【China's Long Journey of Blood and Tears】

V-1 Tientsin Honeymoon 

Judith Tien Lau 田之雲

It was dark by the time the early morning Beiping train pulled to its final destination in the Tientsin Old Dragon Head Station  (Lao Long Tou) in the evening of Sept. 13, 1938, delayed over ten hours by the many regular and irregular Japanese Kempetai inspection stops.

A sense of unspoken relief permeated the train compartment, as palpable as the hint of the scent of the nearby Bohai sea coast.

Handing their pieces of luggage down to the eager porters with identity armbands, Father and Mother were cooly directed, under the appraising eyes of the Japanese patrols, to the shorter line of the 1st class passengers for security inspection. The mass of exhausted passengers pouring out of the standing room only compartments, were contemptuously shoved into long lines to face questioning by the surly guards who brazenly rummaged through their personal items and sometimes dragged off an unfortunate individual or family for whatever reasons.

Tientsin, Settlement Railway Station

As relieved as Mother was to escape from the intimidation of the Japanese controlled train, she could not help looking back at the still heaving locomotive that had been her final connection to her mother, her 5 brothers and her beloved hometown.

The honeymooners’ deliverance to Tientsin from the terror of 12 hours of a mood of impending doom, allowed Mother to feel emotions other than fear - to feel sorrow, to feel the visceral tearing of her heart and a splitting of her identity from whom she once was: an indulged daughter, a beloved sister, an aspiring Beida student and a proud Chinese resident of Beiping.

Years later she would quote the last lines of a poem written by the Tientsin poet prodigy Zha Liang-zheng (查良錚, pen name Mu Dan 暮旦) who was among Father’s small 1938-1939 Lianda class in Kunming. The poet’s poignant words reflected Mother’s feelings throughout her life. “… 掉回頭來背棄了, 動人的忠誠, 不斷分裂的個體.”  “… turning my head, turning my back, abandoning a  heartfelt loyalty, a never ending dismemberment of my being”.[1]

Trying their utmost to appear composed and not overly anxious to rush out of the Japanese managed train terminal, Father and Mother crossed under the station portico toward a neutral zone and the British Concession across the river. The British Concession was a large settlement guarded by two battalions of approximately 2000 United Kingdom soldiers and one battalion of Americans.

Father and Mother felt like they had finally slipped out of the vicious wolf pit into the sanctuary of safety. Nevertheless, the irony of finding refuge with the first invaders of their country, the British victors of the Opium Wars (1838-1840 and 1856-1860), was not lost on them. Since the Opium Wars, over 90 Chinese cities had been conceded to more than 20 foreign countries, as well as the vast Manchuria resource rich lands to Japan.

Like Beiping, Tientsin had also been occupied by the Japanese since August 1937 after the Battle of the Marco Polo Bridge, however, the Japanese allowed the remaining 8 European Concessions in Tientsin to continue a brisk trade, and to live the life of privileges they had been accustomed to.      

Grandfather Tien had believed this abeyance of Japanese hostility toward the European colonials could come to a sudden halt at anytime through miscalculation, accident or deliberate Japanese strategies, during the same period that Germany was steadily encroaching on their neighboring territories in Europe.

Since the 1937 Japanese summer invasion at the Marco Polo Bridge, Japan had moved swiftly with brutality, capturing major Chinese river ports, and great cities like Beiping, Shanghai and Nanking.

By closely monitoring the collapse of the Chinese frontline defenses, and the advance of the Japanese forces, Grandfather Tien had, with the help of Grandfather’s widespread network of Chinese and foreign friends, meticulously threaded his son’s and his daughter-in-law’s escape routes through the shifting Sino-Japanese battlefields toward the currently undisturbed hubs of the European colonies in Asia.

It was popularly murmured among the Chinese that while the European tigers had been luxuriously lounging for a century in China’s front door ports, the Japanese wolves had slinked in from the back  - “前門拒虎, 後門進狼” - through Manchuria.

 Japanese Advances during 1938 and 1939

Once out of the train station, and settled into a hired car, Father and Mother breathed in the refreshing evening air off the Bund of the Hai River. Along the roads from the Tientsin train station to the British hotel, the young couple was fascinated by the well paved, adjoining European Concessions districts marked by quintessential replications of the architecture and cultures of their home countries such as Austro-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and in particular, the inimitable grandeur of the vast British Empire.