Chapter 1

On July 1, 1927, the same day that I was born in Chongqing in the southcentral Sichuan province, the Chinese Communist Party and Red Army were founded, and civil war brokeout in my homeland. Seventy years later, also on July 1, Hong Kong was peacefully returned to China after 156 years of occupation. I am not a fatalist, yet these were all very interesting coincidences. Looking back, it seems that a life full of setbacks and misfortunes was my destiny from the very day I was called down to earth. I have endured many trials and tribulations, very much like China has experienced throughout this century.

I have watched China evolve from a Middle Kingdom into a vital force in the Modern World.

First, a glimpse of the chaotic world into which I was
born. It began on February 12, 1912, when the last Emperor
Henry Pu Yi abdicated China’s throne, ending over 3,500 years
of Emperial rule. The revolution which brought this end and a
new beginning, elected Dr. Sun Yat-sen to be their leader. He
was the American educated father of China’s transition into the
modern world, and became the Provisional President of the
Chinese Republic Party in December of 1911. Only two months
later, Dr. Sun was forced to surrender power to General Yuan
Shik-Kai, the one behind the threatening negotiations for the
Emperor’s abdication.

In 1913, when Yuan’s dictatorial policies became
unbearable, so the powerful governor of Jiangxi province, Li
Liejun, organized a military revolt against him. Fighting with
Liejun in an attempt to right China’s course, was my uncle
Chen, my father, and several other members of my family.
Their first effort to defeat President Yuan failed and only made
him tighten his hold on the country. This resulted in the forced
exile of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his political allies throughout
China. President Yuan then began to enact his plan to become
the new Emperor of China.

