A Boy from China

Richard T. Cheng

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Sujets

• Biography
• Autobiography
• Cheng

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 13 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669869856
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

A BOY FROM CHINA
 
 
Volume I In China
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
RICHARD T. CHENG
 
Copyright © 2023 by Richard T. Cheng.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023904481
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6987-0

Softcover
978-1-6698-6986-3

eBook
978-1-6698-6985-6
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 03/09/2023
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
846671
CONTENTS
Preface
 
Part 1 . Escape the Mainland
Chapter 1 .      My First Escape
Chapter 2 .      The War Casualties
Chapter 3 .      The Poorest Place on Earth
Chapter 4 .      Schooling in Wartime
Chapter 5 .      The Most Treacherous Road
Chapter 6 .      The Crash of a Fighter Plane
Chapter 7 .      A Rice Paddy Fisherman
Chapter 8 .      It Was Beginner’s Luck
Chapter 9 .      Japan Surrenders
Chapter 10 .    Money from the Sky
Chapter 11 .    Return to the Ruins
Chapter 12 .    The Execution of Mr. Yang
Chapter 13 .    My Three Dogs
Chapter 14 .    The Calm between Storms
Chapter 15 .    The Flames of the Civil War
Chapter 16 .    Goodbye, Mainland
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1: At the Age of One in Nanjing.
Fig. 2: With My Grandma and Sister in Nanjing.
Fig. 3: With My sister in Nanjing.
Fig. 3A: My Parents in a Nanjing Park.
Fig. 4: With Grandma in Nanjing.
Fig. 4A: Father in 1939.
Fig 5. With Grandpa and My sister in Nanjing.
Fig. 6: My Sister in a Nanjing Park.
Fig. 7: Uncle Chao Shuan with My sister.
Fig. 8: At Age Four in Chungking
Fig. 9: With Grandpa and Father at Grandma’s Burial.
Fig. 10: With Grandpa, Father, Mother, and My Brother.
Fig. 11: At Age Fourteen in Foochow
Fig. 12: With Uncles Jan and Ming, and Lion.

PREFACE
This book, A Boy from China: Escape the Mainland, truthfully describes events that happened in my youth. It spans a period from the time I was three years old until I was fifteen years old, during which I lived a hash life and moved involuntarily sixteen times. The final move was from the mainland to Taiwan.
The hash period of life I endured took place when China was in war with Japan for eight years and during the civil war with the Communists for four years. I almost lost my life to illness and an ill-intended deed by a neighbor. And in the middle of running away from the Japanese, I was separated from my mother in a big city.
My father was a military man, always away for the war. I lived with my mother in a mud hut and eating meager food until I became a rice paddy fisherman when I was ten so my mother and I could eat fish, snails, and eels every day.
When the war with Japan ended, we returned to Nanjing and found that our former home was a pile of rubble. There was peace for two years, and then we had to run from the Communists.
We moved from Nanjing to Shanghai, stayed for a few months, and moved to Foochow, where my ancestors were from. We had lived in Foochow for six months when the Communists were closing in. My father went to Taiwan with the troops. Three days later, in the darkness of the night, mother, I, and Lion escaped the city of Foochow to board a junk and then a troop carrier that sailed to Taiwan.
PART 1
Escape the Mainland
CHAPTER 1
My First Escape
Images of that hot and muggy summer afternoon in Nanjing still float by hazily in my mind and in my dreams. I remember strangers in our house hastily packing trunks and noisily pushing aside furniture. Two horse-drawn carriages pulled up to our gate, and the larger luggage was hoisted on top of the roofs, while the smaller pieces were tucked inside the cabins. I can still hear the voices shouting inside the carriages and the steel-rimmed carriage wheels rumbling on the cobblestone streets, drowning out the clickety-clack of horseshoes landing on pavement.
I remember getting out at a strangely unlit riverfront landing area in the dark of the early evening. Mother, Grandmother, Grandfather, his assistant, my older sister, and our nanny, Ming, crammed into a small wooden boat with several people from Grandpa’s office and some strangers. After moving swiftly off, the boat stopped suddenly out in the water, far from shore. In the darkness where I could not see, I felt strangers holding me high above their heads and passing me from one set of hands to another from our small boat to a larger boat, where I was finally lowered gently into Ming’s lap.

