Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

She heard shots, but felt nothing. After a minute or so her blindfold was removed and she looked around, blinking. The man who had been standing next to her was lying on the ground. The officer who had taken her down to the dungeons came over, grinning. One eyebrow was raised in surprise that this seventeen-year-old girl was not a gibbering wreck. My mother told him calmly that she had nothing to confess.

She was taken back to her cell. Nobody bothered her, and she was not tortured. After a few more days she was set free. During the previous week the Communist underground had been busy pulling strings. My grandmother had been to the martial law headquarters every day, weeping, pleading, and threatening suicide. Dr. Xia had visited his most powerful patients, bearing expensive gifts. The family's intelligence connections were also mobilized.

Many people had vouched for my mother in wrifng, saying that she was not a Communist, she was just young and impetuous.

What had happened to her did not daunt her in the slightest. The moment she came out of prison she set about organizing a memorial service for the dead students in Tianjin. The authorities gave permission for the service.

There was great anger in Jinzhou about what had happened to the young people who had, after all, left on the government's advice. At the same time, the schools hurriedly announced an early end to the term, scrapping examinations, in the hope that the students would go home and disband.

At this point the underground advised its members to leave for the Communist-controlled areas. Those who did not want to, or could not leave, were ordered to suspend their clandestine work. The Kuomintang was clamping down fiercely, and too many operatives were being arrested and executed. Liang was leaving, and he asked my mother to go too, but my grandmother would not allow it. My mother was not suspected of being a Communist, she said, but if she left with the Communists she would be. And what about all the people who had vouched for her? If she went now they would all be in trouble.

So she stayed. But she was longing for action. She turned to Yu-wu, the only person left in the city who she knew was working for the Communists. Yu-wu did not know Liang or my mother's other contacts. They belonged to different underground systems, which operated completely separately, so that if anyone was caught and could not withstand torture they could only reveal a limited number of names.

Jinzhou was the key supply and logistic center for all the Kuomintang armies in the northeast. They numbered over half a million men, strung out along vulnerable railway lines and concentrated in a few shrinking areas around the main cities. By the summer of 1948 there were about 200,000 Kuomintang troops in Jinzhou, under several different commands. Chiang Kai-shek had been squabbling with many of his top generals, juggling the commands, which created severe demoralization. The different forces were badly coordinated and often distrusted one another.

Many strategists, including his senior American advisers, thought that Chiang should abandon Manchuria completely. The key to any pullout, 'voluntary' or forced, by sea or by rail, was the retention of Jinzhou. The city was only a hundred miles north of the Great Wall, quite near to China proper, where the Kuomintang position still seemed relatively secure, and it was easily reinforced from the sea Huludao was only about thirty miles to the south, and was linked by a seemingly secure railway.

In spring 1948 the Kuomintang had begun to construct a new defense system around Jinzhou, made of cement blocks encased in steel frames. The Communists, they thought, had no tanks and poor artillery, and no experience attacking heavily fortified positions. The idea was to ring the city with self-contained fortresses, each of which could operate as an independent unit even if it was surrounded.

The fortresses were to be connected by trenches six feet wide and six feet deep, protected by a continuous fence of barbed wire. The supreme commander in Manchuria, General Wei Li-huang, came on an inspection visit and declared the system impregnable.

But the project was never finished, par fly due to lack of materials and poor planning, but mainly because of corruption. The man in charge of the construction work siphoned off building materials and sold them on the black market; the workers were not paid enough to eat. By September, when the Communist forces began to cut the city off, only a third of the system had been completed, much of it small, unconnected cement forts. Other parts had been hastily assembled from mud taken from the old city wall.

It was vital for the Communists to know about this system and about the disposition of the Kuomintang troops. The Communists were building up enormous forces about a quarter of a million men for a decisive battle. The commander in chief of all the Communist armies, Zhu De, cabled the commander on the spot, Lin Biao: "Take Jinzhou… and the whole Chinese situation is in our hands." Yu-wu's group was asked to provide up-to-date information before the final attack.

He urgently needed more hands, and when my mother approached him asking for work, he and his superiors were delighted.

The Communists had sent some officers into the city in disguise to reconnoiter, but a man wandering around the outskirts alone would immediately attract attention. An amorous couple would be much less conspicuous. By then, Kuomintang rule had made it quite acceptable for young men and women to be seen together in public. Because the reconnaissance officers were male, my mother would be ideal as a 'girlfriend."

Yu-wu told her to be at an appointed place at a particular time. She was to wear a pale-blue gown and a red silk flower in her hair. The Communist officer would be carrying a copy of the Kuomintang newspaper, the Central Daily folded into a triangle, and would identify himself by wiping sweat three times off the left side of his face and then three times off the right.

On the appointed day, my mother went to a small temple just outside the old north wall but within the defense perimeter. A man carrying the triangular newspaper came up to her and gave the correct signals. My mother stroked his right cheek three times with her right hand, then he stroked her left cheek three times with his left hand. Then my mother took his arm, and they walked off.

My mother did not understand fully what he was doing, and she did not ask. Most of the time they walked in silence, only talking when they passed someone. The mission passed off without incident.

There were to be more, around the city outskirts and to the railway, the vital communications artery.

It was one thing to obtain the information, but it was another to get it out of the city. By the end of July the checkpoints were firmly shut, and anyone trying to enter or leave was thoroughly searched. Yu-wu consulted my mother, whose ability and courage he had grown to trust.

The vehicles of senior officers could go in and out without being searched, and my mother thought of a contact she might be able to use. One of her fellow students was the granddaughter of a local army commander, General Ji, and the girl's brother was a colonel in their grandfather's brigade.

The Jis were a Jinzhou family, with considerable influence. They occupied a whole street, nicknamed " Ji Street," where they had a large compound with an extensive, well groomed garden. My mother had often strolled in the garden with her friend, and was quite friendly with her brother, Hui-ge.

Hui-ge was a handsome young man in his mid-twenties who had a university degree in engineering. Unlike many young men from wealthy, powerful families, he was not a dandy. My mother liked him, and the feeling was mutual.

He began to pay social calls on the Xias and to invite my mother to tea parties. My grandmother liked him a lot; he was extremely courteous, and she considered him highly eligible.