At that moment, I felt very proud to be Chinese.
18
Escape to the Mainland
At first we had a breeze. The sails were hoisted and the junk gathered speed. We children remained on deck because the main cabin was so crowded. Grandma Wu rolled down the bamboo blinds at the sides to hide the wounded Americans lying on the floor. After a while, the boat slowed down. Grandma Wu scanned the sea anxiously through her binoculars.
‘Our boat is almost at a standstill,’ she said in a worried voice. ‘This is terrible!’
David and Marat looked at one another. Without a word, David pulled out the flute dangling on a chain around his neck and began to play a stirring tune. I didn’t know the words of his song, but the music sounded familiar. Where had I heard it before? The lilting melody was a testimony against oppression, a prayer for justice and a plea for freedom. Each note went straight to my heart and lingered there.
While David played, Marat scanned the ocean waves. Not long afterwards, a black shape emerged from the water and surged rapidly towards us. Marat began jumping up and down with glee.
‘Ling Ling! Ling Ling!’ he chanted loudly. Sam and I soon joined him.
David kept playing, but I could see his eyes sparkling with happiness. We watched the dolphin’s sleek, streamlined body as it swam at breakneck speed, drawn by David’s music like a nail to a magnet.
‘Ling Ling to the rescue!’ Marat shouted, as the dolphin leapt in the air and splashed back into the water right next to the junk. David gently scratched Ling Ling with an oar. She reared and rolled over in the water, as if suggesting that David should now pet her belly. Everyone laughed.
Meanwhile, the wind had died down completely and the light was fading fast. The boat rocked gently in the water. We were becalmed. The sailors started to row, but progress was agonizingly slow.
There was a bucket of small fish on deck and David tossed a few to Ling Ling, who jumped to catch them. She sprang playfully into the air several more times before submerging herself and turning over once more. This time, David gave her underside a long rub with his oar.
‘Stop playing, David!’ Grandma Wu commanded, her eyes fixed on her binoculars. ‘There’s something on the horizon. Let’s hope it’s not the Japanese patrol boat we saw earlier.’
‘I’m not playing!’ David protested emphatically. ‘I called Ling Ling here to help us! Last summer, Grandma Liu, Marat, Ling Ling and I practised this routine for hours and hours. I’m going to show you. Wish me luck!’
He stripped down to his shorts and put on a life jacket. Under Marat’s direction, we attached a large rubber life ring to a rope that we tied firmly to the deck, then we threw the ring overboard. Ling Ling hovered, making an insistent clicking sound as she swam.
‘She’s scanning the water,’ David explained to me. ‘When the clicks hit the rubber ring, they’ll echo back to her. That’s how she finds things in water. She’s listening for those echo-clicks.’
With Marat’s help, David climbed on to the railing and positioned himself above the water, getting ready to dive. Ling Ling splashed around beneath him. ‘Click! Click! Click! Click!’ David counted to three, then jumped overboard and climbed on to Ling Ling’s back. At the same moment, I saw Ling Ling slide her snout through the rubber ring.
‘That gunboat is definitely Japanese!’ Grandma Wu was shouting. ‘I can see the sign of the rising sun. It’s heading right for us. Full speed ahead!’
David whistled sharply as he grabbed Ling Ling’s dorsal fin with one hand, and clutched the rope between the junk and the dolphin’s snout with the other. Ling Ling moved her tail up and down energetically in response. I could hardly believe what I was seeing! David was riding on Ling Ling’s back as if she was a horse! Boy and dolphin zoomed through the water together, pulling the junk behind them like a dog on a leash. It was an amazing sight!
The Japanese gunboat kept following us. No matter how hard Ling Ling and David pulled, they couldn’t shake it loose. Ling Ling started to make a sharp, high, eerie, whistling sound.
‘Why is Ling Ling making that noise?’ I called out fearfully to Marat. ‘It gives me the creeps!’
‘That’s her way of calling for help,’ Marat replied. ‘I heard it only once before. The day we found her, when she was bleeding from a fish hook stuck in her back… Hey! What’s that swimming towards us? I think it’s Bumby! Grandma Wu, let me have your binoculars for a second! Yes! Yes! It’s definitely Bumby!’