Fig. 1: At the Age of One in Nanjing.
Grandpa was telling us all to shush—that Japanese spies could be out here and could be looking for us, and that we must not make a noise. Tall, strong men powered the bamboo poles and oars. When we reached the narrows of the river, with its swift, rushing water, we were towed by groups of men on shore with a fat, heavy rope. I still remember the disturbing, unfamiliar sounds of them chanting in unison. It was not at all like the soft hums of my grandma when she would hold me in her lap until I would fall peacefully asleep back home. I longed to turn around and go back there, to be tucked into the warmth of my own bed instead of being in this scary darkness with water all around and no bed to sleep on. An oil lamp hanging from the middle of the ceiling of our cabin swung back and forth constantly, casting spooky shadows on the wall. I squirmed against Ming and pestered Mother continually, but I did not cry. I did not want to make a sound.
It got even darker on the river. The poles and oars resumed their rhythmic motion. When the boat pulled ashore later that evening, I was gently swooped up again and passed by hands out of the boat, and I was surprised when my feet landed on solid ground. Someone carried me while my family walked until we finally entered a building—a hotel, Mother called it. When I looked around the room curiously, I spotted a half-open desk drawer. Peeking inside, I stumbled upon a box of my favorite cookies.
“Look what I have found!” I shouted to Mother and my sister. When I offered some to her, she quickly grabbed some.
At daylight, we were back in the boat, heading farther up the river. Sailors steered clear of huge rocks and floating debris. I was tired and tried to nap in Mother’s or Ming’s lap, still wishing I was back in my own bed or playing in my own backyard. Grandma and Grandpa hovered close to the small table with a hot teapot and cups, drinking tea constantly. When we hit more of those narrow places in the river, I watched intently as a thin rope was tossed from our boat to people in the water. After they swam ashore, they tied that thin rope to a fat rope. When the men pulled that fat, heavy rope on their backs, our boat seemed to move faster than when it was powered by the oars and bamboo poles. We were towed several times like this during the day. Mother said a different group of men towed us each time because they all had their own territories and made a living that way. Of course, I could not understand what that all meant.

Fig. 2: With My Grandma and Sister in Nanjing.
Before dark, we stopped on shore again and headed for another hotel. I ran ahead into our room, where I came upon another half-open drawer containing another box of cookies—my cookies. It was like magic! That is how I remember the days that followed: another hotel, the next room, the next drawer, and the next box of cookies. For twenty days total, I was never once disappointed.
When we reached shore for the final time, the boat docked on a huge pier. A long board was extended from the boat to the deck of the pier. I watched my sister walking down that board by herself without any help, ahead of me. Though quite scared, I wanted to be just like her, so I volunteered to walk on my own too. When I made it to the pier, I was wishing Father were there to see me, knowing he would be proud of me, but he had stayed behind in Nanjing, where he was a cadet in the Huang-Poo Military Academy. Mother told my sister and me that he would be joining us in a few days.
Grandpa hired several rickshaws, and our luggage was hauled from the boat and placed in them. I rode in one rickshaw with Grandpa, and my sister rode in another one with Mother.
“This is Chongqing,” Mother said before we boarded, “our new home, the war capital.”
We had just completed our first escape from the growing dangers of war in China. It was August 1937. I was three years old.

Fig. 3: With My sister in Nanjing.
I was born into a military family shaped by war and military missions. Chuan Cheng, my grandpa, was a teacher at a prestigious school in the early 1900s when he heard the call of revolution. He soon organized a group from Fujian Province to join the forces of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in his campaign to topple the Qin dynasty. Grandpa first served as commander of all revolutionary forces in Fujian and then was promoted to military commissioner under Dr. Sun. A few years after the revolution succeeded and the Republic of China was e