Shanghai to Liberation

William “Bill” Lee

Description

This is a story of liberation from oppression and covers the challenges of a young man’s assimilation into American society during a time of great turmoil torn apart by the Vietnam War. This story is touched by Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, Mizmoon Saltzik of the SLA, Mark Rudd of the SDS, Che Guevara and Ann Romney. It is also a story about the kindness of many Americans, and the Author’s unabashed joy of becoming an American. California history during the 1960s is the backdrop for the story. In addition to the Watts Riots, this history includes Miss Teen LA contests, the first Beatles concert in the Hollywood Bowl, the original Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in Burbank, the design of the LA County Art Museum to float on a lake of tar, the planning of the Irvine Ranch for development into UCI and the city of Irvine, and the slaughter of the SLA in South Central LA.

Sujets

• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Shanghái
• Biography
• Autobiography
• Shanghai

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 03 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781477267035
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Shanghai To Liberation
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE 1960’s
WILLIAM “BILL” LEE


AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2012 William “Bill” Lee. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 04/05/2023
 
ISBN: 978-1-4772-6705-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4772-6704-2 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4772-6703-5 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012916645
 
 
 
 
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.
 
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
CONTENTS
I  Liberation From My Homeland
Eighth Route Army Enters Shanghai
Beijing Family Burial Ground
Leaving China with One Suitcase
II  Taipei To Los Angeles
Taipei
Across the Pacific
Los Angeles
Learning English in the Cloakroom
Le Conte and Hollywood High
III  Summer Work
Miss Teen LA and Snow White
Computer Matchmaking
Watts Burning
Planning Economics
IV  Palo Alto And Beyond
Freshman at Stanford
Lambda Nu
Semmering to Auschwitz
Stanford and the SLA
Nice Body Indeed
V  New Your City
Columbia and War Protest
Waiting for Mitt Romney
Induction Notice
Protest Marches
The Killing of Che Guevara
Visit to Harvard Law School
Marie Patterson
Cambodia Incursion
Walt and Marie
VI  Becoming An American
Development Research Associates
Becoming an American
I
Liberation From My Homeland

