Chapter 8
Return to Prisoners of Liberation: Four Years in a Chinese Communist Prison
Chapter 8
Dell: A few days after Rick’s arrest, as I was sitting in the little pantry room, young Cadre Lu, who had already taken charge of the house, came hurrying in.
“Hey, did you have some money in the house?” he asked loudly, as if hoping that by shouting he would make his Shansi accent more easily understood.
I replied, “I know my husband had just taken 500,000 JMP [People’s currency— about $23] out of the bank a couple of days ago but I’m not sure how much of it he had used.”
“Well, a packet of 500,000 JMP and some loose bills were found in the desk drawer. That must be yours. Here, count it. You’d better keep it with you. You’ll need it to run the house.”
At that time 500,000 JMP seemed like a large sum to me. In my hopes for an early settlement of the case I felt that it would be more than enough to carry me through. It was not long, however, before the little packet had grown quite thin. At that point I was wearing handcuffs, and the prospects of an early departure were not too good. In order to pay the rent, Wang’s salary, etc., I finally wrote a note to a Dutch friend and borrowed enough for another month. ‘That will surely be plenty,” I thought. This again proved an erroneous calculation, so I borrowed once more.
By the third month I decided to become crafty. I would make of myself an unsolvable problem by refusing to borrow any more money from my friend. I reasoned that if I had no money on which to live the People’s Government would let me go home, as the only solution. The though crossed my mind that if I had no money they might send me to jail, but I felt it was worth a chance. So, when the time came to pay the rent I told Cadre Lu that I could no longer borrow from my friend since it was too much to ask of her every month.
“Well, what will you do?” he asked seriously, his usual whirlwind exuberance dimmed before a problem of such magnitude. “Do you have any money in Peking?”
“No. Our money is back in America, but we can’t get it now because the United States Government has prohibited the transfer of funds to China. I don’t know what to do.”
I gazed at him helplessly. He went off without a word. As I heard the front door slam, I thought, “Now he’s going off to headquarters to confer. Maybe they’ll finish up the case and release me.”
But when he came back a few hours later he had quite a different solution. “Since you don’t have any money,” he said, “the People’s Government will lend you enough to get along on until you can find some way to pay it back. How much do you need?”
I calculated enough to last me another month and was immediately given the sum, 500,000 JMP. This was more than the salary of even a relatively high-placed official in the government, but at the time I was too concerned about being thwarted in my scheme to appreciate this.
From that time on, as soon as the money I had borrowed was running low I would write out a slip asking for an additional sum. The rent was taken out of my hands completely and, I found out later, was paid by my father. For all other household expenditures, I used the money borrowed from the government. I was eventually in debt over 5,000,000 JMP (about $230), but I was not particularly worried about it because I felt that I would be able to pay the amount back when I could get funds from the United States.
I tried to live as simply as possible, but I still ate as a foreigner, operating on the myth that an American cannot live on a Chinese diet. I spent 5,000 JMP (23¢) a day and maintained a balanced diet of milk, meat, eggs, fresh vegetables, sweets, fruit, etc. The guards and the cadre cooked their meals in the house also, but they worked on an allowance of 3,000 JMP a day each. In Chinese fashion, both they and Little Yang were eating only two meals a day but, even though a schedule was worked out, the kitchen was hard put to handle us all.
Toward the end of December, the jeep drove up late one night and Little Yang was taken away. I wondered whether she was on her way home or being taken to prison, but I knew I would not be surprised if it were prison, in view of her connection with Harriet.
The cook, old Wang, had continued to come every day to prepare my meals and clean the house. There was little for him to do, however, and I would gladly have let him go, but I did not dare bring the matter up because I thought Cadre Lu would certainly have something to say about my doing someone out of a job. On the other hand, it was quite obvious that Wang was not very happy in this situation. Added to this was the fact that, being advanced in years and in ill health, it was difficult for him to make the long trip back and forth every day from home.
When the Chinese Spring Festival came at the beginning of February, I told him that if it was all right with the Cadre he should take a day or two off. It was settled, and on the holiday I went down to the kitchen and cooked my own meals. Cadre Lu came to me the next day and in a slightly incredulous tone said, “I didn’t know you knew how to cook.”
He then asked if I would like to let Wang go and prepare my own meals. “We can buy your vegetables for you.” he continued. “Old Wang doesn’t seem to be in very good health, and by letting him go you can save money, too.”
