Last Boat Out of Shanghai

by Helen Zia

  SHANGHAI, 1941

  Every school day at eight, Annuo marched to the head of the class and commanded the other children in her loudest voice, “All rise” and “Bow” as the teacher entered the room. More than a year had gone by since that humiliating day when everyone had proudly graduated to the first grade except her. In her year of repeating kindergarten, Annuo had blossomed into an outgoing, confident child who looked forward to each day of school and her new classmates. She had a quick mind and especially loved hearing stories from the Chinese classics that her teacher read to the class. Annuo was so popular that her classmates had selected her to be the classroom monitor, a role she took seriously. At the end of the school day, she happily stood up front again, belting out commands as students bowed goodbye to their departing teacher. Annuo loved her school routine.

  In their small apartment on Rue Lafayette, Annuo’s family life had settled down following her father’s departure more than a year before to join the Nationalist effort against the Japanese invasion. He was somewhere with General Han Deqin’s forces in the enemy-occupied province of Jiangsu, bordering Shanghai on the northeast. There was no information available about the Nationalist resistance because pro-Japan censors closely monitored the few newspapers that they had not already shut down.

  Her father’s absence didn’t bother her. He hadn’t been around for most of her six years. Though Muma’s salary as the school medical officer was modest, she earned enough to hire an amah to cook meals and keep an eye on the children while she was at work. In the old days, when money flowed like water from their father’s lucrative law practice, Annuo’s parents had had plenty of servants to cook and clean for them. Now having just one amah was a luxury that allowed her mother to go to work without worrying that her children might be harmed by Japanese soldiers, desperate beggars, or puppet police.

  Annuo had never heard her mother complain about the lack of money, but she noticed a difference in Muma now that she was working. Her face seemed softer, less tense, her jaw less tight. Annuo didn’t feel the need to tiptoe around her anymore. The amah also brought a noticeable improvement to their meals, especially since she could queue up in the long lines for food rations, something Annuo’s mother didn’t have time to do.

  Triggered by the severe food shortages, a major riot had taken place during a soccer game at the Canidrome entertainment complex, with its sports arena, dog racetrack, and giant ballroom, only a few blocks away from their apartment. On March 15, 1941, a Chinese team had been pitted against the mostly European players of the Shanghai Municipal Police. More than twenty thousand Chinese spectators stormed the field and surrounding streets in protest. Annuo’s parents used to watch greyhound races at the Canidrome and dance in its beautiful ballroom in the days when Chinese had finally been allowed to patronize the once foreigners-only facility. But now Muma said to avoid the area, in case there was more unrest.

  The food riot, however, brought no relief. The Japanese navy had set up a blockade around Shanghai, preventing the city from receiving shipments of rice and other supplies. Meanwhile, the occupation force continued to siphon away Chinese crops to feed its own invading troops. At markets in Shanghai, people often stood waiting with their ration coupons long before dawn, only to find out that rice and other staples were unavailable. Even for those who could pay the exorbitant prices of the black market, food was hard to come by—a single egg could cost more than the monthly income of most families in Shanghai. On lean days, Amah could cook up only some plain millet pancakes for each meal. To Annuo, that was still better than mush.

  With Annuo’s father away in the Nationalist resistance, her mother took painstaking care not to reveal anything that might expose her family. She sternly instructed Annuo and Charley never to speak of their father beyond the walls of their home. Snitches and collaborators were everywhere, and even a casual comment to another child could bring disaster.

  For Annuo, such fears became the background noise of war. Yet compared to her years of moving from one province to the next, ready to dodge some new danger, her life in Shanghai took on a reassuring stability. For the first four years of the war, after the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, the Japanese occupation army largely avoided the British- and American-run International Settlement. They kept a low profile in the French Concession as well, even after France fell to Hitler in 1940, so she rarely encountered a Japanese soldier on her walk between home and school. Indeed, the Japanese had little need to enter Frenchtown when the pro-Axis Vichy consul general cooperated fully with Japan as well as with Shanghai’s Nazis.

