Woman Who Could Not Forget

by Richard Rhodes

  Iris never missed a chance for a reading or a writing activity, even at this tender age. I remember that she was very serious about her school-sponsored “Battle of the Books” activity. The school tried to encourage students to read, so it sponsored a reading competition among the children. At first, their parents were asked by the children to donate reward money for each book the children read. The money collected would be used for a school project, such as purchasing video equipment for the class. We had to pay 25 cents for each book they read. Iris would inform me which books she had read. The speed with which she read those books, and their sheer number, made us jokingly say to her that we were going to be bankrupted.

  Iris and Michael made a good pair of playmates; they played well together, but also competed and fought with each other as all siblings do. Iris was always Michael’s big sister. At this time, Iris was very interested in magic. She was fascinated by it, and she wondered how the magicians did their tricks. She borrowed many magicians’ trick books to read and secretly practiced by herself in her room. She liked to carry a soft flowing silk handkerchief in her left hand and a wand in her right hand. She was often twirling her wand and pretending she was a magician on stage with the words “Abracadabra!” and “See!,” pointing the wand at me. Michael was busy trying to find a way to ruin his sister’s magic tricks. Iris did perform several magic tricks in front of us and fooled us. Once Iris was interested in something and was driven by her curiosity, she would devote her time and energy passionately to work on it; that was the hallmark of Iris’s character.

  Iris also loved to play the piano and really enjoyed her lessons. By this time, she could play many classical pieces by Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven. It was an absolute pleasure to listen to her practice on our piano in the living room. I usually stopped my work and listened when she was playing Beethoven’s “Für Elise” or “Moonlight” Sonata. The images of her profile in front of the piano—her long black hair on her shoulder and the reflections of the wavering birches in our tranquil back yard on the living-room window—had been eternally sealed in my memory.

  Iris was open and very talkative at home, but she was shy and more reserved in public. I don’t know if she was conscious about her minority status, or if she just felt more comfortable within her family. Iris was a child who was very frank about expressing what she liked or disliked; she would not hide her feelings. She was sometimes very naïve and believed everyone was just as outspoken and open as she.

  She liked to ask a lot of questions and made many thought-provoking comments. When we could not answer her questions, we encouraged her to look things up in the encyclopedia and reference books. We were very open and democratic in our family discussions. Everyone could have a voice to express his or her opinions over the dinner table. Iris had by far the most opinions, about anything and everything. She was very talkative and often dominated the entire conversation. We sometimes needed to stop her to give Michael a chance to talk. Because Iris spent most of her time talking at the dinner table, she ate very little or ate slowly. Sometimes everyone else had finished the meal, but she had not even started her main course, so concerned was she with finishing her train of thought. However, everyone enjoyed listening to her because of her eloquence and dramatic expression.

  I think it was around this time, in the 1979-1980 school year, when Iris was in the fifth grade, that she developed a great interest in her own roots. She was extremely curious about our family history and background. When my parents lived with us for three months in 1975, she had been too young to understand the historical significance. But by this time she would ask Shau-Jin and me many questions, such as where we came from, respectively, and why we’d had to come to the U.S. What had it been like when we were her age in China? We usually told her over the dinner table about our parents’ stories*: How my father was orphaned at the age of nine, and, in spite of his poor family background, he was able to beat the odds, challenge his fate, and struggle through and make a name of his own by working hard. I told her about my father’s hard working ethics and his emphasis on education. I told her the words my parents said repeatedly, “Money can be lost or stolen but the knowledge inside our brains can never be taken away by others.”

  We also told her of the sufferings of both our parents’ lives during the Sino-Japanese War and the subsequent civil war between the KMT (the Kuomintang: the Nationalists) and the Communists. Among the many stories we told her, the one about how my parents were almost separated from each other during the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanking was particularly prominent in her mind. The story was described by my parents numerous times when we were growing up, so we repeated the story to our children. In brief:

  On July 7, 1937, Japan attacked the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing and started a full-scale war with China. On August 13, Japanese warplanes bombed Shanghai and Hangzhou. My parents still lived in Nanking, the capital, at the time. All branches of the government of Nanking were planning to retreat inland. My father was informed that he and his family could take a ship provided by the government to travel upstream on the Yangtze River with the working unit to the Hunan province. On November 14, a month before Nanking fell to the Japanese Army, my mother took my sister Ling-Ling back to her home village near Yixing, to retrieve her mother and her younger brother, so they could escape together with her family, since my mother’s father had just died. Ling-Ling was one year old, and my mother was seven months pregnant with my brother Cheng-Cheng. After my father learned that his working unit was going to retreat to Wuhu, he immediately sent a person with a message to inform my mother that when she came back, she should take the intricate waterways to Wuhu, a city southwest of Nanking, upstream on the Yangtze River, instead of coming back to Nanking, because public transportation—buses or trains—was often interrupted by the Japanese bombings.