I was in complete agreement, with the result that a few days later Wang packed up the few odds and ends which belonged to him and left. He had struck up quite a friendship with the guards and in the next month he came back a few times to chat with them.
From that time on I would write out a slip in Chinese each morning listing the things I wanted to buy that day, and one of the guards would go out for me. One morning I listed a tube of toothpaste. It had been snowing and the streets must have been a bit uneven, for, when the guard returned, he found that the toothpaste had dropped out of the knapsack as he jounced over the road on his bicycle. I told him not to worry about it and gave him another 5,000 JMP (23¢) to buy me a second tube the next morning.
“But I can’t take that money.” he said, looking at me aghast. “That was my responsibility. If I lost it, I’ve got to replace it. Put your money back.”
I tried to press the bill on him because, though it seemed a small sum, I knew it would take a major portion of his monthly allowance. But he was firm in refusing to accept the money. Later that day, while I was making dinner in the kitchen, one of the other guards came in.
“Did you think that you ought to give him that 5,000 JMP?” he asked straightforwardly.
“Sure,” I replied. “After all, it wasn’t his fault that he lost it. The ground was slippery and bumpy and he couldn’t see the knapsack on his back.”
“Well, we all feel that he shouldn’t take your money. It was definitely his responsibility and if he lost it he should replace it. The People’s Army is responsible to the people and when we are given a job to carry out it is our duty to see it through. If he had accepted your money we would have criticized him severely.”
Though I felt uncomfortable at being the cause of the guard’s loss, I could not help admiring the honesty with which they dealt with the problem, and I felt a new respect for them because of the incident. All along, however, I had been impressed by the conduct of the guards in the house. They were rotated about every two months and sometimes there were two, sometimes three, stationed in the house together, so that in the course of fourteen months I had an opportunity to observe about twenty young soldiers. One might raise the point of the possibility of my being abused since I was one woman alone in the house with them, but at no time during my entire detention at home did any one of the guards ever bother me in any way. They were friendly as far as chatting with me, asking me to help them use a dictionary, teaching me to cook Chinese food, and asking me to teach them the English alphabet, but that was as far as it went. They were there to guard the house and me, and they took their job seriously as a patriotic duty.
A few of them had come from the city, but most were young country boys who still loved to talk about their villages. One rosy-cheeked, sparkling-eyed young fellow, Yang Ming, seemed to feel that talking was not enough. He wanted some tangible tie with the farm, and so one day he came back from a shopping tour with a live hen.
“Lock what I bought for 20,000 JMP [90¢].” he said proudly. “This hen will lay eggs.”
“You idiot, what did you buy a hen for? Now you’ll have to spend most of your time cleaning up after it. Besides, where are you going to keep it?” said his tall buddy, Liu Shr-lung. disgustedly.
“Yeah, it’ll freeze outside in this weather. Who ever heard of buying a chicken in the middle of February?” added the third guard. Jin Hua. a mild-mannered, softspoken fellow who seemed slightly older than the other two.
“I don’t care,” said young Yang Ming, doggedly. “I just wanted a chicken, that’s all. I’ll fix up a box for it right outside the kitchen window. And you don’t have to worry about the droppings. I’ll clean up after it.”
In the days which followed he did keep the yard quite clean, but the chicken soon became sick. Yang Ming would then take it tenderly out of the box and set it in the courtyard, but it would stand dejected, head down and refuse to move.
“If it doesn’t move around, it’ll never get well,” said Liu Shr-lung wisely. “It needs exercise.”
And so all three of the guards would prod it from behind, all the time making “shoo, shoo” sounds of encouragement and inspiration. Nothing seemed to do any good, however, and eventually it died. Poor Yang Ming was teased unmercifully for some time about spending all his savings on a sick chicken.
When the great Three Anti’s movement to eliminate corruption, waste, and bureaucracy got under way in early 1952 I had a firsthand view of the movement in action. After liberation, former Nationalist officials, clerks, and army personnel had been taken into the new government en masse and, since many of them brought their old habits with them, bribery and corruption were threatening to become a serious problem in China again. To counteract this everyone in the government and army was ordered to make an accounting of himself, including the guards in the house. If they had not stolen, bribed, or extorted anything while they were in service they had nothing to worry about, but anyone who had been dishonest was expected to make a clean breast of it and, if possible, right the wrong. This applied not only to cases which involved millions of dollars but even to the smallest example of cheating.
