1937 Part 2

1937 - age 36 continued

I'm staying at Mr. Li's rented house. But there's no one taking care of cooking and cleaning so it wasn't very convenient. At that time Lingqing and her husband lived in Jiwujianxiang No. 65 Lane. They had a spare room where I could stay, so I moved into the Hu household on March 14. There Sixth Sister [puopuo's older sister: in the nuclear family they were Er, San (my grandma), Si, Wu who were in their generation Liu, Ba, Jiu, Shi respectively] lived with them also and she took care of cooking and cleaning; even so, I felt uncomfortable because there were so many people living there. I went back to inquire about any vacancy at the YMCA and the director gave me preference because I had served at the other YMCA. So I moved in on March 29 and there's a dining hall so it was much more convenient. One afternoon, my boss, Mr. Wu needed to visit the former Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Li. Mr. Li came from Hubei and was a scholar, very humble and sincere. He related a lot of experiences of working in the Department. He came to bring me with him to Mr. Li's home; a very Western home with a beautiful yard, by the lake. 

I worked in Wuchang. Aside from having lunch with my colleagues, I usually do not participate in private dinner parties. So usually I can eliminate changes for people to try to bribe me. Then one day I received an invitation from my old friend's father Xu Zhendong. Mr. Xu's father, when I went to Japan, came to pick me up. So I remember him real well. And also he gave me some clothes to wear when I was so poor as a student. I received an invitation to a private party at their house. Because of our old friendship, I did not decline. The party was at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. When I arrived, there were several guests already there. These guests were playing majiang in one of the side rooms. I usually do not play majiang so I was waiting in this large sitting room and the servants served many snacks and drinks. Mr. Xu hadn't gotten off work yet so I was waiting for him. The party was already going until past 6 o'clock and they finished eight rounds of majiang. Mr. Xu arrived and so we started dinner. Because this kind of party is the old way of living wasting precious money and time. I wrote a letter to Diqing, at first when I arrived at the Department of Interior to work and improve the farmers' standard of living, a hundred-year endeavor. I viewed the environment around them and doubted whether we would succeed or not. I didn't like this way of working and sometimes thought I would rather go back to Shanghai to work in the bank and do some research on the economy. At this time, I waited for an opportunity to do that. 

There was an iron mine in Hubei. And people said there was a lot of iron in this mine. Because the mine was concentrated at 60% and it wasn't very deep and close to the surface. So when you mined, you don't have to do a lot of work. It was cheaper to mine. The factory in charge of mining wasn't very big. The majority of the mine was sold to Japan. The Japanese company, years ago in the beginning when Japan was working on this mine, usually they got the iron cheaply. In this case, this mine isn't the property of a person, but government property. But in the history of mining, people took it as their own property; if they want to sell cheap they'll sell cheap. There's no regulation. So they sold cheaply to Japan. Because Japan enjoyed this cheap mine, they gave kickbacks to these individuals. By the time I started working there, this Japanese company had already developed to a large operation; a major company in Japan because with iron, they made steel. This Japan Steel Company, I interacted with representatives because they knew I knew Japanese. I started negotiating with them. I wanted to get rid of the kickbacks. So my boss wanted me to do this and I told him I didn't want to continue negotiating because I didn't want to be involved with kickbacks. I wanted to resign and my boss spoke to the Governor, Mr. Huang. The Governer and my boss told me we needed to report to this to Nanjing Central Government. So I need to go with them and take an express ship from Wuchang to Nanjing because of the urgency I didn't have time to pack. So I asked the director of the YMCA to do it for me. Because of this situation, this is the conclusion of my service in Wuchang.