Chungking 重慶
(English Version)
My earliest memory of my father, 田寶岱, was when I was not quite 3 years old and received my first spanking.
In 1938, newlywed father and mother fled the Japanese occupied Beiping (Beijing today) with the latterly formed National Southwestern Associated University 西南聯和大学 (Peking, Tsinghua and Nankai Universities) to Kunming 昆明 where I was born the following year. In 1939, father graduated and joined the Foreign Ministry 外交部 hunkered with the wartime Central Government in the mountains of Chungking 重慶. I remember often sitting very still for hours on a small stool underneath a table where it was dark and felt safe, watching the adults in a soft pool of yellow light, comforted by their lively voices mixed with reassuring laughter. At times, after a while a new guest would suddenly ask in alarm, "孩子在哪儿?" "Where's the child?" Familiar guests would nod in the direction of the table, "躲那儿呢". "Hiding over there".
In 1941, a friend of my father's who was serving in the ROC army protecting the 700 miles Burma Road 滇缅公路 supply line between China and Burma, was on leave in Chungking. He left his sidearm with my parents during his short leave. When he came back to retrieve his pistol, my parents could not find the weapon which they had carefully tucked from view on the top of a tall bureau, obscured behind the rim. My father was responsible for its safekeeping during this perilous 抗战 period and was frantically searching the apartment. My parents recount that I observed them quietly for a while and then piped up, "是不是苹苹打日本人的那個東西?" "Is it the bang bang kill Japanesething?" My very annoyed father shushed me, "躲開. 小孩兒不要乱說話!" "Go away. Don't talk nonsense, child!" I burst out "我知道在哪兒!" "I know where it is!" They stared at me in disbelief as I trotted over to my little toy chest, opened it and showed them the pistol. My father's reaction was first relief and then furious anger! I still clearly remember father's left hand tightly gripping my left wrist and soundly pummeling my bottom as I shriekingly ran in inescapable counterclockwise circles until my mother pleaded, " 這個孩子呀!不要打了! 不要打了". "This child! Enough spanking! Enough!" Apparently, I had stacked my little stool on top of a chair and claimed the intriguing new "toy" my parents had hidden on top of the bureau.
Another clear memory was my second crying session in the home of my uncle 大伯父田寶齊 Tien Pao-chi my father's oldest brother. Nine years older than my father, 大伯 uncle was a Russian linguist and had in 1928 joined the Foreign Ministry 外交部 when the government was located in Nanjing. In 1930, Uncle was posted to Russia for 12 years until 1942 when 大伯 was recalled to the Chungking Foreign Ministry home office from his posting in the Moscow embassy. Uncle, his wife and 7 year old daughter 之秋 had taken up residence on the safer, less targeted outskirts of 重慶 than the city center which was under near daily summertime Japanese incendiary bombing and strafing. My parents were horrified by the deaths of 10,000 civilians between June 5-7th, 1941 from bombing, strafing, panic stampedes or asphyxiation in air raid shelters and decided to send me to live with 大伯父, out of harm's way. Both my father and mother worked and were worried my nanny could not carry me quickly enough into the air raid shelters dug into the mountains of 重慶. Perhaps my habitual hiding under the table also concerned them. I remember my second desperate crying session after my parents left me with "strangers" that summer of 1942.
In 1988, my mother and I visited my 大伯 in his simple but comfortable Peking University faculty dorm adorned with old family photos. In 1999, at the age of 94 田寶齊 passed away. Since overlapping in 外交部 in 重慶 for 16 months during 1942-43, the 36 and 27 years old brothers never met again.
My mother often told me about the daily routine of buying a bucket of water from one of the nearly 20,000 water carriers who balanced 2 pails of river water on a pole over their shoulder, scampering up the 100 steep steps from the Yangtze River bank without spilling a drop to provide the only water supply to a population of 2 million. Mother would apportion cooking, drinking water from this precious purchase, then bathe me and finally use the leftover for herself and father to wash. Food was often scarce and I would be over excited to get a 馒頭 to scarf down with some 榨菜 pickles or spicy 辣油 oil. To this day, 川菜 is still my favorite cuisine, and the celestial aroma of 花椒peppercorn is irresistible to me.
In 1988, my mother, daughter Laura and I took the 3 Gorges 3 day cruise from 重慶 to 宜昌. Now, instead of buckets of 扬子 river water, another generation of laborers slung the baggage of cruise boats tourists on their shoulder poles nimbly scurrying up and down the precarious Yangtze River steps. In 2014, my son, Ben and I toured old 重慶, a gray inner city overlooking the brown, eternal Yangtze River, once the lifeline for the wartime capital's most basic human need. Ben and I also visited the General Stilwell Museum and the Flying Tigers' Museum, a homage to the
brave, the few, the young American and Chinese pilots who risked their lives daily against the overwhelming numbers of Japanese planes attempting to subdue an implacably resolute civilian population who were dying by the hundreds, even thousands under each savage attack from 1938-45.
It was a time of great heroism and sacrifice! Churchill memorialized the 1940 British solitary resistance against the Nazis as Great Britain's "Finest Hour" in his finest WWII speech. Indeed - it also was ours, an even longer mortal national struggle against the enemy, losing over 15 million lives during 8 years of war.
My memories of life in 重慶 are spotty and the stories I remember were not traditional children's legends and fairytales but stories about the Burma Road, flying the Hump and the shark faced painted P40's Flying Tigers that confronted the far superior numbers of Japanese bombers and Zero fighters. Father's 2 younger sisters, 田寶聰 and 田寶慧 Tien Pao-tsung and Tien Pao-hui married young Chinese Air force pilots 董啟桓 and 李良才 Tung Chi-heng and Li Liang-tsai who survived their air battles and became generals in the ROC Air Force in Taiwan. In my teens in 1956 when I met my aunts' husbands, I could imagine that my uncles, 三姑爹, 四姑爹 must have been quite the dashing daredevils who swept up my 2 beautiful aunts back in old Beiping.
From my childhood memories, nor did I hear children's songs but I remember my mother softly singing:
"九一八, 九一八,從那個悲慘的時候，
脫離了我的家鄉，拋棄那無盡的寶藏
流浪！流浪！整日價在關內，流浪！
哪年哪月，才能夠回到我那可愛的故鄉？
哪年哪月，才能夠收回我那無盡的寶藏？
爹娘啊，爹娘啊！什麽時候才能歡聚在一堂?"
(A popular patriotic lamentation over the Sept. 18, 1931 Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria known as the Mukden Incident. The composer mourns the loss of his beautiful homeland and his separation from his parents to piteously wander in exile).
My mother and I departed from Kunming in the summer of 1943, flying to India over the infamous Himalaya Hump, the "Highway to Hell" where more than a thousand Allied airmen and 600 aircraft were lost between1942-45. My parents did not foresee that my mother would not embrace her mother again nor my father reunite with his father or oldest brother 田寶齊 and oldest sister 田寶琴. I grew up abroad without feeling that poignant loss of homeland and family but my parents' deep sorrow all their lives is captured in the haunting refrains of "松花江上" "On the Song Hua River".
註：
四歲不到的 田之雲，跟隨她父親、母親，在1943年
飛越駝峯、再從印度孟買搭乘美國運輸輪船，
為了躱避日本潛艇，向南繞道 Sidney ,南太平洋，
提心吊膽的走了 四十多天，才從美國 洛杉磯上岸，
轉坐火車到達芝加哥 。