‘Who’s Bumby?’ Sam and I asked in unison as we saw a huge black pilot whale rapidly approaching our boat, seemingly from nowhere.
‘Bumby is Ling Ling’s cousin!’ Marat shouted happily. ‘They swim together all the time. He weighs over 2,000 pounds. He’ll show the Japanese a thing or two!’
Bumby submerged himself under the water behind our junk and waited patiently until the Japanese gunboat was almost on top of him. Then he surfaced and went to work. When he butted the ship’s hull with his enormous head, the boat listed dangerously to one side. Before we realized what was happening, Bumby dived down and disappeared from view. He must have been batting his tail beneath the water because giant waves began rocking the gunboat violently from side to side. The vessel was about to capsize when it suddenly reversed its course and sped away in the direction of Nan Tian Island.
We cheered loudly and clapped our hands at the sight of the Japanese gunboat retreating. Thatcher came on deck. He gave us the thumbs-up sign and taught us a new American expression to celebrate our escape. We shouted, ‘Hip! Hip! Hooray!’ at the tops of our voices whenever he raised his arm. Soon everyone on board was bellowing, ‘Hip! Hip! Hooray!’ when Thatcher gave the signal, even Grandma Wu, the American airmen and the seamen.
Meanwhile, Ling Ling and David continued pulling us. They guided us across the Three Doors (Sanmen) Bay, up the Sea Gate (Haimen) Estuary to Gushing Spring (Yong Quan) Port on the mainland. Night had already fallen when our junk finally scraped against a concrete wharf. David stroked Ling Ling and detached the rubber ring from her snout. Standing on her back, he clung to the rope with both hands and hauled himself on to the deck.
‘Ling Ling is waiting for her reward,’ Grandma Wu said. ‘Why don’t you feed her the rest of the fish in the bucket?’
Ling Ling bobbed up beside the junk, with her mouth wide open in anticipation. There were still eight fish left, so the four of us had the pleasure of giving Ling Ling two fish each. She swallowed them whole, without chewing. Then, with a satisfied flick of her tail, she headed back to sea.
We had been saved from the Japanese by a dolphin! It felt like something out of a fairy tale. I thought of the ancient Tang dynasty story of Chinese Cinderella that Master Wu had told me. Not only did the heroine and I share the same name ‘Ye Xian’, but she too had been protected from harm by a fish. What a coincidence! Even though a dolphin wasn’t exactly a fish, I couldn’t help feeling that I had well and truly earned my nickname, CC.
As soon as we stepped on to the pier, we saw four surgical stretchers made of wood and canvas laid out neatly in a row.
‘That’s impressive, isn’t it, David?’ I commented. ‘News of the four wounded American airmen has already spread to the port of Gushing Spring (Yong Quan) via the grapevine.’
‘Over here the grapevine is called the “bamboo wireless”!’ Sam quipped.
‘It’s more likely that the stretchers were brought here by our local agents, after my son and CC’s aunt sent them an urgent request by pigeon express,’ Grandma Wu informed us proudly. ‘The two of them know every hiding place and short cut on Nan Tian. They’ve set up a system of secret signals that can be passed quickly from island to mainland and back again.’
Eight stretcher-bearers appeared, carrying paper lanterns on long poles. They stuck the poles into their belts, hoisted the airmen on to the stretchers and transported them through the narrow, unlit streets to the local China Relief Station. The rest of us followed on foot. David was so exhausted that Sam a
nd Marat practically had to carry him. We were told that although Yong Quan was supposed to be under Japanese control, the local puppet troops governing the port were sympathetic towards the Americans.
A group of nurses bandaged the Americans’ wounds and washed the blood off their faces. We were offered hot tea and sweet rice cakes, but I was too tired to eat. I was so relieved when the nurses brought in cushions and blankets. We spent the night sleeping on the floor.
We were woken by the sound of loud voices. It was Dr Chen, the physician from Chuchow, talking animatedly to the Americans in fluent English. He examined their wounds, shaking his head in dismay.
‘We need to get you to my father’s hospital in Linhai as soon as possible,’ Dr Chen said to Lawson. ‘Your leg is badly infected. I’m afraid of gangrene.’
