Swimming To Freedom — My Escape From China And The Cultural Revolution

CHAPTER I

HONG KONG IS NOT CHINA,
AND WE ARE C H I N E S E

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I WAS BORN IN 1948 in a small, peaceful Chinese coastal town
whose name in English is "North Sea" —that is, north of the South
China Sea. The Chinese Civil War between Chairman Mao's Com-
munist insurgent forces and General Chiang Kai-shek's National
Revolutionary Army was in its final stages. Three years before I
came into being, the Nazis were defeated and the Japanese impe-
rialists surrendered. I was blessed, for North Sea had no military
significance in the Chinese Civil War.

Three years before the Japanese invasion in 1937, Chiang
drove Mao's guerrilla forces on their "Long March" to a remote
area of northwest China, far from the reach of the Japanese invad-
ers. By the time I was born, Mao had perfected his "Protracted
War" against the Japanese and turned it into a full-scale attack on
Chiang. Chiang's army had been badly depleted by the Japanese
invaders, and Chiang's ally, the United States, was exhausted after
its brutal fight with the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese imperial

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forces over the Pacific. And Mao was winning. The Yankees would
not want to fight another war to help Chiang. "The globe is round
and it turns full circle"—so goes a Chinese saying. Mao was des-
tined to rule China.

A month after I was born, Papa and Mommy held a celebra-
tion for my having come into the world. Back then, Chinese did
not celebrate life when it started. They waited a month to see if that
life was still vibrant. Why waste money and excitement when many
babies didn't live past a month? The Chinese were practical people.

I was the second child. Mommy brought five of us into the
world, and we all passed the first-month test. She got the job done in
good order, over eight years, at two-year intervals. So, I can always
figure out how old the others are, unless I forget how old I am.

Mommy said I brought good fortune to the family. A few days
after my "birthday" party, Papa and all the other officers working
for the customs agency of Chiang's government were told to relocate
to Hong Kong. Papa and his colleagues knew Chiang was losing

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the war and planning to flee to Taiwan Island. Back then, Hong
Kong was a British colony, and Chiang's government had a much
bigger customs agency there. Papa was not happy to go to Hong
Kong, but Mommy was elated. "North Sea is too small for raising
children anyway," she declared. "Hong Kong is the place!" Mommy
liked to link the size of a city to how good its schools were. "It's
true, always. No sound-minded teacher prefers to teach in a small
town." To the Chinese, nothing is more important than a good
school with good teachers.
"But Hong Kong is not China!" Papa said, annoyed. "It's a
British colony, and we are Chinese."
"You aren't working for the British." Mommy reminded Papa,
"You're an employee of Chiang's government."
Papa raised his voice: "Chiang's government is corrupt, and
you know I hate it."
Mommy was calm: "How do you know Mao will be better
than Chiang? You're not corrupt; you don't take bribes. That's
good enough for me."
Papa loved China. He had a deep loyalty to it. But there was
no work available there that would pay as much as his job in the
customs agency. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that there was
no job available anywhere. China was a mess. There was blood
everywhere. The violence had spread from the battlefields to every
liberated village. Mao's army was shooting landlords, taking their
land away, and redistributing it to poor peasants.
When the day came, reluctant Papa and joyous Mommy
dragged the family's luggage and my older sister, Jing, who could
walk by then, and carried me onto a ship to Hong Kong. We settled
in an apartment in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island. We would
be safe there, even if Mao invaded the Hong Kong peninsula. The

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peninsular part had two districts, Kowloon and the New Territories.
Mao's army could march over the peninsula, but it could not reach
the island of Hong Kong, just as it could not reach the island of
Taiwan: It didn't have warships! The mighty Pacific Fleet of Amer-
ican warships was roaming the Taiwan Strait to protect Chiang. It
would take no time at all for them to sail to Hong Kong to help
out their British pals.
Although Mommy was thrilled to move to Hong Kong, the
move did not come without its difficulties. I became sick with a
cough for days, and on the recommendation of a neighbor, Mommy
took me to the British Hospital. "There were many kids there like
you, coughing and crying," Mommy told me years later. "The doc-
tor said you needed to stay in the hospital in order not to spread
germs to others. I left you there, but when I got home, I felt some-
thing wasn't right. I went back and found you and many other kids
crying inside a room full of brownish fumes."
I got excited: "Did the doctor burn opium in the room?" I
asked. I had just learned about the Opium Wars, when the British
Royal Navy beat the Qing Dynasty army so the Englishmen could
keep trading their opium for our Chinese tea.
"Of course not! What a silly question. I took you away and
swore not to go there ever again." The British Hospital frightened me
to death with the way they treated the sick kids. There should be a
sign in front of it reading, "CHINESE AND DOGS ARE NOT ALLOWED."
In those days, many parks had such signs by the entrance.
To be fair, the Chinese way of dealing with the sick was not
much better. Al we used were bitter-tasting soups made from dried
plants most people couldn't name and ugly-looking insects. I'd
seen sick people drink sake from a bottle in which centipedes and
venomous snakes had been placed while still alive and kept for
years, the longer the better. People also rubbed the sake onto their

