A new book unearths seldom-heard tales of the pain that came with Communist victory
Mark O’Neill 21 September 2009
On October 1, the Communist government will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic with an awesome display of military hardware on the streets of Beijing. Taiwanese author Professor Lung Ying-tai, of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at Hong Kong University, meanwhile, is marking the anniversary in a different way - with a book dedicated to the pain and suffering of the more than 10 million people who died in the Communist victory, and of the millions whose lives were changed forever by it.
“In Chinese tradition, 60 years is an important day,” she said. “Beijing should mark the day but not celebrate it. ‘Behind a successful general lie 10,000 corpses.’ One side should not see the other as the loser.”
The book, Big River, Big Sea - Untold Stories of 1949, tells the story of hundreds of people in that tumultuous year. Since its publication in Taiwan two weeks ago, it has sold 100,000 copies, a record; it was published in Hong Kong a week ago.
Lung’s books have sparked controversy, thanks to her criticism of China’s history and culture. This one will be no exception.
Mainland publishers have expressed interest in the book, but they would require self-censorship that Lung might be unwilling to make. “We will have to see the next step,” she said.
The book is a collection of stories of Chinese families, famous and not so famous, caught up in the maelstrom of 1949. They include the families of Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, and Dr Paul Chu Ching-wu, a world-famous physicist and until last month president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Lung’s story begins with that of her own family, broken up by war - like that of millions of her generation. Many hurriedly bid farewell to loved ones, not knowing if they would see them again.
Her mother had entrusted her first-born son to her mother-in-law in Hengshan, Hunan province ; saying goodbye at the railway station one day, she decided not to take the baby boy, as he was crying and the train was overcrowded. “We will return very soon,” she said. But she was to go to Taiwan, not returning for 46 years. Lung, born in Taiwan in 1952, first saw her elder brother in 1985, in Guangzhou.
“About 1.5 million people fled from the mainland to Taiwan,” Lung said. “Many left husbands, wives, parents, children and other relatives behind. If we say an average of 20 loved ones [were] left behind, that means 40 million people who had a bitter experience.”
Her father was an officer in the Kuomintang military police. He last saw his mother in 1949: a company commander, he was with his men on a train, which stopped at Hengshan station. Since he had no time to visit his mother, she came to the station and gave him a half-made pair of white cloth soles, which she had knitted herself; she had had no time to finish them. He took the soles with him to Taiwan; he never saw her again. When he took out the shoes, he wept.
Lung’s mother also never saw her parents - or even her hometown - again after 1949. In 1958, a dam project created a vast lake that covered Chunan, in Zhejiang province, a town with a history of more than 1,000 years. The 300,000 inhabitants were rehoused in villages all over China, where they could not speak the local dialects and were regarded as strangers.
In 1995, her mother returned for the first time and took a boat to search for the island in the lake where her father was buried. They stopped on the island to remember him.
Lung said her mother, now in her 80s, had lost her memory and did not recognise her, her only daughter. “But she remembers her hometown.”
The book is selling so well in Taiwan because people know little of the history of the civil war. “Neither side wanted to write it,” Lung said. “In the mainland, history was about the victory and how it was won. In Taiwan, the government did not want to talk about its failures.
“In Taiwan, it is a kind of public healing. People find that they do not know their own history. The mainlanders and the native Taiwanese are all surprised. They find they did not know each other.”
One of the most extraordinary episodes is the siege of Changchun , the capital of Jilin province, by the People’s Liberation Army from March to October 1948.
“How many died of hunger? It was between 100,000 and 650,000. If it was the median, that is [about] the number cited for the Nanjing [Nanking] Massacre. Everyone knows about Nanjing and the Siege of Leningrad, but no one knows about Changchun.”
A PLA force of 170,000 surrounded the city; inside was a Kuomintang force of 100,000 and a civilian population of about a million, swelled by refugees from the countryside.
PLA general Lin Biao declared that he would turn Changchun into a “dead city”. He ordered that no grain or fuel be allowed in and no residents be allowed to leave, to put pressure on the KMT army. After the PLA captured the airport, the city was only supplied by airdrops.
The citizens ate cats, dogs, rats and horses; then they ate grass, tree bark and roots. There were instances of cannibalism. On October 17, the KMT army surrendered.
