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Hwa-Wei’s maternal grandfather.
Hwa-Wei’s maternal grandmother.
July 1937 witnessed the Lugouqiao (Lugou Bridge) Incident, which instigated the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. It took only five months for the menacing Imperial Japanese Army to conquer Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, followed by the two-month-long historic Nanjing Massacre. The atrocities committed there by the Japanese occupiers between December 13, 1937, and February 1938 included the barbaric killing of almost three hundred thousand civilians and the destruction of one-third of the city. The Yangtze River was dyed red with the fresh blood of the victims. The notorious “Rape of Nanjing” by the brutal Japanese aggressors turned the Chinese ancient capital of six dynasties into a ghost town and a massive graveyard.
Luckily, the Lee family had already left Nanjing for Guilin of the then Guangxi Province, as Kan-Chun Lee had been hired by two regional military leaders there, General Li Tsung-Jen (Zongren Li) and General Pai Chung-Hsi (Chongxi Bai), to be the education officer in the Provincial Cadre Training Corps. The two generals highly regarded Kan-Chun’s work experience as the governor of Sihui County, Guangdong.
Located in the northeast of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guilin has a revered reputation among the Chinese—“Guilin’s scenery is the best among all under the heavens”—due to its amazing landscape with intertwined lofty mountains and flowing rivers. Guilin’s famous scenic spots include the Duxiu Mountain Peak at the center of the city, Elephant Trunk Hill on the south, Seven Star Cave and Crescent Hill on the east, and Wind Cave and Folded Brocade Hill on the north.
As the Japanese invasion expanded rapidly in China, the situation in Guangxi worsened. Heavily loaded with work both day and night, Kan-Chun had little time to take care of his family. To ensure their safety, he decided to send his wife and six children to Haiphong in Vietnam, allowing them to escape the daily bombing from the Japanese airplanes. Kan-Chun and a contingent of subordinates escorted his loved ones on this journey all the way from Guilin, Nanning, and Liuzhou to Longzhou. There they crossed the border from the south of Longzhou into Hanoi and finally arrived at Haiphong.
Hwa-Wei remembers the long journey as a harsh and endless one. Along some sections of the road, they were able to take buses; on the others, only horseback riding or walking was allowed. Five out of the six children, except Hwa-Hsin, were too young to make the trip on their own. The two younger brothers, Hwa-Ming and Hwa-Nin, had to sit in large baskets, one in the front and the other in the back, of a shoulder pole carried by one of their father’s subordinates. The youngest, Hwa-Tsun, had to be held or carried in a cloth sling. Seven-year-old Hwa-Wei was transported on a horse. He was afraid of falling from the horse, as rough and rugged mountain paths made the bumping and jerking horseback ride quite unstable. The rider used a rope to tie Hwa-Wei to the front of him, warning Hwa-Wei not to move. It was arranged for Hwa-Wei’s pregnant mother to travel in a sedan chair carried by the men taking turns.
It is not quite clear to Hwa-Wei why his father chose Haiphong as the sanctuary for the family. It could have been that some of his father’s friends were living there. As the largest harbor in northern Vietnam, Haiphong was then a French colony with arrogant police officers everywhere.
After Kan-Chun returned to Guilin, Hsiao-Hui Wang and her six children temporarily settled in Haiphong. She took good care of everything in their simply furnished rental home. Several months later, Hwa-Chou, the youngest sister, came into the world. Hwa-Wei’s mother was truly an extraordinary woman, one able to manage household affairs very well, while looking after her seven children, including one newborn, in a foreign country. On the few later occasions when the family’s refugee experience in Haiphong was mentioned, Hsiao-Hui always expressed thanks that all of her seven children were able to survive, something which seemed like quite a miracle during that time. She always felt happy and grateful that her family was able to escape from the war and live a simple life in a foreign land.4
Eighteen months later, his father arranged for the family to move back to Guilin. The trip home was somewhat easier, as all the children were better able to manage by themselves. Hwa-Chou, the youngest sister, was held in her mother’s arms all the way back. When the family checked in at the immigration office in China, the mother and children were all registered as returning overseas Chinese. For that reason Hwa-Wei later went to the National Number Two High School for Overseas Chinese for his junior high education.
4
Sharing the same goal of fighting against the invading Japanese troops, General Li Tsung-Jen’s Guixi armed forces reconciled with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’s central government and formed a temporary alliance. As the general commander of the Fifth War Area, General Li Tsung-Jen, collaborating with General Pai Chung-Hsi, directed the Battle of Taierzhuang. Due to careful deployment of the joint troops, Taierzhuang became a major victory for the Chinese, the first of the Nationalist Alliance against the Japanese army.
This victory boosted the reputation of the Guixi military. From Guangxi, a region home to impoverished but valiant people, Guixi warriors had already become well known as an “iron army” as early as the time of the Northern Expedition. Guixi forces were involved in numerous famous and extremely tough battles against the Japanese invaders. General Joseph W. Stilwell, the chief of staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, once marveled at the quality of this army, calling the Guixi soldiers the best warriors in the world.
A very subtle and complicated relationship of mutual exploitation and mutual vigilance existed between Li Tsung-Jen’s Guixi army and Chiang Kai-Shek’s central government. To get Li Tsung-Jen under control, Chiang Kai-Shek “promoted” Li in September 1943 from general commander of the Fifth War Region to chief commander of the Hanzhong Field Headquarters of the National Military Commission, a wartime senior authority between the central government and the Combined First, Fifth, and Tenth War Regions. This was a promotion in name only because, although it increased the number of war regions under Lee’s supervision, it decreased his military power, as the Field Headquarters was, indeed, a paper agency.
After the Sino-Japanese war ended, Li was transferred in August 1945 to the Beijing Field Headquarters with the same rank.5 Hwa-Wei’s father, Kan-Chun Lee, already a lieutenant general, became Li’s confidential advisor. Kan-Chun followed General Commander Li to Beijing where the family moved into the Qinzheng (diligence to government affairs) Hall in Zhongnanhai. The headquarters was located in the Juren (be benevolent) Hall. Originally built in the Ming dynasty and renovated in the Qing dynasty, Qinzheng Hall had once served as the offices of visiting emperors during their stays in Zhongnanhai.
Located on the west side of the Forbidden City, Zhongnanhai consists of two parts, Zhonghai (Central Sea) and Nanhai (South Sea), and was once, along with Beihai (North Sea), referred to as “Three Seas” in Beijing. With its winding streams, Zhongnanhai has a landscape differing from that of the solemn and respectful Forbidden City. All the emperors since the Liao (916–1125) and Jin (1115–1234) dynasties favored Zhongnanhai and invested large amounts in its expansion and renovation. Zhongnanhai became an imperial garden and political center in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), serving as the emperors’ summer resort and governance place. After the Revolution of 1911, it became one of the essential meeting venues of the Beiyang Warlord Government.
Hwa-Wei did not move with his family to Zhongnanhai. He stayed at the First Municipal Middle School in Nanjing to continue junior high school. What he knew of his family’s life in Zhongnanhai, he learned from his brothers. According to them, the layout of Qinzheng Hall was rather complicated, comprising some thirty rooms of different sizes, including an anteroom, a hallway, a reception room, central and west-wing living rooms, and a dining room, as well as a very imposing home office. The home office, used mainly by Hwa-Wei’s father, had a gigantic rosewood desk in which his father’s documents were kept.6
Qinzheng Hall actually continued its political function in the post-1949 era until it was demolished in the 1970s. There Mao Zedong (Zedong Mao) would often hold his diplomatic meetings with heads of foreign