A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World

by Scott Tong

Overview

An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor).

When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global.

A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today.

“Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times

“Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226339054
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/22/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	261
Sales rank:	702,610
File size:	631 KB

About the Author

Scott Tong is a correspondent for the American Public Media program “Marketplace,” with a focus on energy, environment, resources, climate, supply chain, and the global economy. He is former China bureau chief. Tong has reported from more than a dozen countries.
 

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

SECRETS OF THE TONG VILLAGE

Next time, you eat at my house.

— Third cousin Tong Daren

My dad looks over and shakes his head, the way a doctor does after whispering cancer. We've squandered the better part of this steamy day pursuing a place that may no longer even exist: the ancestral Tong family village. Hours ago we set out in a rental car that came with a driver — a slim man named Mr. Xu and his silver Honda Odyssey minivan — with two clues: a very general location of the hamlet, somewhere in a vast stretch of soybean and rice fields in northern Jiangsu province five hours north of civilization Shanghai; and an obsolete name of the village dating to pre-Communist days.

We've been away awhile. The last Tong on our limb of the family tree was born in the village in 1880. Soon after, our direct ancestors began venturing out, during an age of discovery for China in the modern industrial era — its nineteenth-century enlightenment. They'd end up in faraway places: Tokyo, Nanjing, Nanchang, Taipei, Minneapolis, Poughkeepsie. And now Shanghai, where I was assigned as bureau chief for the American public radio business and economics program Marketplace. The cliché metaphor for China's economic transformation, most often attributed to the late reformer Deng Xiaoping, is "crossing the river by feeling for the stones." Now, Dad and I are trying to return back across the water.

Mr. Xu's Odyssey has driven in a series of big circles, returning once and again to the same nondescript stretch of China's Grand Canal. It just keeps looking the same. More than a thousand miles from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou to the south, this waterway outruns both the Suez and Panama waterways. On this day, it seems even longer than that.

The place we are looking for was once called Fu Ma Ying. The old name of the village went obsolete in 1949, when the Communists took the mainland and proceeded to rewrite history, street names and town names. At the local registry in the nearest city, Huai'an, no one had ever heard of the place, or of any Tongs in the area. At a nearby police station, officers said little and offered less. So we resorted to pestering strangers — pedestrians, cabbies, food peddlers — for some sign of Fu Ma Ying. Quickly, the inquiries took on a predictable sequence: an initial moment of hope, a diversion from the main topic, and finally the phrase bu tai qing chu. It's not very clear.

At a bus stop by the canal, I approach a middle-aged man with a crew cut and a face weathered by a life of farming. Before he can talk his way out, I pounce quickly. This much I've learned as a reporter in China: when you spot your prey, you cannot hesitate. "Hi, we're looking for a place called Fu Ma Ying," I say. "Heard of it?"

"Fu. Ma. Ying." The man repeats the words out loud. And then, as if it would provide further illumination, says them again but three times as loud. "Fu. Ma. Ying. Why are you going there?"

"It's our lao jia." Old home.

"Ahh! Lao jia!" He moves in with a half smile, as if I've earned a few Confucian filial points for seeking out family roots. "Do you still have relatives there?"

"Don't know. That's why we're looking. Fu Ma Ying is the old name."

Pause. "Where are you from?"

"Shanghai. I was born in America. Can't you tell by my accent? Now I work here in China."

"Are you married?"

I know where this is going. "Yes."

"Children?"

"Three."

"Three! You must be rich."

There is an assumed equivalence here between children and wealth, which I must admit makes some economic sense: the more you have, the more you have. Okay. The thing is, the rule only applies to people making purely rational, long-term decisions.

"Not so much."

Crew-Cut Man moves on to the next topic. "Shanghai tai ji, tai luan." Shanghai is too crowded, chaotic. "They're snobs, looking down on us country folk."

"Yes, they are." For this I have no argument.

"Are you traveling by yourself?"

"No, my father's with me, in the car. He also lives in America. So, Fu Ma Ying? Can you help me find it?"

Another pause.

"Bu tai qing chu."

I move on. I've lived in greater China off and on for more than a dozen years. I have taken years of Mandarin lessons. I can recite a Tang dynasty poem. Occasionally I drink bubble tea. But my understanding of China ends at bu tai qing chu.

