Last Boat Out of Shanghai Read online

  Last Boat Out of Shanghai is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

  Copyright © 2019 by Helen Zia

  Map copyright © 2019 by David Lindroth Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  NAMES: Zia, Helen, author.

  TITLE: Last boat out of Shanghai: the epic story of the Chinese who fled Mao’s revolution / Helen Zia.

  DESCRIPTION: New York: Ballantine Books, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  IDENTIFIERS: LCCN 2018036197 | ISBN 9780345522320 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525618867 (ebook)

  SUBJECTS: LCSH: China—History—Civil War, 1945–1949—Refugees. | Political refugees—China—History—20th century. | Chinese—Foreign countries—History—20th century. | China—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century. | Shanghai (China)—History—20th century.

  CLASSIFICATION: LCC DS777.542 .Z53 2019 | DDC 951.04/2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018036197

  Ebook ISBN 9780525618867

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Daniel Rembert

  Cover photograph: Jack Birns/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

  v5.4_r1

  ep

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  A Note on Names

  Prologue: Shanghai, May 4, 1949

  Map

  Part One: The Drumbeat of War

  1 Benny; Age 9; Shanghai, August 14, 1937

  2 Ho; Age 13; Shanghai, 1937

  3 Bing; Age 8; Outside Suzhou, Late 1937

  4 Annuo; Age 2; Shanghai, 1937

  Part Two: Childhood Under Siege

  5 Benny; Age 11; Shanghai, 1939

  6 Bing; Age 10; Shanghai, Late 1939

  7 Annuo; Age 6; Shanghai, 1941

  8 Benny; Age 14; Shanghai, Autumn 1942

  9 Bing; Age 13; Shanghai, 1942

  10 Annuo; Age 8; Shanghai, 1943

  11 Benny; Age 16; Shanghai, 1944

  12 Ho; Age 21; Shanghai, 1945

  13 Bing; Age 16; Suzhou, 1945

  14 Ho; Age 23; Shanghai, 1947

  Part Three: Exodus

  15 Benny; Age 20; Shanghai, Late 1948

  16 Annuo; Age 13; Hangzhou, Late 1948

  17 Bing; Age 19; Shanghai, Late Summer 1948

  18 Ho; Age 23; Ann Arbor, June 1948

  19 Benny; Age 21; Shanghai, May 1949

  Part Four: War’s Long Shadow

  20 Ho; Age 25; New York, 1949

  21 Annuo; Age 14; Taiwan, Early Spring 1949

  22 Bing; Age 20; San Francisco, 1949

  23 Doreen and Benny; Ages 19 and 22; Guangzhou and Nanjing, 1950

  24 Annuo; Age 15; Taipei, 1950

  25 Ho; Age 26; New York, 1950

  26 Bing; Age 21; New York, 1950

  27 Benny; Age 23; Nanjing, 1951 377

  28 Doreen; Age 20; Hong Kong, 1951

  29 Annabel Annuo; Age 22; Taipei, 1957

  30 Benny; Age 29; Nanjing, 1957

  Epilogue: New York, 1950s

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Selected Bibliography

  Photo Credits

  By Helen Zia

  About the Author

  Running away is one of our nation’s characteristics. We are very good at it. The best strategy for getting out of a bad situation is to run away. It may be the only way you can save yourself. If you don’t follow this rule, you end up suffering.

  The two characters 逃难 “tao nan” mean “running away from difficulty.” When transposed, it is 难逃 “nan tao” and means “difficult to run away.” Looking back at those who tried to run away by plane or train or ship, many ended up getting killed in accidents. It was indeed difficult for them to run away.

  —EXCERPT TRANSLATED FROM LUN YU [The Analects Fortnightly], CHINA’S LEADING LITERARY MAGAZINE, IN ITS “SPECIAL ISSUE ON RUNNING AWAY,” MARCH 16, 1949

  Anyone who delves into China, its people and history, soon discovers that, over the years, there have been an assortment of imperfect methods used to render the nonalphabetic Chinese language into English and other “romanized” languages. Most systems have been phonetic—that is, words have been transliterated based on the sounds in Chinese. This is problematic since pronunciation of words can vary to the point of their being unrecognizable from one Chinese dialect to the next. My surname, Zia, for example, is a common Chinese name that was transliterated using the system dominant in early 1900s Shanghai and based on its dialect. With different romanization methods and dialects in play, the alphabetic spelling can be Hsieh, Hsia, Sieh, Sie, Jie, and more. In today’s China, it would be Xie using pinyin, the official standard in China and widely accepted by most universities around the world, including in the United States.

  During the period covered by this book, from the 1920s to the 1960s, various romanization systems have been in use. Furthermore, places were often renamed by the latest political or military organization in command of the oft-changing landscape. As many other authors have done, I use the most familiar names for key historic figures, particularly if their names in pinyin may confuse readers unversed in the nuances of romanization. Thus Chiang Kai-shek, Soong May-ling, and T. V. Soong appear in this book, not Jiang Jieshi, Song Meiling, or Song Ziwen, as they are in pinyin. However, I defer to pinyin where the names will not confound the reader, as with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.