‘How far is Linhai?’
‘About twenty-six miles. Normally, it would take less than an hour by bus from Yong Quan. Since the Japanese are inspecting every vehicle on the major roads out of town, I’ve brought twelve men and six sedan chairs. We’re going to Linhai by a different route in the old-fashioned way: by taking the number eleven express train!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s another way of saying we’ll use our legs and hike around the hills.’
‘Is that how you got here?’ Thatcher asked.
‘Same number eleven train. We walked all night. The journey took twelve hours.’
‘But you’ve just arrived! Surely you need to rest?’ Lawson was shocked.
‘We must leave at once,’ Dr Chen replied, ‘otherwise you’ll risk getting captured.’
‘But you haven’t slept…’
Dr Chen shook his head and stared with respect at Lawson’s bashed-in face and purple leg. ‘We know what you men have sacrificed for China. It’s my honour to return the favour, at least in part.’
Once again, Lawson emptied his pockets and tried to give all his money to the staff who had taken care of him. But they handed it back and said they wanted nothing. Instead, they helped the injured Americans and Grandma Wu into five of the sedan chairs. Thatcher chose to walk, and said he would take turns with everyone else to ride in the last remaining chair.
Dr Chen led the way, accompanied by Thatcher and the four of us. The sedan-chair carriers followed in a single file down the confined, dusty alleyways. At first nobody chose to ride in the sixth chair, but we soon changed our minds. The journey seemed interminable.
As we walked across rice fields, up and down hillocks and through village after village, I was glad to find a few hard biscuits in my pockets and a canteen of water. Ahead of us, Thatcher questioned Dr Chen about the fate of the other American airmen who had raided Tokyo.
‘There were sixteen planes in the raid, each with a crew of five men,’ Thatcher was saying. ‘Lawson thinks that every plane must have run out of fuel. Do you know what happened to the others? Especially our leader, Jimmy Doolittle?’
‘Not a single American plane was shot down,’ Dr Chen answered. ‘Besides your plane The Ruptured Duck, one plane flew to Russia and landed safely in Vladivostok. Of the remaining fourteen, the crews from eleven of the planes bailed out, descended by parachute and escaped to Chungking. This included your leader, Jimmy Doolittle. The twelfth plane crashed on an island close to Nan Tian, but luckily all five airmen survived. Li Cha and Master Wu are trying to get them here because one of them is a doctor who’ll be able to help your pilot with the injured leg, Lawson. Unfortunately, we believe that the last two planes crashed in Japanese-occupied territory and their crews were taken prisoner.’
‘Where would they take them?’ Thatcher asked.
‘Our agents tell us that all captured American airmen are being sent to Bridge House in Shanghai for special interrogation.’
‘Bridge House!’ cried Thatcher in dismay. ‘These Americans are prisoners of war. They shouldn’t be incarcerated in a torture chamber. We were briefed about Bridge House before the raid. Isn’t it a hell on earth?’
‘Your raid over Tokyo has humiliated the Japanese, and they want revenge,’ Dr Chen said. Tm afraid they might do terrible things to the prisoners.’
Thatcher said nothing.
Then David asked, ‘Can we help?’
‘I spoke to Grandma Wu just now. She should take you children back to Shanghai as soon as possible,’ Dr Chen answered. ‘You’ve done a great job getting the crew out of Nan Tian. What our American friends need now is medical care, which I can provide at my father’s hospital in Linhai. Mr Lawson’s leg is infected and may have to be amputated before he can be moved to Chungking. But I’m worried that the Japanese will be out hunting for them and their rescuers. That includes the four of you.’
‘Oh, no!’ David demurred. ‘We want to accompany Mr Lawson to the hospital. Besides, Mr Thatcher hasn’t finished telling us how everything works in his plane yet. He drew a sketch of the instrument panel and –’
‘Your mission was to rescue the Americans and lead them to safety,’ Dr Chen interrupted firmly. ‘You’ve accomplished this. If you go back to school now and don’t tell anyone where you’ve been, the Japanese will have no reason to suspect you. On the other hand, if you stay with the airmen at my father’s hospital, you’ll be more of a burden than a help. Grandma Wu has already booked train tickets for herself and all of you from Linhai back to Shanghai. If she has her way, you’ll be sitting at your school desks the day after tomorrow.’