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skin to soothe pain. But the worst were the cooked bugs sold in
stores. They looked just like cockroaches except they were black!
Parents would force their kids to eat them if they couldn't control
their bladders while they slept. Thank Heaven I was able to wake
up when the need to pee arose.
The Chinese had peculiar ways to deal with the human body.
For them, being sick meant that some invisible element inside the
body was out of whack. For example, pimples were a sign that the
body was too hot. So, logically, one must drink "cool tea" —but
illogically, one must drink it while it was still hot, to counter the
"hotness" inside the body. No kid liked "cool tea." It was very
bitter. When I had pimples, I was instructed to bite off a little bit of
an extremely salty and sour dried plum with every sip of hot "cool
tea"—to distract my taste buds from the bitterness. The skin of my
forehead would tighten until it tugged at my eyebrows.
Mommy laughed. "Look at you! You're suffering terribly,
aren't you?"
"How can you laugh, Mommy? You try it!"
"Mommy has no pimples."
Cantonese still drink "cool tea" in today's China. Some smart
guy added a whole bunch of sugar to our Cantonese "cool tea,"
refrigerated it, and sold it in cans all over China, calling it "Chi-
nese Coca-Cola." Adults, without pimples, drink it ice cold while
eating-to get fat, I guess.
Mommy liked to say that moving to Hong Kong was a bless-
ing from Heaven. It gave us peace when Mao's army was approach-
ing the area north of Hong Kong to wipe out the remnants of
Chiang's government, so Mao could declare, on October 1, 1949,
on the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the
birth of the People's Republic of China. I was too young to remem-
ber living in Hong Kong, but in the photos from those years, I feel

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the calm and ease and I see the joy in our faces. Mommy took a
lot of pictures of me alone, me with her and me with her and Jing.
Papa seldom showed up in the photos. "He was always busy at
work," Mommy explained.
A happy person takes pictures to remember happy moments.
Many happy moments left behind many pictures. Of the many
pictures of our family, quite a few show my fat cheeks and curious
eyes. The one that always made me laugh features ice cream. I
stuffed my mouth with too much of it, causing it to spill out and
drip onto my shirt.
"Mommy, how come I don't like ice cream anymore?" I asked
years later, when we were back in China.
"China has no ice cream. It has ice chips."
For all that Mommy loved Hong Kong, Papa did not. His
heart was always with China. "Hong Kong is not China," he d say,
"and we are Chinese. We must go back to China!" He never went
deeper to explain why he liked China so much, so I asked Mommy.
She explained that all Papa's brothers and sisters were in China,
and besides, he was stubborn. Once he decided on something, it
was hard to change his mind.
"Is stubborn good?" I asked.
"No, it's not good. You don't want to be stubborn."
"What's 'stubborn' mean?"
"When Mommy asks you to do something in the right way
and you keep doing it your way."
"But what if my way is the right way?"
"Then Mommy is stubborn."
"Oh, Mommy can be stubborn, too?"
"Everybody can be stubborn."
"Who is not stubborn?"

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"Nobody. But your Papa is more stubborn than all of us
combined."
But Papa didn't need to be stubborn to bring us back to China.
For two thousand-some years, Confucius's teaching had become
part of the Chinese "cultural DNA," which dictated that the Chi-
nese act as family units, not individuals, and that the authority of
a family rested on the husband, not the wife. That was great for
Papa. It also dictated that a woman's greatest duty was to produce a
son, not a daughter. Being a woman, Mommy faced insurmountable
odds in keeping the family in Hong Kong.
Before Mao, Chinese emperors had relied on Confucius's
teaching because it had taught the Chinese to respect and obey
authority. Then, in 1966, when Mao was seventy-three, he decided
to launch the Cultural Revolution to achieve his political and cul-
tural goals. He replaced all -isms (except, of course, socialism and
communism) with Maoism. Mao wanted all Chinese people to
worship only him-not Confucius, not Buddha, and especially not
the Christian God. After Mao died in 1976, Confucianism made a
miraculous reappearance and has been strong ever since. The new
leaders of the Communist Party of China appreciate the beauty of
this Chinese cultural DNA-conformity and obedience. Capitalizing
on the Western intellectuals' admiration of Confucian teaching, the
Chinese government has opened hundreds of "Confucius Institutes"
in the democratic world to serve its global ambition. I wonder
how the Western world can reconcile its advocacy for independent
thinking and women's rights with its endorsement of this Chinese
cultural DNA.
In 1951, two years after the founding of Communist China,
Papa joined an insurrection in the customs agency to bring the
family back to China. Jing was five, I was three, and our baby