In a literal sense, the phrase does mean "not very clear." But it has a linguistic flexibility. Each time I grasp a new context for bu tai qing chu, it turns up in a new way. It means at least these things: I can't help you. I will not help you. I don't want to tell you. I'll get in trouble. You don't deserve to know. I'm moving on now. A great paradox of China is, people make declaratory statements with absolute certainty, yet at crucial moments reach into their pockets and pull out bu tai qing chu.

This roundabout exchange has eaten up twenty minutes I'll never get back, but this is how things work. Chinese civilization goes back five thousand years, the saying goes. My people have time.

I would later learn Fu Ma Ying was a place of military intrigue, going back to the Ming dynasty in the fifteenth century. According to historian Shih-shan Henry Tsai in his book Perpetual Happiness, an army leader named Mei Yin lived there with his wife, the princess daughter of a renowned emperor and Ming Dynasty founder, Zhu Yuanzhang. At some point, things got complicated. The emperor died, his fourth son usurped the throne, and the new guy in charge deemed Mei Yin in Fu Ma Ying a threat. Mei Yin died mysteriously soon after, in what his obituary calls a drowning "suicide." China has its share of mysterious accidents.

My father and I have limited time to find the place. He's flown out from his home in Oregon, with my mother, for a three-week stint with us. We have budgeted this weekend to look for the village. For him, this is a filial act. He fled the mainland during wartime at the age of ten, exactly sixty years ago, and his return to the lao jia amounts to a pilgrimage of respect to where the Tongs began. Still, I suspect this pursuit matters less to him than me. For Dad, this is something to do once: go to the place, cross it off the Confucian bucket list, and tell his friends about it. I can understand that.

I, however, am developing an obsession with this quest, and it's unclear why. To organize my own thoughts as we drive — and drive ... I start scribbling words in my reporter's notebook. "First mover," I write. This phrase comes straight out of Father Spitzer's freshman theology class at Georgetown: the Problem of God (Aquinas: Every single thing must be moved by something else, but at some point there had to be an original First Mover, or God). Every migration story starts with person one leaving a place for another place. That person in the village was Great-Grandfather Tong Zhenyong. This much I know. But how did he get out? When? Why? A lot of Chinese Americans have written eloquently about their families' immigrant experiences, but often those are tales of second or third movers. I care about the first: Tong Zhenyong's story.

Then I write the Chinese phrase I've heard my mainland relatives utter over and over: haiwai guanxi. Overseas relations. This is the punishable offense that doomed so many in the 1950s–'60s era of strongman Mao Zedong. For his association with an anti-Communist father living in Taiwan, Uncle Tong Bao was sent down to the countryside for a full decade. His mother was publicly tortured and shamed for the same reason. In the twisted symmetry of the Communist Party, when one person goes abroad and becomes a de facto political enemy, several of that person's relatives back home incur a disproportionate cost. How did that play out in the village, for those left behind?

I write "stubborn." When I was young, my parents wore that word out describing this pesky younger brother who once threw a tantrum by lying down in the center of a busy Taipei street (long story). Simply put, I'm digging into the past because so many in my family want to bury it. My maternal grandfather's name has barely been mentioned in my lifetime because of his now-shameful politics during World War II. He died alone in a faraway prison labor camp, almost entirely forgotten by family members trying to survive and protect themselves. There's an old imperial saying that when a person commits a serious crime, punishment extends to nine generations of his family. So it's best to "draw a clear boundary line of separation" from offenders and never mention them. The upshot in my family is that certain stories get actively forgotten, wiped from the historical record. But not if I can help it.

Two barges putter by on the canal, with the innards of industrial modernity on their backs: rice, wheat, cement, coal, sand, logs, pipes. The vessels move at different speeds, like China itself. More than half the population is racing ahead, in cities, to join the global, digital, service-economy future; the rest toil in places like the Tong village — if it still exists — growing the same grains and vegetables their ancestors did.

The canal itself was, like China's Great Wall, built out of imperial self-interest. In the sixth century, the Sui dynasty emperor in the north ordered a canal to the south to provide access to two things: taxes and food. The waterway did not take form without cost or misery, and surely people in and around the Tong village paid a price. Half the conscripted laborers are assumed to have died on the job. Summer temperatures in this area peak at 105 degrees, and in winter the water can freeze over.

Once built, the canal carried revenue collectors southbound to China's fertile region, to take a share of grain from each family. On the way back, barges also carried produce, rice, and salt. Domestic water transport helped create a vast, efficient marketplace; rice sold for a remarkably similar price all across China in the early 1700s. In a way, the canal serves to connect the Chinese people, rather than separate them — the great anti-wall of China.

