The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert DeJong

Even though all ends well, this novel, based on the author’s own experiences in China during World War II, is darker and more scary than any of the other books by DeJong that I have read.

“The House of Sixty Fathers is based on Meindert DeJong’s actual experience. During World War II Mr. DeJong was official historian for the Chinese-American Composite Wing which was part of Chennault’s famous Fourteenth Air Force. A young Chinese war orphan, the Tien Pao of this story, was adopted by DeJong’s outfit. The boy chose DeJong as his special “father,” and the two were devoted to one another. Mr. DeJong wanted to bring the boy back to the United States with him, but because of legal complications, he was unable to do so. However, the men in the outfit left the youngster well provided for when they returned to America. The Communists then took over that section of China, and DeJong has never heard what happened to the boy.”

I read that note after I finished reading the novel about Tien Pao, a young Chinese boy who becomes separated from his family during the Japaneses invasion of China with only his pet pig to keep him company. Tien Pao’s story is harrowing. He becomes lost behind the Japanese lines, almost starves to death, is shot at, nearly captured, and pursued for rescuing an American flyer. Tien Pao is a very small boy lost in a sea of soldiers and refugees and casualties of war. Nevertheless, there are friends and helpers along the way: the Chinese guerrilla leader who carries Tien Pao across enemy lines, the man who pulls Tien Pao onto a train at the last minute and hides him in a tall basket, and the American airmen (Flying Tigers) who become his “sixty fathers” when Tien Pao cannot find his own parents.

It’s a war story and people are killed, but the descriptions of the war itself are not too graphic. It’s the effects of the war on the civilian population that are the focus of the story, and that part is difficult to imagine and to read about. The children, who are starving, eat grass and mud to fill their stomachs. People target Tien Pao for the sake of his pig companion, Glory-of-the-Republic, and Tien Pao struggles to keep Glory-of-the-Republic from being eaten. Refugees flee the city of Hengyang when it is taken by the Japanese, and Tien Pao is caught up in the flight of the people from the dreaded Japanese army.

If a child is looking for a war story about heroes and daring deeds, The House of Sixty Fathers might be an appropriate recommendation, even though the heroes in this story are quiet, understated heroes, and the daring deeds are ones of persistence, patience, and continued, careful resistance. Tien Pao’s story is one small slice of life in the midst of a complicated war, but it does satisfy the desire for a story of what might happen to a child caught in a war that is beyond his comprehension or control.

What can a lost boy do, other than keep trying to find his home and his parents? I do really wonder, though, what happened to the Chinese boy that Meindert DeJong and his fellow soldiers befriended in China during the war.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Jan18

Wild Swans is the story of three generations of a Chinese family during the rise of Communism, and Mao Tse Tung, and the Cultural Revolution. Jung Chang’s grandmother was a concubine to a Chinese general. She had her feet bound as a child in the traditional Chinese way. But her daughter, Chang’s mother came of age during the conflict between the Nationalist Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek the Communist idealists who followed guerrilla leader Mao Tse-tung. The Changs, mother and father, became dedicated Communists who believed in Chairman Mao and the ideals of the Communist Party without question. True believers, Jung Chang’s parents endured great suffering and hardship for the sake of changing Chinese culture and society into a Marxist Communist paradise. Because she was taught the virtues of communism under Mao and the evils of a capitalist society, Jung Chang came to share their philosophy and to idolize Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book. But eventually, it all came crashing down when Chang’s own family became the persecuted instead of the persecutors during the Cultural Revolution.

