On December 1, 1941, Rangoon imposed a blackout. The Japanese fascists brought the flames of their war of aggression to Burma. Upon this Buddhist land, which had always been peaceful and tranquil, tens of thousands of families suffered an unprecedented calamity. We were one of them.
### Fleeing to Lashio, We Welcome the Nationalist Army
We heard that the Japanese devils were going to bomb Rangoon. Thinking of our safety, Father told Mother to take me and my two younger sisters into the countryside to hide for a while. I remember that we went by boat. In Bassein, we had an auntie from our home village whose surname was Ye. Her family ran a small grocery store. We stayed at her home for several days, and then they took us farther into the remote countryside. Few people lived there. We saw no Chinese. It was like a paradise beyond the world. We stayed for about two months. Then Father wrote to say that the situation in Rangoon was tense and the Japanese devils would soon fight their way in. He told us to hurry back to Rangoon and prepare to flee north.
This was February 1942. Japan had occupied Tavoy in Lower Burma, and people in Rangoon were panic-stricken. Residents were evacuating one after another. Father and Mother packed some luggage and locked the iron gate of the tailor shop, and we moved to Upper Burma. (When we returned to Rangoon in 1946, other people had long since occupied our home, and all the family’s belongings were gone.) Lashio was a mountain town. We rented a thatched hut outside the town. Father and Second Uncle set up the sewing machine and mended clothes for people. My family’s third younger sister was born amid this turmoil.
One day, firecrackers thundered in the city and the noise shook the sky. We saw troops in yellow uniforms moving slowly down the street, surrounded by crowds. Father said the Nationalist Army had come to Burma to fight the devils. We later learned that this was the Thirty-Eighth Division of the Chinese Expeditionary Force entering Burma and taking up its post in Lashio. It was April 1942.
Our happiness lasted less than a week. We heard that the fighting had become critical and that the overseas Chinese had to evacuate. Father searched everywhere for a vehicle. There were too many people fleeing. It was difficult even to find an empty place in a freight truck, let alone for all seven people in our family, adults and children. Just when the whole family was desperately anxious, Father met a fellow Taishanese surnamed Huang who worked as a driver for the Southwest Transportation Company. For the sake of being from the same home district, he allowed us to ride on his truck, which was already loaded with goods. Mother and my three younger sisters were squeezed onto the seat to the right of the driver. I crouched beside Mother’s feet. Father and Second Uncle sat on top of the goods piled high in the truck bed. After two days on the road, passing through Jiaoding and Mangshi, we reached Longling County. The driver said there was something wrong with the truck and it needed to be repaired.
### Stranded at Longling, We Hide Deep in the Mountains
We stayed in Longling for one day. Vehicles and streams of people fleeing passed continually along the streets. The restaurants, inns, and grocery stores in Longling were doing brisk business. Some shops seized this opportunity to hang lanterns and decorations and set off firecrackers, hoping to make a great profit. But the situation changed too quickly. By evening, the rumble of gunfire and artillery came from the distance. The town suddenly fell into confusion. People fled north one after another, and vehicles quickly left the city and headed into the mountains. Driver Huang hurriedly got the truck ready and shouted at us to get aboard. We had to go up the mountain under cover of darkness and hurry across Huitong Bridge before daybreak. The whole family was like ants on a hot wok. With everyone urging one another on, we had not even finished our meal before we were stuffed into the truck. In the faint evening light, Driver Huang started the panting truck along the winding mountain road.
Broken-down vehicles stood beside the road all along the way. Chests and baskets lay in disorder on the trucks, and abandoned things were everywhere along the roadside. Our truck clattered and clanked its way halfway up the mountain. No matter how hard Driver Huang stepped on the accelerator, it was no use. He could only pull over by the road and get out in the fading light to examine the truck. At last he said: “The truck cannot go on. Everyone carry some luggage up the mountain and find a place to sleep. I will repair it again tomorrow morning.” Father and Second Uncle each shouldered bedding and other large pieces of luggage and walked up the mountain. Not far from the road, we found a broken-down thatched hut. We went inside, unrolled the bedding, and slept.
