The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

  Wang failed to take into consideration one fact. He was, perhaps, getting too old and inelastic to realize what he was deserting when he left Chiang Kai-shek’s China. That mental picture of a personal duel between two strong men had obscured for him the tact that Chiang’s China was not the old scattered heterogeneous mixture of general-governed provinces, but a new entity, an entity that was conscious of being threatened by an enemy from outside. This was no civil war, no family squabble, and the Chinese people knew it. Wang’s defection, therefore, was definitely shocking. There was all the difference between his departure from Nanking in the old days and his flight from Chungking in the new as there would be between a quarrel in the American government between the President and the Secretary of War and that Secretary’s sale of the national defense plans to some foreign agent. He himself could not see the difference because his mentality is as limited as that of a war lord: the Chinese public, with a reasonable number of exceptions, did. Wang Ching-wei, haggling over future power with the Japanese in Hanoi and Shanghai, was out of China, once and for all. His future was linked with that of Japan.

  Winter in Chungking is a gloomy time, which is one of the reasons the Government picked it out as a place where they could dig in. A heavy fog lies over the hills by the rivers that segregate it into a wedge-shaped peninsula, and this fog stays there, varying only in density, from October to well into April. In the winter the Chungking sun appears only at long intervals as a watery pale-yellow blob through the fog. Commercial airplanes, manned by pilots who become perforce most skillful at blind flying, make their landings on and take off from a sandspit in the river at the foot of one of the steepest cliffs. Getting into and out of the canyon is only one of their problems. It is not an easy place to fly into, even for a commercial plane with friendly intentions.

  Japanese bombers are thus barred from Chungking by weather conditions for about eight months of the year. This fact was the salvation of Free China for two reasons: the temporary freedom from menace to the population, and the opportunity to make more dugouts. The cliffs and rock-cored hills on which the town is built (sooner or later every visitor to Chungking calls it “the city built on rock”) offer an ideal material for artificial caves. More and more and more were scooped out by blasting and picking away, and more blasting and more picking away in the endlessly patient, slow, inefficient manner of the Chinese workman, who gets results no efficient laborer could achieve. The city was honeycombed with these caves, public and private, big and little, deep and shallow, and still they wanted more, for Chungking was still filling up to overflowing. As the summer season approached, the military authorities recognized the peril to these crowds and ordered everyone out of town who did not have a good reason for remaining. In vain. There was no possible way to regulate the number of residents. China is no regimented European country: life is incredibly lavish, and the coolie and his children can enjoy at least the freedom of complete anonymity. How were the overworked military and civil authorities to rout out of their huts and corners the thousands of bean curd sellers, itinerant stone workers, storekeepers’ cousins’ cousins’ children?

  So they kept making dugouts to accommodate the people, and the people kept flooding into town, depending placidly on the dugouts that they were overcrowding. Downtown the streets, widened since 1935, were still too narrow for the rickety busses, the jogging rickshas, the thick clotting streams of people jammed between rows of framework shops and houses. Opium selling was summarily stamped out by virtue of the government’s presence, and the opium smoker’s characteristic pallor and vagueness vanished from sight. Native workmen and coolies began to make fortunes. The city hummed, buzzed and rang with chattering and vendors’ cries and the endless “clink, clink” of picks detaching crumbs of rock from the mountainside.

  It was a cheerful scene, but the army officers and members of the air-raid precaution committee wore worried expressions. The whole gigantic mass of population had been drilled more than one would have thought possible. Everyone knew that a first blast on the siren meant Japanese planes were on their way, and that the second blast would be an urgent warning to get into a cave and stay there until the All Clear. In the meantime, with characteristic calm, the people went about the life-and-death business of daily work.

  January 1939 was their first taste of another sort of life-and-death business.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  Air Raids and Orphans

  May in Chungking is still delightful, before the heavy hot blanket of summer descends on the double valley. Most of the population, of the town were out in the precipitous streets, sitting on their doorsteps or lounging in the middle of the highway and moving with maddening slowness from the paths of squawking motor cars when the first alarm, the “ching pao,” sounded. It is not one siren only, but several in different districts of the city that give tongue, and anyone who has gone through the drill of an air raid will never again hear the upward swoop of a whistle without an involuntary tightening of the heart muscles. After a long steady blast the siren lowers its voice, then heightens it again, then lowers it, then heightens it, in a mad sine-cosine pattern of sound. The nearest one fades away at last, and then from neighboring hills come answering voices as later whistles shriek their messages too. Across the Yangtze and the Chialing rivers the town watchmen beat great gongs in double time — one two; one two; one two.

  This is the moment when the people are supposed to start for the dugouts to which they have been assigned. Each person, theoretically, has a place in some cave not too far from his home. In the most crowded districts the public dugouts are far too full, and in those early days the cave space was insufficient for registered people, not to mention the vast numbers who were not supposed to be in town at all. Later the dugout drill became familiar and people calmly collected their most precious belongings and walked to their refuges, but this time, in the beginning, they were simply bewildered and either ignored the warning or ran around in circles, in useless panic. Some of them, but only a few, did go into the caves.