When she visited Changchun, Lung discovered that many of its people, especially the young, did not know about the siege. “The mainland side did not speak about it because it was too brutal. An officer wrote a book about it but it was banned. The Kuomintang side did not speak of it out of a sense of shame and failure.”
Her book concentrates on personal stories, accounts of individuals caught up in these terrible events. “There have been so many injustices and, during these 60 years, no one said ‘sorry’. There were so many debts that have not been cleared, so many acts of kindness that have not been repaid and so many wounds that have not been healed.”
She said writing such history was like opening a black box. “In the mainland, we need 100,000 such books to be written. There are too many black boxes.”
Lung hopes that the book will help reconciliation between the two sides. “If peace is important, we must know the hurt of the other side. If people on each side of the strait do not know the other, then there is no basis for friendship. It cannot only be peace between political leaders.”
She had the idea for the book in 1989, when she was living in Germany and saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall. She saw that many of those in China who had lived through 1949 were elderly and would not live long; it was a matter of urgency to record their testimony. Some told her they did not want to repeat the pain of their experience; others that they had been waiting their whole life to tell their story.
She started her research by reading the newspapers from January 1949, but was invited by then-Taipei mayor Ma to head the city’s Cultural Bureau, a post she held for 3-1/2 years. “Then my father died and my mother lost her memory. The book was always in my heart.” Last year, she started full-time work on the book, locking herself away for 400 days and not reading any newspapers.
The book avoids taking sides in the civil war, treating the KMT and Communist armies the same. “The nation was the machine. I wanted to open the machine and see the little individual inside,” she said.
Her parents belonged to the defeated side. They arrived in Taiwan, having lost their land, their house and their social and family networks. Her father became a provincial policeman, rotated to a new district every few years.
Leung graduated in foreign languages from National Cheng Kung University in Tainan and obtained a PhD in English and American literature from Kansas State University. In 2002, she moved to Hong Kong, where she is a fellow at the University of Hong Kong. She has written more than 20 books, including novels and critical essays on social and political issues.
The first page of her new book concludes: “War - is there a winner? I am proud to be the next generation of ‘the loser’.”
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1949: The untold story
A new book unearths seldom-heard tales of the pain that came with Communist victory
Mark O’Neill
21 September 2009
On October 1, the Communist government will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic with an awesome display of military hardware on the streets of Beijing. Taiwanese author Professor Lung Ying-tai, of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at Hong Kong University, meanwhile, is marking the anniversary in a different way - with a book dedicated to the pain and suffering of the more than 10 million people who died in the Communist victory, and of the millions whose lives were changed forever by it.
“In Chinese tradition, 60 years is an important day,” she said. “Beijing should mark the day but not celebrate it. ‘Behind a successful general lie 10,000 corpses.’ One side should not see the other as the loser.”
The book, Big River, Big Sea - Untold Stories of 1949, tells the story of hundreds of people in that tumultuous year. Since its publication in Taiwan two weeks ago, it has sold 100,000 copies, a record; it was published in Hong Kong a week ago.
Lung’s books have sparked controversy, thanks to her criticism of China’s history and culture. This one will be no exception.
Mainland publishers have expressed interest in the book, but they would require self-censorship that Lung might be unwilling to make. “We will have to see the next step,” she said.
The book is a collection of stories of Chinese families, famous and not so famous, caught up in the maelstrom of 1949. They include the families of Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, and Dr Paul Chu Ching-wu, a world-famous physicist and until last month president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Lung’s story begins with that of her own family, broken up by war - like that of millions of her generation. Many hurriedly bid farewell to loved ones, not knowing if they would see them again.
Her mother had entrusted her first-born son to her mother-in-law in Hengshan, Hunan province ; saying goodbye at the railway station one day, she decided not to take the baby boy, as he was crying and the train was overcrowded. “We will return very soon,” she said. But she was to go to Taiwan, not returning for 46 years. Lung, born in Taiwan in 1952, first saw her elder brother in 1985, in Guangzhou.
“About 1.5 million people fled from the mainland to Taiwan,” Lung said. “Many left husbands, wives, parents, children and other relatives behind. If we say an average of 20 loved ones [were] left behind, that means 40 million people who had a bitter experience.”