  Aside from her mother’s occasional worried conversation with the amah about food, Annuo’s life in Shanghai had become so steady that she finally had a chance to blossom. On some days she skipped all the way to school. Yet there was one thing the child had already learned: In war, nothing is safe. In a moment, everything can change.

  * * *

  —

  ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, Japan bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in the U.S. territory of the Hawaiian Islands just before 8:00 A.M. local time. In Shanghai, across the International Date Line, it was almost 2:00 A.M. on December 8. In the early-morning hours, Japan’s military coordinated devastating attacks on several other strategic sites across the Pacific: Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, Malaya, Thailand, Midway—and Shanghai.

  At 4:20 A.M. in Shanghai, two hours after radio monitors first learned of the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese marines on the Huangpu River seized the American gunboat USS Wake and sank the British warship HMS Peterel, both moored off the Bund. Survivors were taken as prisoners of war.

  With the United States and Britain declaring war on Japan, the International Settlement instantly lost its protected status. The Gudao, Solitary Island, was no more. Japanese soldiers could make their presence known in every part of Shanghai. Soon the occupation force began making unannounced door-to-door searches in the French Concession and the International Settlement at any hour of the night, demanding to see identification papers of all residents.

  This was a terrifying new development for Annuo’s family. Muma was always on guard—as the wife of a high-ranking Nationalist resistance official, she would certainly be arrested. She could be subjected to torture from the Chinese puppet police at 76 Jessfield to extract what knowledge she might have of her husband’s whereabouts and activities. Or she could be taken to the equally hideous Bridge House on Sichuan Road, just across the Suzhou Creek in Hongkou. It was just a matter of time before trouble would reach their door.

  Late one night, not long after the Japanese attacks throughout the Pacific, someone came running up the stairs to their floor and applied a light but insistent tapping on their door. Muma cautiously checked: It was a woman, a messenger from the underground Nationalist resistance.

  “The Japanese are coming for you! You must leave now! Be quick!” she said. Japanese secret police had obtained the names of Nationalists in the foreign settlements, and they were rounding them up for arrest and possible execution. Yongchio Liu, Annuo’s father, was on the list, but because her mother used her maiden name, they had a little time to leave before the Japanese could locate them.

  Muma and Amah roused the sleeping children. Amah pulled some clothes over Annuo’s head, her hands trembling as she buttoned the winter quilt jacket. Muma hurriedly carried two-year-old Li-Ning down the steps. Annuo, Charley, Amah, and the messenger were right behind, each holding a few possessions. They had managed to run a couple of blocks away when Annuo heard the sound of heavy leather boots stomping in the direction they had just come from. A harsh voice barked commands in Japanese. When she turned back to see, the soldiers were entering their apartment building.

  Japanese soldiers in Shanghai demonstrate their bayoneting and beheading prowess to foreign journalists in 1937, using live Chinese prisoners.

  Terrified, Annuo could feel her heart pounding. They h
ad barely escaped the Japanese Special Agents who had come looking for their father. Since it was no longer safe to return to their apartment, the four went to stay with Muma’s sister and brother-in-law, Aunt Yiniang and Uncle Shu-shu, who also lived in the French Concession. Annuo and her family didn’t dare go out for several days. There was no school for Annuo and Charley and no work for Muma. When Annuo mustered the courage to ask when she could see her beloved teacher and schoolmates, her mother’s reply was terse: “Never. We can never go back there. The Japanese will be looking for us.”

  Annuo’s heart sank. How could she disappear without saying goodbye to her friends, who had entrusted her as their class monitor? But she dared not complain when it was clear that they had narrowly averted disaster. At her aunt and uncle’s apartment, the anxiety was stifling as her mother fretted over what to do. Without an income, she had to let their amah go. In worried, hushed tones, Muma spoke with her sister about having to find other means to earn money.

  What now? They couldn’t stay indefinitely with Aunt Yiniang and Uncle Shu-shu when their sudden presence could attract unwanted attention. With Annuo’s father fighting with the Nationalist underground somewhere in Jiangsu Province, Muma certainly couldn’t seek help from him either.

