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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780761872412 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hamilton Books |
| Publication date: | 02/12/2021 |
| Edition description: | Second Edition |
| Pages: | 252 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.01(w) x 9.08(h) x 0.64(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Compelling Journey from Peking to Washington
Building a New Life in AmericaBy Chi Wang
HAMILTON BOOKS
Copyright © 2011 Chi WangAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7618-5385-5
Chapter One
My Family
MY FATHER: GENERAL WANG SHU-CHANG (1885–1960)
The concept of family is different in China than it is here in the United States. In China, where I was raised, a family often includes dozens of people, or even hundreds. Cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents—people who are part of the extended family in America—are all considered part of one's own family.
My father, Wang Shu-chang was born in a small village in Liaoning Province in Manchuria in 1885. Like Mongolia, Manchuria at that time was largely self-governing, although it was nominally part of China. My father was the third child of a middle class farmer who had a 200-acre farm. My father's mother died when he was only six years old, and my grandfather then remarried. He had two more children with a second wife.
Of my grandfather's four sons, three were raised as farmers. But my grandfather wanted my father to become a scholar, so he sent him to a private tutorial school to become versed in the Confucian classics. There my father studied Chinese characters and calligraphy. In those early childhood years, my father's health was poor. His mother had died, but fortunately he was supported by a maid, Mrs. Lee, who acted as a surrogate mother. She bathed, fed, and clothed him. He remarked to me that he considered her his real mother. My grandfather, meanwhile, was too busy farming to spend much time with his children.
My father never forgot where he came from. Years later, as governor of Hebei Province, he would walk around on visits to his hometown, since driving a car would have been seen as pretentious. The first person he would see on such trips would invariably be Mrs. Lee. He returned her kindness by helping her son and her grandson find jobs in Beijing.
By the time my father was high school age, he had memorized all of the Confucian classics. In 1905, at the age of 20, he passed the county level civil service exam. In Imperial China, a civil service career was the most prestigious occupation; once a man joined the civil service, he usually stayed for life. From the time of the Han dynasty, dating back to around 100 A.D., the Chinese government had three levels of rigorous exams for its civil servants. If a student passed the county exam, it was comparable to a present-day Bachelor's degree. Three years later, he planned to take the provincial exam in his province's capital and earn the equivalent of a Master's degree. Three years after passing the provincial exam, a student could take the national exam and earn the equivalent of a PhD.
A student who passed the county exam could become a teacher or work in the lower levels of the civil service. If someone passed the provincial exam, he could work for a provincial government, for instance as a commissioner or as a magistrate. Passing the national exam qualified one to work for the central government and to become a governor, minister, or even prime minister. It is important to note that while the civil service exams were taken only by males, they were open to students of all economic backgrounds. A child of humble origin could theoretically work hard and rise up to the post of prime minister. In that sense, the Chinese system was democratic. The last civil service exams were offered in 1905. The Manchu dynasty discontinued all three examinations as part of its Westernizing reforms, and my father was never able to sit for the provincial-level exam.
While my father never took the provincial-level civil service exam, in 1908 he was handpicked by the governor of Liaoning Province to be one of 25 Chinese students to study at a Japanese military cadet school in Tokyo. (The provincial government paid the students' expenses.)
MY MOTHER
At the time of his departure for Japan, my father had just married my mother. As was the custom back then in China, it was an arranged marriage. My grandparents liked each other and decided their children should marry. My father did not meet my mother until they were actually marriedhe was 23, she 18. My mother was part of the Manchu clan, which was ruling China at the time. Her family flew the yellow banner of the Manchu clan. The yellow banner was the highest flag and indicated that my mother's clan was directly descended from the original Manchus.
In that era of Chinese history, females were very much second-class citizens. A young girl did not go to school, but my mother's parents taught her how to read and write at home. My mother was a pretty young woman, light-skinned as was typical of the Manchus. By the time she married my father, she had lived through two major events in Chinese history. In 1899, the Manchu empress called on Chinese to kill missionaries on grounds that Western trade and influence had ruined the country. A group of revolutionaries calling itself the White Lotus Society took over the foreign legation area of Beijing, an area that the Chinese people were forbidden to enter. Some 2,000 residents were taken hostage. My mother watched the militants (known as the Boxers) jumping around to show their physical prowess. They believed that they were invincible and could even withstand gunshots. After a 50-day siege, during which my mother mostly hid in her home, a Western force led by an American colonel annihilated the White Lotus revolutionaries.