By the time my great-grandfather was born in the late nineteenth century, the canal was long in decline. Like the Erie Canal back home, these old waterways lost out to superior technology: steamships allowed bigger, faster vessels to travel the ocean and supersede canal trade. The new "iron horse" of railroads replaced horse-drawn canal boats. In China the problem was also maintenance. Dredging of the rivers and canals fell off in the late nineteenth century, as the Qing dynasty began to crumble politically and fiscally.

If this forlorn part of northern Jiangsu ever had a heyday, I don't know when it was. Across China, people from the area known as Subei are looked down on, and have historically occupied low rungs of society. My mainland-born friend John Lu, an ad executive, put it succinctly when I first met him and told him about my lao jia. "No one," he said, "has any reason to go there."

*
My father asks Mr. Xu to drive us back to our hotel, an acknowledgment of defeat — at least, for now. There's still time for a miracle. In this moment of fantasy, a classic '80s movie scene pops into my head, from one of the Indiana Jones films. You've seen it: the protagonist played by Harrison Ford finds himself stumped in a library, searching for a hidden tomb. Then, in a moment of illumination, he hustles up a circular stairway to gain a new perspective and sees it. X marks the spot.

"Do we know any Tong relatives still living in the village?" I ask my dad.

"I don't think so." He's never been there either. In a way, he's more of an outsider than I am. My father left the mainland in 1949, fleeing the People's Liberation Army. By now, I'd spent three years in Shanghai with my wife, Cathy, and our three young children. The kids attended Rainbow Bridge International School on the grounds of the Shanghai Zoo. Their favorite meal was a thirty-cent noodle bowl down the street from our apartment. Cathy had taken Mandarin lessons twice a week.

My Nokia cellphone rings. It's Cecilia, my news assistant, from Shanghai. "I found info on Fu Ma Ying online." she says. I'd texted her two hours back, suggesting a last-ditch Internet search for the place. This was the pre-smartphone era, and in any event we'd found the Chinese web unhelpful for this kind of thing. It was hard to find good maps and directions, analog or digital. "It's near the town Jinhe, just north up the canal." Cecilia gives a few directions, Mr. Xu fires up the Odyssey, and Dad sits up and smiles. X marks the spot.

I'm not so sure. Perhaps we have simply found the right haystack. If experience is any guide, we may still have in our way villages and sub-villages, roads without names, and bu tai qing chus.

By the time we enter the town of Jinhe it's almost five in the evening. Mr. Xu drives up to a bespectacled forty-something man walking out of a store, puts down the window, and gets to the point. "Fu Ma Ying?"

"Fu Ma Ying," he repeats, and approaches. A good sign. Mr. Xu passes him a cigarette, a down payment for his time. The man doesn't know the exact spot but offers the services of a friend, makes a cellphone call, and crosses the street — presumably to find this friend. Again we wait. So I get out and step into a gritty general-goods store, the kind you see all across China.

I love these. The smell brings me back to living in Taiwan in the early '80s (my father was recruited from IBM in the States to work for the Taiwanese government, and then he left for the consumer technology firm Acer). The whiff in the air is not exactly fragrant, but it's familiar: a mix of past-expiration soap and mothballs. The items on the shelves here are remarkably similar to that time: bottled orange juice separated into its constituent liquids, chocolate bars that have begun to powderize, knockoff-brand ramen noodles, prawn-flavored chips, batteries hiding under dusty glass countertops.

But there is one thing that is different: the toothpaste. During my days in Taiwan, the dominant and wholly politically incorrect brand we brushed with was known as Darkie. The logo featured a black man in a top hat sporting bleach-white teeth. But now, having been acquired by Colgate-Palmolive, the brand goes by Darlie, and in the revised logo the man appears racially ambiguous. He's somewhat lighter. Yet for all the corporate updating, the Mandarin on the packaging remains black person toothpaste. Upon seeing that, I experience a confusing sort of nostalgia.

Exiting, I look over the three blocks of shops that make up Jinhe. In America, a visitor might say this place's best days were behind it. In China, though, it's the opposite. Things are picking up here. Years ago, these stores had just two choices of chocolate instead of twenty. They didn't have plug-in freezers to stock ice cream bars. There were no sidewalk merchants hawking next-generation rooftop solar thermal panels for people to enjoy hot baths.

