1939 - age 38 Part 3

When we arrived at Ji'an in mid-April, we had a terrible bombing. On the 26th of April, Nanchang was occupied and Ji'an was now close to the front lines. During the day, we had sirens for bomb warnings usually in the morning. Every bank changed working hours from 5pm to 9pm. There was a huge bombing and one exploded at the entrance to the shelter, there were many casualties. We planned on moving our bank headquarters to Taihe, so I needed to go ahead to take a look to see which spot we should move to. When I went to explore Taihe, it was actually a very nice place. Zejiang University had moved there once but later on continued west. We had Jiangxi provincial government move over here into the Shao Family mansion. Mr Shao was a millionaire and his business of transporting salt was how he got his wealth. [How my maternal grandmother's family was wealthy too.] After he became rich, he built many housing units, nearly a hundred buildings. Also, he built roads and all the necessities to form a community. Since the Jiangxi provincial government occupied the Shao compound, our bank Yumin needed to find another place in Taihe. So I was looking and asking around and was told that there was a place called Xinling Village only a few miles away where another millionaire named Liu had built a lot of houses that could be rented to us. This Mr. Liu used to be Mr. Shao's household manager. Both of them became millionaires and built lots of housing. Later on, Central Bank, Farmers' Bank, and several others all moved to Xinling cuen. So it became a banking area. And between Xinling cuen and the city was only a very tiny walking path between rice paddies, not wide enough for cars. So in order for the manager's transportation, they hired several people to carry sedan chairs. That was the main way of transportation. Many electric poles were set up for telephone lines. On July 6, the telephone system was finished and I tried out the system by calling the manager at Ji'an, Mr. Cui. He said my Shanghai apartment had sent a telegram that said, "Your wife gave birth to a boy. Both mother and baby are well." I was very glad. Because the next day I needed to return to Ji'an, I told them to leave the telegram there. On the 7th of July, I arrived in Ji'an, read the telegram myself, and immediately sent a telegram to my wife to congratulate her. This is our third child and we named him Shuyuan. His family tree name (puyun) is Zhangjun. This piece of telegram I have kept until today because when Shuyuan was young we used to tease him that because he was born when his father wasn't present that he was picked up from the street. When he grew up and he read this telegram, he said, "I was not picked up from the street because you have this telegram as evidence." It was very coincidental that we had the telegram from when he was born. 

[When people go to Huangsan who can't climb, they hire sedan chairs to carry them up!] 

In Jiangxi province, besides rice, another important product was tea. There were three main areas for tea production. The Jiangxi tea they pressed into bricks which could transported to places like Russia. Together with Anhui's tea, in China we called them Shuangbi (Jade Tea Pair), the top grade. In Jiangxi, from breeding, seedling, cultivation, fertilizer, picking, green tea, and black tea, transported to Hong Kong to be sold to the whole world. But these tea farmers usually lived far from each other and did not know about international trade. So we bankers had to help them out. During this long process of making tea, there were times we needed to loan them money; they also needed banks for financing and business transactions. Not only does this long process include many specialized technologies, they also needed to improve all the steps in between so the tea can be exported. When you have products to export, your nation gains money. At this time even during the war, we did not neglect to improve the tea business. Because of all this involvement, the bank formed the China Tea Company. I became friends with several of their CEOs. Because I was in Jiangxi, they assigned me to form a branch of the Tea Company.

Taihe (meaning Peaceful and Prosperous) is a place like its name. The Japanese seldom bombed us so we had a normal peaceful life. In front of Mr. Liu's mansion, there was a huge field. We hired all the sedan carriers, when they were not working, to level this field and make it into a tennis court. Because the whole country was in a state of war, the mayor of Taihe didn't think playing tennis was appropriate. So one day he came to see me, he beat around the bush telling me that sports like tennis should not be promoted. At that time, I was still young and I became upset and said during this time lots of folk songs mention students and teachers and the government make the sounds of playing mahjong. This mayor wanted to save face and after he heard me mentioning these folk songs, he changed his way of talking and said, it's better to play tennis than play mahjong. It used to be that Chinese said playing mahjong was chien guang, ren guang, tian guang--lose money, lose friends, lose time. After this, he didn't oppose tennis anymore. He even said, "When you travel to Xinlin cuen, there are newly built tennis courts." Tennis is my hobby and every time I move to a new place for a new job, I'm always thinking of ways to build a tennis court. If there is an old one, I usually have it refurbished. Some of my colleagues also liked to play tennis. So these years during the war, we had a pretty good life: you can work and also play tennis.

