Last Boat Out of Shanghai

by Helen Zia

  TAIWAN, EARLY SPRING 1949

  From the moment that her plane landed on the airstrip in Jilong, a city just east of Taipei, the island’s capital, Annuo had the uneasy feeling that things might not go as well as they all hoped. The sighs of relief after the airless flight on the cargo plane turned to gasps of dismay when the airplane door opened to a suffocating gust of hot, humid air. Annuo began peeling off the many layers of heavy winter clothes she had donned in Hangzhou’s cold March weather. Her seventeen-year-old brother, Charley, and little sister, Li-Ning, ten, were doing the same, along with everyone else on the plane. The sudden shock of intense heat seemed to catch the grown-ups by surprise too.

  Outside, the wilting sun beat down on Annuo as steam rose from the tarmac; the damp air on her clammy skin leached away the joy she had felt for their safe landing. What else should they have known about this place? Even the remote village in Jiangxi Province after her family’s four-month trek five years earlier had seemed more inviting than this.

  At least her father’s former superior officer, General Han Deqin, was waiting for their arrival. He had been the governor of the Nationalist resistance forces in Jiangsu. Annuo had known his children from the days after the Japanese war when they, too, had lived in Hangzhou. Her father had become a civilian then, but General Han had stayed in Chiang’s government and was now an official with the Nationalist regime in Taipei.

  Good luck now touched Annuo’s family: General Han had found a house for them to rent, when so many newly arrived refugees had nowhere to live. On that first hot car ride from the Jilong airport to Taipei, Annuo found that the heavy scent of earth, flowers, and greenery reminded her of the West Lake in Hangzhou on a steamy summer day. But she was shocked to see thousands of idle soldiers huddled by tents and lean-tos along the roads and railway tracks, many clad only in their undershirts and rolled-up khaki pants. This is the defeated Nationalist army, she realized, hunkering by their makeshift shelters, smoking, playing cards, swatting at flies and mosquitoes.

  As the family drove into Taipei, the houses at the city’s edge were unlike anything she had known before—small one-story frame houses with curved, Japanese-style roofs and windows. The local people looked even more alien to her, dressed in baggy, shapeless clothes that she associated with Shanghai’s rickshaw pullers and coolies, not smartly dressed city folks. They had sun-browned skin and wore wooden sandals on bare feet, their legs without stockings to cover their red mosquito welts. Annuo stared in surprise, unable to find any similarity to her previous life. She had not known what to expect, but it would not have been this.

  * * *

  —

  ANNUO’S FIRST IMPRESSIONS WERE no different from those of hundreds of thousands of other refugees from the mainland who were arriving in hordes and overwhelming the six million locals who lived on the island. Four hundred years earlier, Portuguese traders had dubbed the lush tropical island Ilha Formosa or Beautiful Island. Formosa was the name the other Western imperial powers adopted. To the local people it was simply Taiwan.

  Most of Taiwan’s residents were ethnic Chinese from Fujian Province, who had been crossing the hundred-mile strait for generations. They subsisted on the fertile green island by farming and fishing. After the First Sino-Japanese war ended in 1895, a defeated China had ceded Taiwan to Japan, which planned to turn the island into a showcase of its expansionist designs on the rest of Asia. Imperial Japan built schools, railroads, coal mines, factories, and hospitals, raising literacy rates and living standards. It also banned the local language and culture, forcing the Taiwanese to adopt Japanese language, housing, clothing, and customs. Japan controlled the government and industry with close oversight of people’s lives. Taiwanese who cooperated with their colonizers were rewarded, while those who resisted were crushed.