The bespectacled Jinhe guy returns to the car with his friend, named Mr. Zhu, who wears the round face and gray slacks of an office man. But something is wrong. Mr. Zhu has no cigarette in his mouth. He hesitates as we fire questions his way. "Do you know Fu Ma Ying? Can you point us there?" I wonder if he's assessing the situation for what's in it for him: perhaps a free meal, a potential business deal, maybe a kickback from any purchases he can recommend to us. I suspect he's waiting for some kind of offer. Then, to my surprise, Mr. Zhu fishes out his phone and things happen quickly. He calls a local village head and arranges for him to meet us; this would be our third middleman, and I have no idea how close we are. Mr. Zhu hops into the minivan next to me, and we drive on.

"Where are you coming from?" he asks.

"Shanghai."

"Too crowded. Too chaotic."

I nod and pivot the conversation. "What do you grow here?" We've left the town and turned right into a vast stretch of farmland.

"Dadou, shui dao." Soybeans, rice. I nod and process shui dao. In English it's "rice," but Mandarin has different terms for the stages of a grain's life. Planted in the field, it's shui dao. After harvest and de-husking, it sells in stores as mi. Sticky rice is nuo mi. And once you cook it, it becomes fan, which to further confuse things also refers to an entire meal. There is a linguistic precision at work, similar to the way Americans have separate words for wheat, flour, dough, batter, bread, bagel, brioche.

The "road" we're driving on has turned into one-lane paved path, about the width of a bike trail back home. It has the added drama of five-foot-deep irrigation ditches on either side. As Mr. Xu drives, I try not to consider the odds of a car coming the other way, except that's all I can think about. About a mile down, we stop at a house on the left to pick up the village head. Surely he knows Fu Ma Ying.

"No, but I know someone who does," he says as he climbs in too. He points us down the road as I survey this circus car of five. Our driver, the village head, and Mr. Zhu are all standard height, skinny, nondescript. You'd walk past them.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "A Village With My Name"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Scott Tong.
Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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.

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Table of Contents

List of the Characters
Preface

Part 1 The Great Opening
1 Secrets of the Tong Village
2 Revenge of the Peasants from Tong East
3 Foreign Exchange: Student Life, Tokyo Wife
4 The Nanjing Glee Club and a Revolution for Girls
5 Genealogies and Corrections: We Regret the Error
6 The Communist Mole in the School

Part 2 The Great Interruption
7 The Day the Japanese War Devils Came
8 Lost and Found: Grandmother’s Voice on Cassette
9 The Wartime Collaborator in Our Family
10 From Prison to Mao’s Gulag
11 The Brother Left Behind in the War
12 Cursed by Overseas Relations

Part 3 The Great Resumption
13 My Cousin and His Shanghai Buick
14 Lonely and Smothered: The Only Child
15 Daughters for Sale
Epilogue

Sources
Index

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/15/2017
Discovering and understanding one's family history is never an easy journey, but that road is even bumpier for those who have lost touch with relatives or who have family on the "wrong side of history." Such is the story of Tong, a correspondent for the American Public Media radio program Marketplace, who sets out to learn more about his heritage in modern China. Focusing on the stories of five relatives through five generations, Tong uncovers the lives of those with connections outside of China, who were later considered enemies of the state and suffered for it. In talking to family members who didn't want certain family secrets to be told, the author finds a recording of his grandmother, who received a Western education. This personal narrative could easily become one of bitterness; instead, Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, lots of love, and a determination to show the dignity of his people and others he meets along the way. VERDICT A charming book about a second-generation American's search for his family (past and present) and for himself in contemporary China. Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.—Melissa Aho, Univ. of Minnesota Bio-Medical Lib., Minneapolis

Library Journal

"In this, his first book, Scott Tong does much to revive the stocks of two genres that have been looking a bit tired lately: China reportage and China memoir. A former correspondent for the US public radio series Marketplace, he argues that the official narrative of Chinese history is frustratingly incomplete, and his gentle and original fusing of the two genres backs up his claims."
 

Inside Story

"Immensely readable. . . . Readers of this book will find their views of China deepened and expanded, and will discover that they can never look on the China in the Western news headlines the same way again."
 

Christian Science Monitor

"One of the best books on China in a decade. Tong displays the creative zeal of a world-class investigative reporter, but also the huge heart and family ties of a great-grandson of old China. Tong's family stories are the lived history of China—where exile, starvation and shame alternated with escape, riches, and promise. This is a spellbinding and personal portrait by a remarkably gifted storyteller."

