During World War II, Rangoon under Japanese fascist rule was shrouded in darkness. Residents lived amid the suffering of war and terror, spreading disease, broken transportation, no electricity or running water, and shortages of food. Yet officials sent by the Japanese invaders and the Wang Jingwei puppet government in Nanjing repeatedly glorified the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” printing propaganda materials and textbooks that poisoned overseas Chinese and young students. Chinese culture suffered serious destruction and devastation.
After the war, overseas Chinese who had fled Burma returned from evacuation, and residents who had taken refuge in remote rural settlements moved back to Rangoon. Everyone rebuilt their livelihoods, and Chinese schools throughout the country reopened or were newly established like bamboo shoots after rain.
Yet beneath this scene of vigorous renewal there was a severe shortage of books, and it was deeply worrying.
An Urgent Need for Spiritual Nourishment After the War
From the Japanese capture of Rangoon in March 1942 until their retreat in May 1945, three years under the iron heel had destroyed books and deprived young people of schooling. After the war, books were urgently needed. Books were seeds of culture; books were food for the spirit. Schools had reopened and needed textbooks and teaching materials. When students went home from school, they needed books to read outside class.
But everywhere people cried out about the book shortage. The few printing companies and book companies that remained could barely manage to print a small quantity of textbooks, and even those were insufficient.
There were few places for entertainment in Rangoon’s Chinatown. Outside the district there were two or three cinemas, but Hollywood films monopolized the market—Tarzan, Western gunfights, King Kong in New York, Bathing Beauty, and others played to full houses night after night. Young people who had lost schooling, as well as those now back in school, had little to do after dusk. They wandered the streets in twos and threes or sat in teahouses chatting.
This cultural barrenness and social decline deeply touched the souls of Burmese Chinese educators and shook the conscience of cultural workers. Something had to be done quickly to reverse the situation and rescue a generation whose schooling had been lost to war.
They asked people everywhere for help and entrusted travelers to bring books into Burma from outside. When the Burmese Chinese poet Huang Chaoqing passed through Kunming on his way back to Burma, Li Gongpu, Tian Han, and overseas Chinese friends asked him to carry books back with him. He once wrote of himself:
From the North Gate bookshop, a load upon my shoulder,
My traveling case brings back seedlings to be sown;
I am willing to break new ground and labor hard,
Bearing the weight beneath the blazing sun, sweat surging like the tide.
Huang Chaoqing brought seeds of culture to the overseas Chinese in Burma, carrying a shoulder-load of books across the border at Wanding. Some people returning to Burma from Hong Kong also brought newspapers, magazines, and books with them.
There was one poor schoolteacher who watched the many young students gnawing away at their two dry textbooks with no activities after class and nothing else to read. It troubled him constantly. He decided that he would personally start a library.
The Rangoon Chinese Public Library Opens
His surname was Yang, his given name Zhangxi. He wore very strong myopic spectacles and, one could say, was rather ordinary-looking. Could a schoolteacher earning only a little over one hundred rupees a month really accomplish such a thing? Let me tell you carefully: before the war, in 1938, after returning to Rangoon from the rural settlements, he had already founded the “Burmese Chinese Reading and Newspaper Society.” He solicited donations of glass-fronted cabinets from organizations and individuals, collected donated books from bookstores, borrowed a location, and opened it to the public free of charge. It answered the needs of the rapidly growing anti-Japanese national salvation movement and satisfied young people’s increasing thirst for knowledge.
Now, with the cooperation of the Burmese Chinese Students’ Federation, he once again ran here and there seeking help. From private collections and books donated by bookstores, he gathered about three thousand volumes. It was not many, but it was better than nothing and could relieve the immediate thirst. More could gradually be solicited and purchased later.
In 1947, the “Rangoon Chinese Public Library” opened. It was the first Chinese-language public library belonging to the Burmese Chinese community after the war. Its address was 138, 16th Street. The space was only about ten feet square, on the ground floor of a three-story building. Mr. Zhao Runwang, a native of Yunnan and also one of the book donors, looked after it. The shelves were open to readers day and night.