  Annuo’s family, like many newly arrived refugees, was completely unaware of the simmering resentment by the local Taiwanese toward the Nationalists. Upon Japan’s surrender in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China had taken over control of Taiwan. The Taiwanese had initially welcomed their Chinese brethren, but the victorious Nationalists came to the island as conquerors, treating the locals as enemy subjects. The new masters from the Chinese mainland proved harsher than the Japanese, setting off a firestorm one day by cracking down on a woman peddler, then shooting into a crowd of protestors. A mass uprising began the next day, on February 28, 1947. In the days that followed, the Nationalists killed thousands of Taiwanese, inflicting “a reign of terror, probably unequalled in the history of the [Nationalist] government,” according to Shanghai newspaper editor John W. Powell. The Nationalist military imposed martial law on Taiwan, just as it later would in Shanghai—arresting and executing Taiwanese leaders, teachers, and intellectuals, shutting down newspapers and suppressing dissent. By the time Annuo’s family arrived in 1949—two years after 2-28—more than a million Nationalist loyalists, family members, and supporters had already fled to Taiwan in their desperate retreat, with many more on the way. Most were too immersed in their own trauma to notice the island’s tensions. In Taipei, an area known as machang ding—horse field—had been an execution ground for dissidents. That was where Annuo and her family would live.

  * * *

  —

  THE HOUSE IN MACHANG DING was another shock. Annuo and Charley ran ahead of their parents into the small covered hallway and into two empty rooms. There were no closets, no chairs, just bare walls and thin sliding doors of wood and paper. The floors of both rooms were covered with a woven straw mat.

  They listened quietly as General Han explained that this was a Japanese-style house with no beds or chairs. They would sit, eat, and sleep on the woven straw floor that the Japanese called tatami. A primitive charcoal fire burner in the outer hallway was for cooking and heating water. “After all,” he reminded them, “this island suffered as a Japanese colony for fifty years. Many of the customs are more Japanese than Chinese.” Annuo remembered the disparaging words of her seventh uncle, spoken months ago: The people in Taiwan still thought they were Japanese.

  Then she recalled his other major complaint about Taiwan—in a Japanese-style house, there was no toilet or indoor plumbing. Outside, behind the house was a hole in the ground that served as a latrine. To use it, they would have to squat. Once a week, workers would come to clean out the waste, much as the night-soil collectors made their rounds each morning through the lilongs of Shanghai, taking the human waste for use as fertilizer in neighboring farming villages. According to her mother, this also spread contagion and parasites, and that was why nearly all children in China had to take giant pills to expel the worms that infected their bowels.

  Cooking? How would they make do here with no servants and no money to hire any? Annuo wondered. She had never seen her mother cook or clean, except for the brief time when her father had left them to join the Nationalist resistance. Yet she seemed as unperturbed as always. Though the brunt of their many moves across China had fallen on Annuo’s elegant mother, she never complained and would certainly have never caused Annuo’s father to lose face in front of the general. The unspoken lesson for Annuo was that she should never voice her dissatisfaction. Her mother thanked the general with a demure smile and a gentle nod of her head. Not a hair was out of place, despite the warm, humid air and the long plane ride. She’s the graceful swan, Annuo reflected. If only I could be more like her instead of the clumsy, ugly duckling. Then maybe my father would like me.

  “No thanks necessary; don’t be so polite,” the general replied. “Your husband has been one of my finest officers and a true stalwart of our Nationalist cause.” Then he cleared his throat and looked at Annuo’s father.

  “There is one more thing: I’m sorry but I could not find employment for a man of your caliber—there are many educated and skilled men fleeing to Taiwan from all over China but not enough suitable positions.”

  For a moment, her eloquent father
said nothing. It was true that more than a million Nationalists had retreated from the mainland, overwhelming the island’s resources. Further, the entire Nationalist government was in disarray: The national administration on the mainland was disintegrating but had not surrendered. Though Generalissimo Chiang had resigned from the presidency of China, he retained the title of supreme commander of the armed forces and party leader and had set himself up in Taipei with his closest circle—and almost all of China’s treasury. A vast number of formerly high-ranking Nationalist officials and intellectuals from all over China had descended on Taiwan, an island smaller in area and population than most mainland provinces. The new government would have far fewer positions available. Already the party factions and competing military cliques were jockeying for power. General Han advised Annuo’s father to wait and see what kind of patronage jobs would emerge.

