This final excerpt from Ning Lao’s autobiography describes events that took place almost forty years after those recounted in Documents 29.1, 29.2, and 29.3. Much had changed in China in the intervening decades. The Qing had fallen, China had descended into a period of political chaos, and new political forces had emerged to compete for power and control. And, the Japanese had returned, this time bent on total conquest. For Ning Lao’s son and granddaughter, the pain and destructiveness of these developments were balanced by the hope they offered of the birth of a “new China.” Ning Lao, however, saw things differently. For her, the events of the 1930s fit into a pattern that stretched back to the beginnings of Chinese history. As you read this excerpt, ask yourself why Ning Lao saw the Japanese invasion differently than did her son and granddaughter. Why did she see continuity where they saw discontinuity?
My son and my granddaughter Su Teh talked of the Japanese and of the power they were gaining and their desire to take over more of China each year. It is not reasonable for the Japanese to take land that is not theirs. It is not the way of those who understand. It is the way of robbers and of such as should be removed from among mankind. Surely, I said, they will not come into China, into a country that is not theirs, and take what is not theirs. But my son and my granddaughter said that they would come and make us much trouble. Su Teh said that we should think of what we should do when they came, if they came. She said that she would not stay in Peiping if the Japanese became masters. She and many of her friends had decided to leave Peiping if the Japanese came, and go somewhere to work for our country. That was new talk which I did not understand, but my granddaughter is a good girl. Why should she leave this good job to go where people do not know her and where there are none of her own people?
My son read the paper to me each evening. I began to see what Su Teh was talking about. The paper told each day of the Japanese. My son said that each day they came closer and that each day they took more of that which belonged to China. The feeling these actions of the Japanese gave me was like the feeling on board ship — the fear and the uncertainty.
Then silver became of no use. It became waste material. My son said that if anyone bought any silver he would be imprisoned. If silver was taken to the silversmith it could not be used. The smiths had orders to use only one third silver in all ornaments. The old people say that it is no use to think too far ahead. Destiny is determined in ways we do not know. When my granddaughter brought those dollars to me I rang them each one and kept only the best. Now the silver dollar is of no use and pieces of paper have taken their place. That is not according to reason. Silver will always be worth more than paper. Banks come and go. I have my little hoard. I kept two hundred dollars hidden in my room, in case we must fly in the night, and I asked my friend, the teacher of my granddaughter, to put some of my savings, three hundred dollars, into the American bank. In that way I will have some money if the Japanese come and take what we have at home.
The war came nearer. I remembered what my son had read about a little country where the people are all black and have no big guns. And every day the airplanes from a country in Europe went over and dropped bombs on them. The Japanese have come nearer each month and they are more arrogant each day. They ride in big motor cars and, my son says, the decisions made in the city are their decisions.
One year was like the next, except that the children were promoted from one grade to another, and, my son said, the Japanese came closer, taking each year more of the land belonging to China. For people living as we did, there was not much difference. It was only in the talk of my son and my granddaughter that I knew of any difference — and things became more expensive to buy.
Then one day we gave my son his breakfast as usual. It was summer and we had daylight to cook his breakfast. He started to work, but before we could get the breakfast things cleared away he was back again. He said that our soldiers would not let him cross the main street, so he could not get to work. He said the streets were empty, as in the middle of the night, and the soldiers stood guard with long bayonets. We stayed inside our gate and all the people went into their houses and shut their gates. When soldiers fight that is all the people can do. The city was quiet; never have I heard the city so quiet.
Every morning my son went to see if he could cross the main street, and on the third day the soldiers let him cross. They let us cross between sunrise and sunset, and those that brought vegetables from the truck garden outside the city came again, and we had food to eat.
Then the guns began to roar. They roared all day and all night. There was fighting, they said, in the south of the city, in the South Barracks. The stories of the fighting were thick like snow in the winter. We gathered in the side streets in knots and told each other what we had heard, and we were afraid.
We were proud of our people. They told of one boy outside Anting Gate. He had a bloody sword. He had killed eight Japanese with his sword. It was dripping with blood. He waved it over his head and sang a song from the romance of the Three Kingdoms, and fell dead. He was a brave boy. Our men are equal to eight Japanese. But the Japanese have guns and airplanes and we have only swords.