  The peculiar situation of Chungking makes possible a lengthy period of warning. Watchers send word as soon as the raiding planes cross a certain point on their way inland. Even then it cannot be told just where they are going, but the Urgent is sounded, in theory, just before they enter an area near Chungking and approach the city itself.

  Keyed up as the people were, some of them nevertheless remembered the procedure they had already followed several times. The Urgent would warn them when it was acutely necessary to rush for shelter. They waited anxiously, suspended in action, for that second alarm. It was long in coming. It was so long in coming that the inexperienced people at last decided that the danger had passed, and many were far from their caves when the sirens did blow again and the planes followed promptly on the echoes.

  It was a quick, savage raid, but the Japanese fliers too were inexperienced and the damage, compared with what was to follow, was slight. Far too many people were killed; they could have been saved if they had taken precautions. Some buildings were smashed; a few fires were started. Chungking thought it had undergone the worst possible results of a raid, and the next day the authorities prepared more pressing commands and advice. That evening, just at dusk, the Japanese came again.

  The first alarm sent some sadder and wiser citizens under cover, and many more fled to the open country outside the city, where they dawdled and waited. So extremely long was the delay this time that human nature could not remain cautious. People began to drift homeward. A party of foreign and Chinese journalists out on the Chengtu Road decided, watching the streams of humanity, that somehow word had gone around that danger was over. This sudden confidence that takes possession of a mob is just as contagious as panic: the journalists got into their car and started back. A policeman in the street stopped the car and said that the warning still held good: cars cannot run without special permits during the time between the Urgent alarm and the All Clear, and people cannot walk in the open. The c
rowds were out of hand, but this policeman did his duty. Grumbling but patient, the party went back to the Chengtu Road and safety.

  Something went wrong with the alarm system on this evening of May fourth. Instead of the Urgent, the All Clear sounded, and in a few minutes more the planes were over the bustling little city, catching it completely unawares. Lights burned; fires had been started for cooking; the streets were tragically full of life as those hopeful merchants and coolies trudged homeward from their dug-outs . . . .

  The hell of May fourth has been described elsewhere. There has been nothing like it in Chungking since. In one night thousands of people learned a lesson they will not, cannot forget, and thousands died before they could learn any more. Near one of the ruined sections early in the morning the Generalissimo was seen marching alone up and down, up and down the street, staring at the wreckage. A group of bodyguards followed in a huddled group at a distance of fifty yards.

  “What’s the matter?” asked an official who knew Chiang. “Why aren’t you closer to the Generalissimo?”

  “He won’t let us come any closer,” said an A.D.C. “He says not to come near him. He says it’s all his own responsibility that this happened.”

  One group, perhaps because it had been so well trained, obeyed orders to an unbelievable extent. Throughout that fire-haunted night, while the relief and rescue squads and the police toiled heroically, the War Orphans were being shepherded by the women who were in charge of them and given their orders. Before dawn a little army of over six thousand children had been sent off into the country with directions to march and to keep marching for as long as possible out of the scene of death, until further help could be given them.

  Madame Chiang had been on her feet all night, going from fire to fire and making quick decisions as to rescue and relief. It was not until after noon on May fifth that she could think of her orphans. With several members of her staff she followed on their trail in a truck, as her own car with that of the Generalissimo had been sent out to help evacuate bombed victims. (One old couple refused to get into the Generalissimo’s car or even to approach it until they were assured over and over that such action would not be a profanation. Even then they insisted upon kowtowing three times to the machine before they would enter it.) They came upon the forlorn, gallant little band well outside of the belt of villages that surrounds the city. The children had marched, stopped by the roadside to rest when they had to, and marched again. The older ones helped the little ones along. Some of them carried others. They were a worn-out army, but not one of them was crying.

  Temporary quarters had been prepared for them in a district several miles outside of the city. It was now a matter of getting them to shelter, for it was five o’clock, and of finding food for them. Madame Chiang decided to stop all trucks and private cars that had been pressed into service to evacuate the Chungking populace. Now, having deposited their loads, they were returning empty to the city, and she thought of turning them back once again to transport the children. She stepped out into the road and held up her hand to flag a truck; the driver brought it to a halt. When she told him, however, to load the car with children he shook his head and drove on, unaware that he had cheeked the wife of the Generalissimo. This was no wonder, for her face was streaked with grime and her slacks and shirt were crumpled. The rest of the party was no better, and her aide-de-camp had been sent to scour for food for the hungry children.

  Several more trucks were intercepted and lost again, for the chauffeurs could not be convinced of Madame’s identity. At last she managed to commandeer the necessary’ cars, and the orphans were brought to their destination, to food and beds of a sort. It has not gone on record, but Madame admits that a few of the babies, when they realized their behavior had not been too shameful, allowed themselves at last the luxury of a few comfortable howls . . . .

