Awaken: the Memoirs of a Chinese Historian transports readers into the turmoil and transformation of China in the 20th century through the eyes of a rare survivor, the Chinese Christian and scholar, Gu Chang-sheng. His memoir is the riveting and inspirational journey of a man who retained his independent spirit against crushing odds. Missionaries rescued the Gu family from poverty and starvation and Chang-sheng grew up as a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. At the mission school, Chang-sheng endured hunger, back-breaking work, and humiliation in order to get the precious education he needed for medical school. The Communist Revolution dashed his dreams. The government of the People's Republic dictated that Chang-sheng's new career would be that of historian of Christianity in China. Under Mao Ze-dong, Chang-sheng survived beatings, "re-education" sessions, imprisonment and hard labor. After the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, he chose freedom in the United States in order to speak out for human rights. Many books have been written about life in China under Communism. Awaken: the Memoirs of a Chinese Historian spans almost the entire 20th century, giving Western audiences a unique perspective on eight decades of religious and secular life in China before the birth of the People's Republic as well as during the Communist regime. Gu Chang-sheng's memoir parallels his youth under the authoritarianism of Christian missionaries with adulthood under the Chinese Communists. He renounced the dogma of the Seventh Day Adventist Church but never joined the Communist Party. His independence meant imprisonment and forced labor at worst; it was a balancing act at best. No matter what his circumstances, Gu Chang-sheng lived true to his motto, "Seek truth from facts" and continues to do so today.
Awaken
Memoirs of a Chinese HistorianBy Gu Chang-ShengAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Gu Chang-Sheng
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-0617-4Contents
Prologue.........................................................................viiChapter 1: Remembering My Parents................................................1Chapter 2: My Education..........................................................17Chapter 3: The Civil War Years...................................................34Chapter 4: Living Under the People's Republic of China...........................52Chapter 5: Jobs Assigned by the Communist Government.............................69Chapter 6: The Cultural Revolution...............................................95Chapter 7: Starvation in Anhui Province: a Survey................................122Chapter 8: Academic Life at the East China Normal University.....................136Chapter 9: A Visiting Scholar at Yale University.................................157Chapter 10: An Unexpected Return to the United States............................178Epilogue.........................................................................200Acknowledgements.................................................................214
Chapter One
Remembering My Parents [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]
Wuxi: Life In A Slum
I can trace my life back to when I was four years old and lived with my parents in a slum area at the foot of Huishan Mountains in the city of Wuxi (Wooshi), China, which is located about sixty miles north of Shanghai. One very warm summer afternoon, my father asked me to go outside to play and not return until he called. The other poor kids and I played hide-and-seek and other games together in the dirty ground. It was not until dusk when my father looked for me and took me home. I heard a newborn baby crying in our little hut.
My mother, Liu Lin, gave birth to twelve children in eighteen years. Among them, seven died at early ages and two were given away to orphanages. Only three of us survived.
I was born in the village of Jiangying, east of Wuxi on July 19, 1919. My parents were desperately poor. My father, Gu Zhiling (Koo Tsu-ling), owned no land. He got a job running a small ferryboat that paid very little.
When I was about nine months old, I became very ill. My mother took me to the nearby temple on top of a hill to pray to a female Buddha, Guan Yin. While my mother was crying and kowtowing to the Buddha, an old monk approached her and asked, "Why are you crying so bitterly?"
She replied, "I have already lost two babies. This is my third child, a boy. He is very ill. I have no money to see a doctor for him. So I came here to ask the gracious Buddha to save this little boy."
The old monk picked me up from the ground and held me in his arms. He looked at me closely. Then he asked my mother, "What is this boy's name?"
"My husband gave him the name Hong Bao," my mother replied. Hong Bao means "great treasure."
The old monk felt keenly for me. After a moment of silence, he said to my mother, "From now on, do not call this boy Hong Bao. You should call him Chang-sheng. It means 'long life.' He will survive and live a very long life."