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sister, Lily, was one. Lily was born in Hong Kong, and therefore
given a British first name, just like "Mommy," one she was proud
of. But when she grew up, Lily complained often that Mommy
had lost her British birth certificate. Back then, Cantonese loved
all things British.
Papa's insurrection ended our happy, peaceful life in Hong
Kong. At that time, Papa was young and handsome, ambitious and
hardworking. While many of his colleagues worked hard out in the
field hustling bribes, he worked diligently in the office on his way
up the career ladder. Neither he nor Mommy could have foreseen
that working for Mao's enemy in Hong Kong would turn out to be
perilous for Papa and our family later on in China.
When I was old enough to understand the meaning of the
word insurrection, I was disappointed. Mommy told me there was
no gunfire or bloodshed involved in Papa's insurrection. Papa and
some of his colleagues simply walked out of the office and declared,
"We quit! We're returning to the Motherland!" The customs office
didn't stop this patriotic bunch. There were many qualified people
waiting in line to fill the vacancies. And the British governor of
Hong Kong didn't give a damn. Their insurrection didn't affect the
money flowing back home to the Queen.
Why Mao did not take over Kowloon or the New Territories
on the peninsula during the liberation-together, these two places
comprised more land than the island of Hong Kong—was a mys-
tery to me for years. If Mao had taken over the peninsula, Papa
would have been working for the new China from the get-go, as his
office was on the peninsula. And I'm sure Papa would have joined
Mao's forces and become a revolutionary comrade instead of one
of Chiang's former officers-Papa had complained that Chiang's
government was no good because it was corrupt. But Jing said that

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Papa could be shot dead by the People's Liberation Army for having
been an enemy of Mao. Politics was bloody in China.
Why Mao did not take over Kowloon Peninsula remained
an aching question for me. But it was hard to find out the truth in
China. Not a single book I found said a word about the Yankees'
Pacific War, which destroyed the Japanese navy; or about the Ameri-
can atomic bombs that brought the Japanese invaders to their knees;
or about the evil Chiang's government representative standing
beside the leaders of the Allied powers to accept the surrender of
Imperial Japan on the deck of the mighty USS Missouri.
In the end, Papa had a simple answer for me: "China needs
Hong Kong to trade with the world. It needs a stable Hong Kong as
a whole, so it honors the Qing Dynasty's leases and lets the British
run the island. The trade gives me my job. That's what I'm doing
every day."
So, I learned that things happen for a reason. That I could
not find the reason did not mean there was none. Yet, in China, we
were not taught such reasons in school. And when no reason was
found, gossip took over.
"Don't tell anyone what I've just told you," Papa warned me.
"Why?" I asked. "Isn't it true?"
"Of course it is; Papa doesn't lie. But it's not good for China's
image. If someone hears it, it'll spread like wildfire. Twisting and
spinning gossip a few times will get me in trouble."
"What trouble?" I was curious.
"Trouble is trouble," Papa said. "I don't know what it would
do to me."
Mommy wasn't excited about Papa's insurrection, but China
was. The insurrection brought us to Canton City (now known as
Guangzhou). Upon our arrival, we were greeted by people beating

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drums. Banners on the train station platform bore the words
INSURRECTION HEROES in bold characters. By participating in the
insurrection, Papa was seen as officially rising up against Chiang's
government; he was a hero. It earned him a good job: as the head
of the import/export department of the provincial government in
the province of Guangdong.
As the family of one of the heroes of the insurrection, we
were driven around Canton City, the largest city in Guangdong
Province, by a young comrade, to view various apartments. We
were jammed together in the car like sardines in a can. Papa sat in
front, and Mommy, holding crying Lily, sat in the back between
Jing and me, to separate us-even though we were too tired to
bother each other.
"It was exhausting," Mommy recalled. "There weren't many
differences among the apartments." She was right. I had been in
some of my classmates' homes, in old concrete buildings. Most
had electricity and water, but no heating or air-conditioning. (I
didn't even know there were such things, as I had been too young
to appreciate them in Hong Kong.)
We were given two rooms on the ground floor of an old four-
story building. The bigger room had space for a square dining table,
a large bed with a steel frame for mosquito netting, a dresser, and
a desk under a window covered in rusty bars. The bed was for
Mommy and Papa and my youngest sister. (That sister would later
be Bun, the last of Mommy's five babies.) I slept in the smaller room,
in a small bed with a circular mosquito netting, the worst kind
because it allowed my forearms and legs to touch more of the net's
surface, giving the mosquitoes a better chance to suck my blood.
My bed was about one foot from a larger bed that took up almost
half the room. The larger bed was for Jing, Lily, and Ning-Ning•