“The whole nation slid into doublespeak. Words became divorced from reality, responsibility, and people’s real thoughts. Lies were told with ease because words had lost their meanings—and had ceased to be taken seriously by others.”
The state of China in 1958, from Wild Swans by Jung Chang

It was horrible, yet instructive, to read about an entire society gone mad in twentieth century China and about how slowly and subtly a utopian ideal can become a nightmare, especially with a power-hungry madman in charge. It happened in Russia with Stalin, in Cuba with Castro, in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez and Maduro, and in China with Mao. From 1958 to 1962, Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people in a famine that starved people throughout China. The Cultural Revolution that followed in the late 1960’s killed somewhere between 500,000 and two million people. The number of people who didn’t die but suffered great injury and trauma under Mao’s Communist rule is literally incalculable. Jung Chang’s Wild Swans brings the story of this historic horror down to an understandable but terrible story of one family. The book shows how the first generation suffered in the political corruption and prejudice against women that characterized Chinese culture before Communism, how the second generation came to idolize Mao as the embodiment of their dreams of a socialist paradise, and how Jung Chang herself and her siblings, the third generation, paid the price for their own and their parents’ mistaken ideals.

I think everyone should read this book or another book that shows the true story of what can happen in an authoritarian society run by a charismatic but evil ruler. “Mao hoped his movement would make China the pinnacle of the socialist universe and turn him into ‘the man who leads planet Earth into communism.'” Instead, he became the bloodiest dictator the world has yet known. Some other accounts of twentieth century China, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the aftermath of the late twentieth century.

Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang. Middle school/high school account of the experiences of one girl, twelve years old when the Cultural Revolution began.
China’s Long March by Jean Fritz. Describes the events of the 6,000 mile march undertaken by Mao Zedong and his Communist followers as they retreated before the forces of Chiang Kai-shek.
Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China by Lian Xi. Not the best written book, and definitely for adults. The title pretty much sums up this harrowing and true story of a Catholic girl martyr.
Sparrow Girl by Sara Pennypacker. This picture book manages to tell about the backward disaster that Mao’s Great Leap Forward precipitated without being unnecessarily traumatic for young readers. Based on real events in China, when Chairman Mao ordered the people to kill all of the sparrows because they were annoying and stealing too many seeds.
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party by Ling Chang Compestine. Nine year old Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the Cultural Revolution. Young adult to adults.
Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing by Guo Yue. In Communist China in 1966, eight-year-old Leap Forward learns about freedom while flying kites with his best friend, by trying to get a caged wild bird to sing, and through the music he is learning to play on a bamboo flute. A gentle introduction to this difficult period of history for younger children.

I’ve not read any of the mostly adult books on these lists, but I’m interested in pursuing at least some of them.

The best books on the Cultural Revolution.

Five Must-Read books about the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Best books about the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Before the Sword by Grace Lin

Oct13

Written as a sort of prequel to Disney’s Mulan (movie), Before the Sword takes Hua Mulan on a journey with the healer Jade Rabbit to save Mulan’s sister, Xiu, from dying from the bite of a poisonous spider. It turns out that the spider is more than a simple spider, and even Mulan herself might be something more than a clumsy, persistent, horse-loving, and unconventional village girl.

I’ve never watched the movie Mulan (can you believe it?), so I can’t say how well the book meshes with the characters and plot of the movie. However, Ms. Lin, a best-selling author of middle grade novels, easy readers, and picture books, with Disney’s permission and imprimatur. So, someone must have thought it paired well with the franchise.

The book read a lot like Ms. Lin’s previous non-Disney character middle grade novels—Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, When the Sea Turned to Silver, and Starry River of the Sky—which all have short legends and stories embedded in between chapters that tell an over-arching story. Before the Sword not only has short legends and folktales that illuminate and explain the main novel’s story, but it also switches point of view from time to time to tell the story from the perspective of the enslaved servant, the Red Fox, of the villain of the piece, who is Daji, the White Fox.

Fans of Ms. Lin’s previous novels of Chinese folklore and culture will enjoy this one, too. I actually liked it better than the others she has written because it seemed more approachable from my own cultural background. Maybe it’s more Westernized? Or maybe I’m just getting better at understanding how a story from a Chinese/Asian culture works? I’m not sure. At any rate, with the live-action movie version of Mulan already streaming on Disney+, this book should get some traction and should please a number of young readers.

Christmas in Mexico, 1960

Nov28

The Year of the Christmas Dragon by Ruth Sawyer.