My mother kowtowed to the Buddha for her blessing and returned home with me, where I recovered.
When I was three years old, my father decided to move our family to the city of Wuxi to look for jobs. We settled in a slum area in the east of the city. My father bought some reed mats and built a small hut without any windows. We all slept on the straw-covered ground.
Although my father worked part-time jobs here and there to earn some money to support the family, we lived in abject poverty. One summer, he got a job sawing large tree trunks with another man. Working with the scorching sun directly overhead, my father suddenly came down with sunstroke. The other man kindly helped my father to our hut. I heard my father groan to my mother, "I am dying!"
My mother would pick wild herbs and dry them for the purpose of curing illness. I saw her take some dried herbs from her collection, put them in our big wok, adding a lot of water to boil them. She fed my father this concoction and told him to rest. Then she took some of my father's copper coins and went out to buy several catties (a catty equals 1.1 pounds) of sweet potatoes. She boiled the potatoes to feed us, and sold the rest to our neighbors. While my father remained ill, my mother continued to sell boiled sweet potatoes downtown in order to support the family.
One afternoon, while she was selling sweet potatoes near the market place, my mother heard music coming from a nearby school. She thought that she could sell more potatoes there. When she arrived, she saw several foreigners playing musical instruments in front of a big canvas tent. A tall, elderly, white woman greeted her and invited her into the tent "to listen to Jesus."
My mother refused. "Oh, no! I can't go in there. My husband is very ill. I must go home right away."
But the white woman pushed her inside the tent, saying to my mother, "Just sit down here. Jesus will save your husband. After the meeting, I will go with you to your home." She kept her promise and accompanied my mother home to the slum where we lived. Playing outside with my little friends, I suddenly saw a white woman walking with mother into our hut. I was scared because it was the first time that I had ever seen a white person and my mother did not tell me what was going on.
The next morning, I was inside our hut when the white woman returned. She told me not to be afraid of her. I saw her give some pills to my father, instructing him to take them three times a day. She also brought my father some food. Before she left, she asked all of us to kneel down with her and close our eyes. I heard her murmur words that I did not understand. Nevertheless, thanks to the white woman's visits with medicine and food, my father gradually recovered.
Several days later, the white woman returned to our hut with a middle-aged Chinese gentleman. She introduced him to my parents as a pastor. She asked my mother to attend Bible study with the Chinese pastor at his church in Wuxi. She said to my parents, "We foreigners must return to Shanghai. May Jesus bless you."
The Chinese pastor's surname was Lee. He was a very nice man. My mother went to his church and studied Bible with him. Because my mother was illiterate, she just learned some basic stories about Jesus from Pastor Lee. Two months later, my mother was baptized and became a Christian. Pastor Lee asked my father to study Bible, but my father refused.
In the winter of that year, I developed an infection under my nose. It was very painful. My mother took me to see Pastor Lee at the church. He examined the infected spot and told my mother, "I know Chinese medicine. This infection is called a miliary vesicle because it is no bigger than a millet seed. It may be small, but it is dangerous. Luckily, you brought Chang-sheng to me. Otherwise he would have died." Pastor Lee went to his commode, scraped off a little bit of leftover stool, and mixed it with some Chinese medicine. He spread it above my lip. A few days later, the infection was totally cured.
My mother told me, "if I had not taken you to the monk when you were less than a year old, you would have died. Now, you are nearly five years old and you got this disease that was nearly fatal. If I hadn't taken you to the pastor you would have died this time. You have escaped two deaths already in your life."
I felt grateful to the monk as well as to Pastor Lee, but at that age, I had no idea about Buddhism and Christianity. I loved both of my parents very much. My father was a hard-working and honest man. My mother was a bright and strong woman. In 1924, when I was five years old, I had already lost two brothers and two sisters. I was the only child who survived.
