Japanese Army in the China-Burma-India Theater, along with six other Japanese representatives, bowed, hats off, to the Chinese government representatives led by General Ying-Chin Ho, who, ironically, was a former student of General Okamura at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy.
Japan had regarded China as a hopelessly backward country that could not withstand a single blow from modern post-Meiji restoration Japan. This perception was based on the weakness and corruption that had developed during the last century of China’s Qing dynasty, founded in 1644 by Manchus, and the country’s lack of unity after the 1911 revolution that ended the dynasty and established the new Republic.
The Japanese failed to realize that their invasion of this ancient country had set off a time bomb. What they had not understood was that vast and populous China had also been undergoing a reformation with westernized cultural components and an enhanced national consciousness, but one growing at a slower pace than their own. Tanaka Giichi’s statement about taking over China as the first step to conquering the world was ultimately proved to be wrong.
Hwa-Wei (front row, third from the left) in his junior year at the National Han-Min High School in Guilin.
Hwa-Wei (front, third from the left) was a member of his high school basketball team
Hwa-Wei (first from left) and friends in his senior year of high school at the Provincial Taichung First High School, Taiwan.
When Hwa-Wei’s family returned to Nanjing in the fall of 1946, there were still many Japanese soldiers waiting to be repatriated from China to their home country. Wandering on the pier in the rain, the Japanese soldiers lined up with heads down, showing no reaction to the outrageous curses, kicks, and thrown stones from angry Chinese citizens. Seeming indifferent, those low-spirited, defeated soldiers lost their wartime swagger and moved like animated corpses.
After seeing this scene, all the hatred that had built up during the past eight years in Hwa-Wei’s heart was suddenly gone. Instead, Hwa-Wei felt sympathy for those down-and-out Japanese soldiers whose expressionless faces also seemed mixed with a bit of relief—the war was over and they were going home alive. Indeed, he understood, they were merely the tools and victims of the militarism of their misguided government. The true war criminals, he felt, should be seen as those who had initiated and directed the war.
Nanjing was a city where Hwa-Wei had spent most of his childhood years. He first moved to the city with his parents at the age of two and stayed there for four to five years. His second residential period in Nanjing was between the end of the Sino-Japanese War (1945) and the beginning of the resumed civil war between the Nationalist and Communist parties in 1947. During those two years, Hwa-Wei actually stayed in the boarding school of the First Municipal Middle School of Nanjing on his own, while the rest of the Lee family relocated to Peking after a very short stay in Nanjing. There were no worries for his parents this time around as Hwa-Wei was already accustomed to life at a boarding school and had learned to take care of himself.
Hwa-Wei left Nanjing for Guilin in 1947 to join his parents and siblings, who had just withdrawn from Peking to Guilin. It was in Guilin that Hwa-Wei was able to finish his tenth and eleventh grades at the National Han-Min High School, a famous state-run school in Guilin.
Notes
1. “Education in Wartime China,” The Whole History of China, part 20, 372.
2. Zhenshi Yi, “National High Schools for Oversea Chinese during the Anti-Japanese War.” Oversea Chinese Affairs First Journal, No. 5, 2006. http://qwgzyj.gqb.gov.cn/qwhg/132/755.shtml.
3. “Brief History of the Second National Overseas Chinese High School”, Special Issue of the History of Private Overseas Chinese High School, the First National Overseas Chinese High School, and the Second National Overseas Chinese High School. (Hainan: Hainan Overseas Chinese High School, May 2013. 13-23.
4. Ibid.
5. “Education in Wartime China,” 373.
CHAPTER 3
National Taiwan Normal University
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without words
And never stops at all.
—Emily Dickinson
1
THE ISLAND of Taiwan became the only remaining territory of Chiang Kai-Shek after 1949. The post-war division of Korea and ensuing Korean War resulted in a flow of military and economic aid from the United States. With that aid and the natural water barrier of the Taiwan Strait, Chiang was able to resettle the Nationalist government on the island and thus establish China as a dual governance structure.
The largest city on this island, Taipei, features four major east- and westbound arterial roads: Chung-Hsiao Road, meaning loyalty and filial piety; Jen-Ai Road, meaning benevolence; Hsin-Yi Road, meaning faithfulness; and Ho-Ping Road, meaning peace. Meanwhile, many streets and alleys in Taipei are named after mainland cities and provinces. Even the layout of these streets and alleys resembles their geographic locations in mainland China, making Taipei seem a miniature facsimile of China. In addition, there are also thoroughfares with names—such as Siwei, meaning four social guidelines; and Bade, meaning eight virtues—chosen from literary allusions to primary Confucian classics.
When Hwa-Wei first came to Taipei, bicycles and rickshaws were the primary means of transportation in this simple and tranquil city; automobiles were not popular at all. Traffic signals meant nothing to pedestrians crossing the street.
With the resettlement in Taiwan, Hwa-Wei started as a twelfth-grade transfer student at Provincial Taichung First High School. After graduation, he passed the entrance examination and was admitted to the Provincial Taiwan Teachers College (renamed later as the National Taiwan Normal University), which was, back then, one of only a few institutions of higher education in Taiwan.
During the fifty years of Japanese occupation from 1895 to 1945, local students were kept from receiving education in political science and economics. They were only allowed to study in subject areas such as education, history, literature, and medicine. The restriction remained until after the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan and instituted an educational reform. Before long, the National Taiwan University (NTU) and the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) rose as the two flagship universities on the island. The latter assumed a unique position in educating generations of future educators in Taiwan.
With its main campus located on the northwest side of Taipei, NTNU was founded in 1946 at the site of the former Taiwan Provincial College, which had originally been established by Taiwan’s Japanese government in 1922. Many buildings on campus, featuring neo-Gothic and Gothic architectural styles, were built during the era of Japanese occupation. NTNU is just a few miles away from NTU, the other famous university established in Taiwan since the 1950s, one well known then for its academic freedom. As an institution for teachers’ education, NTNU was more restrictive, known for its practice of the school motto: “Sincerity, Integrity,
