In issue 1181 of World Weekly (May 11, 2006), there was a photograph of Gao Yu visiting the elderly Ge Yang, former editor-in-chief of Beijing’s New Observer magazine. Seeing it made me very happy and deeply moved.
Ge Yang—a name that sounds masculine—has been an image I admired and respected since I was young. In 1948, I was still a junior-middle-school student studying in Rangoon, Burma. We overseas students constantly followed the motherland, then engulfed in the flames of civil war. As the Chiang family regime declined, one by one we began to imagine and long for a flourishing New China.
At that time, Rangoon had an amateur musical group called the Irrawaddy Choir. They sang the Yellow River Cantata, democratic and progressive songs banned in China, and Ge Yang’s “Our Forces Have Arrived.” The song was vigorous and forceful, full of fighting spirit, and it circulated for a long time among many progressive overseas Chinese schools in Burma. I can still remember the lyrics:
“Our forces have arrived,
Mighty and vast,
Watering their horses at the Yangtze.
Our forces have arrived,
Sweeping a thousand li,
Nothing can withstand them.
We fear neither the Yangtze’s breadth nor depth,
Nor fortresses thick as forests.
Our forces
Will cross the Yangtze,
Will liberate all of China.”
After New China was founded, my classmates and I returned to China carrying hopes of building the motherland. Afterward, every year more Burmese Chinese students returned. We all knew the motherland was poor, but we were willing to endure hardship and contribute our youth.
Yet in one political movement after another, many classmates were labeled “Rightists” or “suspected special agents.” Even those who were never formally given a label remained bound by the invisible cord of overseas connections and had to swallow humiliation in silence. We knew that Ge Yang too had been given a political label. Later, we heard her name less and less.
I have never met Ge Yang in my life, but I have never forgotten that name. Seeing the photograph and knowing that the elderly woman was being cared for in a nursing home in Flushing, Queens, New York, brought me great comfort.
My respectful wishes to senior Ge Yang for good health.