Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

  In spite of the Communists' policy switch, some students and teachers decided it was safer to flee. One shipload of students sailed to the city of Tianjin, about 250 miles to the southwest, at the end of June. When they arrived there they found that there was no food and nowhere for them to stay. The local Kuomintang urged them to join the army.

  "Fight back to your homeland!" they were told.

  This was not what they had fled Manchuria for. Some Communist underground workers who had sailed with them encouraged them to take a stand, and on 5 July the students demonstrated in the center of Tianjin for food and accommodations. Troops opened fire and scores of students were injured, some seriously, and a number were killed.

  When the news reached Jinzhou, my mother immediately decided to organize support for the students who had gone to Tianjin. She called a meeting of the heads of the student unions of all the seven high and technical schools, which voted to set up the Jinzhou Federation of Student Unions. My mother was elected to the chair. They decided to send a telegram of solidarity to the students in Tianjin and to stage a march to the headquarters of General Chill, the martial law commander, to present a petition.

  My mother's friends were waiting anxiously at school for instructions. It was a gray, rainy day and the ground had turned to sticky mud. Darkness fell and there was still no sign of my mother and the other six student leaders. Then the news came that the police had raided the meeting and taken them away. They had been informed on by Yao-han, the political supervisor at my mother's school.

  They were marched to the martial law headquarters.

  After a while, General Chill strode into the room. He faced them across a table and started to talk to them in a patient, paternalistic tone of voice, apparently more in sorrow than in anger. They were young and liable to do rash things, he said. But what did they know about politics? Did they realize they were being used by the Communists? They should stick to their books. He said he would release them if they would sign a confession admitting their mistakes and identifying the Communists behind them. Then he paused to watch the effect of his words.

  My mother found his lecturing and his whole attitude insufferable. She stepped forward and said in a loud voice: "Tell us, Commander, what mistake have we made?" The general became irritated: "You were used by the Communist bandits to stir up trouble. Isn't that mistake enough?"

  My mother shouted back: "What Communist bandits? Our friends died in Tianjin because they had run away from the Communists, on your advice. Do they deserve to be shot by you? Have we done anything unreasonable?" After some fierce exchanges the general banged his fist on the table and bellowed for his guards.

  "Show her around," he said, and then, turning to my mother, "You need to realize where you are!" Before the soldiers could seize her, my mother leaped forward and banged her fist on the table: "Wherever I may be, I have not done anything wrong!"

  The next thing my mother knew she was held tight by both arms and dragged away from the table. She was pulled along a corridor and down some stairs into a dark room.

  On the far side she could see a man dressed in rags. He seemed to be sitting on a bench and leaning against a pillar.

  His head was lolling to one side. Then my mother realized that he was tied to the pillar and his thighs were tied to the bench. Two men were pushing bricks under his heels.

  Each additional brick brought forth a deep, stifled groan.

  My mother felt her head was filled with blood, and she thought she heard the cracking of bones. The next thing she knew she was looking into another room. Her guide, an officer, drew her attention to a man almost next to where they were standing. He was hanging from a wooden beam by his wrists and was naked from the waist upward.

  His hair hung down in a tangled mess, so that my mother could not see his face. On the floor was a brazier, with a man sit ling beside it casually smoking a cigarette. As my mother watched, he lifted an iron bar out of the fire; the tip was the size of a man's fist and was glowing red-hot With a grin, he plunged it into the chest of the man hanging from the beam. My mother heard a sharp scream of pain and a horrible sizzling sound, saw smoke coming from the wound, and could smell the heavy odor of burned flesh.

  But she did not scream or faint. The horror had aroused in her a powerful, passionate rage which gave her enormous strength and overrode any fear.

  The officer asked her if she would now write a confession. She refused, repeating that she knew of no Communists behind her. She was bundled into a small room which contained a bed and some sheets. There she spent several long days, listening to the screams of people being tortured in rooms nearby, and refusing repeated demands to name names.

  Then one day she was taken to a yard at the back of the building, covered with weeds and rubble, and ordered to stand against a high wall. Next to her a man who had obviously been tortured and could barely stand was propped up. Several soldiers lazily took their positions. A man blindfolded her. Even though she could not see, she closed her eyes. She was ready to die, proud that she was giving her life for a great cause.

  She heard shots, but felt nothing. After a minute or so her blindfold was removed and she looked around, blinking. The man who had been standing next to her was lying on the ground. The officer who had taken her down to the dungeons came over, grinning. One eyebrow was raised in surprise that this seventeen-year-old girl was not a gibbering wreck. My mother told him calmly that she had nothing to confess.

  She was taken back to her cell. Nobody bothered her, and she was not tortured. After a few more days she was set free. During the previous week the Communist underground had been busy pulling strings. My grandmother had been to the martial law headquarters every day, weeping, pleading, and threatening suicide. Dr. Xia had visited his most powerful patients, bearing expensive gifts. The family's intelligence connections were also mobilized.

  Many people had vouched for my mother in wrifng, saying that she was not a Communist, she was just young and impetuous.

  What had happened to her did not daunt her in the slightest. The moment she came out of prison she set about organizing a memorial service for the dead students in Tianjin. The authorities gave permission for the service.

