China's Long Journey of Blood and Tears

IV. Promises...

Judith Tien 田之雲

 

Late in the afternoon of the day of their departure on Sept 13, as the train lumbered toward Tientsin, Mother and Father sank quietly into their seats, immersed in their thoughts as the miles lengthened their separation from their families in Beiping.

 

 

Train in early China Republic

 

Father had more recently lost his mother after a lingering battle against cancer, but his father was as energetic in mind and body as he ever was. After the traditional mourning period, Grandfather Tien laid out painstaking plans for Father’s escape from Beiping. “When the Americans come to our aid,” Grandfather Tien said, “the Japanese will lose and you will return home to celebrate”. Grandfather Tien instructed Father and his fiancée that in the meanwhile, they should complete their education in the Xinan Lianda refuge in Kunming.

 

 

Grandmother Liu Shi-fang劉淑芳（1882-1937）

 

Grandmother (Liu Shi-fang) and her 3 sons, 3 daughters, daughters-in-law and grandchildren. Grandfather (Tien Shu-fan) on right. Taken around 1935 in 水磨胡同.

 

Grandfather Tien, who had served in the Foreign Ministry, had chosen to retire at an early age from government service to manage his Beiping business. He told his son that he was confident that President Roosevelt would soon abandon America’s isolationist policy and join in the war against the Japanese rapacity for the rich natural resources in Asia. Grandfather Tien felt that my parents’ destination in Kunming could be safe; in Kunming, a retired high ranking American aviator was reforming and training a better Chinese air force. His name was Claire Chennault and General Chennault would become the legendary leader of the AVG (American Volunteer Group) also to be known as “The Flying Tigers”!

 

Though Grandfather Tien had declined the Foreign Ministry assignment to be head of the Chinese Consulate in London, he had, like his father before him (Father’s grandfather), maintained a wide circle of knowledgeable friends and a deep interest in global affairs. Grandfather Tien had majored in English at the Imperial Academy and collected a considerable library of Chinese and foreign books. Father’s oldest brother (Tien Pao-chi 田寶齊) a major in Russian Language and Literature, had joined the young Republic’s Foreign Ministry and was serving in the Chinese consulate in Moscow.

 

From an early age, Father had happily embedded himself in his father’s library of intriguing foreign books and recordings; teaching himself German, French, English and Japanese which was especially useful this September day on their train journey. It made sense to the Japanese authorities that a Chinese businessman would be conversant in the languages of the foreign colonialists. Also, Father could politely answer in Japanese when the Kempetai made their inspections. It was with astute foresight that Grandfather Tien had stocked Father’s luggage with books and magazines in those various languages which Father would pull out to casually browse when the Japanese Kempetai boarded the train.

 

Mother, on the other hand, could only avert her eyes out the train window to mask her fury at the roving Kempetai. Mother had inherited the temperament and passion of her departed Hunan father whom she deeply loved - and missed. Now as they were hurtling toward the city where Grandfather Liu had once worked, Mother painfully remembered her father Liu Jun-man 劉君曼 who, despite the turmoil in China, had built a sense of well-being and security around his family within his domains - their homes in Beiping, Tsingtao and his office in the Jiuda Salt Co. 久大精鹽公司in Tientsin.

 

Mother would, for her entire life, vividly recall the events of the day, Dec. 21, 1934. She was in class during her senior year in high school, thinking about the upcoming  university exams, when she was summoned by a messenger to immediately return home. Mother’s father at age 56, had collapsed from a stroke!

 

Disbelieving that a man as energetic and indomitable as her father who had braved China’s blood soaked revolutions and civil wars, could be cut down in his prime of life, Mother sat hopefully by her father’s bedside as he lingered in a coma.

Western physicians were rushed in, shook their heads and ruefully left. Then the Chinese doctors came, and apologetically shuffled out. But Mother firmly believed that the man on whose stalwart knee she as a little child, had sat for hours reciting classical poetry - that constant man - could not falter!