  There was not much of vociferous grief in Chungking for several days: the people were stunned and overworked at the same time. Everywhere in the ruins and on the street corners, however, were coffins; some of them were of black lacquer and had candles burning before them, and some were of rough white wood, mere unfinished boxes. Even in this ancient and well-stocked Chinese city there were not enough coffins to go around: not nearly enough coffins.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  Reunion under Fire

  Wang Ching-wei became a resident of Shanghai, a most unwelcome one. He settled down in Yuyuen Road, at the outer edge of the International Settlement, and his house became an armed camp. Even when there were no fights directly at his headquarters, his presence was a constant stimulation to lawlessness and terrorism, particularly during one somewhat comic period when he was quarreling with his sponsors, the Japanese. Five factions fought among themselves over the dying body of Shanghai; the Ta Tao party, which was made up of opportunist Chinese; the Japanese themselves; the new puppet Mayor of Greater Shanghai, who wanted to become independent; Wang’s gang; the Chinese guerillas.

  During the summer of 1939 while Chungking learned how to take cover, on into the autumn and the winter that marked a new burst of building and liberated activity in the wartime capital, Wang and his patrons argued about it and about. There was a flurry of excitement in Free China when it was rumored that the enemy had made another important convert in North China, where the spineless puppet government had long awaited a leader — Wu Pei-fu himself. Had he agreed to take on the job he would have found dozens of old acquaintances from pre-Chiang days as his colleagues.

  “Peking is fantastic,” reported one observer. “Old people who haven’t seen daylight in years are coming out and walking in the streets. Tired retired old scoundrels, forgotten petty war lords, people who’ve been smoking opium for the past ten years — they look like something from under a stone. And they’re all in the new North-China government.”

  Now that Wu had evidently promised to deal with the conquerors, however, there was hope for a stronger body of men. The Japanese waited confidently for his acceptance speech.

  Wu made the speech. He said he was willing to become the leader of North China again on behalf of the New Order in Asia, if every Japanese soldier on Chinese soil gave up his post and went back to Japan. China rocked with mirth. Japanese hopes of Wu faded to nothing, and the old scholar-general went back into retirement, dying later under what some people considered suspicious circumstances. He was a national hero before he died, a status he had never before achieved.

  Wang Ching-wei, however, reached a compromise at last, and the new “National” government was announced. Several false alarms were given and the inauguration ceremony was announced at various times throughout the winter, only to be postponed. When it did take place at last in Nanking, the contrast between the city as it is now and as it was during the Chiang inauguration was striking. Japanese soldiers were much in evidence; Japanese “advisers” smiled from behind the shoulders of all the new officials. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the proceedings lacked spontaneity and merriment. Stubborn Chinese still persisted in talking of the future “when the Government comes back,” and a party of foreign correspondents was held up by an accident on the Shanghai-Nanking railway when some of the track was pulled up by guerillas. Going back they were delayed again by an explosion on the same track. Their Japanese hosts were flustered and disinclined to make explanations.

  Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s health was not in a satisfactory state, though she protested that she was quite all right and was “not one of those people who enjoy ill health.” Months of living in the fogginess of Chungking, hours of speech making with her girls in the Training School, sleeplessness and overwork had left her a prey to that most painful of complaints, inflamed sinus. Dr Talbot from Hongkong operated on her in December, and thereafter for a few days was to be seen hovering about and trying to keep her from public speaking. He also urged her to go away to some sunnier spot, but she felt that she could not leave the Generalissimo. An occasional journey to the front was as much of a break
as she allowed herself. Another reason for her reluctance was that the Training School was turning out a most important class, a group of girls who were themselves to be teachers in subsidiary training schools throughout the country. She could not leave them to go out into the world without a few more talks from herself.

  In February it became evident, however, that the operation had not been entirely successful and that a rest was imperative. Therefore she consented to go to Hongkong, to visit her sister Eling, whom she had not seen for more than a year.

  The house in Sassoon Road was very busy for the next six weeks, Madame Sun too moved in, leaving her own establishment for the time being, and for a few happy days the three sisters completely forgot their public roles. It was the first time in many years that they were able to sink political differences with free consciences; the United Front was a fact in that house. They gossiped, they cooked, they made jokes — the old family jokes that outsiders can never understand — they tried on one another’s clothes, and Mayling was firm about buying a pair of slacks and assuring Madame Kung that she must wear them when they went to Chungking. She was determined to take both sisters back with her.

  It was really an excellent idea, coming as the trip would close upon the inauguration of Wang Ching-wei. If the three sisters were to be seen in public, in the capital, no more rumors as to a split in the family and consequently in the Government would be believed. The sisters consented, Chingling stipulating only that Madame Kung promise to return with her to Hongkong after a month or so, and not be tempted by the fear of airplanes and the excitement of the capital to remain indefinitely in Szechwan. She, Chingling, had work to do in the Colony, and she did not want to lose the company of her favorite sister.