WHEN THE WORLD WAS IN TURMOIL, AN INDIVIDUAL’S FATE WAS SEALED
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF KONG CHU
As told by Kong Chu (written by Scott Freeman)
After the Ching Dynasty ended in 1911, many parts of China were occupied by the warlords, who were supported by foreign powers. Countries like Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Russia each had spheres of influence. The warlords drafted people to their armies and fought against each other with arms given by the foreign powers.
In 1926, Chiang Kai-shek led the Northern Expedition. He led new graduates from the Wan-Pu Military Academy and tried to eliminate the warlords and unify China. He had limited success.
In 1931, Japan seized Manchuria, the northeast province of China. And in 1937, Japan invaded coastal China, including Shanghai. One of the unexpected good results by the Japanese invasion was the elimination of all the warlords.
My grandfather on my father’s side was a landlord. He’d passed the government civil service examination, both in literature and martial arts. At that time, there was fighting between the warlords; and there was no suitable work for him. His family lived on rent collected from farmers. He liked to spend his time in tea houses and public bathhouses.
My grandmother on my father’s side had little education, but had a progressive attitude and she loved to watch Hollywood movies.
My mother’s father was the minister of a Christian church in Hangchow, one of the most scenic spots in China because West Lake is there. Her mother raised seven children, three sons and four daughters. They were all well educated. The oldest son went to the Philippines for higher education, and came back to work as the exclusive agent for a U.S. oil company and tobacco company.
The second son also went to the Philippines to study. During the second Sino-Japanese War, he controlled the oil supply to the Nationalist government. The youngest son is a physician, still living in 2009. He is 92 years old.
All four daughters received good educations. My mother is the second daughter. She graduated from a teacher’s college at 18 years old. Her first job was the dean of a girl’s school in the northeast of China, Manchuria. The local warlord wanted to take her as his wife. Her students helped her board a train in the middle of the night to escape.
She met my father in Hangchow. Both of them had participated in a student movement called “New Life Movement.”
My father graduated from the Shanghai University, where he studied social science and finished at the top of his class. He loved sports and was the captain of the school’s soccer team. He also played tennis and one year he entered the Chinese National Tennis Tournament, and won the runner-up trophy. He lost to a famous Chinese tennis star from Hong Kong in the finals, but it was a very close match.
My father and mother married in 1925 at the same age, 26. I was born in April of 1926.
My mother ate too much nourished food when she was pregnant with me. I grew too big to get out, and at that time there was no C-section. The physician used a clamp to pull me out. I weighed 12-and-a-half pounds. When I was one-year-old, my mother entered me into a baby contest. I was disqualified because I was too fat.
When I was six, we moved to my father’s hometown. Because of me, my mother took a job as the principal of the elementary school where I was enrolled. My mother put me in the third grade and went out to our tenant farmer’s place to select four healthy and bright boys. She brought them home to keep me company and to help me in my homework.
I graduated from the elementary school at the age of 10. At the urging of my mother, my father took the job of principal of the only middle school in town where I was enrolled. She also hired a male servant to follow me from home to school and back.
When the Japanese started to attack Shanghai, their superior weapons killed hundreds of Chinese soldiers. And the airplanes, wave after wave of planes bombarded the area, killing people and animals and fish.
My family was having supper one night in 1937, and suddenly we heard the noise of many airplanes. When we went to our backyard toward our air raid shelter, we saw many Japanese bombers. One bomb was dropped on the river in the back of our house. I felt water splash all over us, and I was hit by the shell of a dead tortoise.
My family — my father, mother and younger brother — left on a fishboat that carried us to the British settlement in Shanghai along the Sowchow River. We saw many dead bodies in uniforms, floating on the river and alongside the riverbanks. They were the Chinese national soldiers slaughtered by the Japanese Army. Later on, the Japanese army entered the city of Nanking, and the tragedy is called the Rape of Nanking.
(The Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Rape of Nanking, was a genocidal war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing (Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on December 13, 1937. The duration of the massacre is not clearly defined, although the violence lasted at least until early February 1938. Estimates of the death count vary, with most reliable sources holding that 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were massacred in this period. Japanese officials lied about civilian death figures at the time, and some Japanese ultranationalists are still active in attempting to deny that the killings ever occurred.
