Transportation was the lifeblood of commerce and war, while food and energy fueled both. The only difference between war and commerce was that the latter is bloodless.
With the gas gone, the Army’s movement was limited. General Li’s escape strategy had been decided for him: the trucks would go as far as the gas in their fuel tanks would take them. The contents of the Bank would have first priority. Ammunition and rice occupied the rest of the trucks. The men would carry food supplies and ammunition on their backs, haul it wagons, push in wheelbarrows and otherwise use whatever means possible to keep themselves alive and in fighting shape. There just wasn’t enough trucks to carry everything, including the soldiers.
To minimize the Army’s exposure to Japanese air attacks, the soldiers would march in three columns each taking a different route. They would converge at the new headquarters roughly three hundred miles inland.
The General with his wife and two young daughters would ride in his black Buick. Immediately following the Buick would be the trucks loaded with the Bank’s assets and secret Government files. Jee-ing would ride in the truck holding those sensitive files. Her son, Bo, would be carried by two soldiers on a bamboo sedan chair.
“Remember,” Jee-ing said, “you are the youngest soldier in the Army! We won’t be separated for long. Just a few weeks, at most. Mother will be waiting for you.”
Bo nodded solemnly. “What happened to the old man, Ma?”
“They shot him,” she said simply.
General Li requisitioned an entire town and relocated its citizens to neighboring villages. His military subordinates and supporting civilian bureaucrats established offices and living quarters in the vacated town. When the body of his massive Army arrived, he ordered his men to take over the surrounding countryside. The army would need farmland to grow food. The peasants who owned and worked these farms were told to find work elsewhere. The soldiers would farm the land. (During the war, millions of peasants were displaced in this way. Many joined Mao and the Communists.)
That summer, the weak and the frail died from starvation.
The war was not going well for the General. Tax revenues were down substantially because the Japanese occupied the most productive coastal regions. To supplement their incomes, the Bureaucrats resorted to demanding bribes. While greasing the palm of a Chinese bureaucrat had been a way of life since the earliest Dynastic days, the modern bureaucrat was not as discreet nor courteous. The transitory nature of modern warfare had changed the game. The General and his staff had no prior relationships with the local populace, nor did they think that they would be around long enough to develop one. Hence, these demands from strangers came across as harsh and heartless to the locals during these difficult times.
Local politicians, wealthy merchants and influential landowners complained, but their voices went unheard. Only Jee-ing took the time to read their letters and entreaties. The rampant corruption among her co-workers at headquarters disturbed her greatly even though bribery (like tipping) was a cultural thing. What offended her was that they did not even bother to hide it. And why should they? The General himself was knee deep in it. Perhaps the only real secret the General kept from his staff was the two numbered Swiss bank accounts. Even Jee-ing wouldn’t have known about them had it not been for her accidental viewing. Once seen, it had not been difficult for her to figure out who owned them and how the gold had been transported to Switzerland.
After much diligent research and many discreet inquiries, Jee-ing decided to act. She contacted the most influential and powerful locals and met with them individually. Those who expressed a willingness to testify to the General’s malfeasance, which all were willing to do, were invited to a secret summit meeting. There, the group drafted a letter to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. This letter outlined all the grievances experienced by the people of the region as well as the fact that the Governor-General had been smuggling gold bullion out of China via the ancient silk route through local agents and intermediaries. The letter was not signed by any individual but by a group known as “Patriots of Modern China.”
While the letter did not accuse the Generalissimo of any malfeasance, it did make clear that the group knew about the gold in the Swiss Bank. They figured that the Generalissimo could not take the chance of being implicated in such a scandal. After all, there was a paper trail that led to one of his most trusted subordinates.
A few short weeks later, the atmosphere at General Li’s Headquarters suddenly turned subdued and sullen. They had been ordered to concentrate on the war effort rather than practice the squeeze on the local populace.
After the Japanese surrendered, the Generalissimo suggested that his friend take some time off to travel the world. His assignment was to learn the ways of the western world. And, upon Li’s return, he had been promised a new job. One that would be commensurate with his new-found knowledge of western culture.
In May of 1946, General Li, his wife, two daughters and a Nanny boarded a steamship for Europe. One of the first places they visited was Switzerland.
In the summer of 1945, Jee-ing took Bo to Chungking where General Joseph Stilwell had his headquarters. Stilwell had long been recalled to Washington. One of the reasons for his recall was his vocal and persistent dislike for the Generalissimo. America could not afford to alienate an ally fighting against their mutual enemy, the Japanese. It was more expedient to recall Stilwell than to insult Chiang Kai-shek.
Her job done, Jee-ing hired a small river junk to return to Shanghai. Once again, she and her son changed into peasant’s clothing. The junk owner had warned her about the lawlessness on the Yangtze River. The trip down river from Chungking to Shanghai not only entailed riding the turbulent rapids, but also dodging pirates on the water and avoiding bandits who lined the river banks. Law and order had completely disappeared. The Communists under Mao were moving in on Chiang’s Nationalist Army. Chaos ruled.
Back home in Shanghai, Jee-ing warned her father about the Communists. In particular she had recounted the way Chiang’s Armies had treated the peasants. It had not been lost on her that most of Chiang’s conscripted Army came from peasant families. Clearly, their loyalties were divided. (As the Civil War progressed, hundreds of thousands of Chiang’s soldiers defected en mass to Mao’s peasant revolution.)
Jee-ing encouraged her father to sell his land holdings in Shanghai before the Communists took control. Car-lo refused. The land was not his to sell. He believed that it belonged to his father.
In May of 1947, Jee-ing and her son reunited with KP, her husband, in New York. A year later, the Li family arrived in New York after a two-year trip around the world. They never returned to China.
Mao took China in 1949. Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island of Taiwan.
The Communists let Car-lo Sun live because he had voluntarily given his family’s properties to the people. Additionally, the new government allowed Car-lo to continue to run his railroad. When he retired, they gave him a pension. Car-lo did not live long enough to see the Modernization of his country.
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