Recollections about Mr. Wang Jing-Wei ( 汪精卫 )

Transcription

1 Recollections about Mr. Wang Jing-Wei ( 汪精卫 ) By William Wei-Liang Chu ( 朱维亮 ), June, 2013 My recollections are based on personal encounters with Mr. Wang Jing-Wei in the period of when I was years old. That such events took place was due to the long, comradeship between him and my father, Chu Pei-De ( 朱培德 ), as devoted followers of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and senior members of the Nationalist Party ( Guomindang ). After my father died in February, 1937, the government of China established a commission for building his grave and memorial monument in Nanjing. The monument was to include a large stele memorializing his life, deeds and services to the nation. According to custom, I, the eldest son, was to formally present the request to the person our family wished to invite for the task of composing the stele s text. Mr. Wang was the obvious choice because of his deep knowledge about my father, their mutual respect and the elegance of his classic-styled writing. I was to present the invitation at his house on a day in early June. Arriving shortly before the appointed time while Mr. Wang was on his way home, I waited in the parlor with some trepidation for my first encounter with the famous man. Soon I heard him at the front door; when told where I was, Mr. Wang, without stopping, immediately came to greet me. Again according to custom, a son of the deceased, during the one-year mourning period, would kneel and bow down when greeting an elder person on formal occasions. I did so when Mr. Wang entered the room extending his hand for a handshake. To my great surprise and shock, he immediately went down on his knees next to me to return my gesture of homage, while saying Please rise; please rise. Confused, and totally inappropriately, I rose while he was still on the floor! With the help of his butler, we managed to get him up moments later. He graciously accepted the invitation, thanked my family for asking him to do the task, and said that he would try to have the first draft done in about a month. Speaking to me as if I was an adult equal, he enquired about the well-being of my family, particularly that of my grandmother and mother. A few weeks later, the war with Japan started. The Memorial project was shelved for the duration of the war, and I had always assumed that Mr. Wang could not have any time to deal with it during those desperate days before the war broke out. The next encounters took place during the fall and winter of My family had evacuated from Nanjing in the summer of 1937, sojourned in Hong Kong and moved onto Kunming in early Enrolled in the city s top high school, I found its scholastic standards grossly wanting and began searching for alternatives. One day in early September Mrs. Wang (Chen Bi-Jun 陈璧君 ) was in Kunming and stopped by to visit my mother. The Wangs had moved with the national government to Chongqing, China s war-time capital, living in a large rented house on the Institute-of-Art Avenue. On hearing of my search, she advised strongly that I applied for admission to the Nan-Yu ( 南渝 ) Academy near Chongqing (formerly the famous Nan- 1

2 Kai Academy of Tianjin), and assured my mother that, while in Chongqing, I would live with the Wangs and be cared for like a member of her own family. I flew to Chongqing a few days later. Arriving in late afternoon, I was brought by the Wangs family car to the house where Mrs. Wang had set me up to share a bedroom with Mr. Zeng Zhong-Ming ( 曾仲铭 ), Mr. Wang s life-long devotee-friend and executive aide. It was a large twin bedroom on the second floor near the main stairway. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wang were on their way home at the time. As they entered the front door, on hearing that I had arrived and was in the bedroom, Mr. Wang immediately came upstairs to greet me. We shook hands this time. Speaking to me as if I were a family member, he was solicitous and wanted to be sure that I was comfortable with the room arrangement, noting that since Mrs. Zeng had chosen to live in Hongkong, Mr. Zeng would be away on most week ends. Within a week, I was admitted to the Academy and moved into its dormitory. Mrs. Wang would send the family car to bring me to the house each weekend. Lunches and dinners were served daily at two large round tables for the family and aides who lived in the house. Being diabetic, Mr. Wang was home nearly every day for both meals. I was always seated at the same table with him. Conversations flowed, often led by him on national events of the day from his vantage point. During October, the war went badly for China. Important strategic cities were lost. The national government s armies suffered severely. Bombing of Chongqing had begun. On the other hand, according to Mr. Wang, the Japanese casualties were estimated to be about 200-thousand, a very high price which they could ill afford. One Sunday in early November, he came home later than usual for lunch after a long meeting of the Guomindang s Political Standing Committee ( PSC ), China s highest governing organ of which Mr. Wang was the vice chairman. He appeared distraught and apologized for keeping us waiting. During lunch, he drifted into a short monologue reflecting on his view of war and peace. Essentially, he noted that all wars between two states, even if conducted off-and-on for a hundred years, sooner or later ended in Peace of some sort --- by clear defeat of one, by sheer exhaustion of both and falling into a stalemate, or by reaching acceptable terms of peace. With sign of frustration, he added: This war is severely wounding both countries, especially on a massive scale for our side. I can t understand why Mr. Jiang (the Generalissimo and chairman of the PSC) and some of my colleagues would reject the idea of searching for a peaceful solution as already clearly articulated by our Party early this year, and just insist on fighting even when the enemy has sent out feelers for peace. At the time, I did not appreciate the significance of what Mr. Wang said on events that were to follow in the next few months and eventually on his historical legacy. Bombing of Chongqing was intensified during that November. At the school, we spent more time dispersed in nearby farm fields than in the classrooms because of air raids. Kunming was also subject to escalation of bombing; my mother had moved the family in mid-november to Hanoi in the then French-Indochina for safe haven. One evening in early December, one of Mrs. Wang s relatives who was on Nan-Yu s administrative staff came to the dormitory; quietly he asked me to walk with him to a car waiting by the darkened athletic field. He told me that the Wangs were evacuating their 2