A year after my illness, Pastor Lee came to our slum with an important offer. He told my mother that he had received a letter from the Adventist Church in Shanghai requesting him to find a cook for its hospital there. He thought that my father was the best candidate. The only condition was that my father would have to be baptized before he could take the job. Pastor Lee asked my mother to bring my father to church that night to discuss the matter.
My mother was excited with this good news. She told my father about the job opportunity after he returned home from work. I heard them having a big fight. My father did not want to be baptized in order to get a new job in Shanghai. My mother cursed my father and called him stupid. My mother was crying and murmuring, "Why is my fate so bad? After I married you, we lost four children and we are still living in extreme poverty. Now there is a better job in Shanghai ready for you and you don't want it. Why? Why?"
My father did not say a word. Finally, my mother said to him, "I promised Pastor Lee that we would go to his church together. You must go with me."
"All right, don't cry. I will go with you." My father had a bit of a soft spot for my mother.
That night, all three of us went to Pastor Lee's church. I noticed that Pastor Lee was very patient with my father. He asked what was his real objection to being baptized and joining the church. My father explained to the pastor, "If I were baptized, I could be accused of 'eating the foreign religion' and would be cut off from my relationship with my parents, my three brothers, and other relatives as well. I would be isolated from my family clan and would never be able to pay respect to my ancestors. Therefore, I would rather live a poor life without believing any foreign religion."
In the 1920's in China, the expression "eating the foreign religion" was very common among Chinese people. It refers to the fact that for foreign missionaries, the best way to attract people to join the church was to offer them jobs or charity. People who joined the church for these reasons were called "Rice Christians."
Pastor Lee told my father, "If you are baptized, you still can pay respect to your ancestors provided that you do not worship them. If you accept the offer and go to Shanghai, you and your family will live a much better life than you do now, living in a hut and mingling with people in the slums. You will lose nothing after you become a Christian. I do believe that all of your immediate relatives would go to Shanghai to visit you and probably ask you for help. I know that you are a good and honest man, so go home and think about this offer. Tell me your decision within three days."
My father did not sleep well that night. He got up very early the next morning and woke me. He asked me, "Son, do you want me to go to Shanghai?"
Actually, I had no idea what Shanghai was like, but I did know that we were very, very poor. So I replied, "Dad, why not try another job in some other place? I would like you to go to Shanghai."
My father then woke my mother and said to her, "Let's go see Pastor Lee right away. Our son is very clever. He has straightened out my ideas as soon as he said 'why not try another job.' I will tell Pastor Lee that I want to accept the new job in Shanghai."
My father joined the Bible class and was baptized a month later. He told Pastor Lee, "I don't want to be a 'rice Christian.' I will work hard and honestly at my new job in Shanghai and will live as a true Christian." My father left by train, alone, for Shanghai in the autumn of 1924. Before he left, my father gave away another baby boy to a wealthy family in Wuxi. Both my mother and I cried bitterly. A year later, my father was able to afford to send for my mother and me. We joined him in Shanghai, thus ending our lives of absolute poverty in the slums of Wuxi.
Shanghai: My Childhood With The Adventists
Before 1840, Shanghai was a small village in East China at the mouth of the Yangtze River facing the East Sea, but it rapidly opened up to foreign trade after the Opium War of 1839-42. The first conflict between China and the West, the Opium War ended in defeat for the Chinese by British troops. China and Britain signed the Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking) on August 29, 1842, aboard the British gunboat Cornwallis that was moored in the Yangtze River about 180 miles west of Shanghai.
The Treaty of Nanjing encouraged British, French, and American merchants and missionaries to open foreign concessions in Shanghai. The island of Hong Kong was ceded to the British government "in perpetuity." For the purpose of trade, five Chinese cities were opened to residency by British subjects and their families. These cities were Guanzhou (Canton), Fuzhou (Foochow), Xiamen (Amox), Ningpo and Shanghai.