  There was great anger in Jinzhou about what had happened to the young people who had, after all, left on the government's advice. At the same time, the schools hurriedly announced an early end to the term, scrapping examinations, in the hope that the students would go home and disband.

  At this point the underground advised its members to leave for the Communist-controlled areas. Those who did not want to, or could not leave, were ordered to suspend their clandestine work. The Kuomintang was clamping down fiercely, and too many operatives were being arrested and executed. Liang was leaving, and he asked my mother to go too, but my grandmother would not allow it. My mother was not suspected of being a Communist, she said, but if she left with the Communists she would be. And what about all the people who had vouched for her? If she went now they would all be in trouble.

  So she stayed. But she was longing for action. She turned to Yu-wu, the only person left in the city who she knew was working for the Communists. Yu-wu did not know Liang or my mother's other contacts. They belonged to different underground systems, which operated completely separately, so that if anyone was caught and could not withstand torture they could only reveal a limited number of names.

  Jinzhou was the key supply and logistic center for all the Kuomintang armies in the northeast. They numbered over half a million men, strung out along vulnerable railway lines and concentrated in a few shrinking areas around the main cities. By the summer of 1948 there were about 200,000 Kuomintang troops in Jinzhou, under several different commands. Chiang Kai-shek had been squabbling with many of his top generals, juggling the commands, which created severe demoralization. The different forces were badly coordinated and often distrusted one another.

  Many strategists, including his senior American advisers, thought that Chiang shoul
d abandon Manchuria completely. The key to any pullout, 'voluntary' or forced, by sea or by rail, was the retention of Jinzhou. The city was only a hundred miles north of the Great Wall, quite near to China proper, where the Kuomintang position still seemed relatively secure, and it was easily reinforced from the sea Huludao was only about thirty miles to the south, and was linked by a seemingly secure railway.

  In spring 1948 the Kuomintang had begun to construct a new defense system around Jinzhou, made of cement blocks encased in steel frames. The Communists, they thought, had no tanks and poor artillery, and no experience attacking heavily fortified positions. The idea was to ring the city with self-contained fortresses, each of which could operate as an independent unit even if it was surrounded.

  The fortresses were to be connected by trenches six feet wide and six feet deep, protected by a continuous fence of barbed wire. The supreme commander in Manchuria, General Wei Li-huang, came on an inspection visit and declared the system impregnable.

  But the project was never finished, par fly due to lack of materials and poor planning, but mainly because of corruption. The man in charge of the construction work siphoned off building materials and sold them on the black market; the workers were not paid enough to eat. By September, when the Communist forces began to cut the city off, only a third of the system had been completed, much of it small, unconnected cement forts. Other parts had been hastily assembled from mud taken from the old city wall.

  It was vital for the Communists to know about this system and about the disposition of the Kuomintang troops. The Communists were building up enormous forces about a quarter of a million men for a decisive battle. The commander in chief of all the Communist armies, Zhu De, cabled the commander on the spot, Lin Biao: "Take Jinzhou… and the whole Chinese situation is in our hands." Yu-wu's group was asked to provide up-to-date information before the final attack.

  He urgently needed more hands, and when my mother approached him asking for work, he and his superiors were delighted.

  The Communists had sent some officers into the city in disguise to reconnoiter, but a man wandering around the outskirts alone would immediately attract attention. An amorous couple would be much less conspicuous. By then, Kuomintang rule had made it quite acceptable for young men and women to be seen together in public. Because the reconnaissance officers were male, my mother would be ideal as a 'girlfriend."

  Yu-wu told her to be at an appointed place at a particular time. She was to wear a pale-blue gown and a red silk flower in her hair. The Communist officer would be carrying a copy of the Kuomintang newspaper, the Central Daily folded into a triangle, and would identify himself by wiping sweat three times off the left side of his face and then three times off the right.

  On the appointed day, my mother went to a small temple just outside the old north wall but within the defense perimeter. A man carrying the triangular newspaper came up to her and gave the correct signals. My mother stroked his right cheek three times with her right hand, then he stroked her left cheek three times with his left hand. Then my mother took his arm, and they walked off.

  My mother did not understand fully what he was doing, and she did not ask. Most of the time they walked in silence, only talking when they passed someone. The mission passed off without incident.

  There were to be more, around the city outskirts and to the railway, the vital communications artery.

  It was one thing to obtain the information, but it was another to get it out of the city. By the end of July the checkpoints were firmly shut, and anyone trying to enter or leave was thoroughly searched. Yu-wu consulted my mother, whose ability and courage he had grown to trust.

  The vehicles of senior officers could go in and out without being searched, and my mother thought of a contact she might be able to use. One of her fellow students was the granddaughter of a local army commander, General Ji, and the girl's brother was a colonel in their grandfather's brigade.

  The Jis were a Jinzhou family, with considerable influence. They occupied a whole street, nicknamed " Ji Street," where they had a large compound with an extensive, well groomed garden. My mother had often strolled in the garden with her friend, and was quite friendly with her brother, Hui-ge.