Its principal borrowers were overseas Chinese students. Most of the collection consisted of primary and secondary school textbooks, books on teaching methods and youth self-cultivation, and books and periodicals dealing with education and thought.
There was also a National Education Library of about three hundred volumes, the American scholar Thorndike’s New Principles of Education, Shen Baiying’s Notes on Primary Education, and, in literature, individual works by Lu Xun and Ba Jin as well as novels from the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.
The young teacher Chen Zhaofu used the library’s National Education Library as reference material and wrote a number of articles for newspapers. At the time, I was a student at Nanyang Middle School. I borrowed translated Soviet and Eastern European novels from this library, enriching my life outside class and broadening my horizons.
By the 1950s, there were more than four hundred Chinese-language schools throughout Burma, and student enrollment had multiplied several times. The interest of Burmese Chinese youth and students in learning grew stronger and stronger, and their thirst for knowledge became ever greater. The Rangoon Chinese Public Library could no longer meet the needs of so many students.
A number of cultural figures therefore began to campaign for the establishment of a “Burmese Chinese Library Society.” In 1955, the original Rangoon Chinese Public Library was expanded into the “Burmese Chinese Library.” Its collection had grown to more than ten thousand volumes. It moved to the fourth floor of 505 Guangdong Street, and its scale increased fourfold.
In 1964, it expanded again and moved to the second floor of 628 Guangdong Street.
Yang Zhangxi Was a Poor Schoolteacher
Yang Zhangxi devoted his life to education—to teaching, writing, progressive cultural work, and organizing anti-Japanese national salvation activities. He gave himself wholeheartedly to overseas Chinese education. He was a senior figure in Burmese Chinese education, highly respected, with students everywhere.
In 1936, he came from Fujian to Burma to become a schoolteacher. In newspapers and magazines he edited supplements such as Wooden Clapper and Alarm Bell, vigorously publicizing the principle that “the rise or fall of the nation is the responsibility of every ordinary person,” and urging overseas Chinese to support the motherland’s resistance against Japan: those with money should contribute money, those with strength should contribute strength.
Using the pen name Jizhuang, he served as chief editor of a publication called Southern Guide, later renamed Southern Literature. Because it was an independent publication and had not received registration approval—in truth, because the British colonial authorities were afraid of offending Japan—it was shut down.
In 1939, he organized the Rangoon Chinese Public School, specifically to admit children from poor families. To make up for the school’s inadequate finances, he went to teach at the overseas Chinese middle school in Bassein in the rural districts. From his monthly salary he kept only enough for his own food and sent all the rest back to Rangoon to support the school. After Zhang Guangnian, Zhao Feng, and others came to Burma from China, they too taught there, educating a group of young people active in anti-Japanese national salvation.
After the Japanese invaders moved south, the Bassein Overseas Chinese Middle School and Rangoon Chinese Public School both closed. Yang Zhangxi led a group of students to Mandalay to join the Burmese Chinese Wartime Work Team. Later he returned to Yunnan and taught at Jianshui Middle School in southern Yunnan. In 1946, after victory in the War of Resistance, he returned to Rangoon and successively served as director of school affairs and teacher at Overseas Chinese Middle School and Nanyang Middle School.
In 1955, he returned to China with his family and settled there. He served as director of the library at Xiamen Overseas Chinese University. In his later years he taught classical Chinese at Fujian Medical University. He died in Quanzhou in 1981. During his lifetime he also served as a member of the Central Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission.
Yang Zhangxi’s contribution to Burmese Chinese education was outstanding throughout his life. He was deeply respected and loved by fellow overseas Chinese. In Beijing, Xiamen, Kunming, Hong Kong, Macao, and other places, commemorative articles have been written in remembrance of this remarkable teacher.
Originally published in the North American World Journal, October 4–6, 2007.