to have a park built on the original site for the sake of memory.
The county government of Haian (the village that used to be part
of Taizhou now belongs to Haian) agreed. However, a mentally ill
man objected. Then the plan was dropped!

Fate is too cruel! It created this catastrophe and destroyed too

many homes. Why doesn't it allow restoration to happen? While I
hold bitter and deep regrets for my entire life, the most grinding
pain comes from the loss of my ancestral villa!

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Afterword
Legacy
By
Crystal Tai

In September 2004, my maternal grandfather had porcelain mugs

custom-made in pairs as shown above (many thanks to my cousin
Eileen for the fantastic photo). He gave a pair to each of his
grandchildren. These were meant to celebrate his 90th Chinese
birthday when he actually turned 89. As explained in the
foreword, the Chinese used to count the nine-month gestation time
as the first year of one's life, and that was how they added one
year to everyone's age. This custom has faded. My grandparents'
generation was probably the last one that lived by it.

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The porcelain mugs display Granddad's calligraphy.

In the photo on the previous page, the one on the left presents a
couplet in parallel structure, which can be translated into English
as follows:
Keep your kindness as the most precious treasure to enjoy for a
whole lifetime;
Regard your heart as the most fertile land to cultivate for
hundreds of generations.
According to Granddad, this is the motto of the Chi family.
The mug on the right has the so-called courtesy name of his
carved on it. In China's past, every educated person received a
courtesy name from his or her teacher when entering adulthood,
which would be age 20 for him but age 15 for her. The courtesy
name was meant to be used by adults of the same generation to
refer to one another on formal occasions or in writing. It usually
carried a meaning related to the person's given name but sounded
more sophisticated.
As for Granddad's given name Yu-ting (), the Chinese word
yu means to cultivate, and ting actually should have been
spelled as ding to sound closer to the original, but his name was
translated into English when people in Taiwan used the WadeGiles system to translate names. Either spelled as ting or ding in
English, the Chinese word literally means bronze tripod
container, which is round-shaped and matches his birthday
coinciding with the harvest moon, but it symbolically refers to
the nation, because such a container in ancient China was used
to carry offerings for gods at rituals conducted by emperors.
Granddad's courtesy name Song-jiu () means in praise of
China, though the word jiu literally means number nine. This
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is because China's first dynasty, Xia, divided the country into nine
states. The courtesy name therefore resonates with his given
name.
The Chinese word that literally means number nine in
Granddad's courtesy name somehow had a mysterious connection
with him throughout his life. He was born in September (Sept 23,
1915 to be exact), the ninth month on the Gregorian calendar. He
worked at nine different courts (including district and superior
courts) of the Nationalist government in China. When he moved
from China to Taiwan, a human resources clerk messed up the
date of birth on his ID and accidentally added nine years to his
age. He didn't have a birth certificate to correct the mistake, so the
wrong date of birth even followed him to the United States. When
he was hospitalized in September 2005, his doctors and nurses
saw the wrong date of birth on his chart and all said they could not
believe he was 99, because he looked much younger. He was in
fact 90 then. Was it destiny?
I wish he could have lived to be 99 in 2014. In that case he would
have seen me earn my Master's degree from Stanford University
and attended my wedding. In that case, I certainly would have
read the entire manuscript of his memoirs with him around and
asked questions in order to learn more about his experiences. Only
if he could have stayed alive in relatively good health for nine
more years, I wouldn't have as many regrets as I do now...
I can't change what happened, but I've found some solace in
compiling excerpts from his memoirs and translating them, as
well as in digitizing his paintings. Hopefully, everyone reading
this book will enjoy his artworks, appreciate his stories, and
benefit from his wisdom as much as I did.

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Appendix

24 Chinese Weather Periods

Also Known as Solar Terms
Chinese Names

English Translations

Starting Date

First Signs of Spring

Feb 3, 4 or 5

Transition from Snow to Rain

Feb 18, 19 or 20

Awakening of Hibernating
Insects

Mar 5, 6 or 7

Vernal Equinox

Mar 20, 21 or 22

Clear and Bright Daylight

April 4, 5 or 6

Frequent Rainfall on the Farm April 19, 20 or 21

First Signs of Summer

May 5, 6 or 7

Maturing Crops

May 20, 21 or 22

Ears of Grain on the Farm

June 5, 6 or 7

Summer Solstice

June 20, 21 or 22

Mild Heat

July 6, 7 or 8

Fierce Heat

July 22, 23 or 24

First Signs of Autumn

Aug 7, 8 or 9

Remains of Summer Heat

Aug 22, 23 or 24

Ubiquitous White Dews

Sept 7, 8 or 9

Autumnal Equinox

Sept 22, 23 or 24

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Ubiquitous Cold Dews

Oct 7, 8 or 9

Appearance of Frost

Oct 23 or 24

First Signs of Winter

Nov 7 or 8

Mild Snow

Nov 21, 22 or 23

Heavy Snow

Dec 6, 7 or 8

Winter Solstice

Dec 21, 22 or 23

Slightly Cold Weather

Jan 5, 6 or 7

Seriously Cold Weather

Jan 19, 20 or 21

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