  Hui-ge was a handsome young man in his mid-twenties who had a university degree in engineering. Unlike many young men from wealthy, powerful families, he was not a dandy. My mother liked him, and the feeling was mutual.

  He began to pay social calls on the Xias and to invite my mother to tea parties. My grandmother liked him a lot; he was extremely courteous, and she considered him highly eligible.

  Soon Hui-ge started to invite my mother out on her own. At first his sister accompanied him, pretending to be a chaperone, but soon she would disappear with some flimsy excuse. She praised her brother to my mother, adding that he was their grandfather's favorite. She must also have told her brother about my mother, because my mother discovered that he knew a lot about her, including the fact that she had been arrested for her radical activities. They found they had much in common. Hui-ge was very frank about the Kuomintang. Once or twice he tugged at his colonel's uniform and sighed that he hoped the war would end soon so he could go back to his engineering. He told my mother he thought the Kuomintang's days were numbered, and she had the feeling that he was baring his innermost thoughts.

  She was certain he was fond of her, but she wondered if there might be political motives behind his actions. She deduced that he must be trying to get a message across to her, and through her to the Communists. The message had to be: I don't like the Kuomintang, and I am willing to help you.

  They became tacit conspirators. One day my mother suggested that he might surrender to the Communists with some troops (which was a fairly common occurrence). He said he was only a staff officer and did not command any troops. My mother asked him to try to persuade his grandfather to go over, but he replied sadly that the old man would probably have him shot if he even suggested it.

  My mother kept Yu-wu informed, and he told her to cultivate Hui-ge. Soon Yu-wu told her to ask Hui-ge to take her for a trip outside the city in his jeep. They went on such trips three or four times, and each time, when they reached a primitive mud toilet, she said she had to use it.

  She got out and hid a message in a hole in the toilet wall while he waited in his jeep. He never asked any questions.

  His conversations became more and more centered on his worries about his family and himself. In a roundabout way, he hinted that the Communists might execute him: "I'm afraid I'll soon just be a disembodied soul outside the western gate?" (The Western Heaven was supposed to be the destination of the dead, because it was the site of eternal peace. So the execution ground in Jinzhou, like most places in China, was outside the western gate.) When he said this, he would look questioningly into my mother's eyes, clearly inviting contradiction.

  My mother felt certain that because of what he had done for them the Communists would spare him. Although everything had been implicit, she would say confidently: "Don't think such gloomy thoughts?" or "I'm sure that won't happen to you!"

  The Kuomintang position continued to deteriorate through the late summer- and not only because of military action. Corruption wreaked havoc. Inflation had risen to the unimaginable figure of just over 100,000 percent by the end of 1947 and it was to go to 2,870,000 percent by the end of 1948 in the Kuomintang areas. The price of sorghum, the main grain available, increased seventy fold overnight in Jinzhou. For the civilian population the situation was becoming more desperate every day, as increasingly more food went to the army, much of which was sold by local commanders on the black market.

  The Kuomintang high command was divided over strategy. Chiang Kai-shek recommended abandoning Mukden, the largest city in Manchuria, and concentrating on holding Jinzhou, but he was unable to impose a coherent strategy on his top generals. He seemed to place all his hope on greater American intervention. Defeatism permeated his top staff.

  By September the K
uomintang held only three strongholds in Manchuria Mukden, Changchun (the old capital of Manchukuo, Hsinking), and Jinzhou and the 300 miles of railway track linking them. The Communists were encircling all three cities simultaneously, and the Kuomintang did not know where the main attack would come. In fact it was to be Jinzhou, the most southerly of the three and the strategic key, because once it fell the other two would be cut off from their supplies. The Communists were able to move large numbers of troops around undetected, but the Kuomintang were dependent on the railway, which was under constant attack, and, to a lesser extent, on air transport.

  The assault on Jinzhou began on 11 September 1948.

  An American diplomat, John F. Melby, flying to Mukden, recorded in his diary on 23 September: "North along the corridor to Manchuria the Communist artillery was systematically making rubble out of the airfield at Chinchow [Jinzhou]." The next day, 24 September, the Communist forces moved closer. Twenty-four hours later Chiang Kaishek ordered General Wei Li-huang to break out of Mukden with fifteen divisions and relieve Jinzhou. General Wei dithered, and by 26 September the Communists had virtually isolated Jinzhou.

  By 1 October the encirclement of Jinzhou was completed. Yixian, my grandmother's hometown twenty-five miles to the north, fell that day. Chiang Kai-shek flew to Mukden to take personal command. He ordered seven extra divisions to be thrown into the Jinzhou battle, but he was unable even to get General Wei to move out of Mukden until 9 October, two weeks after the order had been given and even then with only eleven divisions, not fifteen. On 6 October Chiang Kai-shek flew to Huludao and ordered troops there to move up to relieve Jinzhou.

  Some did, but piecemeal, and they were soon isolated and destroyed.

  The Communists were getting ready to turn the assault on Jinzhou into a siege. Yu-wu approached my mother and asked her to undertake a critical mission: to smuggle detonators into one of the ammunition depots the one supplying Hui-ge's own division. The ammunition was stored in a big courtyard, the walls of which were tolaped with barbed wire which was reputed to be electrified.