1927: Work the land

Pity Peasant Song by Tang dynasty poet Li Sen (780-846)

Hoe crop sun high noon,
Sweat drops field down earth.
Who knows food on plate,
Each grain by hard toil.


1927 - age 26 continued

One day at the YMCA, the nationalist party called for a meeting and the auditorium was full inside and out. Because I didn't need to do any service for this meeting, I went to my room to rest. But after a little while, I heard fighting in the auditorium. It started with a quarrel and grew into a fist fight. The members used chairs as weapons. A lot of people got hurt. The two party leaders fled from the chaos and came into my room. I welcomed them and said here we don't separate people by party, we only recognize people by province. I gave each one a glass of water. Mr Cen and Mr He became very cordial and gentleman like. After the chaos died down, both of them left smiling.

Ever since the business school relocated to Guoliding, each class was in a wooden classroom. Because the transportation to and from the main area was infrequent, a lot of students couldn't make it to class. As for my department, there was a professor named Qu Guanggui who was very strict on attendance. Every class, he had someone perform roll call. Each student had a name tag to flip over when they entered class. So he knew who attended. But the students were crafty and had their peers turned their name tags over for them. At the beginning of class, there were so many tags being flipped, it was hard to tell who was doing what. This method was a flop, so after a while, he cancelled this practice.

There were many people who stayed with me at the YMCA dormitory. One man from Jiangxi named Cen Maoying was kind of short and fat but he majored in music in voice. He was quite talented and sang baritone. Every time we had a chance, people in the dormitory asked him to sing. He never said no. Everybody liked it very much. There was one day he and I didn't have class, and both of us came back to the dorm to rest. At that time, the Chinese national anthem had words but the government was asking for the song. Cen had composed a version to submit to see if he would win and receive the award. He told me there was a part of the song which he wasn't satisfied with. His roommate Mr Liang wrote down his song in notation. Even though he didn't like it, I told him to go ahead and submit it to make the deadline. After Mr Liang wrote it in musical notation, he wrote down Mr Cen's name and it won. It is the tune of the Nationalist anthem.


1928 - age 27

Inside China, there was war. The government sent troops into Wuchang and Hankou. There was a policy to centralize currency. Most of the money was used for the military. So the funding for education was very lacking. Sometime we didn't have any money come for one or two months. Most of the students panicked. If they sent a letter back home, there was no reply. So we went to the embassy for help. At that time, the ambassador Mr Jiang was from Hubei. He participated in Sen Yishen's revolution. Even though he was very sympathetic to the students, there were too many of us and the money was a large amount so he had no way of solving the problem and refused to see us. So all the students loitered in the embassy and wouldn't leave. We occupied the embassy until the next morning. Ambassador Jiang, after seeing us occupy for so long, came to talk to us. He told us to return to school and study hard and, "The money the government owes you, I will send a telegram." He gave us some assurance so we went back to school. The governor of Hubei at that time used to work for this ambassador. So after he received the telegram, as compared to the military money, this amount wasn't that much, so they sent funds to the ambassador and the students were satisfied.

As I mentioned before, I lived in the YMCA dorm. Because I had to go to school for class, my mealtimes weren't regular and I didn't dine regularly at the YMCA. To save money, I usually ate at public diners because they were cheap. Even though they weren't tasty, they had sufficient nutrition. These diners were established for common people's convenience. But they had hours and if you missed closing time, you didn't eat. Sometimes I got so focused on studying, I lost track of time and by the time I made it to the diner, they were closed and I had to find other places to eat. About this experience of hunger, I wrote a poem. In order to manage my time better, I set a certain time to take the train to the university. If there was class I went. If not, I studied by myself. At noon time, I always went to the school dining room for lunch because at that time we had the government funding, I had more money and every meal I could choose better food so I had better nutrition. In the evening, I took the train back to YMCA and sometimes saw people rowing boats and by the bridge there were some slums. I wrote some poems about that too.

I worked as assistant director of the YMCA for quite a while. This year, the YMCA bought a piece of land and planned to build five dorms for staff and workers. Mr Ma named this area East Youth Village. There were four directors: Zhang, Qu, Xie, and Lao. Each stayed in one dorm. Another bigger building was assigned to Mr Ma. Mr Ma had quite a few children, his eldest and second daughter were in Japanese elementary school. They asked me to tutor them in Chinese, so they gave me a little side room as my dormitory. Because of this, I also was a member at East Youth Village. I left the YMCA dorm where I stayed for three years and moved to East Youth Village. From East Youth Village to Business University was a lot closer, so it was more convenient. The only thing was this whole area was residential with no stores. If I needed to buy something, I had to go to Silver Chair (my mom notes this is a well known shopping area).