 

Occasionally through the next days and nights, Grandfather Liu would  weakly raise his hand to gesture the Chinese symbol “six”. To the bafflement of the household, they would whisper, “Six” - what? Whom? Sixth uncle? Sixth sworn brother [把兄]? Who or what was the important sixth? For two days and nights, Mother and her mother held continuous vigil next to the dying Liu patriarch. On the third day, in the early dawn at exactly 6 o’clock, Grandfather Liu’s sighed his last breath.

 

Jan. 1935 (?) Obituary and  fuzzy reprint of Grandfather  (Liu Jun-man, 1878-1934) and the only photo which  the Liu family has of grandfather Liu.

 

At that moment, Grandmother Liu shrieked out, “ No, no! I can’t! I can’t! - The children are too young!”

 

Mother’s mother collapsed into a faint. Attending to her unconscious mother, Mother had to leave her father’s bedside. As her mother revived, her mother sobbingly recounted, “ I saw Jun-man departing through the door with a merry group of people but at the threshold he stopped to turn - and smile at me -  beckoning me to come with him!”

 

“I so wanted to,” she continued haltingly,  “- but I thought of how young my children were!”

 

 

Grandmother (Yeh Yi-Shi 葉宜書) with her 3 of 4 sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren. Taken in 1957.

 

Mother still could not accept that her father had expired and rushed back to his bedside to wrap her warm, young arms over her father. Hours later, as it grew dark, Grandfather Liu’s friends gently removed her arms around her father and laid him in a casket but Mother refused to have the lid nailed down. As the dismal day darkened, Mother did not even feel the quilt tucked around her shoulder or that her father’s body had grown as cold as the December night.

 

The next day before the lid was secured on the coffin, Mother took her father’s German pocket watch which would run for 36 hours on a full windup, and laid it on her father’s chest. Mother wound the fine watch as tightly as she could, and placed it on her father as the lid was gently affixed to the casket. Through the wood panel of the casket, she could hear the steady ticking of the watch, certain that she would hear her father soon stir.

 

The German timepiece was a dignified accessory for the attire of a modern gentleman and Mother was proud of her father’s exacting taste in the cut and fabric of his suits, his choice of the household custom dining porcelain, as well as in his collection of ink stones and fine calligraphy brushes. Grandfather Liu even had a different fan for each day of the hot summer months when he would fan himself to the rhythm of his extemporaneous compositions of verse couplets and point at his daughter to respond. Unfailingly, Mother would meet his challenge by matching his couplet with her own spontaneous composition. Her father would fan himself, smiling approvingly at his brilliant daughter, “ Ah, and if you had been born a boy…”

 

At the dinner table, Grandfather Liu would indulgently look around at his family of five sons and one daughter, then sigh at his handsomest child, the youngest son, “My greatest regret in life is that you were not born a daughter”. Then pointing to Mother, he would continue, “… and that you were not born a son!”

 

Had Grandfather Liu lived long enough, he would have been so proud of his daughter!

 

 

Mother 葉曼(1914-2017) teaching at the Imperial College (國子監), Beijing in early 2000’s

 

When Mother could no longer hear the ticking of the watch, no matter how hard she pressed her ear to the coffin panel, she retreated into a stupor and apathy toward the unreal activities of bereavement proceedings around her.

 

After the weeks of ceremonial tributes and visits from relatives, friends and company staff, my stricken young mother, as the new head of the family, was jolted out of her trance to take charge of her family, and the necessities of the household. From the reports of the lead domestic and from reading her father’s ledgers, Mother was shocked to find that her father was actually just living from a month-to-month salary as the managing director of the struggling Jiuda Salt Company 久大精鹽公司. The fledgling company, a subsidiary of the Yong Li Conglomerate永利集團, was battered by unremitting domestic wars and the looming Japanese encroachment. The company was barely self sustaining. Mother’s father was also the main support for his Liu relatives and his in-law relations. Mother had been, herself, an unwary spendthrift in her nuclear family of 8. 