At first glance, this Christmas story seems to be set in the mountains of China, home of many dragons, including the King Dragons. In fact, the story does begin with a boy named Chin Li in China:

“He could see dragons everywhere: immense, ancient dragons; lazy, fat dragons; small scrawny dragons. Except for size they all looked alike. They had shining green scales covering their bodies and tails. They had black spots here and there, and their noses and claws were black. The splendid part of them was their wings; these were a bright red, and when they spread their wings Chin Li could see they were lined with gold.”

However, Chin Li and a certain dragon with whom he becomes friendly are infected with wanderlust, and they travel together across the ocean to a new land, Mexico. And there the dragon falls asleep and sleeps for a very long time, only to awaken to another friendship with a Mexican boy named Pepe. And as Christmas approaches, Pepe tells the dragon about the wonderful true story of Christmas:

“For a number of days Pepe came to the barranca shouting with the joy of the Christmas. Many things had to be explained to the dragon. Angels, for instance. Pepe told about the shining light about their heads, about their wings, white as a dove’s, about the heavenly music they could make. Pepe’s eyes shone with some of the light as he told, and his voice caught some of the heavenly music. He had to tell about the star that shone the first Christmas Eve. No one had ever told him how large and bright it had been. ‘It must have been brighter than the moon,’ Pepe explained. ‘And truly it must have been larger than the largest rocket ever sent into the sky.'”

How Pepe’s dragon becomes the Christmas Dragon and how the year of the dragon’s wakening becomes The Year of the Christmas Dragon complete this tale that dragon lovers will find enchanting. The reading level and interest level of the story is about on par with other dragon tales such as My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett or The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame.

For Christmas giving, pair this book with a stuffed dragon toy or a dragon costume, and you will delight any dragon fan below the age of 10.

The Bomber’s Moon by Betty Vander Els

Mar22

This fictional treatment of missionary children escaping World War II China reads almost like a memoir. In a brief search on the internet, I couldn’t find any information about the author, Betty Vander Els, but I would almost bet that this story is a fictionalized version of her own experiences or those of a very close friend. In the book in 1942 “Ruth”, about eleven years old, and her younger brother, Simeon, are sent away to an emergency boarding school for missionary kids so that they won’t end up in the concentration camp of Weihsien, captured by the approaching Japanese. However, their emergency school site is no safer from Japanese bombing raids than their homes were, and so the children are evacuated over the Himalayas to Calcutta.

The contrast between the children’s petty day-to-day concerns and the enormous events that are happening around them is one focus of this book. Ruth considers herself to be a naughty girl. She gets spanked (or strapped as the book calls it) a lot. But her infractions seem petty and inconsequential, too, for the most part: wandering away from the group, forgetting responsibilities, being disrespectful to teachers. Ruth’s concerns are to survive school and her nemesis, Miss Elson, and to take care of Simeon as her parents have charged her to do. The book paints a vivid picture of what it must have been like to see the war and its effects from a child’s point of view.

Ruth is a bit of an annoying child. She calls Simeon “dope” and “dummy” and “cowardly custard” and other such epithets frequently. She does forget to do her work, and she and her friend Anne play tricks on the teachers and band together to outwit the other children and get their own way. However, at the same time Ruth is quite concerned about taking care of Simeon, and she tries to teach him to be tough and to stand up to hardship. Simeon and his friend, Paul, are both daydreamers and and imaginers who run away, get lost, and find themselves in trouble with alarming frequency. And ever in the background and on the periphery of the children’s lives, there are Japanese bombers, American flyers, Chinese children, and Indian amahs. The setting is both exotic and dangerous, and Ruth and Simeon sashay through all the danger and foreign cultures with style and childlike confidence. In short, they act like children.