To many people in the United States padding an expense account or taking office supplies for one’s own use is not considered a serious crime, but in the new China the People’s Government impressed upon its workers that such acts were actually cheating the people, since everything belonged to the country as a whole. The movement was designed to clean up any of the corrupt practices which had held over from the Nationalists and to educate the people in a new way of thinking, in which dishonesty had no part.
The guards took turns attending the meetings held in their unit, and there was a great deal of coming and going. Yang Ming and Jin Hua were plainly in the clear and chattered excitedly about the statements others were making. Liu was curiously silent during all this and finally withdrew almost completely from the group. During the day, instead of sitting around with the others as he usually did, he went into the room which had once been Harriet’s, saying he did not feel very well and wanted to take a nap. Apparently he had a problem and was worried about the outcome.
It turned out that he had obtained a sum of 50,000 JMP ($2.30) under false pretenses, whether extorted or stolen I was never sure. When the movement started he realized it would be best to own up to the affair, but then he began to worry that his fellow-soldiers would ostracize him or that he would be punished for what he had done. The others could see he had a problem, but left him to work it out himself. Finally, he went off one morning and was gone for several hours. When he came back, he retired again to the little room. I heard Yang Ming telling Jin Hua the outcome. He had confessed and, because he had done so voluntarily, he would not be punished, but his unit had urged him to think about how he could pay the money back.
Yang Ming said they all felt that since the emphasis of the People’s Government was on exposing evidences of corruption in order to prevent their recurrence, owning up to the affair was the important thing. This showed that Liu was at least trying to be honest. Paying back the sum could be worked out later.
When later in the afternoon Liu Shr-lung had still not appeared, Yang Ming called across the courtyard, “Hey, Liu Shr-lung, how about going to the movie tonight? We’re all going together.”
With much coaxing, Liu was persuaded to go, but for the next few days he was a very deflated, despondent person. The others made a determined effort to make him feel part of the group again, and even Cadre Lu joined in. As they were discussing getting dinner one evening, Lu said, jokingly, “Jin Hua seems to think he’s the only one who can knead bread. How about it, Liu Shr-lung, I’ll bet you can make the dough as well as he can. Why don’t you give it a whirl?”
Liu Shr-lung laughed embarrassedly. “I don’t have as much experience as Jin Hua, but if you don’t mind taking a chance I’ll try.”
Friendly relations returned once more to the little group and on a much more solid basis than ever before.
In the spring of 1952, the army launched a big campaign to wipe out illiteracy and began using a shortcut system of learning which had been worked out by one of the soldiers. The program was designed to teach adults to read and write several thousand characters in a few weeks. When I first read about it in the newspaper I did not believe it. After all, Rick and I, as well as most of the foreign students we knew, had spent years learning to read Chinese; and when we studied in the Navy Japanese Language School during the war memorizing 250 characters a week was considered a fast pace. Yet here were young people with no academic training whatsoever professing to learn 2,000 characters in little more than a month. I was sure it was all propaganda. In May, however, I had a chance to see the process in action, for the three guards stationed in the house at that time all started the literacy course.
Classes took up most of the morning, and in the afternoon they practiced together. This consisted of repeating the phonemes over and over while relating them to the proper symbols. “Bo, po, mo, fo; de, te, ne, le,” on and on at the tops of their voices. They kept at it all afternoon and evening. At the end of a week, they had mastered all the phonetic symbols and were beginning to relate them to characters. They were transferred soon after, so I was for a while unable to keep up with their progress; but during the summer two of them were transferred back. My curiosity about their ability to read was soon satisfied as I watched them in the courtyard reading the newspaper aloud. They pronounced each character in an expressionless, halting manner, but there was no doubt about it, they could read. Once in a while they would come to me and ask for the pronunciation of a word, but their command of the printed page was phenomenal, considering that two months earlier they could barely read their own names.
When I expressed my astonishment to Cadre Lu, he said, “Well, you know, we feel that if a person has the will and enthusiasm, nothing is impossible. These young men see their country growing and developing into an industrialized nation and they want to be part of it all. They realize they’re going to be left out of many things if they can’t read and write, and so they crave it. That’s one side of it. The other is that they all help each other. None of them feels alone in this. They are carried along by each other’s enthusiasm. If one of them gets discouraged, there is always someone to help him out and start going again.”