3 family and that I was to go into the city right then with the car in order to leave Chongqing with them early next day. He would pack and send me my belongings later. At the Wangs house Mrs. Wang apologized for the suddenness of the evacuation which she thought was best for me and her own children, given that destruction of Chongqing was to be the next objective of the Japanese military. We flew out next morning to Kunming. While the Wang children went into the city, I changed to a commercial Eurasia flight for Hanoi in the afternoon. (My belongings did arrive in Hanoi a few weeks later.) When my mother began the process for moving to Hanoi, the Foreign Ministry notified the Chinese Consul General there to provide all local assistance needed by the family. An officer of the Consulate, Mr. Zeng San-Tai ( 曾三泰 ) was assigned the task. A spacious house with modern facilities in the high-end residential area was leased; the family settled in quite comfortably. Mr. Zeng, a well-cultured man in his forties, became a friend of the family. He visited with us often and sometimes stayed for dinner. About a week after my arrival, while we were sitting down for dinner, a car pulled up at the front gate and soon the doorbell rang. To my total surprise, I found one of Mrs. Wang s nephews at the door smilingly gesturing for me to go to the limousine waiting at curbside. When the car s rear door opened, I was helped into the cabin and came face to face with Mr. and Mrs. Wang in the back seat! The car immediately pulled off. While quietly cruising in the deserted streets, Mr. Wang first apologized for their sudden, unannounced arrival, and then told me that they were on a top-secret mission to come South to find ways, probably with help from Britain and/or France, for achieving a just peace with Japan. He added that, because of the secrecy of the mission, they could not use any commercial facility during their short stay, and hoped that we could accommodate them for the first few days without too much inconvenience. Without hesitation, I assured them that we certainly could and would. After exchanging greetings with my mother, Mrs. Wang immediately noticed with alarm the presence of Mr. Zeng. On learning that he was from the Consulate, she impressed upon him of the absolute secrecy of Mr. Wang s mission and that their arrival in Hanoi was not to be revealed to any one outside the Chu family. Visibly shocked, Mr. Zeng nodded in response. The Wangs were put up in my mother s main bedroom suite and stayed with us for the next four days. The entire household was fully engaged in making them comfortable. As I understood, Mr. Wang s aides were dispersed in local hostelries at the time. They soon arranged to lease an entire summer-only resort hotel atop a wooded hill in the Tu-San area, less than an hour s drive from Hanoi. About a week after their move to the hotel, just before Christmas, Mr. Zeng (Zhong-Ming) came in a car to invite me to visit with Mr. Wang at the resort. It so happened that Mr. Wang slipped and fell on the freshly polished floor and badly twisted an ankle just a day ago. Bandaged and bedridden, he appeared to be still in pain when I arrived. Momentarily brightening up, he complained aloud but jovially, as if talking to a friend, about the accident, using a common Chinese phrase to describe it as an unexpected and undeserved disaster ( 无妄之灾 ), and blamed himself for being so clumsy. At the time, he was propped up on the bed with large pillows; a breakfast tray table, covered with writing instruments and 3