My uncle Chen had been the General Chief of Staff for
Li Liejun, joining in the alliance with Dr. Sun. When Yuan
ordered the arrest of Li Liejun and all of his staff, my uncle and
father had no choice but to go into exile. They first fled to
Japan and later into Southeast Asia, where they could easily
cross back over the border into China at the right time.
In 1915, it was finally safe for them to return. As soon as
they crossed back into China, they joined forces with General
Cai E who had just secured Yunnan Province’s independence
from Yuan in southern China. They soon found themselves
marching north to confront Yuan to stop him before his
ceremonial enthronement as the self-proclaimed new Emperor
of China. But fortunately, my father and the alliance were
successful this time in their effort to defeat Yuan’s army. Soon
thereafter Yuan died, and my father was rewarded and sent to
the Guangzhou Military Academy.
~~~
My father, Wu Xishan, graduated from the academy with
honors, but he left the Army soon after he married my mother.
My mother, Zhang Yunhe, was a graduate of the Chengdu
Woman Teachers’ School, but after marrying my father, she
was obliged to stay at home and be with him. They quickly
decided to join my uncle and many other members of my
family in the movie business. This is one of my earliest
memories in life, when my family moved from Chongqing to
Shanghai to begin work in the family movie business.
My parents were great lovers of Beijing Opera, and they
also sang very well themselves. At our home in Shanghai, they
often held small performances for friends. I quickly became
familiar with the classical melodies and was soon able to sing
along with some of them myself. This gift of singing positively
affected my life in many unexpected ways for years to come.
I have two younger sisters named Ying and May, and we
were all born one year after the other. May was the youngest,
very pretty, yet she was always melancholy because she was
treated practically like a slave girl by mother. You could
usually find May in the kitchen, and I remember that by age
eight she was already doing most of the housework. Whenever
we were shopping with our parents, singing in front of guests, or
watching a movie, it was only Ying and me. I once overheard
my mother talking with her friends about May, saying that she
had once badly bitten and hurt my mother while nursing. In her
old superstitious Chinese way, this made my mother think that
May had only come to this world to bring her bad luck and pain.
What a terrible superstition and how much May had suffered
from it! However, against all odds, May also became an
excellent singer and won many prizes in competitions for her
marvelous voice.

In those days, Shanghai was virtually a semi-colony. It
seemed as if everywhere we turned in that great city there were
areas that had been taken over by various foreign governments.
All the people of Shanghai were very resentful of those
intruders and regarded them as plunderers. “Like greedy wolves,
if you give them a lamb, they would take the whole flock!”
Traditionally, this is the perception Chinese people have toward
foreigners.

When still only a child in Shanghai, I quickly learned
the concept of an enemy. Throughout my childhood, we were in
constant fear from external aggression by the Japanese. In 1931,
inflamed by Japan’s occupation of Manchuria, China’s great
northeastern territory, the people garrisoned Shanghai and
fought back. We first boycotted and then burned all Japanese
goods and businesses to show support for our defending troops.
The commander of the 19th Route Army in the north was
General Cai Tingkai, one of my father’s classmates from the
Guangzhou Military Academy. Our soldiers in Manchuria had
fought very bravely, even though their weapons were vastly
inferior to those of the Japanese. In his effort to defend our
country, my father helped in the logistical support for General
Cai’s subsequent defense of Shanghai.

On January 28, 1932, just four months after Manchuria’s
fall to the Japanese, they invaded Shanghai in an effort to force
the Chinese government to break the people’s boycott of
Japanese goods. This invasion has become known in China as
the Battle of Shanghai. In the early days of the Battle of
Shanghai, most of the fighting took place beyond the leased
territories surrounding the northern and eastern parts of the city.
However, we also often heard rumbles of canon fire in the
French territory in the western sector of the city.
During those days of battle in Shanghai, my parents and
their friends would have great celebrations at our home
whenever there was any news of victory. My parents had hung a
portrait of General Ma Zhanshan over the fireplace in the main
room of our house. He was the man who successfully led the
Northeast Volunteers in the battle against the Japanese invaders
in Manchuria. On those nights, everyone would be drinking and
hailing each and every word of good news from the battlefront,
while also singing the songs of resistance against the Japanese
aggression. I can still remember the first song I ever learned to
sing when I was only four years old:

Unreasonable the Japanese,
Killed my compatriots and seized my land!
Hurry up troops, defeat the Japanese!
Give vent to our hatred!
Let it be free, let it be free!
Give vent to this hatred!

In those formative years, I was taught that the Japanese
were the world’s number one savages and a ruthless enemy. All
of this anger and hatred was taught to me when I was still little
more than a baby. Even I celebrated when the Chinese 19th
Army, with only thirty thousand troops, finally defeated the
Japanese invaders with their one hundred thousand well-armed
troops in a bitter three-month battle.

Soon after that victory, I started attending the state-run
Bide Primary School. I enjoyed school very much and in my
first years of education, studied diligently and always received
very good marks. However, because I was so impulsive and
eager to excel, I often found myself in trouble. They would
discipline trouble makers by putting them into a pitch-dark
room, and to this day I can still remember the look of mock
terror in the school authorities eyes as they tried to control our
behavior by playing upon our fear of ghosts. The first time I was
given this “honorable invitation,” I was very nervous and
frightened. I was horrified because those who had previously
come out of this mysterious dark room, always told of a scary
ghost or a ferocious tiger they had seen while trapped in their
solitary confinement. However, each time I was pushed into
the room, I quietly looked and waited. Always there was
nothing. No ghost! No tiger! Only the pitch-dark. This was but
the first time in a long life of persecution that the punishment
failed to achieve its desired effect on me. I just learned early on
that surviving punishment is a state-of-mind, no matter what the
circumstances in which one is placed. I soon found out that the
Chinese had many other ways of punishing a young boy.
~~~
My later childhood years were naturally filled with a
normal curiosity of girls. In Shanghai, we were living in an
apartment building and our neighbors above us had a girl about
my age. Her name was Shiao Mao, and we quickly became
friends. When I was not with her, I discovered that I missed her
terribly. She had become my best friend and I wanted to be with
her all of the time, and I would often wait for her to come down
the stairs so we could play in the street or in the courtyard. One
day while we were playing together, her sixteen-year-old
brother came up to us and told me not to play with his sister
anymore. He told me that because I was a boy, it was forbidden.
He forced me to bow down, and then he swung his leg over my
head. This gesture was considered a deliberate act of
humiliation—an act that was unmistakable to any young
Chinese. I was so insulted that I picked up a stone and threw it
at him, for I knew that I was much too young to match his
physical strength. It hit him in the face with great force and
when I saw that I had bloodied him above his left eye, I ran
with all my might to my mother’s side.

Also, when I was about six I gained an understanding of
secrecy. At that time I went with my parents and their friends
to Lushan mountain for a wonderful summer holiday. I didn’t
know why, but one day everyone went out on a walk and left
me alone in the house with a young girl my age. While playing,
we both felt a strong curiosity about our physical differences. To
satisfy that curiosity, we each promised to let the other see us
in the nude. This early natural curiosity about the opposite sex’s
differences ended indifferently, as I remember that my first
impressions were definitely not of sexual attraction and we
understood, even then, that we could share our natural curiosity
with one another only when the adults were not in the house.
It’s amazing how quickly we learn about the need for personal
privacy, and respect for others around you.

