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.
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