There’s a sequel (that I haven’t read) with the same characters called Leaving Point: “Home from boarding school to spend Christmas with their missionary parents, fourteen-year-old Ruth and her brothers find that the Communist Revolution has brought about many changes and new restrictions that complicate Ruth’s growing friendship with a young Chinese girl who may not be what she seems.” (Goodreads)

Exploring the World in Books

Mar9

I am taking a blog break for Lent, but I thought I’d share some of my old posts from years gone by. I’ve been blogging at Semicolon since October, 2003, more than eleven years. This post is copied and edited from February 28, 2005:

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live. –Coleridge

I read Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya and thought it gave a beautiful, but very sad, picture of life in India for many people. It’s the story of a poor family, a fourth daughter who, because she has no dowry, cannot marry well but must settle for marriage to a landless tenant farmer who brings her home to a mud hut he built himself. Fortunately for the girl, Rukmani, her husband Nathan is “poor in everything but in love and care for me, his wife, whom he took at the age of twelve.”
Rukmani narrates the story in first person, telling of the birth of her daughter, the long wait during which the couple think they will have no more children, and then the birth of her five sons. The village where the family lives is on the edge of poverty and starvation; a bad year with too much rain or too little rain will push Rukmani’s family over the edge. Change and new economic oportunities come to the village; however, these new ideas and possibilities are full of danger too, for peasants who have nothing in reserve and are unable or unwilling to move with the times.
I wrote about a month ago about some of my favorite fantasy worlds. These fantasy worlds were first encountered on the pages of books. Then, there are historical and sociological worlds that I visit mostly in books, too. Finally, there is the actual world. I’ve never been to India or China or South America, but I have a picture of what life in those lands is (or was) like–again, from books. I think that Nectar in a Sieve, first published in 1954, will become a large part of my picture of India, along with missionary stories, the young man I met a few years ago at Baptist World Alliance Youth Conference, and other sources, such as the women I see at the grocery store here in Clear Lake dressed in saris.
Warning: The book has a bittersweet ending, but it’s realistic without being hopeless and depressing. Excellent.
These are some of my favorite books that have given me vivid pictures of the world. Most of them are fiction.
Around the world in books:
South Africa: Cry, the Beloved Country and Too Late the Phalarope both by Alan Paton
India: Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan, The Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones, Boys Without Names by Kashmira Sheth.
China: Imperial Woman by Pearl S.Buck, The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang, Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin, other books by Pearl Buck
Antarctica: Troubling a Star by Madeleine L’Engle,
The Netherlands: The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
England (Yorkshire): All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot and all the many, many books I’ve read that take place in England.
Russia: The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig (And, of course, Tolstoy and Dostoyevski, although they’re more historical)
Israel: Exodus by Leon Uris
Hawaii: Hawaii by James Michener

Can you suggest any books that capture the culture and living conditions of a country in either fiction or biography? I do prefer and learn more from stories.

Christmas in Northeast China, 1940

Dec5

David Michell was born in China, the son of Australian Christian missionaries working with the China Inland Mission. He was at Chefoo School, away from his parents, when the Japanese took the students and staff there captive. He spent part of the war in an internment camp, the same camp where Olympic runner Eric Liddell was held. This Christmas, described in a letter to the students’ parents, was just before the Japanese took over the area in 1941.

From A Boy’s War by David Michell:

“Just before Christmas the well-known story of Scrooge once again delighted youthful eyes and ears and prepared the way for the Spirit of Christmas 1940. On Christmas Eve little messengers went round the compound or to the houses of other friends carrying bulging bags, waste paper [baskets], or even laundry baskets full of gifts, while others with dolls’ prams filled them with gay packages and wheeled them off. Meanwhile a bevy of artists from the Girls’ House transformed our dining room into a Christmas bower, where red and green and silver glowed in the soft lights from the tree.

Just as supper was over a Chinese school visited us and filled the hall with their hearty singing while our children looked on in solemn amazement. . . . That night a package found its way on to the foot of each bed, not quite burning a hole through the covers in the few short hours till Christmas Day in the morning. That morning began at 6:30, and instead of the clanging of a gong, church bells relayed by a gramophone echoed down the passages. Breakfast was followed by family prayers round the table, and again the soft lights on the tree shed their radiance over a scene which you would love to have looked upon. Our hearts bowed in worship as we sang of the One who came, ‘A little Child to earth, long ago’ from the knowledge of whom comes all peace and joy and love.”