In 1935, when I was eight, I also learned that life is not
always pleasant and is often fraught with unwelcomed changes.
Sadly, my mother was assaulted in our home and all her cash
and jewelry were stolen. It was very unfortunate that father was
away from our house at that terrible moment. Soon after, to
escape the ever growing chaos in Shanghai, we left that great
city and moved by ship up the Yangtze River to Wanxian, a
major city in Sichuan Province. The city is located on the
middle reaches of the Changjiang River in Southcentral China.
There used to be a well-known clock tower in Wanxian near the
entrance of the city’s West Hill Park, which was located on the
top of a hill in a beautiful quarter of the city. From the hilltop,
you can look back down over the river and see the approaching
ships. As our crowded ship came around the final bend in the
river, we cheered when we spotted the clock tower overlooking
the city. It was like Big Ben in London, but this tower was
smaller and its chimes couldn’t be heard in all parts of the city.
Soon after we docked, everyone was startled to hear cannon fire
and we quickly learned that unlike battle-torn Shanghai, the
people of Wanxian still fired a cannon at exactly noon each
day for everyone to set their watches by.

Early each morning we observed people exercising in the
park. They would run, play ball, shadow box, and even shoot
arrows. It wasn’t long before my mother regularly went to the
park to practice shadow boxing and to get an aerobic workout.
Unfortunately, one dreary and chilly morning, she wore only a
thin silk dress and she caught a cold that eventually developed
into bronchial pneumonia. From that moment on, she frequently
suffered pulmonary congestion, and in critical times it took all
of her strength to simply breathe. Our neighbor, Mrs. Shen, was
an opium addict and first gave that drug to my mother to ease
the pain when she suffered from attacks. The opium provided
temporary relief, but soon became a destructive habit much
worse than the illness it was intended to relieve.

I clearly remember the fear I felt as I watched my mother
become thinner and weaker by the day because of the opium. I
witnessed the addiction ruin her body, and also eventually
destroy her spirit. The only thing I could do when she suffered
badly from her illness was to kneel beside her, close my eyes,
and recite a prayer to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, Guan
Yin.

My mother’s opium supplier, Mrs. Shen, was a vicious,
cruel and wicked-evil creature. My blood turned cold whenever
I saw the way she treated her fourteen year old servant girl. In
those days, many girls were sold by their impoverished parents
to serve as house servants, concubines, or even as slave-girls.
They had no real civil rights other than those granted by their
masters, and when they were treated poorly, some found the
courage to run. But of course, when they were caught, it often
made matters much worse at home with their master. I once
saw Mrs. Shen bind her helpless slave-girl to a pillar and then
place burning tongs to the girl’s lips. This cruel torture was
simply because of something the girl had said. I was
overwhelmed by what I saw, and even at the tender age of eight

I wanted revenge against that poisonous snake of a woman. I
must admit that many years later, when I returned from
America with a souvenir revolver, I searched everywhere for
that black-hearted woman. Fortunately, she was already dead.
More so than today, many people used to be very
superstitious, and I often had first-hand experiences of this tired
old traditional reality of historic Chinese culture. One day,
when I was about nine, someone approached me on the street
and asked for some of my urine. Not knowing what he was
going to do with it, I gave him some in a jar, and to my surprise
he drank it right there in front of me. He told me that according
to ancient tradition, the urine of a tender boy under the age of
ten was the cure for a particular disease he had. It was believed
that the pure virgin innocence of such young boys, known as
Tongzi, carried a virtuous-curative in their urine. I don’t know if
my medicine worked or not, but at least it gave him hope.

Another time, not long after, a married couple having
difficulty conceiving a child decorated me with red silk ribbons.
Again, I was the virgin boy, but this time I was carried to the
childless couple’s home in a two-man sedan chair while holding
a melon tightly in my arms. When we finally arrived at their
home, I was immediately seated on the couple’s bed with the
melon still in my arms. I guess it was to give them good luck,
but soon my charm wore thin and I was ready to go home.
Unfortunately, my virtuous qualities couldn’t equal the
supreme-being because the wife never became pregnant.

