kindergarten she knew well, which was like a labyrinth. She hid there for over an hour and then sneaked out the back door and got home safely. Dr Xia had seen the Russians chasing my mother into the building; to his immense relief they soon came out again, obviously baffled by the layout.
Just over a week after the Russians arrived, my mother was told by the chief of her neighbourhood committee to attend a meeting the following evening. When she got there she saw a number of shabby Chinese men—and a few women—making speeches about how they had fought eight years to defeat the Japanese so that ordinary people could be the masters of a new China. These were Communists—Chinese Communists. They had entered the city the previous day, without fanfare or warning. The women Communists at the meeting wore shapeless clothes exactly like the men. My mother thought to herself: How could you claim to have defeated the Japanese? You haven’t even got decent guns or clothes. To her, the Communists looked poorer and scruffier than beggars.
She was disappointed because she had imagined them as big and handsome, and superhuman. Her uncle Pei-o, the prison warder, and Dong, the executioner, had told her that the Communists were the bravest prisoners: ‘They have the strongest bones,’ her uncle often said. ‘They sang and shouted slogans and cursed the Japanese until the very last minute before they were strangled,’ said Dong.
The Communists put up notices calling on the population to keep order, and started arresting collaborators and people who had worked for the Japanese security forces. Among those arrested was Yang, my grandmother’s father, still deputy police chief of Yixian. He was imprisoned in his own jail and his boss, the police chief, was executed. The Communists soon restored order and got the economy going again. The food situation, which had been desperate, improved markedly. Dr Xia was able to start seeing patients again, and my mother’s school reopened.
The Communists were billeted in the houses of local people. They seemed honest and unpretentious, and would chat with the families: ‘We don’t have enough educated people,’ they used to say to one friend of my mother’s. ‘Come and join us and you can become a county chief.’
They needed recruits. At the time of the Japanese surrender, both Communists and Kuomintang had tried to occupy as much territory as they could, but the Kuomintang had a much larger and better-equipped army. Both were manoeuvring for position in preparation for renewing the civil war which had been partly suspended for the previous eight years in order to fight the Japanese. In fact, fighting between Communists and Kuomintang had already broken out. Manchuria was the crucial battleground because of its economic assets. Because they were nearby, the Communists had got their forces into Manchuria first, with virtually no assistance from the Russians. But the Americans were helping Chiang Kai-shek establish himself in the area by ferrying tens of thousands of Kuomintang troops to North China. At one point the Americans tried to land some of them at Huludao, the port about thirty miles from Jinzhou, but had to withdraw under fire from Chinese Communists. The Kuomintang troops were forced to land south of the Great Wall and make their way north by train. The United States gave them air cover. Altogether, over 50,000 US Marines landed in North China, occupying Peking and Tianjin.
The Russians formally recognized Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang as the government of China. By 11 November, the Soviet Red Army had left the Jinzhou area and pulled back to northern Manchuria, as part of a commitment by Stalin to withdraw from the area within three months of victory. This left the Chinese Communists alone in control of the city. One evening in late November my mother was walking home from school when she saw large numbers of soldiers hurriedly gathering their weapons and equipment and moving in the direction of the south gate. She knew there had been heavy fighting in the surrounding countryside and guessed the Communists must be leaving.
This withdrawal was in line with the strategy of the Communist leader Mao Zedong not to try to hold cities, where the Kuomintang would have the military advantage, but to retreat to the rural areas. ‘To surround the cities with our countryside and eventually take the cities’ was Mao’s guideline for the new phase.
On the day after the Chinese Communists withdrew from Jinzhou, a new army entered the city—the fourth in as many months. This army had clean uniforms and gleaming new American weapons. It was the Kuomintang. People ran out of their houses and gathered in the narrow mud streets, clapping and cheering. My mother squeezed her way to the front of the excited crowd. Suddenly she found she was waving her arms and cheering loudly. These soldiers really look like the army which beat the Japanese, she thought to herself. She ran home in a state of high excitement to tell her parents about the smart new soldiers.
There was a festival atmosphere in Jinzhou. People competed to invite troops to stay in their homes. One officer came to live with the Xias. He behaved extremely respectfully, and the family all liked him. My grandmother and Dr Xia felt that the Kuomintang would maintain law and order and ensure peace at last.
But the goodwill people had felt toward the Kuomintang soon turned to bitter disappointment. Most of the officials came from other parts of China, and talked down to the local people, addressing them as Wang-guo-nu (‘Slaves who have no country of your own’) and lecturing them about how they ought to be grateful to the Kuomintang for liberating them from the Japanese. One evening there was a party at my mother’s school for the students and Kuomintang officers. The three-year-old daughter of one official recited a speech which began: ‘We, the Kuomintang, have been fighting the Japanese for eight years and have now saved you, who were the slaves of Japan…’ My mother and her friends walked out.
My mother was also disgusted by the way the Kuomintang rushed to grab concubines. By early 1946 Jinzhou was filling up with troops. My mother’s school was the only girls’ school in town, and officers and officials descended on it in droves in search of concubines or, occasionally, wives. Some of the girls got married willingly, while others were unable to say no to their families, who thought that marrying an officer would give them a good start in life.
At fifteen, my mother was highly marriageable. She had grown into a very attractive and popular young woman, and she was the star pupil at her school. Several officers had already proposed, but she told her parents she did not want any of them. One, who was chief of staff of a general, threatened to send a sedan chair to carry her off after his gold bars had been refused. My mother was eavesdropping outside the door as he put this proposal to her parents. She burst in and told him to his face that she would kill herself in the sedan chair. Fortunately, not long afterwards his unit was ordered out of the city.
My mother had made up her mind to choose her own husband. She was disenchanted with the treatment of women, and hated the whole system of concubinage. Her parents supported her, but they were harassed by offers, and had to deploy intricate, nerve-racking diplomacy to find ways of saying no without unleashing reprisals.
One of my mother’s teachers was a young woman called Miss Liu, who liked her very much. In China, if people are fond of you, they often try to make you an honorary member of their family. At this time, although they were not so segregated as in my grandmother’s days, there were not many opportunities for boys and girls to mix, so being introduced to the brother or sister of a friend was a common way for young people who did not like the idea of arranged marriages to get to know each other. Miss Liu introduced my mother to her brother. But first Mr and Mrs Liu had to approve the relationship.
Early in 1946, my mother was invited to spend the Chinese New Year at the Lius’ house, which was quite grand. Mr Liu was one of the biggest shop owners in Jinzhou. The son, who was about nineteen, seemed to be a man of the world; he was wearing a dark green suit with a handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket, which was tremendously sophisticated and dashing for a provincial town like Jinzhou. He was enrolled in a university in Peking, where he was reading Russian language and literature. My mother was very impressed with him, and his family approved of her. They soon sent a go-between to Dr Xia to ask for her hand, without, of course, saying a word to her.
Dr