 

From that moment on, Mother often cringed with remorse over her adolescent shopping sprees when she charged luxurious fabrics and clothing for herself, her mother and brothers to her father’s account and be delivered to their home. Grandmother Liu being illiterate, Grandfather Liu would handle the monthly list of disbursements and shake his head, gently chiding his lively, be-dimpled daughter for her casual spending habits.

 

On the train ride with weary hours to think, four years after her father’s death and for the rest of her life, Mother mourned her father.  Grandfather Liu was the man Mother had always most admired. Mother often recounted her grief to me over her lack of insight into her father’s worries and stress which Mother believed had contributed to his early death at the age of 56.

 

At the wedding banquet on the eve of Mother’s departure with her new husband, Mother assured her disconsolate mother, “As soon as the Japanese are defeated, I will return with a Beida degree. Then I will be well prepared to take proper care of you and my brothers!”

 

Mother vowed she would prove herself to be as worthy as a son in fulfilling filial duties.

 

Almost 50 years later in 1987 when Mother was finally able to return to Beijing, Mother was told by her brothers that even up to their mother’s final days in 1961, dying from pancreatic cancer, Grandmother Liu had insisted to her sons, “Just you all wait and see - your sister will come home to take care of me!”

 

Overcoming many personal challenges and constant geo-political turmoil, Mother did surpass her father’s aspirations for an accomplished son. Yet, however hard as Mother petitioned the Mainland government in 1961 to grant her mother an exit permit to Hong Kong for cancer treatment, her mother was not permitted to leave Beijing.

 

To that end, Mother often lamented her regret over not having been able to fulfill her promise made to her mother the last time mother-daughter saw each other - at the wedding banquet on the night of September 12, 1938.

 

I never met my Tien Grandparents nor Liu Grandparents but I know from my uncles, aunts and my cousins that my grandparents lived their end days with heartbreak and broken dreams. I know from Father and Mother that they lived their own lives with heartbreak and broken promises.

  

Mother’s memorial service at the Beijing Imperial College (國子監), 2017

 

時代的血淚

四、未曾實現的諾言

周素鳳  譯

 

隨著火車駛向天津，父母親離開北平越來越遠。兩人難捨家人，難忘家鄉，卻又不得不分離，一路上無限傷感，默默無語。

 

父親不久前才痛失罹癌多年的祖母，但是祖父的身體倒是一向很健朗，腦筋也很靈活。守喪百日之後，祖父開始為父母離開北平的事規劃部署，祖父說，等美國出手援救中國後，日軍必定吃敗仗，到時候等著你們回來慶祝。祖父特別叮嚀父母親的一件事就是──務必要在昆明西南聯大完成大學學業。

 

根據祖父的判斷，羅斯福總統應該很快就會放棄美國原本採取的孤立政策，加入同盟國，壓制日本在亞洲強取掠奪的侵略行為。祖父認為當時昆明應該是安全的，因為退役的美國航空隊中將陳納德被請到昆明，協助中國訓練飛行員。他後來成為美國志願航空隊，也就是著名的「飛虎隊」的指揮官。

 

祖父田樹藩原本在北京政府外交部任職，外交部派他為駐英國領事館領事，但祖父必須留在在北平管理田家的產業，於是他選擇提前退休。但是他和曾祖父田仁甫一樣，不但有一群見多識廣的朋友，自己對國際事務也一直非常關注。祖父在京師大學堂念書時主修英文，家中藏書甚豐，中文外文都收藏。而父親的大哥，也是我的大伯田寶齊主修俄文，曾在民國政府駐莫斯科大使館任職。

 