19
A Visitor from Home
Waking up in Shanghai after an exhausting journey that took three days, I couldn’t remember where I was, only that it felt wonderful to be lying on a bed with a pillow under my head. Someone was moving around the room but I kept my eyes shut, reluctant to wake up completely.
‘Was it all a dream?’ I asked myself. ‘Did I go to Nan Tian Island and rescue five American airmen? Did I see a giant panda leaning against a tree and feeding itself bamboo with its own paws? Did a dolphin pull our boat safely to the mainland? When I open my eyes again, where will I be? Is that Niang I hear snooping around in my room, finding fault and gathering evidence against me?’
‘CC! CC! Wake up! There’s a woman at the door asking for you.’
I opened my eyes and saw Grandma Wu’s worried face looking down at me.
I sprang out of bed, ran to the door and yanked it open. Ah Yee was standing there by herself, wringing her hands and looking anxious.
‘Miss Ye Xian!’ she cried. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early in the morning. Your father is finally asking for you to come home –’
‘Finally!’ I shouted angrily, as I let her into Grandma Wu’s academy. ‘What do you mean, finally? Don’t you understand that I don’t want to go home? I’m perfectly happy here.’
‘Maybe it’s me who wants you to come home. What does it matter? Did you forget it was your father’s birthday yesterday? He celebrated by giving a big party. All his friends and relatives came. Many of them asked for you and were surprised you weren’t there. After the party was over, your father sat in the living room for a long time, drinking by himself. Your stepmother had gone to bed. I knew he was thinking of you, so I brought him a cup of tea and stood there talking to him about the old days when your mama was still alive. One topic led to another. After a while, he agreed that I should go to your aunt’s flat first thing this morning and tell you to come home.’
‘So it was your idea that I should go home and not his,’ I said resentfully.
‘What does it matter whose idea it was to begin with? At least he wants you home now!’
‘What does Niang say?’
‘I have no idea. I’m not concerned about her. It’s you and your father I worry about. And he has ordered me to bring you home. He loves you and misses you!’
‘Did he actually say that?’ I asked, overwhelmed by a sudden rush of emotion.
‘Not in so many words, but I could read the expression on his face. Sometimes it’s hard for men to admit certain things… especia
lly when it involves their wives and daughters. Surely you’re aware of that?’
‘I suppose…’
‘Well, are you coming home with me now?’
‘I… I don’t know what to do… What if I refuse?’
‘Oh, Miss Ye Xian. Don’t make trouble for yourself and for everyone else! Do you remember what your Niang said when they first threw you out?’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said that if your aunt doesn’t let you go when your father sends for you, they’ll sue her for kidnapping you. If you don’t come home with me today, they’re bound to blame everything on your aunt. You know as well as I do what your stepmother is capable of. She’d like nothing better than to cause trouble between you, your aunt, your father and your friends.’
‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ I agreed reluctantly. ‘Please wait here. I need to talk to my teacher, Grandma Wu.’
It didn’t take Grandma Wu long to advise me to go home with Ah Yee.
‘Just be careful!’ she said. ‘Keep your wits about you. Stop by the bookstall in the bazaar on your way home from school this afternoon. I’ll be there waiting for you.’
I dressed in my school uniform, took my school bag and went home by rickshaw with Ah Yee. Niang was still asleep when we arrived. Father looked both happy and relieved to see me. He wore a business suit, and was dashing out to attend a meeting when Ah Yee and I almost collided with him at the front door.
He and I looked at each other, and I felt a terrible ache in my heart. I had forgotten how distinguished and handsome he was. All the time I lived at home and we were together, I’d never really ‘seen’ him. He was simply there, seemingly present and accessible, but actually increasingly remote. Today I noticed everything about him: the worry lines on his forehead, the white hairs at his temples, the slightly stooped shoulders, the soft paunch below his belt, the scratch mark on his chin where he had cut himself, shaving. I longed to throw my arms around him and tell him I loved him. Instead, I stood there and said nothing.