4 papers, was placed over his legs. He invited me to sit at the end of the bed while handing me several pages of documents for me to read. They were hand-written by him with a number of corrections or changes, obviously the edited original draft. It turned out to be the famous Telegraphic Message of the 29 th ( 艳电 ) --- an open letter addressed to Mr. Jiang and the PSC members on the need to seek a justifiable peace according to the principles set forth by Guomindang s Central Council earlier that year and those offered by Japan s Prime Minister, Prince Konoye, just a couple of days ago. (The Message was eventually published by Mr. Wang s newspaper in Hongkong on December 29 th, the day after Mr. Jiang announced in Chongqing his rejection of Konoye s offer for working towards a negotiated peace.) Immediately sensing the significance of the message, I slowed down in reading it trying to capture the full meaning of its content. Finally, after more than 10 minutes, I raised my head, nearly breathless. Mr. Wang then said that the message s targets included the people of China, and asked: Did I state my case clearly and unambiguously? I said Yes, very clearly. To be sure that I had responded to his question fully, I added what I thought to be the essential elements of his message. He seemed relieved and thanked me for going through it. He then went into a short discourse, as if thinking aloud, on the vicissitudes and great difficulties such negotiations, if conducted, would have to endure, and on the need for forbearance and pursuing it in successive stages as emphasized in his message. I was invited to join a small group of people already gathering for dinner downstairs, and surprised to find Mr. Chen Gong-Bo ( 陈公博 ) seated at one end of a long table. On his left were Mr. Zhou Fo-Hai ( 周佛海 ) and Mr. Zeng Zhong-Ming. I sat next to Mr. Chen on his right with Mrs. Wang. Standing at the time at the other end, to my shocking surprise, was Mr. Tao Xi-Sheng ( 陶希圣 )! The first three were for many years Mr. Wang s close friends, lead intellectuals of Mr. Wang s wing of the Guomindang, ministerial officers during Mr. Wang s premiership of the national government in the early 1930s. On the other hand, Mr. Tao, the famed scholar on China s Social History, had in recent years been one of the Generalissimo s closest brain trusts and a loyal personal aide. Mr. Tao, with a clarion voice, was at the moment discoursing on Mr. Jiang s personal inadequacies in leading the nation, describing him as a man suffering from self-inflicted tormenting craze! Such remarks met stone-faced responses from the others at the table. As conversations began to pick up sporadically, touching on their individual Exit from Chongqing and the hoped-for negotiations ahead, I could not help but noticed, at close range, Mr. Chen s darkened countenance palpably exuding a sense of sadness and gloom. He ate and spoke little during dinner. I bade Good Bye to Mr. and Mrs. Wang soon after dinner. That was the last time I ever saw or heard from them. 4

5 Postscripts: The attempted assassination of Mr. Wang by agents from Chongqing took place in the spring of 1939 when I was attending the Ling-Nang ( 岭南 ) High School in Hongkong. When I returned to Hanoi for the summer vacation, my mother told me about an event of early that year which she learned from a friend in Chongqing at the time. It appeared that the government had sent a well-respected Party member to visit Mr. Wang in Hanoi at his rented residence, soon after publication of the Open Letter, trying to persuade him to take time off in Europe --- presumably to continue recovery from the bullet wound inflicted by a wanton assassin in late and to proffer a fund of several hundred thousand dollars (Chinesecurrency) as the first installment of subsidy for his travel expenses. Mr. Wang turned down the offer at the meeting, saying in effect that he had the duty of continuing to persuade Chongqing towards achieving a justifiable peace for the people of China. The failed assassination by Chongqing agents took place jut a few weeks later. In the summer of 1940 when my family began moving to Shanghai to seek a better educational environment for the children, I heard Mr. Zeng San-Tai describing the scene of Mr. Wang s departure earlier that year from Hanoi to Shanghai, as observed by another Consulate officer with binoculars at some distance from the boat anchored at the Haiphong harbor. He said: When Mr. Wang reached the gang-plank for the boat, he stopped, stood still and began crying aloud. Then Mrs. Wang came alongside and walked him onto the boat. 5