During the fourth watch of the night, I awoke and heard Mother crying. She kept saying: “Your father and Second Uncle have been gone for most of the night. Why have they not come back?” I opened my eyes. A faint half-moon clung to the outside of the thatched hut. Mother said that Father and Second Uncle had gone back to the truck on the road to get a few things. Then heavy gunfire broke out. She did not know whether they were alive or dead. Why had they not returned? As we waited in sorrow and tears, we heard a sound outside the fence. Father had returned. He said: “It was terrifying.” He and Second Uncle had reached the road and were looking for our truck when suddenly a vehicle came down from the mountain, while another came up from below. When the two vehicles met, someone in the descending vehicle shouted: “What unit are you? What is your unit number?” No one in the ascending vehicle answered. There was only a sudden burst of machine-gun fire shooting up the mountain. Both vehicles turned off their lights. In the darkness, they could see only the people on the vehicles all jumping down. The two sides began a fierce gun battle. Father was so frightened that he immediately rolled into the ditch beside the road and dared not make a sound. Then a man rolled down from the road, moaning softly, “Aiya, aiya.” Father thought it was Second Uncle. He crawled over quietly. “Zhan! Zhan!” he called Second Uncle’s name in a low voice, but there was no answer. When the gunfire stopped, he quietly crawled back onto the roadbed and saw several soldiers’ bodies lying on the road. Father could not find Second Uncle and dared not stay long, so he hurried back. Father had just finished his story. The air was frozen with terror. Then we heard movement outside. It was Second Uncle, also returning with a frightened look. He told us that the troops coming up from below were Japanese soldiers, and those coming down from the mountain were Nationalist soldiers. The Nationalist soldiers had died miserably.
At daybreak, we hurried on our way. We dared not remain. We climbed higher and deeper into the mountains to hide from the Japanese soldiers. We reached a small village whose name we did not know and stayed there. People in the mountains said that Huitong Bridge had already been blown up. We could not continue along the road. What were we to do? Father went everywhere asking for guides and mules to take us to Baoshan.
### Over Mountains and Through Rivers, the Road Stretches Far
We stayed in the small mountain village for several days. Every day, we saw people fleeing pass by. They brought many pieces of terrible news. Some said the Japanese devils had already reached Huitong Bridge. The bridge had been blown up, and the Japanese could not get across, so they fired their guns everywhere. Some people tried to swim across the river, but the Japanese machine-gunned them to death. The river ran red. Others said they had fled from the direction of Tengchong. The Japanese pursued them from behind while Japanese aircraft strafed them from above. Too many people had died. Still others said that when they crossed the Wild Man Mountains along the China–Burma border, local chieftains robbed them. Every one of them was stripped clean and left wearing only shorts. Along the road, some starved to death and some died of illness. These refugees supported the old and carried the young. Their clothes were ragged and their faces haggard. They had begged all along the way. After resting for a while, they hurried back onto the road.
Father kept looking for guides and mules. Baoshan was too far away. We heard that it would take half a month on foot. The guides were unwilling to go that far. They would travel only one or two days before turning back. There was no other way. We could only go one stretch at a time. After agreeing on a price, we hired two guides and two mules. The three heaviest pieces of luggage and one sewing machine were loaded onto the animals. The oldest of my younger sisters and I sat in one rattan pannier, with luggage of equal weight loaded on the other side. Father carried my second younger sister on his back, and Mother carried the third. Second Uncle was young. He carried a small cloth bundle and had to follow the guides closely, so that if they walked too quickly, the luggage would not be lost. Mother walked slowly. Second Uncle was afraid she would fall behind and lose her way, so he broke off branches and left them in conspicuous places at forks in the road as markers.
In this way, we passed through deep mountains and old forests and waded across streams and small rivers. At night, long after we had reached the small village where we would camp, Mother would finally come staggering in, step by step. She had never walked so far in her life. What suffering!
### The River Runs Swift—Nearly No Way Across
Every day, we did not know how many mountain ridges we climbed or how many ravines we crossed. Every day, we wondered when we would finally reach Baoshan. Along the way, we endured scorching heat, hunger, and cold as we climbed mountains and forded rivers. Sometimes we passed through dense primeval forest, treading upon rotting leaves that covered the ground. Sometimes we climbed steep, narrow paths fit only for sheep. I was truly afraid that if a mule missed its footing, it would tumble into a bottomless chasm. Sometimes we met miasmic fog, soaking our clothes and hair. Sometimes rain poured down, forcing us to move with great care along muddy earthen ridges.
Along the way, we also saw the bodies of overseas Chinese who had starved to death beside the road. There were old people with graying hair, children thin as sticks of firewood, and pregnant women whose faces were the color of earth. They had all fled from their second homeland! They were all people who refused to become slaves of a conquered nation! They were all Chinese people who loved their native land! Now they slept forever in these desolate mountains and wilderness. This was the evil done by the Japanese devils! When would this blood debt ever be repaid?
After several days, we reached the bank of a swift-flowing river. The guides would go no farther. They said there was no boat and no way to cross. They led the mules back and left us on the desolate sandbank. Father and Second Uncle looked at the surging, swift water. They could only sigh and had no idea what to do. Everywhere we looked was empty. There were no villages nearby, only the mournful cries of apes. It was almost noon before a few figures appeared on the sandbank. They were all families fleeing disaster. We were all people fallen to the ends of the earth; each knew the hardships within the other’s heart.