One day, I had yet another even more bizarre encounter
with superstition. My father had invited some of his friends to
our home for dinner. During the meal, one of them explained
that his company’s office had been robbed. Another guest, who I
remember as being fat, dark-skinned and about fifty, said he
knew a magic incantation that would reveal the robber’s
identity to them. He needed the help of a young boy about ten
years old and, once again, I was the obvious candidate. He
asked me to put my head into the large loose sleeve of his robe,
and then he muttered a charm over me and commanded,
“Now, you are going to reveal the place where the robber lives.
Tell us where to go. Lead us to his home.” I looked and looked
but I could see nothing more than the pitch-dark of his sleeve.
Not wanting to disappoint everyone, after a few moments of
nervous thinking I answered, “Yes, the street where the robber
lives looks like the bookstores on the second lane of Xinglong
Street.”

The guests were overjoyed with the prospect of capturing
the robber and I immediately realized that I was stuck in this
lie until its bitter end. They immediately whisked me off to
Xinglong Street and asked me to point out the robber’s house. I
felt like an ant on a hot frying pan. I looked this way and that
until my desperation prodded me almost to my wits end. To the
fat man’s constant urging, I finally answered quietly and with as
much sincerity as I could muster, “The picture in your sleeve
was not very clear. In there all the houses looked so much alike.
I just cannot tell which is the right one.” Finally, very
disappointed, they took me home. When our guests eventually
left, their faith in this old superstition was very much deflated. I
was always sure that the fat “magician” knew exactly what I
had done, and for years I dreaded seeing him when he came to
our house.
~~~
Unlike most other Chinese boys my age, I was not very
well behaved in school. During our brief ten minute breaks
throughout the day, I would play to my heart’s content and often
returned to class out of breath and with my face covered in dirt.
On occasion, in my enthusiasm, I would accidentally knock
over chairs and a few times clumsily break windows. The
punishment for me was no longer the ghost room used by my
teachers back in Shanghai. It was now physical and very
real—my palms would be beaten with a bamboo stick similar to
a large ruler. The stick was made from a special kind of
bamboo called Nan, which was the largest and strongest of all
the species of bamboo. Our teacher would cut it into a stick
about one inch wide, a quarter inch thick, and about three feet
long. It was flat and hard. Sometimes fearing that awful pain, I
would shrink my hands back quickly so my teacher would miss.
This only made him more angry and the next stroke was even
more severe. At first my heart ached in disgrace, but then the
pain in my swollen palms would be worse. Sometimes the
teacher pulled back the bamboo abruptly when striking my
hands, cutting into my palms. After the punishment I would hold
my bloodied palms upright and my classmates would quickly
place an ice-cold ink slab on my open wounds. This was a
simple pain relief remedy discovered by many boys before me.
I never intended to be confrontational, but one day I
returned home from school with a bruise on my forehead that I
received in a fist-fight. I instinctively pulled the brim of my cap
down over my eyes before entering the house, but my father
immediately sensed something suspicious. It must have been
obvious, because he ordered me to approach him and remove
the cap. In embarrassment, I looked silently down at the floor
before receiving a punishing slap to my head. Another time,
however, I punished myself without the help of my parents or
any other adults. I wanted to know what parachuting felt like, so
I jumped from our second floor balcony with only a large
umbrella. Naturally, the umbrella turned inside out and I
crashed down to the ground. I only sprained my ankle, but my
parents made me stay in bed for almost a week. Fortunately for
me I had only chosen the second floor balcony, because the
third was significantly higher.

When I was ten and in primary school, it was easy for me
and my grades always placed me at the top of my class. Fellow
students would congratulate me and asked for my help on their
lessons. Sometimes they would even beg me to secretly pass
answers to them during tests. My parents and their friends would
also praise me at home. Some of those friends even asked me
to become their adopted son. Swelling with pride and feeling
superior to my classmates, I began to disregarded my classes
and homework. I chose to play and do whatever I pleased all
day long as though I did not have to work for my success. Sure
enough, when that school year was over and I received my
grades, I was quite surprised. I had fallen from first to twentieth
in my class, and I immediately realized that I would have to
tell my father. As he had gotten older, my father developed
quite a bad temper and didn’t hesitate to beat me. As hard as I
tried to avoid it, there was no way to keep my grades a secret
from him.

I braced myself, and then handed him my report card as
soon as I entered the house. I waited with my head bent low for
whatever punishment I deserved. Though he trembled with rage,
to my surprise, this time he didn’t beat me. He verbally scolded
me for nearly ten minutes however, and I never complained
even to myself about this lecture. I was now old enough to know
that I deserved it. I quickly made up my mind that when the
new school year began, I would again be the top student in my
class. The words of wisdom I received from my father for failing
to always do my best, left an impression on me that remains to
this day.
~~~
During 1936, the Japanese imperialists still vainly
attempted to swallow up all of China in their growing empire.
The annexation of Manchuria in 1931 had only stimulated their
unappeasable appetite. They often provoked us in the northeast
and arbitrarily created the “Autonomous Five Northern
Provinces.” These Provinces extended their control politically,
economically, and militarily over an extensive area in northern
China—far beyond their original grab into Manchuria. By now,
our Chinese government, weakened by civil war with the
Communists, unexplainably persisted in a non-resistance policy
and brutally opposed those patriotic Chinese that wanted to
fight back against the Japanese invaders. The Chinese people
felt humiliated and would tolerate no further retreat, and it was
from this anger that the world’s attention was suddenly captured
by the Xi’an Incident on December 12, 1936.