Pietra Rivoli

"A Village With My Name is a rich, subtle, closely observed study of the power of memory (and forgetting) to shape both a family and a nation. Tong's multigenerational tale of his remarkable clan captures all the contradictions of a China in world-changing metamorphosis."

Eric Liu

"An account of China's treasured historical biography [that] helps answer the question, 'Where did today's China really come from?' . . . Tong succeeds in sharing the raw spirit of China’s people through a period of history that is in many ways better left alone. He captures the hopes, joys, sufferings, losses, fears, present realities, hardships, and dreams of the Chinese people. . . .Like a warm blanket reminding me of good times gone by . . . . Tong gracefully shares the pain of China's history through his family's ancestral past. . . . He takes the secretly packaged and hidden histories of his family and reworks them into this beautiful story filled with both good and bad endings in order to leave a legacy; a legacy for all Chinese families who understand the disconnect between China's past and its current modern age."

China Source

This ambitious work, part social and political history and part personal story, doesn’t attempt to cover all the members of Tong's family. Tong instead concentrates on a few representative relatives who reveal particular facets of the vast changes in China. . . . Tong clearly communicates the complexity of Chinese life and effectively integrates his own story into a much larger one."
 

Booklist

A Village with My Name is a wonderful unearthing of long-forgotten but ever-important ties between America and China. It is a great reminder that our relations with China are about more than politics and have stretched farther back than many of us would realize. Besides, it’s a great read!”
 

John Pomfret

In this combination of memoir, genealogy, history, and current affairs reporting, Tong uses his discovery of his family’s past in mainland China to put many of China’s most monumental historical events into a human scale. His attempts to clarify or uncover his family history, and the disputes, controversies, and missteps he encounters along the way will be familiar to anyone who has spent time trying to understand how a family became the way it is. Here the story is even more interesting because the story of the Tongs is complicated by the political history of China, which remains very present in their lives.

James Carter

"He uses a radio journalist’s sense for sound and place to create a vivid and readable account. . . . The book's focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible."
 

Financial Times

"A remarkable achievement: the writer has overcome his own family’s reluctance to speak about a past punctuated by heart-rending episodes to tell the story of China’s re-emergence through their lives. . . . [A] gem . . . more than just a trip through the ancestral archives."

Post Magazine

Tong uses a reporter's skills and dedication to track down his family’s own story, traveling to such unfamiliar places as a desolate prison camp in remote northeastern China and a child trafficker’s front room. The result is a vivid illustration of the high price paid by his relatives for their links with the West. Compulsively readable, this book traces China’s long and difficult relationship with the outside world through the extraordinary journey of a single family.”
 

Louisa Lim

“This ambitious work, part social and political history and part personal story, doesn’t attempt to cover all the members of Tong's family. Tong instead concentrates on a few representative relatives who reveal particular facets of the vast changes in China. . . . Tong clearly communicates the complexity of Chinese life and effectively integrates his own story into a much larger one."
 

Booklist

"He uses a radio journalist’s sense for sound and place to create a vivid and readable account. . . . The book's focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible."
 

Financial Times

2017-09-24
In his first book, Marketplace correspondent Tong offers a unique look into the lives of his Chinese relatives since the communist takeover in 1949.Though the narrative is sometimes confusing as the author runs through the lists of maternal and paternal grandparents and great-grandparents (though the character list at the beginning is helpful), it is particularly interesting in that, as his relatives say, it was the same for everyone; they all suffered. Tong's decision to write about his family's past was driven by the fact that so many in his family wanted to bury it. As the China bureau chief for Marketplace, he was well-placed to seek out the histories of his ancestors. The most intriguing story is that of his maternal grandmother, Mildred Zhao, who moved to Shanghai after the great flood of 1931 and ended up founding the Light of the Sea Primary School with her husband, Carleton Sun. After the communists took over the mainland in 1949, she left Shanghai for Hong Kong, and Carleton sent the children on a year later, staying behind to run the school. He was arrested in 1951 and convicted as a counterrevolutionary, and he received a 15-year sentence. Many of these stories are heartbreaking narratives of separation, of wives escaping with their children and husbands taking one but leaving other children behind. The book also represents Tong's search for a history to pass on to his children. "Sometimes you have to flip back in the album to try to understand the pictures you're seeing now," he writes. "And flip slowly." The author ends with an exposé of the baby-selling market and the dodgy methods often used to procure children for Americans desperate to adopt.A solid exploration of China past and present in which the author climbs "a punishing mountain of history with [his] intergenerational team."

Kirkus Reviews