  Similarly, I rely on the present-day place-names Guangzhou, Suzhou, Chongqing, and Taiwan, rather than Canton, Soochow, Chungking, and Formosa. For street names, I use the name as known by the book’s characters, for example, Avenue Joffre and Jessfield Road, not the current Huaihai Lu and Wanhangdu Lu. However, to make those former street names relevant to present-day Shanghai, I’ve placed an endnote with the current name on the first reference to each. I also refer to Chiang Kai-shek’s government as Nationalists, which is how they were commonly known in English, rather than Kuomintang (in the Wade-Giles system) or Guomindang (in pinyin).

  Finally, some words appear that are peculiar to Shanghai: Expatriates called themselves Shanghailanders, a term applied only to the city’s foreign residents, whereas Shanghainese refers only to its Chinese residents—a distinction that would be well appreciated if one were transported alongside the characters of this book.

  SHANGHAI, MAY 4, 1949

  Bing sat straight up in the pedicab, gripping the hard seat as the driver cursed and spat. She watched with alarm as his feet, clad in sandals cut from old tires, seemed to slow to a snail’s pace just when she most needed speed. This stylish-looking young woman had imagined that her last hours in Shanghai would be spent waving farewell from a ship’s deck to envious onlookers below as a river breeze gently lifted her dark hair, just as she’d seen in the movies. After all, s
he was about to leave China’s biggest, most glamorous, and most notorious city. Shanghai had been Bing’s home since she had arrived following the Japanese invasion nearly twelve years earlier, as a frightened girl of nine. But now, with the imminent threat of a violent Communist revolution, she was running away again, along with half the city’s population, it seemed. And instead of standing at the rail, exchanging smiles with the ship’s other passengers, she was stuck in traffic, terrified that she wouldn’t reach the Shanghai Hongkou Wharf in time. That would spell disaster.

  She lurched forward as the pedicab driver stood on the pedals of his three-wheeled cycle and came to a stop. Around her was a sea of other pedicabs, rickshaws, cars, buses, carts, and trucks—all screeching and honking, their drivers yelling every manner of obscenity. The cacophony reverberated against the walls of the stone-and-concrete canyon of Nanjing Road. Bing was no stranger to Shanghai’s mayhem, but she had never seen anything quite like this. Of all times to be stuck in such bedlam—on the very day she had to get to the riverfront, the date set for her departure from this desperate city.

  She’d sewn her floral-print qipao for this special occasion. Each careful stitch had captured her growing anticipation. With her oval face, big eyes, and full, red lips, all crowned by a tiara of black permanent waves, the twenty-year-old might have been mistaken for a coy Shanghai poster girl but for the panic in her eyes. Like her, everyone in Shanghai seemed to be in a frenzy to escape, to use any means to get away from the impending arrival of the Communists. But unlike those who were still clamoring for a seat to anywhere, Bing was one of the lucky ones: She possessed a precious one-way ticket out. On a ship. To America.

  Finally, the driver managed to break through the crush. He harangued everyone in his path, shouting, “Move along, you worthless mule scrotum, smellier than pig farts!” She didn’t blink at his choice of words, which came as naturally as breathing on Shanghai’s streets. She didn’t care as long as he got her to the wharf. The ship’s smokestacks came into view just past the stately Astor House Hotel and the towering nineteen-story Broadway Mansions apartments, where the Suzhou Creek meets the bend in the wide Huangpu River, the last major tributary of the mighty Yangtze River before it joins the East China Sea. Massive granite buildings, all in European style, lined the signature waterfront boulevard and docks.

  To the foreigners, this prime section of riverfront was known as the Bund, from a Hindustani word meaning embankment. The Chinese called it Waitan, meaning outside or foreign shore—a reference to the foreigners who had once ruled this proud imperialist showcase of Shanghai. British and American businessmen had wrested away the best sections of the port city with the full support of their governments. Land and sovereignty had been ripped from China, spoils of the Opium Wars that had forced the narcotic onto China one hundred years before. Everything about these monuments to international capitalists and pale “big noses” seemed foreign, including the British Big Ben chime of the giant clock tower over the Custom House. Soon it would be up to the Communists to decide what would happen to these grand stone edifices.

  * * *

  —

  SHANGHAI WAS CHINA’S MOST modern, populous, and cosmopolitan city. One of the leading metropolises of the world, the “Paris of the Orient” was also home to tens of thousands of foreigners, who were despised as imperialists by the Communist Party and its leader, Mao Zedong. The city was the launching point for major inland routes and international traffic, whether by boat, plane, train, or wooden cart—making it the epicenter for the massive exodus of the late 1940s.