On that date, the commanders of the Northeast and the
Northwest Armies, Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang
Hucheng, staged a coup d’etat and arrested the President of
China, Chiang Kai-shek, in Xi’an City. They demanded an end
to civil war and the creation of a united front of resistance
against the Japanese invaders. Without publicly acknowledging
it, Chiang’s government had no choice but to accede, and a
united front against Japan was finally formed by the
Kuomintang and the Communist Party.

When our teacher Mr. Yan rushed into our classroom with
this exciting news, tears were rolling down his face as he cried,
“My dear boys and girls, the day we have been longing for has
finally arrived! We are now going to fight the Japanese
aggressors!” My heart was deeply moved as this reserved young
teacher so emotionally expressed the feelings held by every
Chinese. The walls of our classroom were already covered with
anti-Japanese posters, and messages on two of them were
burned deeply into my memory. One was of a map of China,
with the northeastern part being eaten by a Japanese soldier.
The other was of a Japanese samurai in traditional kimono, who
was using his sword to slice up China, piece by piece, with the
blood of China dripping to the floor. With such posters around
me, my early hatred of the Japanese grew daily.

Half a year later on July 7, 1937, the first gunshot of
China’s War of Resistance against Japan sounded at the Marco
Polo Bridge in Beijing. For me, and most other Chinese, this
was the first day of World War II. Everyone knew that we faced
a brutal enemy ten times stronger than us, but we had to protect
our homeland. All Chinese blood had been boiling after so
many years of humiliation, and we were prepared for a life or
death struggle. The invaders never suspected the will nor the
ultimate strength of the Chinese people. They received a very
good taste of it as soon as our defense officially began.
We were told that the Japanese occupied the critical
Beijing-Guangzhou railway bridge about 500 meters from the
Marco Polo Bridge. A Chinese company commander named
Zhao, leading only thirty soldiers armed with just broadswords,
had quickly infiltrated their position in the dark of night. Our
warriors surprised the sleeping Japanese and began cutting them
up as if they were melons. The Chinese Broadsword Warriors
regained control of the bridge that night, and for the rest of the
war all our enemies had to fear their might.

Our sudden resistance triggered the arrival of many
additional waves of Japanese soldiers to China. Because of
their vastly superior military power, Beijing soon fell
completely into their hands. The subsequent cruelty of the
Japanese military horrified my young ears, as we constantly
heard reports of them burying alive any Chinese soldiers they
caught within the city of Beijing. One very tragic event of this
conflict was the death of our heroic military leader, General
Zhao, who was killed in a Japanese air raid. Knowing that we
had no airplanes to intercept the enemy’s attacks, I felt
especially angry and helpless. In my anger, I wrote an essay for
my composition class entitled, “My Wish,” to express my
determination to join the Chinese Air Corps when I was old
enough to defend our country. I wanted to shoot down every
Japanese airplane in the sky. The essay caught everyone's
attention and was soon published in the East Sichuan
Newspaper in the Spring of 1938.