Alvin Ho: Allergic to the Great Wall, The Forbidden Palace, and Other Tourist Attractions by Lenore Look

Oct6

Alvin Ho is back again, kind of like his namesake, the chipmunk. (Actually, the two have nothing to do with one another. I just was reminded of Alvin the Chipmunk for some reason and wanted to post a picture. Maybe because both Alvins have a penchant for getting into lovable trouble.)

This time Alvin Ho goes on a trip at Christmas time to China with his family to visit his relations who live in a tall scary apartment building. And Alvin has to fly across the ocean in an airplane, aka tin can, to get there. And there are maybe a billion people in China who could squash you. And you might have to use a squat toilet or be stuck all over with acupuncture needles like a pincushion. Scary, right?

Those are only a few of the dangers Alvin faces as he explores, or tries to keep from exploring, a new country. I’m getting a little jaded on Alvin, but I think this book might be just as funny and just as comforting to the average second or third grader as were Alvin’s previous adventures.

I did especially like chapter 15, You Can Make a Friend Anywhere, where Alvin does something very generous and kind in spite of all of his fears and phobias. The rest is standard Alvin Ho fare, although it provides a good introduction to the tourist attractions and interesting aspects of a visit to China. I felt sorry for Alvin’s dad, though, who is forced to be very, very patient and forgiving with Alvin’s childish anxieties and careless misdeeds.

Read this one if you’re a fan or if you want a painless introduction to China or if you have yet to meet the inimitable Alvin Ho.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee

Jul9

So, how are fortune cookies and Powerball (lottery) related?

And who really invented fortune cookies anyway–the Chinese or maybe the Japanese?

Why do Jewish people love Chinese food, or as Ms. Lee asks, “why is chow mein the chosen food of the Chosen People?”

Do you know where in China all those illegal immigrants to the U.S. come from—and what they leave behind?

Is chop suey really Chinese?

Who is General Tso, anyway, and why are we eating his chicken? Is it really his chicken?

And what’s the greatest Chinese restaurant in the world outside of China?

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: A Book Adventure through the Mysteries of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8. Lee (what’s with the middle numeral/initial?) purports to answer all of these questions and many more you didn’t know you had about Chinese food in the United States and the rest of the world.

There are more Chinese food restaurants in the U.S. than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendy’s combined. Our family only eats restaurant or take-out Chinese food once or twice a year, but apparently we’re in the minority when it comes to Chinese food lovers.

I enjoyed reading about all of the quirks and ramifications of Americans’ love affair with Chinese food, but I must admit that Ms. Lee’s writing style, journalistic in nature, sometimes gave me reader’s whiplash. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles starts out as a book about the connection between a flood of of Powerball winners in March 2005 and the fortune cookies where they all found their winning numbers. Then it becomes a book about Chinese cuisine and where fortune cookies were invented. Then, suddenly we were dealing with other topics, such as Chinese illegal immigration or the Kosher Duck Scandal of 1989 or Cajun Chinese food or the source of take-out boxes or the soy sauce controversy.

Yes, all of these topics and more are at least tangentially related to Ms. Lee’s main topic, American Chinese food, but the material, while fascinating, is not organized as well as I might have liked. A lot of back-tracking and rabbit trails lead the reader on a winding road through the world of Chinese food and Chinese restaurants and Chinese influence in the United States and in the world. As long as you can take the twist and turns, which hardly ever slow down enough to be boring, you’ll like Ms. Lee’s guided tour through the world of Chinese cuisine.

A few facts and stories I found particularly interesting:

Did you know that there’s one particular day in the year that hundreds of Chinese immigrants in New York’s Chinatown choose to get married? No, not Valentine’s Day and not New Year’s Day and not in June.

Most of the fortunes in the fortune cookies we get from our favorite Chinese restaurants are curated, written, and sold by three guys, two of whom aren’t on speaking terms as a result of stolen fortunes (the written ones, not money).