In 1904–05, Czarist Russia and Imperial Japan fought a war over Manchuria. Fighting occurred near my mother's home village. My mother was terrified, as accounts spread of rapes and atrocities. My grandmother actually shaved my mother's head so that she looked like a boy. If soldiers were to enter the house, the hope was, they would leave her alone. Eventually an end to the Russo-Japanese War was mediated by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
MY FATHER'S CAREER
At that time in China, if a young girl was not married by age 20, she was considered an old maid. My mother was therefore very happy to get married. She was also happy with the choice of husband. My father was a robust, healthy young man—he showed no signs of the ill health that had plagued him as a young child. His height was six feet, which was quite tall for a Chinese man. He was very handsome and looked splendid in his military uniform.
My father studied at the cadet school in Tokyo for two years, from 1909 to 1911, while my mother stayed behind at my father's family home. During the first year, he studied the Japanese language; during the second year, he studied military science. Reserved and agreeable, he mixed well with other people, including the sophisticated cadres from East China. In Japan, he often helped other students with their Japanese, just as he would later help colleagues with their work. On the boat ride over to Japan, my father met and befriended Chiang Kai-shek, who went on to become ruler of China. Chiang and my father were roommates at the cadet school.
When my father returned to China, he became a second lieutenant in the Army. He stayed briefly in Shanghai, where he, along with Chiang, was part of an underground movement seeking to overthrow the Manchu dynasty. In 1911, the dynasty was in fact overthrown in a revolution led by Sun Yat-Sen. My father then went to Beijing to work for the military governor, a warlord supported by Sun. In the first year of the Chinese Republic, my father was promoted to the post of Colonel of the Chinese Army in Beijing.
He remained in Beijing for three years. In 1915, the Chinese government picked eight outstanding officers to study at Imperial Japan's elite military academy in Tokyo, the Japanese equivalent of West Point. My father, then a colonel, was the lowest ranking of the group; he had been added at the last minute when a general pulled out. The Germans have a phrase—one has to be lucky. The Chinese would agree, and, in this instance, my father was lucky.
And so, my parents moved to Tokyo. Despite the fact that my parents had been married for seven years at that point, they had had no children. In classical China, if a wife could not give birth, she hired a second wife or a concubine to mate with the husband so that the family continued. Obviously, my mother did not want to do that. My mother desperately wanted a son. Once, another woman ridiculed my mother for holding someone else's child. At that time in China, women were looked well upon for bearing sons. In Japan, she went to what might be deemed a polishing school—she learned to cook, sew, dress nicely, and speak Japanese. She also went to a gynecologist. The doctor must have helped her: In 1919, my oldest brother was born in Tokyo.
By then, my father had spent four years studying in the elite Japanese military academy. Prior to the arrival of my father and his comrades, the school had been for Japanese students only. Many of Japan's famous World War II war criminals studied at the institution alongside my father; he was friends with Hideki Tojo, future prime minister and supreme warlord of Imperial Japan. As during his earlier stay in Japan, my father enjoyed helping other Chinese students with their homework assignments. He always enjoyed helping people. In 1919, my father returned home to China and became a Major-General and chief of the Army in Heilongjiang Province (Black Dragon River Province).
My father progressed steadily through the ranks of the Chinese military, becoming a full general. He spent time in charge of the War Ministry's Division of Strategic Plans and edited a military science magazine. Eventually, he became governor of Hebei Province, a large and important area. From the early 1920s through the mid 1940s, my father enjoyed serving China as an officer and as a public official. At first, he liked Chiang, whom he thought was a good leader for China. Chiang could receive the acclaim and attention, while my father acted in the background. My father, a very private person, rarely gave speeches, but when Chiang was threatened by enemies, my father always supported him.
A PRIVILEGED CHILDHOOD LIFE
After initially having had trouble conceiving a child, my mother eventually bore three sons and one daughter. I was the youngest, born in the early 1930s. My second brother was born in Manchuria in 1924, and my sister was born there in 1926. I was born at a German hospital in Beijing. My earliest memories begin around the year 1937, when I entered kindergarten. At that time, we were living in the courtyard house in Beijing, the home we lived in throughout the 1930s until the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937.
My early upbringing was much like that of a member of the old ruling family in Imperial China. We had four motor cars, each with its own chauffeur. My father rotated among the vehicles, while my mother often rode in a Plymouth. My father had to ride in different cars to reduce the risk of assassination; the license tags on his vehicles were frequently changed. We had 45 servants, including 10 kitchen helpers, a family doctor who had graduated from medical school in Japan, a nurse, an acupuncturist, a tailor, and a barber. There were also 32 bodyguards, some would salute us as we entered and left the house and others accompanied the kids to school while armed. Every day, I sat down to a four-course meal for breakfast, a six-course meal for lunch, and an eight-course meal for dinner. I sat with my brothers and my sister in the dining room at a separate table from my parents.
Until recently, most of the residences in Beijing were courtyard-type houses. Each home was a walled compound with a main entrance that led to a street or alley known as a hutong. There were no front yards. A hutong might have had 20 to 30 houses on both sides. Our home had more than 200 rooms in it, including 20 bedrooms.