Also that March, the exciting news of a great Chinese
victory over the Japanese army at Tai Er Zhuang, in northern
China, spread like wildfire across the country. In that battle,
twenty thousand Japanese troops were annihilated, which gave
us the confidence and belief that, with justice on our side, we
could defeat a better equipped army. The enemy we beat that
day was armed to the teeth with modern military weapons. We
only had old rifles, crude machine guns, a minimal number of
weak hand grenades, and a few small artillery weapons. This
victory gave heart to all Chinese. What our ill-equipped soldiers
achieved with such bravery and determination made me proud
to be Chinese. I knew we would prevail, and eventually we did!
In the fall of 1938, my father received word from his
brother, Wu Tiesheng, that he needed to work more closely
with him in the family movie house, so we moved back to the
city where I was born. Traveling on a crowded ship, we
journeyed up the Yangtze River to Chongqing. At Chao Tian
Men Wharf, a military band was waiting for our ship’s arrival
and played a song of welcome as we docked. Only then did I
realize that there were very important officials traveling with
us. Because of the growing conflict further north and east, the
government was being transferred from Nanjing to Chongqing,
which became the new wartime capital of China.

Chongqing is a very beautiful city located among clusters
of hills at the junction of two rivers. The Changjiang River lies
to the south, and the Jialing River to the east, and both come
together to form the mighty forces of the Yangtze River or what
we call the Long River. The heart of the city rests on the
peninsula, and is surrounded on three sides by water. It is,
therefore, a city of wharfs, each with a designated gate into the
city. Their names are all very colorful; Facing the Sky Gate,
Facing the River Gate, Dragon Watching Gate, and Pacific
Gate. At night, if one looks back on the Changjiang River
toward the city, the water on each side makes Chongqing
appear like a huge boat riding the water of one giant river. The
lights and shadows reflecting on the river’s surface is still a
marvelous sight to behold.

On May 5th, the Chinese Lunar New Year, Chongqing’s
annual festive Dragon-Boat Tournament is held on the rivers to
commemorate the birth date of Qu Yuan, the great patriotic
Chinese poet of ancient times. According to legend, Qu Yuan
decided to drown himself in despair because the self-indulgent
ruler of his time caused the country to collapse. The people of
Qu’s hometown raced to rescue him by boat. They realized that
he was willing to give himself for the good of all people, so he
was made a hero and the colorful tournament was established in
modern times to honor that date. Each wharf enters a dragonboat
marked by distinctive colors, and strives to win the annual
race to rescue the phantom poet-hero. As the boats cruise across
the water in front of Chongqing, it becomes one of the most
beautiful festivals to behold in China.

My Uncle Wu Tiesheng graduated from the Bao Ding
Military Academy. In the 1920’s he even led a group of students
to France on a work-study program. One of those students
eventually became our Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister,
Marshal Chen Yi, who was sponsored in France and taught
French by my uncle. It was in France that my uncle studied
movie production, which began his career in the movie industry.
Sometimes, when my father and uncle had a little too much to
drink, they sang together. My father had been to Japan and my
uncle to France, so father sang the Japanese national anthem in
Japanese (which puzzled me due to our hatred for them) and
uncle the Marseillaise in French. Their loud and joyful singing
pleased the entire family very much and further influenced my
own love of music.


My uncle’s movie house was called the Universal
Cinema, and we all lived in large apartments in the back of the
theater on the third floor. The building was a massive four-story
structure that dominated the center of an entire block. My aunt
and uncle had eight children, which was a very large family for
China, along with several wet-nurses and live-in maids living
with us in their own apartments throughout this vast structure.
At various times, Chinese movie stars would also live in the
cinema building, and there were also many cats and dogs that
roamed about freely.

Unfortunately, by this time both my uncle and aunt had
become opium addicts. This evil obsession made the household
disorderly, noisy, and decadent. They would lay on the bed, or
wherever the opium was being administered, much of the time,
day in and day out. The instruments for preparing and smoking
the opium would occupy the center of the bed, with a single
smoker on each side. This bed with its opium pipe had become
the focus of their life. As a result of their opium stupor, dinner,
the primary meal of the day, was often served at midnight.

Consequently, the adults would not awaken until about eleven
each morning and their lives throughout the day were then
basically devoted to smoking opium, followed by eating,
drinking, gambling and sometimes whoring. The only signs that
the master of this house was a man of learning and higher
social status were the art and handicrafts from France, and the
great quantity of books and magazines from China and abroad
that could be found scattered throughout the apartments.
With our two families now together, there were eleven
children always moving about the building. We all had the
character Hua in our names to indicate the generation in which
we all belonged; such as Jin-hua, Yong-hua, Shu-hua (me), and
so on. We were also arranged according to seniority, from
oldest to youngest. So, although I was the oldest boy in my
immediate family, I became third among my cousins in our
extended family. In the local Sichuan dialect, the ending of the
word for monkey, hou-ser, is the same sound but in a different
tone often used to mean third. Therefore, when I got smart with
my elder sisters, they would get back by calling me the third
monkey.