Her father was an officer in the Kuomintang military police. He last saw his mother in 1949: a company commander, he was with his men on a train, which stopped at Hengshan station. Since he had no time to visit his mother, she came to the station and gave him a half-made pair of white cloth soles, which she had knitted herself; she had had no time to finish them. He took the soles with him to Taiwan; he never saw her again. When he took out the shoes, he wept.
Lung’s mother also never saw her parents - or even her hometown - again after 1949. In 1958, a dam project created a vast lake that covered Chunan, in Zhejiang province, a town with a history of more than 1,000 years. The 300,000 inhabitants were rehoused in villages all over China, where they could not speak the local dialects and were regarded as strangers.
In 1995, her mother returned for the first time and took a boat to search for the island in the lake where her father was buried. They stopped on the island to remember him.
Lung said her mother, now in her 80s, had lost her memory and did not recognise her, her only daughter. “But she remembers her hometown.”
The book is selling so well in Taiwan because people know little of the history of the civil war. “Neither side wanted to write it,” Lung said. “In the mainland, history was about the victory and how it was won. In Taiwan, the government did not want to talk about its failures.
“In Taiwan, it is a kind of public healing. People find that they do not know their own history. The mainlanders and the native Taiwanese are all surprised. They find they did not know each other.”
One of the most extraordinary episodes is the siege of Changchun , the capital of Jilin province, by the People’s Liberation Army from March to October 1948.
“How many died of hunger? It was between 100,000 and 650,000. If it was the median, that is [about] the number cited for the Nanjing [Nanking] Massacre. Everyone knows about Nanjing and the Siege of Leningrad, but no one knows about Changchun.”
A PLA force of 170,000 surrounded the city; inside was a Kuomintang force of 100,000 and a civilian population of about a million, swelled by refugees from the countryside.
PLA general Lin Biao declared that he would turn Changchun into a “dead city”. He ordered that no grain or fuel be allowed in and no residents be allowed to leave, to put pressure on the KMT army. After the PLA captured the airport, the city was only supplied by airdrops.
The citizens ate cats, dogs, rats and horses; then they ate grass, tree bark and roots. There were instances of cannibalism. On October 17, the KMT army surrendered.
When she visited Changchun, Lung discovered that many of its people, especially the young, did not know about the siege. “The mainland side did not speak about it because it was too brutal. An officer wrote a book about it but it was banned. The Kuomintang side did not speak of it out of a sense of shame and failure.”
Her book concentrates on personal stories, accounts of individuals caught up in these terrible events. “There have been so many injustices and, during these 60 years, no one said ‘sorry’. There were so many debts that have not been cleared, so many acts of kindness that have not been repaid and so many wounds that have not been healed.”
She said writing such history was like opening a black box. “In the mainland, we need 100,000 such books to be written. There are too many black boxes.”
Lung hopes that the book will help reconciliation between the two sides. “If peace is important, we must know the hurt of the other side. If people on each side of the strait do not know the other, then there is no basis for friendship. It cannot only be peace between political leaders.”
She had the idea for the book in 1989, when she was living in Germany and saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall. She saw that many of those in China who had lived through 1949 were elderly and would not live long; it was a matter of urgency to record their testimony. Some told her they did not want to repeat the pain of their experience; others that they had been waiting their whole life to tell their story.
She started her research by reading the newspapers from January 1949, but was invited by then-Taipei mayor Ma to head the city’s Cultural Bureau, a post she held for 3-1/2 years. “Then my father died and my mother lost her memory. The book was always in my heart.” Last year, she started full-time work on the book, locking herself away for 400 days and not reading any newspapers.
The book avoids taking sides in the civil war, treating the KMT and Communist armies the same. “The nation was the machine. I wanted to open the machine and see the little individual inside,” she said.
Her parents belonged to the defeated side. They arrived in Taiwan, having lost their land, their house and their social and family networks. Her father became a provincial policeman, rotated to a new district every few years.
Leung graduated in foreign languages from National Cheng Kung University in Tainan and obtained a PhD in English and American literature from Kansas State University. In 2002, she moved to Hong Kong, where she is a fellow at the University of Hong Kong. She has written more than 20 books, including novels and critical essays on social and political issues.
The first page of her new book concludes: “War - is there a winner? I am proud to be the next generation of ‘the loser’.”
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