By now Mrs. Dennison had recovered from the scene she had witnessed with Minnie, saying, “Amazing, you Chinese can survive anything.”
“Just a year ago,” I said, “everything here lay in ruins. Every house was gutted and had lost its roof, and many were burned down. Who could have imagined that this district would come back to life so soon?” As I was speaking, anger again surged in me. I had lived in Nanjing long enough to consider it my new hometown.
“I guess,” Mrs. Dennison went on, “this city was destroyed time and again in history, so people here must be accustomed to all sorts of devastations.”
“True, that may explain why we can survive a catastrophe like this Japanese occupation.”
The Confucius Temple had been repainted crimson, and even the huge stone lions in front of it and the placards hanging beside its doors had been washed clean. The gateway, with its flying eaves and colored tiles, was decorated with two rows of lanterns, each printed with the character HAPPINESS, below which people hustled to and fro. The Japanese seemed to mean to preserve this shrine and restore its popularity.
We entered a stationery store on the waterside to see if there was something we could buy for the college. The owner, a fleshy-faced man with a hairy mole on the wing of his broad nose, said delightedly, “Welcome to this hovel. President Dennison, I’m so happy to see you back.” He nodded at her, beaming.
“Nanjing’s home,” she said. “I’ve nowhere else to go.”
She was so pleased by his words that she bought a pack of Dearer Than Gold ink sticks.
I knew she couldn’t use a writing brush, so she had probably purchased them as a present.
We took a rickshaw back. When we arrived at Jinling, dinner was already over at the dining hall, so we had chicken noodles at my home. After the meal, we drank pu-erh tea while Liya, who knew English, since she had attended a missionary school, read an article in the North China Daily News out loud. It reported that the Japanese army had just captured Guling, a hill-encircled resort town in Jiangxi Province, where foreigners and Chinese officials used to flock to escape the summer heat, though it was unclear how many men our army had lost this time. The Japanese claimed that they had eliminated all five thousand defenders, but that was unlikely, because the Nationalist troops were already familiar with the Japanese tactics and knew how to avoid annihilation.
Mrs. Dennison thanked me for a wonderful afternoon and evening. I was glad but unsure if this meant she would now treat me better. If Dr. Wu were around, she could mediate between the old president and Minnie, whom she was fond of, but I was only a forewoman and couldn’t possibly perform that function. I just wanted to be on decent terms with Mrs. Dennison. Not only did I need to make sure my family could stay in its safe haven; I also hoped I could calm the old woman if she became upset or angry.
38
FIVE OF THE SIX IRC men were released from jail on April 27, thanks to an amnesty in honor of Emperor Hirohito, whose thirty-eighth birthday was two days away. Our part-time math teacher was among those released, though one student’s father was still in jail. The returned men had all been instructed not to talk about their ordeal in prison, or else they would be brought in again. One of them had a broken wrist, and another, his face partially paralyzed, could no longer speak coherently. Yet none of them would disclose what had happened to them, and each one just said he was lucky to come back alive.
In private, one told me that the torturers had often tied him to a bench, then stacked bricks on his feet and filled him with water mixed with chili powder until his stomach was about to burst. At first he denied all of the charges, but later he confessed to whatever crime they said he’d committed. He even said that he had helped John Magee and Holly Thornton embezzle relief funds and had single-handedly stolen a military truck, though he didn’t know how to drive. “I just didn’t want to be killed by those savages,” he said, and shook his head, which was afflicted with favus and reminded me of a molting bird.
“Did they believe what you told them?” I asked him.
“Perhaps not. They once said I lied to them, so they punched and kicked me till I passed out.”
“Who beat you, Japanese or Chinese?”
“Some Chinese running dogs man the torture chamber. Every now and then one or two Japanese officers showed up too.”