There were refuges coming into the city. In our street a family from a village outside the South City came to some relatives and stayed a few days. They had not much to tell. They had heard the guns roaring and had packed their things and left. They had not seen any Japanese. They heard the firing and ran. My son says there are many refugees in the city, and his master belongs to a committee to feed them. My granddaughter says that they come to the hospital.
We were all frightened but where should we run? We could have run from here, but my son says that it would have been as bad in Shantung. We decided we might as well stay here. We said, “If it is our fate to live we will live, if to die we will die.” No one can escape his fate. When the Japanese shelled P’englai, Old Chang, the dirt cart pusher, took his wife and two children and hid in the cave on the P’englai bluff. He stepped out of the cave. A shell struck him and killed him. His home was not touched. He was one of the two or three to die. We can but go into our house and stay.
A policeman went to the school and told the children not to talk too freely and not to linger on the streets after the classes were over.
The Japanese will not be content until we are like Manchuria. The teacher of my granddaughter says that when they get North China they will try to take South China, and then they will try to eat up America. They want all beneath the heavens.
Only the Son of Heaven could hold such power and he received it from his ancestor Heaven. Only he who held the Mandate of Heaven could have the power. The sign of the power, the token of the mandate, is in the imperial seal.
The Japanese want all that is under heaven that they cannot have. But the great seal is lost. The seal is gone, no one knows where. When the Empress Dowager fled from the foreigners in 1900, at the time of the Boxer trouble, she took it with her but did not bring it back. She lost it, perhaps in the plains of Mongolia. Without the Mandate of Heaven and the seal there can be no power. There is not great Nine Tiger Seal for the Chief General. How can the Japanese capture the earth? I have seen the great seal cases in the Forbidden City, a roomful of boxes, all empty. . . .
The dynasty has gone and there is no new one; the teeth of the dragon have dropped out. Hair, part of the body given us by our ancestors, is cut, even by women.
The old people say that in every life there is bitterness and there is happiness. There is good and there is bad. We say that we cannot bear our troubles but when we get to them we bear them.
The old people tell us that there must be trouble in every life. I had my personal troubles in the early part of my life and now there is peace in my own life but for my daughter. In the land, however, there was peace in my early years. There was peace in the land from the Taiping Rebellion to the present. I was born after the Taiping Rebellion was over. The old people and the young people were still talking of it as I grew up. It was fresh to them, but it has passed. The little wars do not count. There are always little wars on the borders of the land. But now, my son and my granddaughter say, there is a big war in the land and there is trouble for us all.
Perhaps it is a new dynasty come to rule us, but Su Teh does not agree. She says that we must fight, that we must not give in to the Japanese. How can we fight? I do not understand such matters. The Mongols came and conquered us, but we drove them out. The Manchus came and conquered us, but now they are part of us. We cannot now tell the difference between the Manchu and the Chinese.
Perhaps the Mandate of Heaven has passed to the Japanese. No one knows where the great seal is now. Some say that the Japanese got it. If the Japanese got it they will have the Mandate of Heaven and we should listen to them as our new masters.
My granddaughter says no. She says we must resist and not have any masters. She says that the land must be governed by the people of the land. She says that a new China is being born. I do not understand such words. That is new talk. How can people govern a land? Always, there has been a Son of Heaven who is the father and mother of the people. If he is a bad father and mother, the Mandate of Heaven passes from him and a new emperor comes, one whom Heaven has chosen.
My granddaughter helps her friends in the hospital to get supplies to the guerrillas in the hills. She will not tell me about it. She says it is dangerous for me to know. Every day we hear the guns roaring outside the city. Every day we hear the bombs falling and bursting on the hills where the guerrillas have their camps. They tell us that the old temples where the guerrillas stay are being destroyed by the bombs. My granddaughter says that the guerrillas move on to another temple or village, that the Japanese bomb the rocks in the hills and waste their ammunition. But the Japanese must sometimes bomb people also or why should the guerrillas need medical supplies?
My granddaughter tells me that a new China is building, that the guerrillas will work with the people and win the war. I don’t know. It seems better to me that we should not have war and destruction. Our ancestors changed their dress for the Manchu invaders but did not change themselves. We are Chinese and will always be Chinese. They cannot change us. But if we are dead we are dead.
I tell my son to do his work. That is what we Chinese have always done. We work for our families and we live.
Source: Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945), pp. 240–
Questions to Consider