The young cadre himself was a living testimony to his words. His thirst for knowledge was insatiable. He would sit at Rick’s desk night after night devouring all the books he could find in the house about the history and culture of China. He maintained this devotion to study and responsibility to his job all through the time he was in charge at 48 Hsin Kai Lu. Saturday night and an occasional Sunday were the only times he allowed himself recreation, but at that time he would put on a freshly pressed uniform and take off in a rush. One Saturday he spent some time pressing his jacket. Finally, when he was ready to go, he stood in front of the guards, put on his hat, and asked with a jocular air, “How do I look, fellows?”
He turned around for them to get a full view, and upon being assured that nobody could rival him and that he would surely make a hit with all the girls at the dance he laughed delightedly and left.
He was quite concerned about my outlook on life and emotional state all through that year. When I started to read after the interrogation period had ended, he often talked with me about my point of view on Chinese history, foreign policy, etc. He also recommended books on history and Marxist philosophy for me to read. When he discovered that I could write Chinese he suggested that I write a page every night on the thoughts I had had during the day concerning what I had been reading, hearing on the radio, or any problems that bothered me about my daily living.
Though I could not help respecting the cadre for his honesty and obviously sincere desire to help me solve my problems, I did not feel that I was in need of any help. My thoughts were my own and I was not prepared to share them with anyone. I agreed to write the diary, but I looked on it merely as a way of passing time and of practicing my written Chinese. For the most part the content was determined by what I thought he would like me to say. The chief interrogator had said that I knew very little about the new China, so in my diary I would make comments on articles I read in the newspapers, as if I were terrifically impressed by discovering the wonderful aspects of the new society. I felt somehow that if I played along in this way and waited patiently the People’s Government would eventually conclude our case and let me go.
However, the true state of my thoughts sometimes showed in what I wrote. In April I dreamed three nights in a row that Rick had died, each night in a different way. I wrote about this in my diary and handed it in to Cadre Lu. Next morning, he dashed into the room and said excitedly, “You mustn’t think such things. Li Ko has committed a crime, it’s true, but it’s not anything he’ll be executed for. You shouldn’t worry about it like that. Everything will come out all right.”
I smiled through my tears at the concern on Cadre Lu’s face, and said I would not worry any more.
A few days later, he came in again. “How would you like to write a letter to Li Ko? Tell him about yourself and what you’re doing.”
I hardly waited for him to leave the room before I had grabbed up paper and pencil and begun to write. The letter was a simple one, but it relieved the tension, and I never had a recurrence of the troublesome dreams.
My life at home had taken on a definite pattern over the months. I got up about 6:15, made my breakfast, cleaned the room, and then sat down to study. Some mornings I washed or ironed, but for the most part I spent at least three hours reading. At noon I had a simple lunch and afterward usually bathed. From early afternoon until five I studied again. At five I listened to Radio Peking, and when that was over went down to the kitchen to prepare dinner. After the dishes were done I took a cup of tea back to the living room and sipped it while I thought out what I would write in my diary. It usually took about an hour and a half to finish the page, and I would then read for a short time until I turned in, about 9:30. It was curious that this schedule, worked out by myself, was almost a duplicate of the prison hours.
As the months wore on I began to feel that a change would have to come eventually. It would be impractical to keep me very long in the house, where I seemed merely to be marking time. In the early months I had still clung to the idea that I might be deported, but in the spring of 1952, as I continued to be kept under strict surveillance, I began to realize the seriousness with which the government viewed our crime, and felt that sooner or later I would be sent to a regular prison.
I had already gone to bed the night of September 20 when I woke to the voice of the guard calling from the door, “Li Yu-an, get up. Someone wants to talk with you.”
When I had finished dressing, my two interrogators, whom I had not seen for months, entered. The one who had taken the lead throughout my investigation said very quietly, “Li Yu-an, we have decided to arrest you, since it has been definitely determined that you were guilty- of espionage along with Li Ko.”
I murmured, “That’s quite all right.”
My first reaction was one almost of relief. The long period of waiting was over and a definite decision had been made about me. If I sat in jail for a while, my sentence would be served and I could certainly go home. At that point I felt no fear, probably because I knew the interrogation had been completed, and, having observed the cadres and guards for over a year, I no longer had any qualms about mistreatment or torture. I made a bundle of bedding, clothes, toothbrush, comb, and brush, etc., and when I asked if I might take along the 170,000 JMP ($8) which still remained from the last time I had borrowed from the People’s Government, they agreed.
As we drove to the north central part of the city I remembered the address which had appeared on Rick’s letters, and thought, “I’m going to the same place.” Thus, it was almost with a feeling that some progress had at last been made that I went to prison fourteen months after Rick had gone.