祖父的書房不但有各種外文書籍，還收藏許多唱片。父親從小就在祖父的書房中尋寶探奇，甚至自學德文、法文、英文和日文。他怎麼也沒想到，自學的日文就在這一天搭火車離開家鄉時用上了。在日本憲兵隊眼中，中國的生意人當然要懂一些外國語。父親被盤查時，回答憲兵隊的問題中規中矩，彬彬有禮。祖父有先見之明，早就在父母的行李箱中放了幾本外國書籍和雜誌，憲兵隊上車時，父親就拿出來翻閱瀏覽。

 

母親看到憲兵隊上火車就怒火中燒，為了掩飾怒容，只好轉過頭看著車窗的景象。母親和過世的外公在性格方面十分相像，感情強烈剛硬。外公劉君曼是湖南人，父母親那時坐著火車前往天津，那是外公生前工作的地方。母親特別感慨，傷心地回想著外公。即使在局勢動盪不安的時候，外公還是盡其所能地讓自己的家庭和事業維持平穩安定，包括他在北平和青島的家人，以及在天津的久大精鹽公司^[1]。

 

母親想起自己在高三的時候，滿腦子想的都是即將來臨的高考。可是她永遠不會忘記1934年12月21日那一天，突然有人來學校通知她，外公中風昏倒了。

 

外公是一個活力充沛的人，意志特別堅強，曾經不屈不撓地浴血挺過革命和內戰，怎麼可能在盛年就這樣倒下來!即使後來目睹外公昏迷不醒，母親還是堅定地抱著希望，認為外公一定會醒過來。

 

但是中西醫對外公的狀況束手無策。母親看著西醫沉重地搖頭離去，接著請來的中醫也連聲道歉，表示無能為力，但她依舊堅信外公絕對不會就此倒下去。她從小坐在外公強健的大腿上，聽他朗讀古詩，連續數小時也不會累。外公在母親的心中永遠巍然挺立，堅韌無比。

 

外公昏迷時，偶爾會努力舉起柔弱不堪的手，握著拳頭，伸出拇指和小指，比出「六」，全家人都大惑不解，「六」代表什麼？是指誰嗎？六叔嗎？還是六位拜把兄弟？那麼誰又是最重要的「六」？兩天兩夜，母親和外婆分分秒秒守在外公旁邊。到了第三天的清晨六點鐘，外公嚥下了最後一口氣。

 

外婆哭著喊：「你不能走，你不能走!我不要，我不要!孩子還小啊!」然後就昏過去了。母親要照顧昏倒的外婆，只好暫時離開外公身邊。外婆醒來後告訴母親:「我看到君曼向著門口走去，旁邊跟著一群人，看起來很高興。到了門口，君曼轉身看著我，對我微笑，招手示意我跟他一起走!」外婆停了一下，繼續說：「我多麼想跟著他去，但是我想到我的孩子還那麼小……」

 

母親還是不能接受外公已經離開的事實，她衝回外公病房，俯下身來，雙臂抱緊外公，久久不放。幾個小時過去後，天快黑了，外公的朋友過來輕輕地將母親的手臂移開，將外公的遺體移到棺木中，但母親不讓他們在棺木的蓋子上釘上釘子。此時天色已暗，十二月的寒冬裡，母親感覺不到身上披肩的溫暖，也感覺不到外公的身體已然冰冷。

 

第二天，棺木的蓋子需釘上釘子了，母親趁著尚未蓋好之前，將外公的德國製懷錶上緊發條，放在外公的胸前。母親將懷錶的發條上到最緊，可以維持36小時，然後輕輕地放入棺木中陪伴外公。透過厚厚的棺木，母親可以聽到懷錶的滴答聲，總覺得她很快就可以聽到外公翻身的聲音。

 

在那個時候，擁有高貴的德國懷錶代表對現代化的嚮往。外公的品味高雅，對西裝的質料和剪裁，對家用磁器碗盤的選擇，對毛筆和硯墨的收藏，都非常講究。

 

