of General Li Tsung-Jen. The perils of those decades of military service were like treading on thin ice. Fortunately, he was able to settle down with a stable teaching job and do missionary work in his later years.
Kan-Chun took the bad with the good and honored the code of brotherhood. His limited income could barely provide the essential expenses of his big family, even under his wife’s thrifty management. On many occasions when the family was unable to make ends meet at the end of the month, Hwa-Wei’s mother had to trade the jewelry from her dowry to feed the family, or his father had to borrow money from one of his eleven blood brothers whose financial situation was slightly better. He had no alternative but to seek help from his friends for the sake of his family. Hwa-Wei could feel the helplessness and agony of his father; this only increased Hwa-Wei’s respect for him.
The blood brothers of his father were primarily Fujianese, known for their strong ties with each other. Hwa-Wei met two or three of them, including I-Wu Ho, who had once served as the secretary general of the Taiwan Legislature, the vice chairman of the Commission of Overseas Chinese Affairs, and the president of the board of Cathay United Commercial Bank. Ho was a great help to the Lee family and provided kind support to Hwa-Wei and his siblings with their plans to study abroad.
Hwa-Wei’s father was a family man with only a few personal hobbies, playing mahjong, smoking, and drinking with friends. His mother was a perfect housewife who took good care of all seven children. Among the many kinds of love, the most selfless love is the devotion of parents to their children. The adults who are closest to a child during childhood usually shape that child’s life. The personality and character traits of Hwa-Wei’s parents had a far-reaching impact on their children. The harmonious and relaxing family atmosphere that they created has benefited Hwa-Wei and his siblings their entire lives.
Because Hwa-Wei left home at the young age of twelve for schooling, his mother was always very kind and loving to him whenever he came home during school recess. During his youth, Hwa-Wei suffered from chronic allergic sinus infections and had to undergo surgeries each year for nasal polyp removal. When providing him with meals more nutritional than those he got in school, his mother always made him his favorite dish: five-spice red-cooked stewed pork shoulder. Hwa-Wei has always treasured those memories of his mother and still remembers the aromas of the food she prepared for him.
Notes
1. Hongyec Guo, “The Nationwide Flooding of 1931,” Yan Huang Cun Qiu, no.6 (2006).
2. Qing Li, The Not Lonely Past. Jing-Po Fu: Accompanying John Leighton Stuart for 4 Years (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2009).
3. Stacey Bieler, A History of American-Educated Chinese Students, trans. Yan Zhang (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2010).
4. Hong Lu, “Extending time and space in searching and offering—the life of Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, Director of Ohio University Libraries,” Mei Hua Wen Xue (The Literati), no. 25 (January/February 1999): 24–43.
5. De-Gang Tan, Memoirs of Li Tsung-Jen, 1st ed. (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2005).
6. The Bloodstained Red Sky: In Memory of the Martyrs of the Aircraft 815 of the Air Force 34th Black Bats Squadron. (Taiwan: published by family members of the 815 Aircraft, 1993).
7. Len-Yu Huang, Reading the Dairy of Chiang Kai-Shek from the Historical Perspective, (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Jiu Zhou Press, 2008).
8. De-Gang Tan, Memoirs of Li Tsung-Jen.
CHAPTER 2
His Education during the Wars
. . . One day, enemies invaded my village.
So I’ve lost my family, my farmhouse, and my livestock . . .
—“On the Jialing River” Lyrics by Hongliang Duanmu Music by Luting He
1
IT WAS NOT easy for Hwa-Wei’s civil servant father to support a big family of seven children on his limited income. From a young age, Hwa-Wei came to understand the hardships of life. Although his well-educated parents hoped that their children could also receive good schooling, Hwa-Wei’s K–12 education was constantly interrupted by endless wars and his family’s frequent relocation caused by these wars.
During the anti-Japanese War, countless students, including Hwa-Wei, were forced to abandon their schools in enemy-occupied areas and flee to safer places. To help those students who were deprived of education by the war, thirty-four secondary schools were established and operated by the central government from 1937 to 1949, including one girls’ school and three schools for returning overseas Chinese students from Southeast Asia. Many of these government-operated schools were quite large: twelve had over one thousand students and thirteen enrolled a student population of five hundred or more. All of those secondary schools, along with the vocational schools, offered free tuition and room and board, effectively subsidizing a refugee student’s education.1
Located in southwest China, Chongqing served as the temporary capital of the Nationalist government during the Sino-Japanese War, providing shelters for refugees from other parts of the country. The year of 1943 saw increasing hardship resulting from the war and an even greater threat from the invaders.
Hwa-Wei and his family went first to Guilin and then moved to Chongqing, where Hwa-Wei’s father worked. Hwa-Wei had just graduated from elementary school in Guilin and was about to begin secondary school. Under an arrangement made by his parents, he and his older brother, Hwa-Hsin, were accepted by the National Number Two High School for Overseas Chinese where Hwa-Hsin was in the eleventh grade and Hwa-Wei in the seventh grade. The school was located in a remote rural area about a day’s journey from Chongqing, with separate campuses about three miles apart for junior and senior high school classes. His mother was very worried about Hwa-Wei, who was then only twelve years old and had never been away from home. But she had no other choice: the government, who operated the school, would provide free education that covered room and board as well.
Founded in August 1941, the National Number Two High School for Overseas Chinese was originally located in the Cheng clan temple of the Jiangjin District, a suburb in Chongqing, as the result of a free land lease to the government for educational use by the Cheng clan. De-Hsi Wang was the school principal appointed by the Ministry of Education.
Situated in the foothills of Longdeng Mountain and alongside the Zuanjiang River, Cheng clan temple was the best building in Jiangjin. However, transportation between Chongqing and the temple was not convenient. One had to walk on foot for about two miles from the temple to Wufuchang, a small town, then another six miles from Wufuchang to Dushi, a township, then, finally, take a bus from Dushi to Chongqing.
At the beginning, all junior and senior high students boarded at school in Cheng clan temple, as they were few in number. Later, the school was expanded with the addition of another campus a short distance away due to the rising number of incoming refugee students from Southeast Asian countries that had also been invaded by the Japanese army.2
Hwa-Wei had quite an adventurous experience during his first trip from Chongqing to the school. His father had negotiated a paid ride with a truck driver along the highway. It was a fully loaded truck, but the driver somehow managed to find additional space by tying some goods to its top. The father and sons squeezed together in the limited space. Once the truck began to move, the tied-up goods seemed to hang by a thread. For most of the trip, Hwa-Wei kept his eyes closed and hoped nothing would fall from above.
About four or five hours later, the three got off the truck when it was about to head in a different direction. Shaking off the dust, Hwa-Wei was finally able to heave a sigh of relief. Despite their continuous jerking for several hours, the goods right above him had not fallen down at all. To complete the journey, Hwa-Wei had to walk for three or four more hours with his father and his brother, Hwa-Hsin, to reach the school.
After hours on the road, it was getting dark, although they had left home in the early morning hours. His father and older brother carried their light luggage. Hwa-Hsin was a thin seventeen-year-old, but