(During the occupation of Nanking, the Japanese army committed numerous atrocities, such as rape, looting, arson and the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. The executions began under the pretext of eliminating Chinese soldiers disguised as civilians, and a large number of innocent men were intentionally misidentified as enemy combatants and executed as the massacre gathered momentum. A large number of women and children were also killed, as rape and murder became more widespread.)
I went through middle school and high school in the British settlement in Shanghai. I was not interested in regular school work. I spent most of my time in sports and read story books. In 1942, I graduated from St. John’s Senior Middle School. Before my graduation, my father died of TB at the age of 43.
That year, the Japanese air force attacked Pearl Harbor, and joined Germany and Italy in the axis. The Japanese also occupied the foreign settlement in Shanghai. They treated the local residents very rudely. I was with some of my classmates, and we attempted to go to the interior free China. I went westward to reach free China. It was a difficult journey, walking and riding on horseback. We went by steamboat to Wuhan, and tried to cross the battle line. I was detained by shipman with the Japanese Navy, who mistook me for a courier between the guerillas in the occupied territory and free China.
The night I was detained, a boatload of girls made a lot of noise as they sailed by the Japanese soldiers. Whether intentional or not, they diverted the shipmen’s attention and four of us who were being held managed to slide down the side of the ship into the water and swam away.
While trying to get away, I hide in the weeds along the bank of a lake. I accidently dropped in a big mud pond. When the mud reached my chest, I stopped struggling and waited for my fellow travelers to come looking for me. Luckily, one came back and used a bamboo pole to pull me out.
We climbed and crossed many mountains to reach Batung, a city not occupied by the Japanese. There was only one ship sailing to Chung King, the capital of China during the war. There were many refugees who wanted to get on that boat, and we had no way to board. That evening in a hotel, a guy with a lieutenant colonel’s uniform who had crossed the battle line with us, came to visit us. He was the courier that the Japanese soliders were looking for, not me!
He managed to get us on the boat, and we sailed the next day. Because the current was so strong, two dozen people with ropes along the shore had to pull the boat forward. It took three days to reach Chung King. I worked there from the winter of 1942 until the summer of 1943 as a tax investigator.
In the fall of 1943, I decided to enter the Military Academy of China. Japanese soldiers had pushed forward into China, slaughtering thousands of Chinese. All the Chinese were very angry and joined the Army to fight against the Japanese. I chose the Armor Division, located in the Hunan province. I spent two years in the tank division of the military academy, undergoing rigorous training. Suddenly, the Japanese army increased their attack against the province. A massive amount of tanks and airplanes invaded to fight the National Army of China.
There was almost no defense. When they were close to the academy, our commandant decided to disband the school. Each cadet had a rifle and 50 rounds of bullets, and we went to the high mountains. They were very high and when we reached the top, the people at the foot of the mountain looked like ants.
The minority tribe called Miao lived on the mountains used smoke signals to tell each village that we were coming. When we reached each village, they were empty. The residents were gone and there was no food. Some of us got sick and no one could stay behind to look after them.
We had to travel through about 400 miles of mountains and rugged territory. We had to hunt for food by ourselves on the other side of the mountains, where there were rivers with very rapid currents in some stretches. We were lucky to find boats. The pilot would perch on a narrow bridge on the boat, and he would use two oars to navigate the boat down the river — one oar in the front and the other on the back. He would be holding the oars through the rapid current, and avoid crashing into the rocks. Along the shores on both sides were hundreds of monkeys, making loud noises. It was quite a scene.
We reached Chung King in five weeks, covered almost 400 miles. Some of my classmates did not make it because they got sick on the way. We wore straw sandals and no raincoats, and walked over 400 miles on rugged terrain.
The academy was regrouped in a suburb of Chung King, and we resumed classes. I had another two years of military training. When a U.S. plane dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese mainland, the emperor of Japan surrendered.
On the night of our graduation at the academy, one third of our classmates disappeared. We found out they were sent by the Communist Party to receive free military training at the expense of the national government. Later on, one of them visited me in Peking. He told me he was the mayor of a big city already and tried to persuade me to leave the army to join him. I was sent to the 3rd tank regiment as a staff member for the battalion commander. We were stationed in the suburb of Peking.