母親回想，炎炎夏日裡，外公搖著不同的扇子，即興吟詩作對，然後指著母親來應和，母親也從不令外公失望，即席作詩，對應如流。外公就一邊搖著扇子，一邊微笑點頭:「我這一輩子最遺憾的是五弟不是女兒!」這是外公心中一大遺憾。有時全家吃晚飯時，外公會環顧圍坐飯桌的五子一女，然後對著最小最帥的兒子說:「可惜你不是女兒」，接著指著母親；「而你不是兒子!」如果外公活久一點，他一定會以女兒為傲的。

 

母親將外公的懷錶放入棺木之後，心心念念記掛著。當她緊貼住棺木卻再也聽不到裡面傳來的滴答聲之後，整個人進入恍惚狀態，彷彿抽離了周遭繁複的殯喪儀式，一切顯得那麼不真實。

 

治喪期間，親朋好友與公司同事紛紛前來弔唁，等到喪葬事宜處理完之後，深受打擊的母親突然從茫然麻木中驚醒，開始主管家中大小事，成為劉家的支柱。母親從管家口中和父親的帳本中得知，外公在久大精鹽公司當總經理的薪水，只夠維持劉家最起碼的生活。久大是永利集團的子公司，剛剛起步就面臨內戰不斷，接著日本又步步進逼，公司幾乎是勉強維持。外公除了負擔自己一家大小的生計，也要照顧劉家的親戚，還資助外婆家。母親看了帳本才知道，原來在自己的八口之家裏面，屬她最浪費，花錢最不經心。

 

母親很懊惱自己少不更事，完全沒有考慮家中經濟狀況，逛街時常幫自己，也幫外婆和弟弟們採買昂貴奢華的衣服，把帳記到外公名下，然後叮嚀店家把衣服送到家裡。外婆不識字，外公每個月看到母親在外的花用項目，只會搖搖頭，對著這個朝氣蓬勃，有個酒窩的女兒輕輕唸叨幾句，說她亂花錢的習慣不好。

 

母親坐在開往天津的火車上，漫長的十二個小時中，除了緊張與疲累，心中特別想念外公。那時外公已經過世4年了，母親從沒有忘記他，即使在後來的歲歲年年。母親這一輩子最尊敬最仰慕的人就是外公，她常常跟我提起，十分後悔當年渾然不覺外公的肩上擔著那麼多的責任，一點也沒有分擔他內心的煩憂。母親甚至認為外公在56 歲就過世，應該跟他的壓力有關。

 

母親在離開北平前一天的婚宴上，一再向依依不捨的外婆保證：「只要日本鬼子被打敗，我一定拿著北大的畢業證書回來見您。到時候我就可以好好照顧您和弟弟了!」母親還對自己發誓，一定要像兒子一樣孝順外婆，負起照顧劉家的責任。

 

母親幾乎等了50年，一直到1987年才得到批准，回到北京老家。舅舅們告訴母親，外婆一直到1961年因胰臟癌過世的幾天，還很肯定地說：「你們等著看，你姊姊一定會回來照顧我的。」

 

母親一心一意要求自己不讓鬚眉，一定要比外公心目中的兒子還要傑出，因此不畏艱難，不但要克服許多個人的挑戰和困難，還要面對政治的詭譎多變。1961年時，她曾經費盡心力想要接外婆到香港接受癌症治療，卻得不到批准，外婆無法離開北京。

 

母親常常感嘆自己沒能實現自己對外婆的承諾，那個許諾是母親與外婆最後的見面時，最後的對話，就在母親的婚宴上，母女之間最後的諾言。

 

我沒見過我的祖父祖母，也沒見過外公外婆，但是從兩家的親戚們口中得知，田劉兩家的祖輩在晚年時，一心盼望能夠見到父親母親，可惜他們都抱憾而終。我知道，父親和母親生前未能實現他們的諾言，這是他們兩人心中永遠的痛。