1937 Part 3

1937 - age 38 continued

I was on a boat called Longxing from April 14 starting at Hankou and arriving in Nanjing on the 16th.  Wu Tingzhang (my boss) and I stayed at the Nanjing Hotel. All my packages from Longxing I asked the service people on the boat to take my luggage from Nanjing and mail it to Shanghai all the way to Gubuo Gongyi. In those days, society was harmonious and my luggage was transported all the way without me, all through service people transferred. In Nanjing, my boss Wu Tingzhang and I spend two days visiting all the branches of our work. After two days, our job was done so I said goodbye to him. On April 18, I took the train to safely arrive in Gubuo Gongyi on the 19th. On the 19th, I went to the Central Bank to start working and for the Business Bank. Because in the Central Bank I did not have specific work only working research for financing and currency so I didn't have much to do. So the China Business Bank, their chairman of the board, an ambitious person, he viewed that in Cangshu thought there was a lot of development. So he sent me there to take a look and also he assigned in Cangshu a little town Jingfong he wanted to have our office there. So on May 19th, I took a bus to Cangshu. I stayed in a hotel called Yushan and I contacted the manager of China Business Bank, we'll go together the next day to survey.

This city Cangshu is located between the two counties of Jiangbei and Jiangyin. It was formed by deposits in the Changjiang, the further island was several thousand acres growing asparagus. On the island is a famous family called Yang Jinglong, they were very wealthy and generous and usually used their money to build lots of dykes and levees so it would not be flooded. So they made many fertile farmland. Also they bought a big land and built their own mansion. Their mansion had a river around it as protection. Also there's a bridge on the river. Inside their property they had buildings with hundreds of rooms. They usually host many people to eat and stay for free. Sometimes they even finance these people to travel. This whole property is divided into more than one hundred small farms. Every farm, sometimes ten or twenty acres. And every farm had houses for people to live and they had lots of farmers with families and they rented the field to till. Sometimes their crops were abundant and they will pay a percentage of the crops to the landlord. And sometimes there was not a very good harvest and the landlord lend money to the farmers. In this huge Yang mansion, there is a big field. In the middle of the field there's a flag pole, where he suspended a big clock. Sometimes, there was an important event and they would use the clock as a signal. So all the farmers would gather together in this big field and report what's what. After they got information, they would return to their own field. About a half mile away from Mr. Yang's mansion, there is the town of Jingfong. Jingfong's streets were built very wide and even. Both sides had lots of houses, mostly owned by Yang Jinglong. The landlord would let all these merchants rent to sell farming tools and groceries. This island is already a very well developed place. They had schools and factories and hospitals. And since then China Business Bank wanted to set a branch there. The bank built lots of warehouses and shopping malls and Mr. Yang made it more development so he welcomed all these buildings. That night, they invited us to stay in their mansion and everything like the bedding and rooms were very clean and nice. And they also invited us to banquet dinner. All the fisherman, if they had lots of good fish, they would take their best catch to give to Mr. Yang's house. Also the Yangs would pay a real good price for the catch. That night, for dinner, we tasted the most delicious fish from the river. And while we had dinner, everybody talked about Mr. Yang's business: shipping in Shanghai. Every year it had lots of profit. From all these points, Mr. Yang is the best client of the bank. Also Jingfong city is a very prominent in the development. So China Business Bank had a tremendous outlook. I did a lot of research in this place and I wrote a lot of the reports to the bank and everybody was very encouraged. The only sad thing is in the other half of the year, Japanese started to invade: Shanghai, Nanjing, all were occupied by Japan. All our development plants were cut off and we had no chance to see them through.

This is a turning point of China. Since two years ago we started a change of currency. The military, political, economics, social, every aspect had a great big developments quickly. Almost comparative to all the foreign countries. Just as strong as the foreign countries. So at that time the Japanese warlords wanted to stop our development. So they invaded us before China developed more. Just like a little bird who hasn't enough feathers yet. On July 7, on Wuge Bridge, we entered into war. Since this Wuge Bridge incident, they thought Shanghai and Nanjing all these economic leaders Shanghai is too close to the frontline. Since Shanghai is so close to the ocean, it's hard to defend. So all the economic facilities all wanted for safety, went inland. The Central Bank decided to move to Nanchang. Chinese Business Bank wanted to print new currency. So before you print currency, you've got to have gold standard in your bank. According to the price of market, the backup certificate showing what currency is in circulation. At that time China Business Bank had a lot of gold standard in the billions. in that time, gold was stored in the vault. Because they wanted to move everything inland, it's a big safety point to move these gold. According to the board of directors decision, they wanted to move the gold to Nanchang first. The board member Mr. Fu thought these places were my hometown area. Also I had experience traveling between Wucang and Nanjing so he assigned me to ship these gold to a safe place. This was a big assignment. And originally I took this job without hesitation because the Japanese were coming and we had to move fast. But on August 7, I traveled from Gubuo Gongyi to the Business Bank to start shipping the gold. So my home, all the jobs and taking care of Shu-dong and Shu-shi all these responsibilities fell to Diqing. Everything she took over so I didn't have to worry about homefront when working. These gold from our bank we shipped to a boat Dehe. Everybody's ticket and all the passengers' procedure was done by the Business Bank. At that time, Dehe was harbored in Pudong to depart after 8 o'clock. So I had two hours free. I took advantage of these two hours to go to China cultural society. Since everyone had to move inland, we had to have lots of meetings to make sure how everyone is going to move. Since I returned from Wuchang, I had lots of colleagues in the cultural society who studied in Japan with me. So they were good friends and several wanted me to be the secretary of the society. Since this was a job of service, I had to accept. We waited until 8 o'clock, our bank assigned a lot people to wait at the pier to await the shipment of the gold. from 8 to 12, the ship didn't come. We waited until 2am. Unfortunately, when the gold arrived the port was filled with many people poor people running from Japan, lots of women and kids. It was a very chaotic situation. When Japan started to invade China, many of the east coast factories had already stopped working. All the workers and their families wanted them to move inland. So the ports of filled with all these people. So if we want to move the gold, we don't have a way to ship. At that time, some of the staff bank, used silver dollars to hire ten workers to clear the way. By the time everyone was hipped in the boat, it was already 4am. I forgot to eat supper, so until 4am, I'm really hungry. The ship still hadn't moved. but the gold needed someone to guard so I cannot leave. So Dehe would leave on the 7th, but because of two much cargo was delayed until the 8 July in the morning. They delayed again so the safety of the gold, we wasted a whole day waiting for the board. The air is not clean and hot, it's very bad situation. Because of this boat is pretty old and the machines were old, and it was overloaded, ti's very slow. This big boat had to tug another boat and had to travel against the current. So it was even slower. It arrived in Jioujiang on July 11th. Then Jioujiang Bank had lots of people to take the gold cargo and put it in their safe. I safely accomplished the mission so praise the Lord.