  But Annuo’s family had left Shanghai with little money. Even when her father was working, money flowed so freely from his hands that his family was often living on the edge. To Annuo, it seemed her family’s finances had been best with her mother in charge. In those days, they had sometimes even had money for special treats.

  Her father spoke up. “Sir, you know better than anyone that I served during the war and sacrificed without any thought of material gain. In coming to Taiwan, I had to leave everything behind.”

  General Han raised his hand to interrupt. “No need to say more. I will lend you whatever money your family needs until an appropriate position opens up for you.”

  Before the general turned to leave, he offered the family an admonition: With so many refugees streaming in, they needed to be vigilant against the constant danger of Communist spies and subversives who were attempting to sneak onto the island. Passports and identification papers of new arrivals were being checked closely since most refugees were not well-known Nationalists like Annuo’s father. In addition, some of the Taiwanese were malcontents, unhappy with the return of Chinese rule, the general warned. The Nationalists had been able to subdue the 2-28 Taiwanese uprising in 1947, but the military had had to impose martial law on the island to root out and eliminate troublemakers. “You must all beware and stick with other trusted Nationalists from the mainland,” he cautioned.

  * * *

  —

  ANNUO WATCHED IN ADMIRATION as her mother attacked the challenge presented by their Japanese home. If any of the children dared to complain about the uncomfortable house or the primitive latrine, their mother reminded them they could have done much worse. “We’re lucky that we’re not living in a tent or lean-to shanty like the people along the roadside,” she told her children. Annuo was old enough to appreciate her mother’s ability to dig in and make the best of every daunting situation.

  Venturing beyond the thin walls of their Japanese house was no less of a challenge. Mosquitoes, cockroaches, lizards, and snakes were everywhere. People clunked by, clip-clop, in their Japanese-style wooden sandals called geta. Those locals stared right back at Annuo and her family—their citified clothes, leather shoes, and pale skin broadcast “newly arrived mainlander” to all. The Taiwanese called them wai sheng ren, as they dubbed all outsiders, while calling themselves ben sheng ren, meaning those who belong. Remembering General Han’s warning about possible local hostility, the new arrivals kept their distance and remained cautious.

  In those first weeks in Taipei, Annuo stuck close to her mother when she went shopping each morning at the street markets. Although Annuo and her parents could speak a number of different Chinese dialects, none was of use at the neighborhood stores. The Taiwanese dialect was most similar to that of Fujian Province, the nearest part of the Chinese mainland to the island, and completely different from the northern dialects they knew. By using gestures and facial expressions to indicate what she wanted, Annuo’s mother was able to buy the essentials: rice, eggs, some vegetables. A pot and some charcoal bricks.

  Dinner at the little Japanese house posed a special challenge. Annuo’s mother had never before cooked on such a primitive stove. As she fussed with the charcoal and matches, nothing would light. At some point she must have recalled some distant memory of Zhongying preparing the fire. She sent Annuo scurrying to collect some dried twigs and grass for kindling. Soon, the smell of fresh rice cooking permeated the two small rooms. But anticipation turned to dismay as dark smoke billowed from the pot with the pungent odor of burning rice. That night they ate in silence, chewing slowly as they scraped away the hard, burned grains.

  As usual, her mother displayed neither distress nor disappointment. Breaking the awkward silence, Annuo’s father suggested that they pretend they were munching on a succulent morsel of Jinhua ham.

  Charley chimed in: “Mmmm, the rice is much more delicious than the mush we had to eat during the war.”

  Annuo offered, “This is almost as good as the hard-boiled eggs we ate along the mountain trails in Jiangxi.”

  Soon they were giggling over their first cooked meal in their Japanese house.