My room was on the third floor of our family apartment,
with a wall up against the theater with a window where we
could look down at the screen. Many times while laying in bed,
I would pull open the curtain and watch the movie showing on
the screen below. However, my love for the movies could not
always prevent me from falling asleep before the film was over.
I was very fortunate, for unlike other Chinese children, movies
were readily available to me and broadened my understanding
of the world beyond China. I could watch a Western as I passed
through the projection room after school, or a mystery while
sitting in the front row eating my dinner. Some movies I saw
many times, and even now I can repeat from memory almost
the entire story line from a few of those films.

In addition to books, magazines, and records, now the
new Hollywood movies of the 1930’s had become a very
important influence on my childhood. American films
dominated Chinese interest in the movies, and as a little boy
many of those movies and movie stars all became very familiar
to me. My favorite movies featured lots of singing and dancing,
like Fantasia, A Song to Remember, The Great Waltz, and
particularly those movies starring Fred Astair, Ginger Rogers
and Gene Kelly. I still cling fiercely to the memories of the
beautiful music I heard in those movies, but I was also
captivated by the many exciting sword and gun fights in them
as well. After my father left the army, he kept some of the
officer’s swords he had acquired while in service. He also had
some beautiful swords which he had received as gifts from
various warlords. Once, while overwhelmed by the excitement
of a new movie we had seen—The Three Musketeers—we used
these swords to play a game of dueling knights. But
unfortunately, this game ended when I nearly cut off my second
elder brother’s ear, as surely the adults had predicted I might.
The French films that my uncle brought back to China
were very different from the Hollywood films we all loved so
much. Some were silent movies and some short comedies. My
uncle would sit in the front row of the balcony to interpret the
French dialogue for the audience. Some of those films were
even what we would now call x-rated. Once, I tried to follow
the adults into the back theater, but they immediately threw me
out because of the explicit sex in the film. Later, when I
watched them come out, they talked very excitedly about what
they had seen. This secrecy made those films very mysterious
and exotic to me.

We also made several fun home movies throughout my
childhood and at the theater that captured our big unwieldy
family. I can still remember one made while still in Shanghai,
where my father was comically eating sticky popcorn candy
while I was snuggling up in my mother’s arms raptly watching
him. I was only three years old at the time of this joy. Sadly, all
those rare old films were burned to ashes during a Japanese air
raid on Chongqing early in the war. Surely, they were some of
the first Chinese home movies and their loss was truly a great
tragedy for my family.

In those days, the Chinese-produced movies were most
often crudely made. The stunts and acting were sometimes
quite ridiculous, and the editing on those films was limited at
best. For instance, the films that were most popular were of
chivalrous heroes adept in the martial arts. We called these
people Xiake. The cameraman filming a Xiake in action would
have the hero jump from a roof to the ground and then reverse
the film in an effort to create the illusion of his jumping up to a
great height, from the ground up to the roof. But many of those
actors could not even make such a simple jump with the
necessary body control for the illusion to succeed. After landing
they would often fall to the ground and even roll over. Because
of the studio’s poor editing, this would be left in the movie and
appeared in reverse as if the Xiate rolled on the ground before
jumping up onto the high roof, which always received a great
big laugh from everyone! I can still remember the movie Lion
Restaurant, adapted from an episode in the novel Outlaws of the
Water Margin, which had a similarly clumsy scene. The hero,
Wu Song, in one scene kills a tiger bare-handed. Also, in one
fight with the local tyrant, when they leap together through the
second floor window of a restaurant down to the ground, the
tyrant is killed. But in the filming of the stunt, the actor playing
the tyrant twisted his ankle, and he got up and limped away
before the camera stopped rolling. Because of the poor editing
this completely ruined the credibility of the film. To us
children, this improperly edited film humorously brought the
dead back to life! I can still remember the entire theater rolling
with laughter at the blunder.