  Muma weighed the risks of going back to her old job against the dangers of seeking a new one. But it was clear that she couldn’t start again with three small children in tow. Muma concluded her only option was to find other, temporary homes for Charley and Annuo until she could work things out. A close family friend offered to put up nine-year-old Charley. Muma and Li-Ning would stay with their aunt and uncle. But where would Annuo go?

  Muma found a family that would take in the six-year-old girl for a price. When her mother brought Annuo to the small flat, the frightened girl wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs.

  “No, Muma, please don’t leave me here,” she cried.

  Her mother replied without emotion. “We have no choice. You must mind these people. Don’t make any trouble. I’ll come back for you as soon as I can.”

  She pried off the weeping child and left her with strangers.

  * * *

  —

  ANNUO’S DAYS PASSED IN a blur. She hadn’t seen her family in months. No school, no friendly faces. The bright little girl withdrew, hibernating inside herself, waiting for her mother to rescue her. When her mother had sent her away, the chill of winter had already set in. The next time Annuo saw her, Shanghai’s warm, sticky summer was in full bloom. By then it was 1942, and Annuo had turned seven.

  “You’re coming home, everything’s better, and we have a new place to live,” Muma assured her, taking Annuo to an awaiting pedicab. They rode past the grand shops and stately homes of the French Concession. Sunlight streamed through the broad green leaves of the plane trees that France had planted along the boulevards long ago. Sitting at her mother’s side, Annuo felt a calm she hadn’t known in months.

  Soon they arrived at the second-floor apartment of a three-story building on Avenue Pétain, a wide and busy street in a newer section of the French Concession. The building was owned by White Russians who lived on the first floor. The third floor was occupied by another tenant—also European. It was better to live among foreigners, her mother said, because they couldn’t understand Chinese and wouldn’t be as inquisitive.

  Inside the apartment, baby sister Li-Ning was now walking and talking. The toddler didn’t even recognize Annuo and cried for their cousins instead. At last Annuo saw Charley. She brightened as she observed that, at ten years old, he looked taller and more handsome than ever. “Big Brother!” she exclaimed, delighted to see him. He straightened and saluted her, grinning widely. “You’re just the same!” she chided.

  But Annuo didn’t realize how much she had changed. Before she was sent away, she had been a confident, outgoing child, unafraid to shout out commands to her class or to sing and dance for strangers. Now she was hesitant and quiet. Where she had been healthy and active, she now appeared fragile. She wouldn’t speak of the time she was separated from her family and seemed not to remember the strangers who had minded her. That period became a blank slate, wiped clean by sudden amnesia. To the little girl, it was as though it had never happened.

  If her reunited family noticed the change in Annuo, they said nothing. There were more pressing concerns. Muma gathered the children around the table.

  “Listen carefully; I have some important news,” she said quietly. Her voice dropped to a near whisper. Annuo strained to hear.

  “These past months, I’ve been working to find a way for us to be together in Shanghai. Because the Japanese are looking for your father, we will all have to take on new names. You must forget that your family name is Liu. From now on, your family name is Chang. No matter who asks for your name, you must think of your new name as if it has always been your own. If you slip up even once, we will all be in peril.”

  Muma had other instructions. “Don’t be too friendly to the neighbors,” she warned. She also told them Japanese troops were using the campus of Jiao Tong University, only a few blocks away on Avenue Haig, as their garrison. The Japanese military police headquarters was even closer. “Just stay calm if any soldiers are near. They’ll be less suspicious if we are living under their noses.”

  Annuo’s new name would be Chang Tsen. She repeated it over and over, trying to memorize the words. There were other names to remember. Her mother would go by Chao Keping, taking a new maiden name. Charley, who had always been called by his English name, became Chang Ping. Their younger sister didn’t have to change her first name. Muma had obtained forged identification papers for all of them with their new names.