Night fell, and a heavy fog rose over the river. Father and Second Uncle found some branches and propped up a bedsheet to make a tent that hardly looked like one, so that we could sleep on the sand. They sat beside the burning campfire and talked. They seemed to say that Xiang Yu, too, had once come to a riverbank and, unable to cross, had killed himself.
When we awoke the next day, we suddenly saw soldiers in yellow uniforms coming out of the mountain forest. They were scattered and undisciplined. We were all startled.
### The Nationalist Army Crosses the River and Lends a Hand
Those straggling soldiers were listless, hungry, and exhausted. Some had scraggly beards; some had eyes crusted with discharge. From the way they spoke, they had accents from Guangdong and Guangxi. Only after Father began talking with them did he learn that they were from the Nationalist Army’s Fifth Army. They had been defeated at Lashio, had broken ranks, and were returning to China. The soldiers had no food, so they killed their warhorses and roasted the meat. When the commanding officer saw that we had small children, he cut off a little horsemeat for us. Father saw that some of the soldiers were only seventeen or eighteen years old. His eyes reddened and hot tears welled up. He boiled a pot of honeysuckle tea for them to drink.
One platoon leader said he could swim. He wanted to swim across the river to test whether it could be forded. Who could have known that before he had gone far, the swift current swept him away? The company commander and several soldiers ran downstream along the river in pursuit, but they never saw the platoon leader again. A true soldier had not died on the battlefield, his body shrouded in horsehide, but instead was buried in the merciless river, his body never to be seen again. Alas.
The company commander ordered the soldiers to go up the mountain and cut bamboo. They bound the bamboo into rafts. First they tried taking the horses across. After that crossing succeeded, they ferried all the soldiers across. But each trip could carry only three or five people. By the time everyone had crossed, dusk had fallen. The company commander saw that we were all compatriots, Chinese people who had suffered hardship and calamity, and allowed us onto a bamboo raft as well.
After crossing the river, the soldiers set off. We had no choice but to climb the mountain in the dark. Feeling our way and scrambling upward, we reached a thatched hut halfway up the mountain. For some reason, it had no owner. Second Uncle saw several jars and pots beside the bamboo wall. He opened them and rummaged through them, and found some beans. Without worrying about anything else, he lit a fire and cooked them. At last, the whole family ate its fill.
The next morning, we again stumbled and staggered along the road. Without the mules, Father and Second Uncle suffered. The luggage was heavy, but they could not bear to throw it away. The sewing machine was the tool by which we could make a living. Even if it killed them from exhaustion, they had to carry it. When we reached the mountaintop, we saw a large stretch of farmland in the distance, with a village and smoke rising from cooking fires. After resting for a while, we saw several local men passing by. Father spoke with them and paid them to carry our things into the village. Father went to find the village head. The village head said this was Shidian County, not far from Baoshan. He let us stay in the City God Temple. Father and Second Uncle again set up the sewing machine and mended clothes for the villagers to earn a little money. We also took the opportunity to rest for two days. After all, Baoshan was not far away, only one day’s journey. Everyone’s heart began to relax.
### Leaving the Sea of Suffering, We Reach Kunming
After finding a guide, we once again set out for Baoshan. From Shidian County to Baoshan County, following the motor road, the journey would take less than one day. But we climbed mountain paths, walking and stopping, and it took us nearly a month.
Baoshan was in the great rear area of the motherland. It was far from Huitong Bridge. Even so, the shadow of war still hung over it. Everywhere in town, people said that on May 4, 1942, Japanese aircraft had bombed the Tengchong Association Hall. This was where Baoshan Overseas Chinese Middle School was located. The students were holding an athletic meet. A bomb fell on the girls’ dormitory, killing or burning to death more than ten male and female students. Another seven or eight were machine-gunned to death on the school grounds. Flesh and blood flew everywhere, and severed limbs hung from the branches. It was too terrible to look at. Another ten or twenty students were wounded. It was an appalling tragedy. Local people and overseas Chinese refugees alike hurried to find vehicles going to Kunming. Father searched for several days and finally found a truck that could take us along. Three days later, after passing through Dali and Chuxiong, we reached Kunming. The driver took us to Dongsi Street, where there was a reception center for overseas Chinese refugees. From then on, we survived in the great rear area of the motherland and began another kind of refugee life.
(Originally published in *Our Stories*, edited by the Los Angeles Burma Chinese High School Alumni Association; published in Macao in 2007.)