  Stoked by the anticipated Communist victory over the Nationalist government headed by Chiang Kai-shek, panic and terror had first infected the wealthiest, most educated, and most privileged classes—and sent them running in what they fully expected to be a brief exile. It was assumed that the Communists would target the rich and the pampered in the same way that the Bolsheviks had gone after the czarist White Russians, many of whom had come to Shanghai as refugees from that 1917 revolution.

  No one knows precisely how many people fled Shanghai during the early years of the Communist revolution. Scholars and journalists have estimated that more than a million people set off from or through that port city. Many of those who ran for the exits belonged to the city’s capitalist and middle classes, who presumably had the most to lose under the Communists. These two groups comprised about 5 percent and 20 percent, respectively, of the city’s 6 million residents, or about 1.5 million people. On the other hand, the remaining 4.5 million who made up Shanghai’s majority saw no need to escape—they included Shanghai’s industrial workers, coolies, and drivers, the destitute. But it was not only members of the upper classes who fled. They were joined by old-regime loyalists, from high Nationalist government officials to lowly foot soldiers, as well as those who simply got caught up in the frenzy or were especially fearful. Unfortunately, there are no records of the exodus since the retreating Nationalists destroyed as many documents as they could, while the incoming Communists inherited a country in such disarray that no accounting of the departures is known to have taken place.

  Unlike the stories of other such mass migrations from revolutions and human crises, the exodus of Chinese from Shanghai in this era has yet to be told. There are no books or dissertations in English that track their saga through the geopolitical tectonics of modern China. In the Chinese language, only a handful of accounts have been published—in Taiwan. Even today, the People’s Republic of China fails to acknowledge that any exodus took place.

  This book opens a missing chapter of modern history by tracing the lives of four real people—Benny Pan, Ho Chow, Bing Woo, and Annuo (pronounced ann-wah) Liu—starting from their childhoods at the time of Japan’s attack on Shanghai in 1937, the defining battle that marked the start of the Pacific War and altered the course of global politics. These four main characters and their families didn’t know one another, but they were selected from more than a hundred other remarkable individuals for the combined depth and range of their collective journeys. The interwoven stories of their lives before, during, and after the Communist victory in Shanghai present a view of this historic exodus that no single family story could capture. Adding to the rich complexity and color of that era are accounts drawn from the many others interviewed who also bore witness to this time of war and revolution, sacrifice and betrayal, courage and resilience, when every move could spell doom as modern China erupted.

  In today’s millennium, when more-recent conflicts and disasters have forced millions of people around the globe to weigh the same desperate choices of staying or fleeing, the experiences of these Shanghai migrants offer a window into the current human condition.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN BING ARRIVED AT the crowded pier, she waved away the hungry dockhands and touts, not wishing to waste her precious yuan when she could manage herself. In spite of her fashionable appearance, she was no spoiled Shanghai miss, clapping her hands to summon the servants; nor was she like the foreigners bellowing, “Boy!” at their slightest whim. Her cloth valise held only a few lightweight dresses, sweaters, and underclothes—no heavy photograph albums, gold jewelry, or mementos from family or friends. Nothing to remember her father and mother, who might have died in the war, for all she knew. No, there were no keepsakes from loved ones for her to take along.

  Hundreds of people milled about, their desperation permeating the air, evident from the frenetic energy of foreigners and Chinese alike. The children, too, looked anxious under the watchful eyes of minders intent on keeping them from disappearing into the crowd. A group of nuns snaked by in single file, their pallid, ghostlike faces floating in a long curtain of black habits. News stories reported that missionaries had been asked to leave by their religious orders overseas because of the imminent Communist threat. Many had spent the greater part of their lives in China and were reluctant to abandon their flocks.

  Sto
cky shipping agents, fat from the cumshaws that routinely greased their palms for “special consideration,” barked orders to columns of sinewy men stooped over by impossibly heavy loads on their backs. Those dock coolies, clad in loose rags, managed to lug huge crates and overstuffed suitcases up the steep gangways using only their muscle and mettle. None of them seemed disturbed by the impending “liberation” of Shanghai. After all, the revolution was supposed to help them, the workers and the dispossessed—the proletarians who had nothing to lose but their chains, according to Karl Marx. In 1921, the Chinese Communists had founded their party in Shanghai, home to China’s first industrial workforce, and now their propaganda leaflets flooded the city unconstrained, in spite of Nationalist prohibitions.

  Bing scanned the long line of foreigners and Chinese as they waited to show their tickets, passports, exit visas, and other documents to indifferent immigration agents. At the head of the queue, Bing could see customs officials rifling through possessions, presumably searching for forbidden quantities of precious metals, jewelry, and currency. Once past this final hurdle, passengers could join the elated-looking group of those approved for departure.

  Anxious to find her sister in the crowd, Bing was just about to step down to the pavement from the pedicab when a loud voice shouted, “Out of my way! Look out!” A gleaming black Buick came careening next to her pedicab. It jolted to a stop when its wheels hit the high curb, landing exactly where she had been about to alight.