  “You must never, never tell anyone your real name.” Speaking in her sternest voice, her mother looked directly at Annuo, then Charley. “Not your teachers, not your friends. Otherwise, the Japanese and their Chinese puppets will take us away.” Her mother didn’t need to repeat her warning. “Tsen” never wanted to get sent away again.

  * * *

  —

  ANNUO’S MOTHER HAD FOUND a different job. She was now a sales representative with the CBC Pharmaceutical Company, calling on physicians to sell the company’s antibiotics. She was good at it and had saved enough to pay the exorbitant “key money,” commission, rent, and deposit for their new apartment at 275C Avenue Pétain—a building nice enough for foreigners. She even hired a new amah to cook and care for the children. Zhongying, the amah, had two young daughters who moved into the apartment with her. Zhongying was from outside of Shanghai and spoke a dialect that was different from the local Shanghainese, making it harder for her to gossip with the other amahs. Everything was calculated to reduce the chances of exposing their new identities, Muma said.

  In 1942, after missing more than half of the prior school year, Annuo was back in class only a few blocks away from their new home. But she could never go back to her former school, lest someone recognize her. Instead, she entered the second grade at the Pétain Primary School as Chang Tsen.

  Annuo no longer raised her hand to answer a teacher’s questions. Nor did she volunteer for special assignments. She never wanted to be a classroom monitor again and shrank away from extracurricular activities, afraid to draw attention to herself. Her underground life constrained her every move.

  Annuo’s mother had to be especially careful. Her new job with the pharmaceutical company paid her more than her previous job, but it was also more dangerous, requiring her to make sales visits throughout Shanghai. According to Charley, that meant Muma would have to pass Japanese checkpoints frequently. Although she managed to carefully plot her sales routes to bypass most Japanese sentry posts, she could not always avoid crossing the Waibaidu (Garden) Bridge, where the occupiers had built a narrow gated checkpoint out of wood, barbed wire, and sandbags. The belligerent and cruel sentries not only demanded to see identification papers but also require
d all Chinese to bow to them. It didn’t matter if a Chinese was rich or poor, old or young, male or female: All had to stop and bow deeply to the Japanese—or face their wrath. One evening, the soldiers stopped an old man carrying such a heavy load on his back, he was bent like a beast of burden. The old man displeased the guards by failing to prostrate himself quickly enough. One of the guards loudly cursed the old man, whipping him with his rifle butt, then stabbing him through the heart with his bayonet and hurling his lifeless body off the steel bridge and into the fetid Suzhou Creek. None of the other guards even blinked while the horrified bystanders waited their turns in silence, each of them afraid of becoming the next victim.

  At home in the evenings, Annuo and Charley would listen as Muma and Amah discussed the latest dangers in the foreign concessions. Even the tellers of the Bank of China, the financial arm of the Nationalists, had come under attack from the Chinese puppet police at 76 Jessfield. In the middle of the night, 128 bank employees had been arrested at 96 Jessfield, their residential compound, and interrogated for several days. Three of the accountants were shot to death in the driveway of the compound while their families and coworkers looked on. Immediately after the shooting, all of the employees and their families packed up and headed far inland to Chongqing. Their vacant residences were swiftly taken over by the employees of the Japan-friendly Central Reserve Bank.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Annuo couldn’t help but absorb the adults’ talk as she did her schoolwork. It frightened her to think of the horrid enemy stopping her mother. Even second-grade girls her age knew that the enemy wouldn’t hesitate to snatch them off the street. On her way to school, she always kept a watchful eye out for possible danger. Other girls she passed by in her neighborhood did the same. On nearby Rue Boissezon, a girl named Rosalyn Koo cut her hair short and wore boys’ clothes over her lime-green qipao uniform and removing them when she arrived at McTyeire School, while the mother of Theresa Chen-Louie, another nearby McTyeire student, bound her daughters’ breasts to hide their female shapes. Some girls and women rubbed dirt on their faces to make themselves unappealing. The precautions were terrible reminders for Annuo of her beloved young neighbor Zhonghe’s gruesome bayonet death.