Besides the aforementioned tennis, we can also write poems. In Nanchang, there was a famous family named Wan. In this family, there were lots of famous poets. Some poems were compiled into books, quite famous in China. At that time, I wrote some poems to respond to whoever wrote poetry at that time and I put several in my auto-compilation.

1939 - age 38 Part 2

At this time, we received a telegram that said the National Department of Commerce was going to have a meeting in Chongqing for all the banks in the country. Our manager, Mr Chen, would go and I would be the acting manager in Nanchang. The first important action for me was to prepare to retreat. We had many employees and their families, everyone wanted to go first to retreat to safety. Our retreat destination was Ji'an. We only had two small boats; and from Nanchang to Ji'an is against the current of the river, it takes a much longer time. We had so many people and so little transportation, it was very hard to make arrangements. And also our bank had several team loyalties. Every team, especially in this wartime, was fighting each other. Not only within the bank but also from the outside provincial government, everyone was fighting against each other. I was an employee of the bank so I wanted to make fair assignments according to the importance of their function: whoever needed to start working first should go first, critical departments like accounting and operations. As for research and some other departments, they could go later. I knew there were several warehouses in Ji'an, so most of the families of the employees could stay there. There were several other arrangements made, most of the employees of our bank retreated without urgency, panic, and fighting. This was the first difficulty I resolved, so I gained the trust of my colleagues. I needed to stay in Nanchang to finish the work of retreating, so I was the last one to go to Ji'an. I needed to supervise all the packing of important documents and property and make sure it was all loaded onto two big trucks. Before I left, I went to the provincial government to take a look and there was my friend, Mr Yang. He had several boxes of books that he wanted to take with him but his car was already full. I gave him some space in our big trucks so he could retain his library. He was very grateful for that. For many years, he had been doing research inside the country and outside and had collected a lot of important documents and books that he didn't want to abandon. He was extremely grateful. 

[After I asked if she had ever met Mr. Yang, my mom remembers having the piano in the living room in Taiwan, so many people would visit, she always had a good excuse to not practice.]

To curtail the advance of the Japanese army, after we drove to Ji'an, they purposely destroyed the road to prevent the Japanese troops from moving closer. Destroying the road needed a lot of labor. At the time, they had to hire a lot of civilian labor. Most the laborers had to be paid first before they worked. This job was supposed to be done by the city government of Nanchang, so they went to the Jiangxi provincial government for help. They wanted to loan the money from our bank. Most of the people working in our bank, accounting and financing, already had left for Ji'an. There were difficulties financing because the provincial government didn't have money. There were a lot of difficult procedures for this funding. Finally on March 24, they secured the money to pay the laborers and, after our car passed the point, the laborers started to break the road. 

[Mom: When we went to Taiwan in 1946, a year after the end of the war, there was so much rubble everywhere, it was awful.]

At that time, most of our employees and their families had arrived in Ji'an. We had a few at the end, me and several other people. Because I was solo, I stayed upstairs above the branch bank with some service people who did my laundry and cooked my meals. I was pretty comfortable. However, before we left Nanchang, I didn't sleep well for several days and was extremely exhausted. But when I arrived in Ji'an, all of sudden I was able to relax. Unfortunately, at that time, I got a high fever and my right leg became red and swollen. The doctor diagnosed me with a bacterial infection in my lymph nodes from a cut in my foot. This bacteria had reached my bloodstream. I needed medication and rest. The doctor said I would never be totally cured because this bacteria was everywhere. As soon as I had a cut, I would be infected. The only thing to prevent infection was to not have any broken skin. The thing is, I love to play tennis. Sometimes, I would run fast and break some skin and be infected again. I had recurrence of this fever and infection several times. Even after the war when we lived in Taiwan, I still had recurrences of this infection. Until I went to Japan and worked at the embassy, there was a doctor in Tokyo who recommended I use ointment on my foot, some kind of medicated lotion. From then on, I applied it and prevented infection by keeping my skin moisturized. Every night I would use this cream and thus never had this infection again. 