There really are a bunch of “kosher Chinese restaurants” to serve the Jewish community.

People who organize the smuggling of illegal Chinese immigrants into the United States are known as “snakeheads”.

I especially found the chapter about a specific Chinese immigrant family who bought a restaurant and saw their family implode from the pressures of running that restaurant in rural Georgia and adjusting to the cultural expectations of 21st century America. It was a sad story of family dysfunction and cultural misunderstanding and over-zealous child protection services run amuck. I wanted to know what happened to the family and where they are now. So I stopped and prayed for them. (Do you ever pray for the people you read about in magazine articles and nonfiction books?)

Real Chinese people and fortune cookies:

Chinese History in Fiction and Nonfiction

Apr17

I read two books back to back that shed some light on the vicissitudes of Chinese life and history: Fortunate Sons by Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller and Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin.

Fortunate Sons is the nonfiction title, subtitled The 120 Chinese Boys Who Came to America, Went to School, and Revolutionized an Ancient Civilization. It’s about an educational experiment that took place starting in 1872 in which groups of boys from China were sent to New England to be educated in the ways of Western thinking and inventions and technology. The goal was to train leaders for China who would bring the Chinese out of their technological deficit and their impotence in the face of Western weaponry and warfare.

In spite of the fact that the boys were called home early, before most of them were able to complete their university education, many of the young men who returned to China after receiving an American education were able to serve their native country effectively and with great loyalty. Sometimes their gifts were under-appreciated and under-utilized given the chaotic state of Chinese politics in the early twentieth century. However, some of the CHinese Educational Mission graduates were given great responsibility in bringing China into the modern age in the areas of railroads, diplomacy, and warfare in particular.

Unfortunately, I had trouble remembering which boy was which as I read the book. What with American nicknames like “Jimmy” and “By-Jinks Johnnie” as well as Chinese names, such as Yung Wing and Yung Liang and Chen Duyong and Liang Dunyan, that all started to sound alike to my untrained American ears, I was confused most of the time about who was whom. A list of the boys with their Chinese names, American nicknames, and one distinguishing fact about each would have been quite helpful. Nevertheless, I do recommend the book for those who are interested in modern Chinese history.

As usual, I learned more from the fiction book that I read set in 1937-1940 China called Nanjing Requiem than I did from the nonfiction book. This novel is another one of those memoir-ish fictional treatments, based on the life and experiences of a real person, specifically the life of Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women’s College in Nanjing, China. If you’ve read anything about China and World War II, you’ve heard of the Rape of Nanjing. This story brings the Japanese occupation and pillage of Nanjing to life, but in an understated, almost documentary sort of writing style. The violence and the horror are there, and the author’s style, using a fictional Chinese narrator to tell the story of Ms. Vautrin’s courage and her eventual mental collapse, makes the barbarity of the events in the novel even more vivid because Ha Jin leaves much to the imagination. Then, there are the moral dilemmas of war and dealing with the enemy on behalf of the helpless and sometimes thankless Chinese refugees who become Ms. Vautrin’s responsibility. No one, including Minnie Vautrin, especially Ms. Vautrin, escapes the horrible repercussions of decisions made under the pressure of sometimes choosing between evil and more evil.

For those who are interested in the true story of Minnie Vautrin and the Rape of Nanjing, this video is a dramatization of material from the diaries of Minnie Vautrin, presented as a mock trial for war crimes committed during the Nanjing occupation. This video is a fictional presentation, not a real trial. The real Minnie Vautrin died in 1941.

I noticed as I read Nanjing Requiem how the characters in the novel spoke and thought about revenge on the Japanese for the atrocities they committed and how they wondered why God did not act to bring justice and vengeance down upon the Japanese army and upon the Japanese people for allowing such wickedness to proceed unchecked. I couldn’t help thinking about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few years after the Rape of Nanking. Although I don’t believe that God sanctioned the bombing of those Japanese cites in retribution for the Rape of Nanjing and other Japanese war crimes, I do believe that evil begets evil. And sometimes the innocent pay for the sins of their fathers and others.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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