  On the day my father was boarding the ship at Wuhu, my mother and her family still had not arrived. They had been supposed to get to Wuhu four days before. My father waited and waited on the waterfront every day. He walked up and down the piers and checked every little boat loaded with refugees approaching the dock, but my mother was not in sight. When the government ship was about to depart on the last day, my father almost went crazy. In desperation, he started screaming my mother’s name “Yi-pei, Yi-pei” at every arriving boat. Then, a miracle happened. Along came a little boat and my mother’s head popped out and answered “Yes, I’m here.” My father repeated this story many times in family gatherings when we were growing up, and told us that he thanked God for the miracle: otherwise, my mother and all the family members with her would not have survived the Sino-Japanese War.

  We also described the subsequent Nanking Massacre and told Iris that every Chinese person should remember the brutal war crimes that Imperial Japan committed during the war. We never anticipated then that those stories at the dinner table would later become the impetus for her to write the book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, which would become an international best seller and change the world’s view of World War II forever.

  _______________________________

  * My father Tien-chun Chang, Iris’s Gong-Gong (grandfather) (1899-1994) was a legendary figure. He was a follower of Confucius’s thoughts and had passionately advocated Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s “Three Peoples Principle” as the basis for building a democratic new China. He was also a loyal member of the Kuomintang party. He authored many books, including a two-volume autobiography. He was also a political commentator and writer for newspapers and magazines in China and Taiwan. He was never a military general, as some Chinese news media wrongfully reported.

  The High-School Days

  In the fall of 1980, Iris entered University Laboratory High School, or Uni High, in Urbana, after she passed the entrance exam. Uni High is an experimental high school of the University of Illinois under the Department of Education. It combines middle school and high school into five years, namely, Sub-freshman (Subbies, as they are call
ed), Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior. The school is small, with each class having fewer than fifty students a year. The school is quite famous—alumni include Nobel laureates (Philip W. Anderson for physics in 1977, Hamilton O. Smith for medicine in 1978, and James Tobin for economics in 1981), and Pulitzer Prize winners, including the columnist George Will.

  When Iris first went to Uni High, she was happy and full of expectations. But the following couple of years were difficult for her. Whenever we later mentioned the years in Uni High, her mood turned dismal. Indeed, the first couple of years comprised one of the unhappiest periods of her life. I believe this was not due to Uni High itself, but to her passage of life, as high school can be an emotionally trying time for many people, and it was for her.

  Iris and a group of her girlfriends from grade school went to Uni High together. They had known each other for a long time, and eventually there were some conflicts among them. One day, Iris told me that one of her best friends was not talking to her anymore. She said that the friend criticized almost every aspect of her. Iris was devastated. I tried to comfort her and serve as a sounding board. I also gave her my advice. I told Iris that she should analyze her own behavior and ask herself whether her actions could have offended the others. I told her she could improve herself during the reflection, in the meantime forget the unhappiness and move on. When Iris got older, she had told me that she learned that many other girls, just like her, were unhappy at this age. Eventually, they all had overcome the growing pain of life.

  The breakup between Iris and her best friend from grade school was very unfortunate. Iris became quieter and sank into her own world. She read even more. She often told us that she found freedom in books. Books were her best place to forget her troubles and her misery. In books and in the imaginary world she found comfort and felt liberated. Books set her free.

  Iris spoke of the freedom she enjoyed so much at Uni. There were several bookstores on Green Street next to the main campus of the University of Illinois and Uni High. The one Iris loved the most was Acres of Books, which was a popular used bookstore on campus. For a quarter or forty cents, you could buy an old secondhand copy of a world classic in literature.

  After Iris graduated from grade school, there was a short period of time when she said she could not find a good book to read. That did not last very long. Very quickly she jumped into the world of literature classics when she went to Uni High. She read one book after another, just like a bookworm again. The bookshelves in her room were soon filled with secondhand books she had bought from Acres of Books or from book sales at the Urbana Public Library or the U of I Library. The public libraries and the U of I library usually had annual book sales in which they eliminated duplicate or damaged copies of books and books from donations. If she found a book she liked costing her only a dime, she was as jubilant as if she had found a gold coin in the trash.

  At this time, Iris would sacrifice her sleeping time to read. We had a house rule that everyone should go to bed before midnight. We found that Iris had a difficult time getting up in the morning for school. Later we realized that she was still reading when she was supposed to be asleep. We caught her once—she secretly cracked her bedroom door open after the lights were out and used the dim light of the hallway to read her novel after midnight. To wake her up in the morning for school became a perpetual problem during her high-school years.

  Iris’s excessive book reading resulted in even more advanced nearsightedness. Her glasses became thicker and thicker. Fortunately, at this time in 1981, contact lenses were available on the market. Both Iris and Michael started to wear contacts. Our visits to optician Dr. Sorkin’s office became so frequent and routine over the years that he became a good friend of Iris’s. Dr. Sorkin loved to read too, and often they talked about books and other issues besides fitting contact lenses during their appointments.