Eighth Route Army Enters Shanghai
“Where were you during the liberation?” I was in Beijing on a retail development consulting assignment in 2003; and a young client from the “Sky is Red,” the third largest housing development firm in China, asked innocently enough. The “liberation” as the Communist liberators called it was 1949, but I always knew of it as the “rebellion.” In 1949, I was four years old and living in Shanghai. My family and I were being librated.
I can remember it vividly. It was late May in 1949, and the Nationalist troops had quietly abandoned Shanghai, China’s largest and most important commercial city. Once a few Communist scouts determined that the city was cleared of the enemy troops, the Eight Route Army marched into Shanghai in victory without firing a shot. I could see them from my second floor window. My amah took me down to Nanking Road to get a better look.
My mother and step father had left for Hong Kong. I stayed behind with my grandparents because my mother was pregnant, and the housing situation for my family in Hong Kong or subsequently in Taiwan was uncertain. My stepfather was in the diplomatic service of the Nationalist government, which necessitated their departure well ahead of the imminent arrival of the Communist army. My grandfather was terminally ill with throat cancer, and my grandmother did not wish to move him given his condition.
On that day in late May, our household was tense. “After all, they are Chinese.” My grandmother would comment trying to reassure herself of the decision she had made to stay in Shanghai in full anticipation of the regime change from the Nationalist to the Communists. Our family had live through the Japanese occupation, which included the slaughter of 250,000 civilians in the “Rape of Nanking.” We had a house in Nanking, which is about 120 miles west of Shanghai, and heard about the Japanese soldiers using babies for bayonet practice to terrorize the civilian population into submission. Her implication and hope was that the Communist could not be as bad as the Japanese, after all they were Chinese.
The tension stemmed primarily from the uncertainty caused by regime change. While it was not clear at that time to my grandmother, this was Mao’s peasant revolution. It was a revolution directed at the class my family represented. My grandma, Mary Nieh, was the granddaughter of Tseng Kuo-fan. During the Ching Dynasty, he was the epitome of the conservative Chinese gentlemen—intelligent, honorable, loyal to his subordinates and obedient to his emperor. Because of his effectiveness in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion during the 1860s, he was appointed Governor General of Kiangnan Provinces. The Taipings were influenced by Christianity but also believed in the communal ownership of property. Because of that belief, their rebellion was considered by some to be the precursor to the Communist Chinese revolution which would succeed a century later. Governor General Tseng effectively and, according to some accounts, ruthlessly suppressed the Taiping movement. Because of his success in defending the throne, he was reward handsomely. At the time of the Eight Route Army’s entrance into Shanghai, my grandmother’s family had at least three houses in Shanghai and Nanking, substantial stock holdings in a silk factory and of course jewelry and other assets.
The victory march of the Eight Route Army was not at all what I would have imagined, neat parade uniforms and bands playing marching music. It was a ragtag guerilla army walking in silent single file most in bare feet. Some had rifles on their shoulders, and others carried submachine guns in their arms with bandoliers around their necks. Once in a while the line would be punctuated by soldiers pulling a wagon with a mounted heavy machine gun or small cannon. The most curious part of this caravan was three characters lying in boxes being carted along. “What is that grandma?” Grandma didn’t know at the time but she later figured out that it was three characters in effigy, and the boxes represented coffins. The characters were Chang Kai-shek, Douglas McArthur and Harry Truman. When the march reached its culmination point, these characters were burned in effigy and numerous firecrackers were set off in the victory celebration.
A couple weeks later the Nationalist Chinese Air Force bombed Shanghai. We had pasted strips of white paper against the glass window to prevent shattering. After the bombing, we pasted some more. During the bombing, we moved into the interior of the house away from the windows. I heard airplanes, anti aircraft fire, which shook the house, and two or three explosions. The power plant was hit and we lost electricity for two and a half days, and we later heard it was two or three aircraft. My family thought the Nationalist Chinese defense of Shanghai was pathetic. The troops departed before firing a single shot and the air force return to bomb the city and caused us to lose electricity.
The regime change had implications even for a four year old. I had two dolls that were given to me by my Aunt Maggie when she left for the United States to go to college. One was a military figure in parade dress of black and red with a white sash; the other was an American girl doll. I had one in each arm outside the kitchen door one day soon after the liberation. A number of older kids were making fun of me. A girl about eight came up and yelled “that is a Japanese soldier.” “You shouldn’t have that.” She grabbed it out of my hand and ran off, while the other kids laughed. I was conflicted, I had been robbed on one hand but on the other hand thinking that it was probably a Japanese soldier doll and I was wrong to have it. She then came back and grabbed the second doll and ran off with the other kids egging her on. I was not conflicted any more. She robbed me. I went back into the kitchen and picked up the first thing I saw, the meat cleaver, and went after her down the street. Of course I could not catch them, and the meat cleaver was so heavy I could barely hold it up. My grandma gave me a good scolding when she found out. This was the first small step in the property redistribution that was our liberation.
Shortly after the liberation, I resumed kindergarten. The text books in kindergarten changed within two weeks. I had only been in kindergarten about two weeks prior to the liberation, but I could read because my grandma had used flash cards to teach me 400 characters. Rather than addressing family or ancestors like the old text, the new Communist text emphasized peer group even for kindergarteners. It was all about little comrades doing good deeds for their community and their admiration for Chairman Mao.
After the Communist takeover, our household members no longer talked in a normal voice but always whispered especially when talking about the new regime. Apparently informants were everywhere. Within a few months, my grandfather passed away. He had cancer of the throat from smoking cigarettes. My grandmother had his body cremated and his ashes placed in a white porcelain box. We were to take his ashes for burial to his family’s burial grounds outside of Beijing.
Beijing Family Burial Ground
In order to board the train for Beijing, we had to fly to Nanking. Most likely the rail tracks between Shanghai and Nanking had been destroyed by the either the war with Japan or by the civil war. My first flight was in a C-47, which was the cargo version of the DC-3. The plane had no windows, and we sat on a wooden bench along the fuselage.
In Nanking we boarded the train for Beijing. On the first day the train would pass through some smaller towns. As the