in the family, Hwa-Wei had one brother, Hwa-Hsin, who was five years older; one sister, Hwa-Yu, who was three years older; three younger brothers; and one younger sister.
The year 1931, the Chinese Year of the Sheep, witnessed a turbulent rainy season in Southern China. The drenching rain seemed to have no intention of stopping or slowing down; instead, it kept expanding its coverage beginning in Guangzhou and moving further north. By May of that year, the rainstorms had already covered more than half the country. The water levels of several rivers, including the Pearl, Min, Yangtze, and Huaihe, rose rapidly. The fierce tides seemed to declare that this would be a disastrous year.
By June and July sixteen provinces were declared disaster areas, including Fujian, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Henan, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang. Countless houses and fields across half of the nation were submerged in floodwaters. An article from Guo Wen Zhou Bao, a weekly newspaper from Tianjin, reported: “The current number of officially declared disaster provinces is sixteen. However, the actual number should be much more than sixteen, if we include the reports from various news sources. . . . The remaining provinces, such as Hebei and Shanxi, were also affected by considerable degrees of rainstorms and flood. It is likely that almost no province has been unaffected. This is truly a historical catastrophe.”
Three townships in Wuhan, with floodwaters ranging from three to thirty-two feet deep, were among the most seriously affected areas. Scattered buildings were like isolated islands in an ocean of muddy water. Having stayed in Wuhan for a few days to inspect the situation, the head of the Nationalist government, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek (Kai-Shek Chiang), acknowledged the severity of the flood in his Address to the People in the Disaster Areas: “The flood has covered a large part of the nation, south and north to the Yangtze River. The tragedy and severity of its damage is very rare throughout history . . . not only has it affected residents’ daily lives, but it also has threatened the welfare of the entire nation.”1
Facing such a peril, the Nationalist government in Nanjing lamented in its call for National Disaster Relief: “Look at the towering muddy water that is never draining away and at our vast cultural heritage in danger of being submerged. The deceased have been swallowed by fish, whereas the survivors have been suffering from the famine. What a misfortune to our nation! And what a catastrophe to our people!”
This flood, the biggest to date of the twentieth century in China, had affected so many provinces that the headcount of victims reached as high as 70 to 80 million, almost one-sixth of the national population. This serious inundation put the Nanjing government under tremendous pressure as millions of victims, overwhelmed with grief, lost their homes and sought refuge. Nevertheless, this was just the prelude to an even greater disaster.
September 18, 1931, witnessed a military conflict, the historic “9.18 Incident,” in northeast China between the Chinese Northeast Army and the Japanese Kwantung Army. Bold action by pro-war Japanese military forces, combined with the pacifist policy of the Nationalist government, led to a bloodless occupation by the Japanese army of the city of Shenyang and then of all three northeast provinces, Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang. In March 1932, the Japanese invaders established the puppet state of Manchukuo with its capitol in Changchun, Jilin Province. This was followed by an aggressive expansion into other regions of China. September 18 thus became known as the “Day of National Humiliation” to the Chinese people.
Conquering China had been on Japan’s national strategic agenda ever since the Meiji Restoration of the late nineteenth century. In June 1927, Prime Minister Tanaka Giyichi submitted a proposal to the emperor of Japan that said: “Conquering of China must begin with conquering Manchuria and Mongolia, and conquering the world must start with conquering China.” This greedy desire and ambition for continuous expansion inevitably ended in the vicious invasion of China, forcing the country into the flames of war and the suffering Chinese people into deeper misery.
Hwa-Wei was doomed to spend his childhood years in the chaos of wars and natural disasters.
2
Hwa-Wei’s great-grandfather, Shun-Ching Lee, was a successful businessman in Fuzhou, capable of providing his children and grandchildren with opportunities for a good education. Hwa-Wei’s grandfather, Tzu-Ho Lee, was a Xiucai, a scholar who had passed the imperial examination of the Qing dynasty, and made his living by teaching in his hometown. His career path, education, was later followed by Hwa-Wei’s father, Kan-Chun Lee (whose former name was Sheng-Shu Lee), and by Hwa-Wei himself, making three generations of the Lee family professional educators.
Fuzhou, named after Mt. Fu to its north, is located south of the Min River, with warm and rainy weather typical of the south. Driving from the city center to the East Sea takes only about an hour.
For two thousand years, the city had always enjoyed a certain degree of monopoly and autonomy, given the geographic advantage of being far away from the central governments. Further, as a “blessed place,” as the name “Fuzhou” implies, this ancient city, with hills behind and a sea in front, had rarely suffered from calamities caused by natural disasters and human intervention.
Fuzhou also has a poetic nickname—Rongcheng, which literally means Banyan City. Banyan trees could be seen everywhere in the city since the Northern Song dynasty (960–1120). With its continuously growing prop roots, one banyan tree can spread out, over hundreds of years, to form a far-reaching and very dense thicket, resembling from afar a lovely hill covered with green foliage. Ancient memories of this city are likely hidden in those thick tangles of banyan roots and trunks.
Unlike the natives of many other inland cities, Fuzhou people are primarily the mixed descendants of migrants from central China and local natives, with minimal regional ethnicities among them. During the Song dynasty, one thousand years ago, Fuzhou was already a well-known open-trading port on the east coast. It was, indeed, from the two harbors in Fuzhou, Mawei and Changle, the famous Admiral Zheng He (He Zheng) embarked on his seven naval expeditions between 1405 and 1433.
Fuzhou later became one of the five designated trade ports in the Sino-British Treaty of Nanjing, following China’s defeat in the Opium War. As a result, countless foreign diplomats, businessmen, missionaries, and adventurers flocked to the southern city. Its residents, therefore, were among the earliest Chinese people to have direct encounters with westerners and western civilization. Meanwhile, along with the introduction of Wuyi tea to the western world, the Fuzhouese started to sail across the ocean and to extend their sojourns abroad.
In 1931, Hwa Wei and his family visited his parents’ home in Fuzhou. Returning on that visit were (front, left to right): two cousins; six-month-old Hwa-Wei; his sister, Hwa-Yu; and his brother, Hwa-Hsin (Min).
In 1932, Hwa-Wei’s family moved to Nanjing. Shown are (left to right): Hwa-Wei’s brother, Hwa-Hsin (Min); his sister, Hwa-Yu; his father, Kan-Chun Lee; and Hwa-Wei.
Hwa-Wei and his mother, Hsiao-Hui Wang, in Nanjing, 1932.
Whereas the ocean brought a yearning for a wandering life to the Fuzhouese, the surrounding mountain terrain cultivated conservative and traditional virtues among them, along with an open-minded nature. This is why overseas Fuzhouese descendants still preserve their traditions of family and homeland patriotism, their persistent ingrained attitudes, as well as their industry and thrift, regardless of their circumstances.
The natural and cultural environment in Fuzhou nourished the older generations of Hwa-Wei’s