  To everyone’s relief, her mother mastered the stove, and they were soon eating fluffy white grains again. In a few weeks, edible and even tasty meals were coming out of their mother’s tiny kitchen. Annuo recognized the look on her mother’s face as she tackled the Japanese house—it was the same resolute expression as when she’d dispatched the Japanese soldiers who pounded on their door in occupied Shanghai. As then, Annuo’s mother was determined to do whatever was necessary for her family’s safety and well-being.

  * * *

  —

  THE MOST DRAMATIC CHANGE in Annuo’s family routine involved her father. He had been absent for most of her life, serving as the Nationalist magistrate in Guizhou, fighting the Japanese in Jiangsu and Jiangxi Provinces, and working in Shanghai as a salt merchant. Suddenly he was ever present. Whereas he used to direct his soldiers, now he lorded over his wife and children. Everything that Annuo and her siblings did came under his constant scrutiny, command, and control.

  As the family’s supreme commander, her father imposed rules and restrictions without explanation. Given Taipei’s limited public transportation, many children rode bicycles to school. However, the Liu children were forbidden to ride bikes at all. It didn’t matter that the bus system was undependable. They would just have to wait. Bicycle riding could lead to independence; independence could lead to disobedience and unacceptable dalliances.

  In searching for schools for the children, Annuo’s parents quickly learned that the most acclaimed secondary school for girls in Taiwan was the Taipei First Girls’ High School, located in the heart of Taipei, next to the main government building. The beautiful school grounds were enclosed by a tall fence with access through a main gate, much like the finest private schools in Shanghai.

  It was Annuo herself who decided that she wanted to attend the prestigious First Girls’ High School. She couldn’t stand her father’s scrutiny and believed that this school could be her pathway to salvation. She had heard that its graduates were virtually guaranteed a spot at the top college, the National Taiwan University or Tai Da, as it was known. Graduates of Tai Da had the best shot at getting a visa to attend graduate school abroad. If only she could attend the First Girls’ High School, she might be able to get away from this suffocating island of Taiwan.

  Because Annuo’s family had arrived in Taiwan near the end of the school year, she would normally have had to wait until school resumed in September. But because the exodus to Taiwan in 1949 had brought a deluge of school-aged children to the island, the Nationalists created an extra school term over the summer to accommodate the huge influx. Special midyear school entrance examinations were to be held to determine which schools the newly arrived students would attend. Only those who scored in the top 1 percent could hope to get into the best girls’ or boys’ schools.

  Once again, Annuo’s future depended on a test. To get into the First Girls’ High School, she would be
competing with other exiled students from all over China. On the day of the exam, Annuo swore to herself that if she was admitted, she would work harder in this school than she had ever done before.

  Days later, Annuo took a bus to the school to see the posted results. She had to find her name listed somewhere on the long sheets of paper with students ranked in order, with the top scores first. To her astonishment, her name was near the top. She was one of the approximately one hundred who had made it into the special off-term session at the school of her dreams. Annuo rubbed her eyes, thinking that it might be a mistake. Then she looked again. Her name was still there.

  Until this point, the fourteen-year-old had thought of herself as little more than a thistle burr, riding along to whatever place war and circumstance took her. But as her mother reminded her, Annuo was the same age as her grandmother at the time she had married and then learned to manage her own household. Now, Annuo told herself, it was time for her to have a hand in her own future. School would provide the means.

  But she would have to bide her time. Meanwhile, her father drew the circle around her even tighter. She was not permitted to visit other children at their homes for fear that she could fall under bad influences. For the same reason, there could be no school trips with her classes or going out with friends. Without his vigilant presence, who knew what harmful spell might befall his children? She was not allowed to learn how to type—no reason was given. No listening to music, which could create a distraction and was a definite corrupting influence. No dancing or contact with the opposite sex for his now-teenaged children—it didn’t matter that he had taught Annuo and her younger sister to dance.