No rally would be allowed on the emperor’s birthday except for those organized officially. To keep the girls preoccupied, Minnie declared April 29 a big cleaning day. Then the Autonomous City Government demanded that we send one hundred people downtown to take part in the celebration of the emperor’s birthday. They didn’t specify that the participants from our campus must be young students, so Minnie believed we should pick a hundred women from the Homecraft School. Mrs. Dennison objected, saying they were not students and must not represent Jinling College. She insisted on sending middle schoolers instead.
We discussed this, and everyone, including the American teachers, supported Minnie’s idea, because we knew some of the girls were loose cannons and might take the public celebration as an insult. If some of them started an anti-Japanese chant or song, it would get us into deep water. What’s more, Alice and Donna had informed us that some young girls were planning to demonstrate against the Japanese occupation. We didn’t want to kindle their anger by sending them to the official rally, so we chose the women from the Homecraft School.
As we were setting out the next morning, bearing a large banner that displayed the characters JINLING WOMEN’S COLLEGE, Mrs. Dennison blocked the procession outside the front gate. She said to Minnie, “I won’t let you bear our flag, because these are not students of our college.”
Minnie grimaced but caved in. “Okay, we won’t carry it, then.”
So we continued downtown without the flag, while Mrs. Dennison held it with both hands, standing there alone and watching us march away. The white silk flapped a little, shielding a part of her thin shoulder. It was almost midmorning, the sun already high and hot. The women all knew we were going to demonstrate in honor of Emperor Hirohito, so they looked dejected and walked silently, some hanging their heads low.
In the city, martial law was already in force to prevent protests and to control drunken soldiers. We stood in the plaza before the city hall, each given a tiny sun-disk flag made of paper. The celebration started with a review of Japanese troops — one thousand cavalry, three columns of mountain guns, and a regiment of infantry marched past the platform near the templelike building with three tiers of flying eaves. Every officer raised a gleaming sword, its back against his collarbone, to lead his unit forward. The band was blasting out “Japan’s Army.” As the troops passed the platform, they shouted, “Long live the emperor!” and “Japan must conquer Asia!” and “Wipe out our enemies!” On the platform stood two Japanese generals in high boots and some Chinese officials, including Jimmy Pan, a tall, intelligent-looking man despite his slightly lopsided eyes. Pan always claimed that he’d taken the office of vice mayor because it was the only way he could help protect the local citizens’ interests, but the Nationalist government had already set the price of two thousand yuan on his head. Some of the puppet officials on the stage kept their eyes on the floor throughout the ceremony, though they applauded from time to time.
One such official, Yinmin Feng, a scraggy man with jug ears who had earned a master’s in archaeology from Tokyo University, gave a short speech, which, despite its brevity, was empty prattle. He praised the Japanese authorities for their efforts to restore order and normalcy in the city. He also insisted that all Chinese support “the New Order of East Asia.” He stepped down from the rostrum in less than ten minutes, after shouting “Heaven bless the emperor!” and “Long live the cooperation between Japan and China!” Then the Nanjing garrison commander, Major General Amaya, delivered a speech through an interpreter, in which he listed several causes for the suffering the Chinese here had gone through. Among them two were primary. First, the Chinese forces were responsible for the devastation of Nanjing, because they had resisted the Imperial Army, which was renowned for its bravery and invincibility. And once defeated, the Chinese soldiers had disappeared among the civilians, exploiting women and children as camouflage. That was very unprofessional. Also, Chiang Kai-shek had instilled in the entire population so much hatred for the great Japanese nation that most civilians became hostile to the Imperial Army, refusing to cooperate or give provisions. Worse yet, there were snipers everywhere, who mainly targeted Japanese officers; consequently, many commanders had to wear the uniforms of the rank and file to disguise themselves. When Nanjing was taken, the army had no alternative but to “mop up” all the stragglers and deserted soldiers. The second cause was that some foreigners from a certain country — namely the United States — remained here, and their presence emboldened the Chinese to oppose the victorious troops. Those foreigners actually provoked the Japanese soldiers to break rules and vent their frustration on civilians, so the Westerners were the real troublemakers for China and should be repatriated.