Soon after the Japanese surrender, the civil war in China started. Gen. George Marshall tried to mediate the conflict. He established an office in Peking called The Three Circles, indicating the harmony between the Communists and the Nationalists, with the U.S. in the middle as the mediator.
The Communists represented the general public, mostly tenant farmers, and they were against the landlords. Gen. Marshall viewed the Nationalist government as very corrupt, and the U.S. held back any assistance to the Nationalist government. But the Russians directly helped the Communists with arms and military advisors.
The Communists were very smart. When the Nationalist army circled them, they said they wanted to negotiate to stop the Nationalist from attacking them. When the Communists were ready to attack, they went ahead and attacked. Marshall was blinded by them, and the Communists got stronger and stronger.
From 1946 to 1947, I was a staff member in the 4th battalion of the 3rd Armor Division in the suburb of Peking (now called Beijing). My duty was to plan the logistics of repairs and supplies for the vehicles.
The U.S. Marines had the responsibility to guard Peking, where all the embassies were located. One night, I went to Peking to see a movie. When the movie was over, it was already dusk. There were big commotions on the street. A black U.S. Army soldier was accused of raping a female college student, and the students had gathered to protest. They wanted the U.S. soliders to go home.
I was not interested in fighting an internal war against my own people, even though they were communists. So I asked to return to the university. My request was approved. When my battalion commander was sent to the USA to be in charge of purchasing essential weapons for the armor division, he managed to have me discharged and enabled me to go back to college.
In 1947, I left the army and went to Shanghai to resume my college education. I was a student at a very distinguished engineering university — the National Chao Tong University. It was recognized as the MIT of China. Only 400 persons out of 10,000 applicants passed the entrance examination. I managed to get in the year I took the exam. For two years, I studied marine engineering.
By then, the Communist army had defeated the Kuomington Army. The Communist army crossed the Yangtze River and reached the outskirts of Shanghai. I was reluctant to leave. But my army buddies came from the north, convinced me that I would not survive under the Communist regime. For one, my family was landlord class. Second, I was a one-time officer in the Nationalist army, which was the enemy of the Communists. And I would be on the black list. My military classmates managed to get me on a landing craft with them, and we escaped to Taiwan.
When I went to Taiwan with my army buddies, my mother gave me some valuables, mostly small gold bullions. But I was careless and the valuables were stolen. I was lucky enough to pass the entrance exam to go to the prestigious National Taiwan University. The Taiwan government gave financial assistance to all college students who had escaped from the mainland Communist regime, free tuition and room and board. This time, I choose economics as my major. My intention was to understand the social problems that had caused the collapse of the Nationalist government.
Taiwan was saved by the Korean War. The U.S. 7th Fleet separated the island from mainland China. But the economy in Taiwan at that time was in a miserable condition. With the sudden increase of population that had moved from Mainland China, the unemployment rate was very high. The only job available to me was to teach high school students math and science, and prepare them to compete to be among the very limited number that could get into the universities.
I graduated from the National Taiwan University in June of 1952. The woman who became my wife was the cousin of one of my students. We were mutually attracted at first sight. We met at her cousin’s house. We dated one year. We both had no money but, luckily, I got the job as the controller of the Grand Hotel in Taiwan after my graduation.
More and more Americans were coming to Taiwan as military advisors and economic aid supervisors. Ambassador Rankin requested the government provide a first-class hotel and recreation club for Americans and other foreign visitors. I got a job as the assistant manager/controller of the Grand, in charge of finance and accounting. The manager was send by the president’s office, and reported directly to Madame Chiang Kai-shek
The salary was relatively high, equivalent to $100 in U.S. money per month, so we decided to get married in August 1952. Our first son, Adam, was born in 1953.
I worked at the Grand Hotel as the assistant manager until 1957, the year our second son, Roy, was born. By that time, the U.S. began to give both military and economic aid to the Republic of China in Taiwan. I was involved in the U.S. aid mission, working with the International Cooperation Administration for a year. I participated in distributing the economic aid, commodities (machines, etc.), U.S. technicians (hired to give technical advice) and participants (we would send Taiwanese to the U.S. for a short-time internship).
In 1958, I was called back to the Grand Hotel to be the manager, and my salary was doubled.
