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. 

Duanwu de Mayo #5

Cold good by Irene

Better warm: zongzi, beaches, love

Better cold: margaritas, rivers, doubts

Though we wish control of the weather

All we manipulate are chopsticks, glasses, and words

The Lost Season by Doug

Shoeless Joe looks at sly third base coach

Yogi laments another owner in the box

The pitch ignites the first steal of spring

Yogi awakens a remark that resembles itself

Duanwu de Mayo 2020 by Annalise

Celebrating the 5th of May by mixing my first margarita

Commemorating Duanwujie with Irene's first solo-made jong-dz

With a pixely zoom view of three friends

I drink my VERY strong margarita with no ice

Essential Employee: Unpaid by Megan

Teacher, housekeeper, gardener, IT, chef, and parent.

Instruct, feed, tidy, feed, troubleshoot, feed. Fuck.

Irene said booze is important. So.

This fifth of the fifth is drinking and feeding nobody. 

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.