In the years of tangled warfare among the various
warlords and then the ongoing struggle against the Japanese,
running a movie theater in the chaos which had become
Sichuan, and for that matter China, was not an easy business.
Although a person might own the perfect building, have the best
equipment, the cash, and the skilled workers, he would still
need to be backed by one military force or another. Soldiers
would often come into our theater without waiting in line or
even buying tickets. Sometimes an entire platoon or even a
company would march in and occupy the seats, and no one ever
dared to interfere with them. Fortunately for us, my father and
uncle had military backgrounds and had formed long-standing
relationships with some of the chief warlords in the Chongqing
area. Those friends would often send in troops to serve as guards
at the main entrance to our Universal Cinema, or to even act as
patrols on the inside. Those soldiers were necessary to keep the
theater open, and in order to maintain a look of power and
authority. My uncle would sometimes be escorted about the city
by a husky French bodyguard armed with two .45 caliber
revolvers. This curious duo was one of the exotic wonders of
Chongqing in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

As a natural cost of doing business, we had complimentary
tickets for the police, the electricity company, the water
company, tradesmen from whom we bought things in short
supply, and several others. Those free tickets helped the
enterprise to run smoothly, and I was even sometimes able to
tear off a few tickets to give to my classmates. Of course those
tickets had great value to the children, because at the time,
movies were still very new in Sichuan. I quickly learned that to
obtain free tickets, my classmates would often show me great
affection and friendship. This power often made me feel
important and even superior to my fellow classmates, but I
knew early on that it was only the free tickets that they wanted.
Our theater in Chongqing, like others around the world,
had snack counters in the main lobby. During intermission
salesgirls would sell peanuts, melon slices, sunflower seeds,
and cigarettes up and down the aisles. In front of every row of
seats there were shelves on which to put cups and other things
while watching the movie. So when the movies ended, there
were always things left around the seats such as food,
handkerchiefs, handbags, gloves, and sometimes even money.

Therefore, as soon as a movie was over, there were two
things that interested us children the most. The first was to
gather, row by row, all of the goodies left behind by the patrons.
We would keep those things we found interesting and hand the
rest over to the adults in the office. I remember once picking up
a leather handbag, which contained a large sum of money and
some valuable jewelry. We tried to find the owner ourselves,
but finally turned it over to my father. He eventually found the
woman that had left it in the theater, and her husband was so
pleased that he presented us with a big long gilded plaque
inscribed, “Returns Money Found.” This was a well known
Chinese tribute to those honest enough to return a large sum of
money. We proudly hung it on the wall in the center of the
main lobby for all to see as they entered the theater.
The second thing that interested us kids the most when
the movie was over and the lights had been turned off, was the
sport of surrounding and killing the rats that came out to eat the
fallen popcorn and other foods. Sichuan is famous for the
number and size of its rats, some so big they would even scare
the cats! I was once surprised by one fully two feet long,
measured from nose to tail. To kill those dangerous and agile
rats, we used many different weapons, including various homemade
rat traps and two German air rifles. However, the most
memorable was a bamboo arrow we invented ourselves.

This weapon of choice was a piece of bamboo that acted
as a barrel, with a strong rubber-band fixed at one end like a
slingshot to launch the arrow. The arrow was a thin but very
hard piece of bamboo, about one and a half feet long with a
sharp metal tip. We learned to shoot it quite accurately and it
proved very deadly to the rats. So, when the last show of the
night was over and the lights were turned off, we began our hunt
for the rats with flashlights. We would block both ends of a row
with boards and when caught by the beam of our flashlights, the
rats would be blinded and paralyzed. We would then pour air
gun bullets and bamboo arrows into the startled creatures, often
nailing a rat to the wooden partition between the rows with a
single shot of the arrow. We were very proud of our hunting
successes and congratulated one another on every kill.

In the spring of 1939, I was enrolled in Kai Zhi
Preliminary School, located on the top of a hill in Chongqing.
Each day I would walk up the hill, through Zhongshan Park, to
the school on its crest. I was once again very interested in
school and first in my class almost every year, like my days in
Shanghai. I liked all of my courses, which included arithmetic,
Chinese, and physical training, but I loved music the most. I
sang well and always with great feeling, even though my voice
had not yet matured. I worked so hard that my teacher let me
join the school chorus. We once even won first prize in the
Chongqing municipal singing contest. I still remember one of
our songs, Happy Fisherman’s Family. At home, my parents
always wanted me to sing it for our guests. As I write this, I still
can sing most of it. Additionally, there was a very popular song
back then entitled, On Song Huajiang River. It tells of the
peoples’ homeland being occupied by the Japanese. The people
in the song cry out sadly about how much they miss their
relatives, especially their mothers, all killed by the Japanese.
Even now, whenever I’m asked to sing it, I can’t keep the tears
from rolling down my cheeks. It swells deep within me the great
sorrow of my own lost mother and the horrors of the Japanese
barbarians. Even now, it seems as though the scars will never
heal.