The British concession in Shanghai was established in 1843. The local magistrate allocated a piece of land for British subjects that became know as the British Settlement. In 1844, the Americans signed a treaty with China for trade and Protestant missionary purposes. The Americans began to move into the British Settlement, prompting a name change to the International Settlement in 1863. The French established their concession in 1847 with their own government and laws. The Chinese government had no authority over the foreign settlements. By 1925, when my mother and I arrived, Shanghai had become as modern a city as London, Paris, or New York through Western development, culture and civilization.
I was six years old when my mother and I moved to Shanghai. My father met us at the railroad station. He put us on board the third class compartment of a tramcar. Looking out the window, I saw too many fresh and strange things for my eyes to take in: so many large and tall buildings along both sides of the streets, so many different types of cars running on the streets, so many people, Chinese and foreigners, walking very quickly along the sidewalks. For me, Shanghai was an entirely different world to look at and live in.
My father took us to the Shanghai Sanitarium and Hospital where he worked, which was located in the French concession. He introduced my mother and me to Dr. Harry Miller, the superintendent, and to Mr. Ebhar, who was in charge of the kitchen. They were American missionaries. A few days later, Mrs. Malone, the white woman who introduced my mother to Jesus, came to visit us at the hospital. She kissed my little cheek and told me to be a good boy.
We lived in the basement of the hospital. My father had to work seven days a week and was very busy in the kitchen. Although he received very low monthly wages, my family finally had a stable life together. My father learned to read some texts in the Chinese Bible and my mother learned to sing some of the hymns. My mother took me to the Saturday services and to prayer meetings every Wednesday night. I also joined the Sabbath School with other little boys and girls.
One prayer meeting in particular remains in my memory. That night, approximately twenty people attended the meeting. After they sang a hymn, they all knelt down to pray. I knelt down, too. It was quite a long service, so I fell asleep. When everyone had finished praying and stood up to sing another hymn, I was still kneeling with my head on the chair, dreaming that angels were singing in heaven. When the singing stopped, I heard people laughing loudly, including my mother. My mother tried to drag me up, and I complained, "Why do you disturb my prayer?"
When we had been in Shanghai together for about a year, my mother gave birth to another baby. My parents named their new son John, a name from the Bible. John was a very attractive baby. I loved him very much. The summer after he was born, John ate some contaminated food and contracted malignant dysentery. He died within a very short time. I cried a lot.
My mother asked me to pray to Jesus to let my brother be resurrected. She said, "You are a boy without sin. Pray to Jesus to revive John so that he can play with you again."
I knelt in front of my dead brother and prayed very hard and long to Jesus, but he never answered my earnest prayer. I began to doubt whether Jesus could rescue a person from death. My father told me that he did not believe in resurrection; he had noticed that not one patient in the mission hospital had been resurrected after death, no matter how earnestly the missionaries prayed.
The Shanghai Sanitarium built a new hospital in the Chinese territory about twelve miles west of Shanghai. January 1, 1928, was the official opening day for the new hospital buildings. The mission hospital also built houses for the American medical staff, dorms for nurses, and small apartments for workers. We moved into a small, one-bedroom apartment in the workers' building. My father was promoted to the number two chef position and was assigned to work from 3 p.m. to twelve o'clock midnight seven days a week. He worked the shift alone because both Dr. Miller and Mr. Ebhar trusted him. My father never took home any food from the big kitchen.
After the move, I entered a public elementary school near our home. We had classes from Monday through Saturday, but no school on Sunday. The American minister of our church told my father that he should not let me study on Saturdays. I had to miss school every Saturday to go to our church and worship Jesus. I was really confused. Later, my mother explained that my father's job depended on our entire family's following the preaching of our church. If I did not go to church on Saturdays, my father would lose his job. So I had to miss all of my classes one day a week. I had to work very hard to catch up with all of the lessons.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Awakenby Gu Chang-Sheng Copyright © 2009 by Gu Chang-Sheng. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
