Several of the former POWs I knew had also seen the news and often talked about those men who had refused to repatriate. They would sigh and regret, only in private, that they had risked so much to come home so as to pursue and fulfill their illusion of loyalty. It was true that most of those prisoners who went to Taiwan lived a decent life. Some of them attended college and a few rose to senior positions in the army. Having retired recently, some even returned to the mainland to live, where they were well received; some were even appointed local officials. Indeed, China generously embraced them as patriots in spite of their belated love. Even some former POWs who had returned in 1953 wrote to their local governments to express their support for the new policy of welcoming these nonrepatriates home, because it would help bring about the unification of Taiwan and the mainland.
But the reappearance of the nonrepatriates in their hometowns didn't always bring joy. Some of them found that few of their family members were still alive. Some saw that their home villages remained in the grip of dire poverty and ignorance. A few shocked their parents and siblings, who had been informed three decades ago that they had perished in Korea as Revolutionary Martyrs – their families had visited and swept their empty graves every spring ever since.
I wondered how Wang Yong was faring. I still had his niece's photograph in my album.
Bai Dajian's appearance on the TV threw my mind into turmoil for a few days, because I felt I was at least as capable as he, though I understood that a wealthy businessman like him must be a rarity among those POWs who had gone to Taiwan. But soon I recovered my equilibrium. No matter how awful one's life is, there are always others who get it worse. In contrast to Chang Ming, Hao Chaolin, and Pei Shan, I was fortunate, with a happy family and two good children and three grandchildren. There should be no reason for me to indulge in lamenting my personal losses. One must never regret one's fate.
These days I often watch The Simpsons, which I like very much. Last week I saw Bart, the mischievous boy, get a tattoo removed from his arm. This gave me the idea of having mine erased. I asked my son about the possibility. He called around in Atlanta and found out that Dr. Stone at Emory Hospital often performed the procedure. He told the doctor that I had an anti-American slogan tattooed on my belly by the Communists. I guess there was no way he could explain my case clearly. My monthly pension is less than $120, so Dr. Stone agreed to consider a discount. He said the procedure would take just a few minutes and the laser would cause little pain. I'm glad I will see him next Thursday.
I never saw Pei Shan after I left the Repatriates Center in 1954, but I was in touch with Chaolin, who died of a massive heart attack four years ago. In 1995 he told me that recently he had gone to Tianjin to see Pei, whose lung cancer had reached an advanced stage and whose sister had gotten him to come to the city for chemotherapy. Painfully, our former commissar blamed himself for having ruined his only son's life. The son, already in his late forties, was still unmarried; when he was in his twenties, no young woman wanted to enter his home, darkened by his father's past, and later he somehow lost interest in women and preferred to remain a bachelor despite his parents' urging him to marry and have children. Pei had another regret: he had forgotten his former bodyguard Tiger's home address; the boy had saved his life forty-four years before, but Pei had only remembered he was from Gansu Province. If only he had been able to do something for Tiger's parents, who must have died long ago. Pei said to Chaolin, "Tiger was a good comrade. I still meet him in my dreams."
Chaolin had also told me that some weeks later he had paid a last visit to Pei Shan, who was now on the point of dying. The final words our former leader gave him were "Please write our story!"
Chaolin had said to me, twisting his withered lips, "Yuan, my mind's no good anymore. What can I write about? There's only loss and grief – the heavy feeling weighs down my heart like a millstone. All the memories are messed up in my head, no way to sort them out." He still had a few teeth, but couldn't help dropping crumbs of a walnut cookie while chewing it over a cup of hot tea. Indeed, he had aged so much that I could tell he didn't have many years left. Shriveled, almost skeletal, he was half a foot shorter than four decades ago.
Now I must conclude this memoir, which is my first attempt at writing and also my last. Almost seventy-four years old, I suffer from gout and glaucoma; I don't have the strength to write anymore. But do not take this to be an "our story." In the depths of my being I have never been one of them. I have just written what I experienced.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to LuAnn Walther for her critical and careful attention to the manuscript; to Lane Zachary for her enthusiasm and suggestions; to my son, Wen, for providing information on U.S. weaponry; to my wife, Lisha, who persuaded me to write this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Xuefei Jin, who writes under the pseudonym Ha Jin, was born in 1956 in Liaoning Province in northern China. His father was a military officer. In 1969, at only 14 years of age, Ha Jin joined the People's Liberation Army based at the northeastern border between China and the former Soviet Union. While in the army he began teaching himself middle and high-school courses. After his military service ended, he taught himself English while working the night shift as a railroad telegrapher in Jiamusi, a remote frontier city in the Northeast. During this time he followed the English learner's program, hoping "someday to read Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 in the English original".
In 1977, when colleges reopened after the Cultural Revolution, he passed the entrance exams and was assigned to study English. Although this was his last choice for a major, Ha Jin received a B.A. from Heilongjiang University and a Masters in Anglo-American literature at Shandong University. He came to the United States in 1985 to do graduate work at Brandeis University, supporting himself as a busboy in a Chinese restaurant and as a night watchman in a factory.
In 1993 he earned a Ph.D. in English from Brandeis. He intended to return to China after completing his dissertation, but after watching televised coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacre, he and his wife decided to make a life with their son in the United States, and when Jin couldn't find teaching work, he turned to writing instead, eventually finding employment at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
He has published two collections of poetry, Between Silences (1990) and Facing Shadows (1996), and two collections of short fiction, Oceanof Words (1996), which received the PEN/Hemingway award, and Under the Red Flag (1997), which won the Flannery O'Connor Award. In the Pond was published in 1998. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for fiction in 1999, as well as the PEN/Faulkner award. He has also written the story collection, The Bridegroom, which won the Asian American Literary Award, and the novels The Crazed and In the Pond. In 2004 he published War Trash; A Free Life followed in 2007. He lives in the Boston area and is a professor of English at Boston University.
