The Six-Thousand-Dollar Letter

Miscellaneous

Nov 14

This is my grandmother’s story I’ve been wanting to write since she got Covid last year. We were very lucky that she survived. I call her Popo, which is a nickname for “grandmother” in Mandarin Chinese. She’s 94 years old and the matriarch of our family, the person who has held four daughters, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren together as a tight-knit family for decades.

During the Chinese Civil War between the Communist Party and the Kuomingtang (the Chinese Nationalist Party), she escaped to Taiwan and had to leave most of her family behind. This is her story and the history that’s part of who I am. I’m telling it in the style of Humans of New York to honor her own words (with some edits for translation and clarity), since it just didn’t sound right in the third person.

I had to get out. The communists had occupied my city [Rizhao, Shandong Province, on the coast of China along the Yellow Sea] for two years, and there was a lot of turmoil. They wanted to you to go to meetings. They wanted you to do certain things. If you didn’t do them, they would lock you up. Then the Kuomintang came in, but things weren’t much better. The soldiers on the front lines were lawless. I had a neighbor with only a young woman and her mother-in-law at home. A soldier came into their home, saw the young woman, and started dragging her to the bedroom. The mother-in-law screamed, but the soldier ignored her. Then the mother-in-law started crying at the top of her lungs, over and over. The soldier was afraid one of the neighbors might hear, so he ran away.

We were very afraid when we heard about it. I was twenty years old and unmarried. I had nowhere to go. The young women who had boyfriends or husbands left town, but I had no one to take me. I only had my mother and older brothers, so I hid at home. I had a cousin whose husband was staying in Qingdao [about 80 miles north along the coast]. When the communists came, his grandfather sent him there because their family had a lot of money, and the communists were coming for the rich people. When the Kuomintang took Rizhao, he came with them to bring my cousin back to Qingdao, knowing our city was in chaos. When my cousin was leaving, she asked me if I wanted to come. I immediately said yes. So I went to Qingdao with her.

In Qingdao, I stayed with my cousin’s family for a few days. My mother told me we had relatives in Qingdao, and what their name was. Every time I met someone new, I asked if they knew this family. I found my aunt after a few days. She was my father’s cousin — I call her my aunt. My mother gave me a path, and I found it. My aunt told me to come stay with her. I thought it would only be a few days before I went home. But the communists took over my hometown again, and the Kuomintang retreated. I couldn’t go home. So I kept staying with my aunt. They treated me really well, and I would help out around the house. Their two daughters were really kind to me. I ended up staying for over a year. Then the Kuomintang decided to retreat from Qingdao. They were going to Taiwan. My aunt asked me, “we’re leaving for Taiwan. Do you want to go home? The communists are coming. Do you want to go home, or do you want to come with us?”

What was I supposed to do? I thought about it for a long time. If I went to Taiwan, I didn’t know when I was going home again. I wouldn’t see my mother. My mother still had my two brothers and another sister at home. If I went home, I’d have to get married, then I wouldn’t be with her much longer anyway. So I made a hard choice and went to Taiwan with my aunt.

After I arrived in Taiwan, I looked for other relatives there. I had an older cousin — another aunt’s son. I found my cousin’s family in Taiwan, but they told me he missed home and went back. But his younger brother was there with his daughter, who was a year younger than me and grew up with me. I was so happy to have found them, and we spent a lot of time together. Later, my cousin introduced his co-worker to me, and we got married in Taiwan.

*Popo and my grandfather as a young couple.*

I wanted to go back, but I didn’t know when I’d be able to. The communists had already taken all of China, so what chances did I have? I didn’t dare think about it. After I got married and had kids, it didn’t matter much anymore. I had my family to take care of.

There was no contact for many years [between China and Taiwan]. When your Aunt Judy went to the United States for graduate school, we thought a letter from there would get through. We sent her with $6,000 dollars cash and paid $500 for her plane ticket [in 1979]. She took a letter with her, changed the envelope in the U.S., and mailed it to my family in China. She got a response immediately, but my mother had passed away already. She was 85. Later, they allowed veterans to go back to visit family, and we finally returned. My brothers and sisters were still alive, and I got to see them and their families.