[Most relatives called my grandparents Bayiniang and Bayifu, her generational order, asking for money, even though she was the 2nd daughter, she was the 8th cousin. Puopuo grew up in Yangzhou even though her family was from Anhui. "My mom said my dad always made a lot of money for the banks, not for himself." My grandma grew up rich and ever since her time in Yangzhou, nothing compared. Whereas my grandpa grew up poor so he always said as long as there's food, it's good.]

1938 - age 37 Part 3; 1939 - age 38 Part 1

1938 - age 37 continued

Because of war, transportation was difficult. One of my colleagues, Mrs Xu, and I were in Longyo at the time, and her husband wanted to return to Longyo. Mrs Xu requested a ride. It was so hard to rent cars during the time, they were very grateful. After I dropped them off, I went back to Nanchang. One day, Mrs Xu was riding with another manager, Mr Chen, and unfortunately, his car had an accident, they drove off a bridge and died. It was very tragic. During this time, I was traveling around Zhejiang to several places and on December 5, I arrived in Wenzhou. On December 8, from Wenzhou to Lixue. On December 18, I went back to Lixue. A lot of the time, because of the Japanese invasion, many of the roads were broken or closed and there was no way to get around. Many times, we had to wait for a car or for a road to open. We had to wait in little private boats for whatever was available. We would sit through the night. Many times, we stayed on a little boat and played mahjong by candlelight to pass the time until dawn. This was our old-fashioned Chinese life. On the 19th of December, I arrived in Wenzhou and there Mr Chan needed to go to Shanghai. So I bought some small presents and asked him to bring them to my wife as Christmas presents for my family. On the 23rd, one of my colleagues Mr Yang telegraphed me saying to urgently return to Nanchang. So on the 25th, I traveled from Wenzhou to Nanchang via Qingtian but our car broke down so I had to wait in a hotel there. On the 26th, they sent another car for me. By the end of the year, I had traveled all around Jiangxi and ended the year back in Nanchang.

1939 - age 38

Last year, at the end of December, the bank at Jiangxi urged me to go to Nanchang because Yumin Bank wanted to hire a manager. The Yumin Bank organizational structure was more or less the same as every other bank. Usually, the provincial government assigned board members and the board would hire the manager. Under the manager, there was a secretary, accounting, business, etc. This year, there was a position open for a manager. Because this position has good pay and a lot of power, many people competed for it. But most of the candidates were rejected by the General Manager, MrWei Chen. Mr Wei Chen was a Zhejiang Central Bank CEO and highly reputable. He was recruited to GM by Jiangxi's governor. Even though Governor Shong Shihui hired Mr. Chen, concerning banking business, he was not indebted to him. Any governor-recommended candidates were also rejected by Mr Chen. No one knew how to deal with him. A lot of his subordinates tried to find out what kind of person Mr Chen was looking for. Anyone who did not fulfill his criteria, regardless of recommendation, he would reject. He was a fair person and was not swayed by VIP opinions. He wanted to hire truly qualified people. There were several people recommended by powerful persons. He rejected every one of them. Finally, someone recommended me. At that time, I had already left Jiangxi and returned to Shanghai. So again, I left Shanghai for Wenzhou to Nanchang. I had formerly worked with Mr Chen on a committee, though I was not a close friend. He made a statement: "I might want to interview Xu Junzhou." So my friends at the bank urged me to return. On January 10, I received a letter from Yumin Bank saying they had an opening in the management position: "We need someone who's familiar with financing and banking. We want you to come here and take this position." So I took the position and with the help of many of my friends at the bank, fortunately I did a fairly good job.

During the war, even though Nanchang was pretty close to the front line, transportation by water or road was very difficult, so our army and the Japanese were at a stalemate holding position. Nanchang was not involved in the war so markets were pretty stable and prosperous. My job at Yumin Bank became more familiar and I didn't feel as much pressure. During non-working hours, the young workers in all branches of the government and banking formed tennis teams. They used tennis courts to practice and held tournaments between different teams. Sometimes, when you hit the ball, the sound fell among the noise of the cannons. Because we were used to the firing sounds, we didn't mind them at all. Sometimes after we played, everyone would go to the newly built bathhouse for showers. We had a pretty nice life. Unfortunately, in mid-March, the Japanese planned to attack Nanchang. Everyone panicked and the government gave orders for all the organizations to evacuate to safer areas. During war, we had to reorganize and retreat, reorganize and retreat.