A good courtyard house was built with the master bedroom facing south. In our home, the three rooms next to the main entrance were for the bodyguards—they watched the entrance all day long and saluted us as we entered and left the house. Inside the entrance, there was another door that led into the main courtyard. Attached to the courtyard there were three rooms on the East Wing, three rooms on the West Wing, and the master suite facing south. In China, when couples get older, they do not sleep together; therefore, my parents each had a bedroom attached to the master living room. Both of my parents also had studies. I often did my school homework in my Mother's study. The kids would play in the middle of the main courtyard. Doors led from there into other courtyards. Behind the dining room, there was a kitchen courtyard.
The setup allowed for maximum privacy. Each child had his own section of the house. In addition to the three main courtyards, there were smaller courtyards for each child. Attached to my courtyard were three rooms facing north, three rooms facing south, a study, a living room, a guest room, and servants' quarters. A private tutor taught me English, Chinese Literature, and Calligraphy. He had passed the 1905 local civil service exam. Servants were assigned separately to each member of the family, and each child had a servant who slept in the room next to him every night.
My father led a privileged lifestyle because he governed a pivotal province and commanded more than 500,000 troops. Other governors and their families did not live like we did. There are only a few Chinese-Americans alive today who grew up in the wealth and grandeur that I did. After my father retired, however, he had only three servants and one automobile. While the government funded our opulent lifestyle, the house itself was actually owned by my father. It had previously belonged to a Manchu prince. At that time, there were no mortgages in China—my father paid for the house in cash (around $20,000).
Today Communist Chinese leaders live simpler lives. Top CCP leaders use an office that was once my father's, but his lifestyle is very different. I grew up in the last days of the old feudal China.
I have wonderful memories of my young childhood. The house was always full of chatter and full of life. I took our wealth for granted and did not think about poor people. The servants were trying to move up into the middle class by working at our mansion, and many of them did.
The first time I experienced death was the passing of my sister's maid. She was only 45 years old and had a stroke. She slept in the middle of a big bed, with me on her left side and my sister on her right. In the middle of the night, there was tremendous commotion, as people kept coming in and out of the room. The acupuncturist tried to save her by putting a needle through her head, but she stopped breathing. The servants took her away; one of them carried me out of the room and told me not to ask questions. I came to see that there was life and there was death.
Both of my parents influenced me quite profoundly. My father was very well educated in the Confucian classics and in military studies. He had an extremely successful career as an officer and official—he made a profound contribution to the Chinese people and was very well-respected. My father taught me to be good to family and friends, and to study hard and work hard. It was actually because of my father's counsel that I got my undergraduate degree in Agriculture Sciences from the University of Maryland—he had wanted me to study agriculture. I did not see my father very much during my upbringing—he was always attending official functions and meetings. My parents ate in one dining room, the kids in another.
My father's outlook on life was heavily influenced by the Confucian classics, and my values were in turn influenced by Confucianism. In the Confucian tradition, you are supposed to obey your father. I did not always agree with my father, but I tried to follow his instructions as best I could.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Compelling Journey from Peking to Washington by Chi Wang Copyright © 2011 by Chi Wang. Excerpted by permission of HAMILTON BOOKS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………...Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………….
Chapter 1: My Family…………………………………………………………………………….
Chapter 2: War with Japan………………………………………………………………………..
Chapter 3: From Pearl Harbor to VJ Day………………………………………………………...
Chapter 4: China’s Civil War…………………………………………………………………….
Chapter 5: Beginning My New Life in America………………………………………………....
Chapter 6: From New York to Maryland………………………………………………………....
Chapter 7: Business, Artistic, and Romantic Pursuits…………………………………………....
Chapter 8: The Love of My Life………………………………………………………………….
Chapter 9: My Years at the Library of Congress………………………………………………....
Chapter 10: The Start of My Teaching Career…………………………………………………....
Chapter 11: Hong Kong Opportunity…………………………………………………………….
Chapter 12: Promoting U.S.-China Relations…………………………………………………….
Chapter 13: Finally Returning to China…………………………………………………………..
Chapter 14: Moving Toward Normalization……………………………………………………….
Chapter 15: Visiting Taiwan……………………………………………..………………………...
Chapter 16: Meeting Chinese Leaders…………………………………………………………......
Chapter 17: The Young Marshal Zhang Xueliang……………………………………………..…..
Chapter 18: The First Lady of China………………………………………………………..……..
Chapter 19: My Role in Taiwan’s Politics………………………………………………….……..
Chapter 20: The U.S.-China Policy Foundation…………………………………………….…….
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………….
About the Author…………………………………………………………………………………