  In this period at Uni High, Iris thought herself ugly, especially when she wore thick glasses and orthodontic gear or braces on her teeth. She felt unhappy and lonely. During this period, I comforted her as much as possible and gave her my support. It was at this time that we, a mother and a daughter, formed a strong bond that would last a lifetime. She confided her sadness and worries to me. I understood her, and she trusted me. I feel this was reflected in the poem she wrote in June 1981 for me on my birthday:

  My Mother

  by Iris Chang

  Who gave me so much love and care?

  Who for me always had time to spare?

  My mother.

  Who, through love and laughter, time and tears,

  Finally raised me after so many years?

  My mother.

  Who is it that I owe my entire life to?

  Who is it that even a million treasures

  To replace her would never do?

  My mother.

  Dear Mother, one day when your limbs are stiff and old and weak too . . .

  It will be my turn to take care of you.

  Since she has gone, I have read it on every Mother’s Day and my birthday, and I cannot stop my tears.

  Uni High had very heavy coursework, and all the students were very strong academically. Most students at Uni had parents that were on the faculty of the University of Illinois who prioritized education, and there was definitely competition among the students. Iris, however, studied according to her interests. When she loved a subject, she would study hard and get a good grade. When she disliked the subject, or the teacher of that subject, she would not spend as much time on it.

  Iris loved math and English. She represented her class and took part in math contests for her entire high-school career. She won several awards, singly and as part of her team. The traditional view in the U.S. that girls were not good in math was a total myth for Iris. In our family, we never thought there was any gender difference as far as achievement in math was concerned. Shau-Jin was of course very good in math, and Iris always asked her dad if she confronted a problem. Whenever a math competition was over, she would bring the test home to show Shau-Jin. Iris would check each question on the exam with her father and determine how many she had gotten right. She was very happy whenever she got a problem right. She loved to be challenged and was very competitive.

  In later years, Iris had told us that she was grateful for our attitude about the competition and winning. She said the mom of one of her friends told the friend “If you can’t win a competition, don’t bother to enter,” while we simply told her to do her best. In the end, her friend stopped entering competitions altogether.

  On the other hand, Iris had a tendency to obsess over the things she was interested in or working on. When she was pondering ideas or indulging in her own thoughts and imagination, she was in another world. If that happened, she would not hear what her teachers said or how her classmates responded in the class. For that, her classmates would laugh at her and label her a “spaceout” or say she was daydreaming in class. She was quite sensitive to people labeling her as a “spaceout.” Because of that, she withdrew even more into herself and put a distance between herself and the rest of the class.

  Iris was weak at sports. In PE class, she was often among the last ones chosen for a team. This hurt her pride and made her hate sports even more. Besides this, in general she was working hard and loved her classwork. She was enjoying English, math, science, and Mr. Butler’s ancient history class. Iris also loved music. She liked to sing and joined the mixed chorus.

  When the school year ended and summer arrived, we took the children on trips to visit their two sets of grandparents on the east or west coast, alternatively. In the summer of 1980, we visited my parents in New York, so in the summer of 1981, we visited Shau-Jin’s parents on the west coast. This coincided with Shau-Jin’s summer plans too. He was scheduled to visit the Department of Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB).

  In Santa Barbara, we visited Ye-Ye and Nai-Nai, and together we went to the Mission of Santa Barbara and learned the early
history of California. Iris and Michael were very impressed by the Santa Barbara Fiesta. We were lucky to be there at the right time. They saw the dazzling California horsemanship and the gorgeous ladies dressed in Spanish or Mexican costumes in the parade, and they saw what a difference in culture there was between the Midwestern and Pacific states.

  In January 1982, Shau-Jin took the spring semester off for his sabbatical. He visited the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for one month and then was scheduled to visit the Department of Physics at National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan. Iris, Michael, and I stayed behind because both children were in school and I had to work. When the spring semester ended, we joined Shau-Jin in Taiwan for six weeks, in the summer of 1982.

  In Taiwan, a big industrial revolution was also in progress: Taiwan could build computers cheaply. We bought a Taiwanese-made computer similar to the Apple II, for which we only needed to pay a fraction of the price we’d have paid in the U.S. It was a very exciting period when all of us were hearing what wonders a computer could accomplish.

  While we were in Taiwan, I enrolled both Iris and Michael in a local Taiwanese middle school and elementary school, respectively. The semester of Taiwanese schools was longer than that of the U.S. Iris and Michael had one month in Taiwanese school, which was a big experience for them.

  In Taiwanese schools, the students had to wear school uniforms and cut their hair short. We got the principal’s permission to keep Iris’s long because Iris loved her long hair and did not want to cut it short just for one month in a Taiwanese school. She looked so conspicuous among the hundreds of students with their hair cut short above their ears, even though she wore the same school uniform as the others.