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.]
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