The visitors included the King of Jordan, Shah of Iran, Vice-President Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller and other dignitaries.
My salary as the manager — equal to 200 U.S. dollars a month —was high enough for me to buy a condo. I bought CDs of different maturity dates at the rate of 100 percent per year. In seven years, I saved enough money to provide my family for three years, and I came to the USA in 1959 on a student visa. I had learned English in high school at St. John’s Senior Middle School in Shanghai, and knew there was the opportunity for a better life and more freedom in the USA. At that time, only students could apply to visit the USA.
I was admitted to UCLA, which had a beautiful campus. I learned that America is not as it was depicted in Hollywood movies; she also has her dark side, poverty and crime. I’d left my wife and two sons in Taiwan. The only way we could keep in touch was one airmail letter a month.
I received my Master’s degree in economics from UCLA in nine months. It was so easy, it made me want to study further to obtain a Ph.D. degree and become a professor.
Even though I was already 34 years old, opportunities in the USA seemed so abundant compared to Taiwan. I applied for a few Ph.D. programs. I was introduced to Tulane University by the director of industrial development at the U.S. aid mission in Taiwan; he was a former professor at Tulane.
Tulane not only offered me an assistantship and a scholarship, they also promised to apply for permanent residence for me right away. They carried out their promise. Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs sent a bill to Congress on my behalf; he was later killed in a plane crash in Alaska.
My family joined me in 1962; the almost three years of separation was pure torture. President Johnson managed to have the U.S. Congress pass a bill that allowed the family of a foreign student to come to the U.S. to be united with husbands. So my wife and our two sons came to the USA. My wife also gave birth to a girl the following year, so my family became complete. We named her Michelle because she was born in New Orleans and the name has a French flavor.
We received our green cards in 1964, and I turned in my dissertation and received my Ph.D. in economics. I taught two years at California Western University in San Diego, but I liked the South. Job offers were plentiful at the time, but the most attractive one was from Georgia Tech: associate professor with tenure in two years if I became a U.S. citizen. At that time, foreigners could not obtain tenure at Georgia Tech. Later, when I was 40, they promoted me to full professor.
My mother died in Shanghai during the cultural revolution at the age of 74. At the time, I was giving lectures in Nigeria.
I had a tough life in China, war and poverty. But in the USA, I had it easy. Life is peaceful and interesting, and I get to travel all over the world. All my children had a good education. And being a professor in the university, I was spared from racial discrimination. When I was at Tulane, blacks and whites were segregated and I was treated like a white.
I became a full U.S. citizen in 1969. The year before I was promoted to full professor and Ga. Tech granted me tenure. With a U.S. passport, it was easier for me to travel to foreign countries. I taught at Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos, Equador and lectured in dozens of countries. I have experienced many adventures, some of them dangerous and some of them hilarious. God has been really good to me. I am blessed.
There’s much I’ve witnessed: the wars between the warlords, the Japanese invasion, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. I left the Chinese mainland at the age of 23 to go to Taiwan. There, I witnessed the economic boom initiated by the U.S. aid and how that money improved the infrastructure.
That was followed by the establishment of a tax-exempt import and export zone to attract foreign investment, which facilitated technology transfer from the U.S. and Japan, and the U.S. opening its markets to Taiwan exports. And later on, there was the establishment of Science and Technology Park to invent Taiwan’s own superior products.
I came to the U.S.A. in 1959 at the age of 33. I’ve witnessed the fast growth of telecommunication — color television, the Internet, e-mail, cell phones and on and on.
I was able to go back to Mainland China in 1980 when they began to open up to the outside world. I’ve since gone back many times, giving lectures on economic development, international trade and finance, and business marketing strategy. And just as with Taiwan, the Foreign Direct Investment, foreign technology transfer and the availability of the huge U.S. market has caused rapid economic growth in the Peoples’ Republic of China.
I never had big ambitions, I just wanted to be left alone to lead my own life. I have that, and am satisfied the future is up to my children and grandchildren. I wish that they will walk straight on the road I have paved for them.
Someone asked me recently whether I was happy. And I said, you’re asking the wrong question. I’m 82 years old. Am I happy about that? No. The right question to ask is, am I content? And I am.
— Kong Chu (with Scott Freeman), March 2009
