The Tears of Nanjing: Thoughts and Reflections on the Nanjing Massacre

In memory of the 300,000 Chinese murdered during the Nanjing Massacre.

The Western history textbooks usually place the official start of World War II as September 1st 1939, the day Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Nazis’ rampage and genocidal policies resulted in unimaginable horror and tragedy by the end of the war in 1945. The deaths of more than 6 million Jews in the Holocaust have always been a focal point of 20th century history and serves as a reminder to future generations of the gross extent of man’s cruelty towards his fellow men. The Nazi ideology was subsequently outlawed in most European countries. German governments have since made official apologies to the Jewish people and paid billions in reparation. Nowadays many countries have enacted legislation explicitly criminalizing Nazism or any forms of expression related to Nazism (such as the Hitler salute). The Holocaust is a part of human history entrenched in Western education. Ever since Grade 4, the Holocaust has been embedded in the school curriculum. We saw movies such as Schindler’s List and The Pianist and read books such as Number the Stars and the Diary of Anne Frank. The Holocaust allowed us to peer into the dark side of humanity, the dehumanizing consequences of mass racism and the power that ideology can have on people’s minds within a certain societal context.

What is often ignored in Western education curriculum, and unknown to Western society in general, is the fact that War in Asia had already erupted by 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China and the subsequent takeover of the then capital city of Nanjing, 4 entire years before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Japanese expansionism had already begun by the early 1930s with the occupation of the northeastern part of China and the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo. Full scare war between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China officially began by July 1937 following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. By August of 1937, the Japanese launched a full scale assault on the city of Shanghai. They were met with heavy resistance from the Chinese Nationalist army but eventually captured the city after weeks of brutal fighting. By then, the then-leader of China, Chiang Kai Shek, knew that the Japanese’s eventual target would be Nanjing. Knowing that the city would be lost, Chiang Kai Shek pulled out and relocated his government to Wuhan and later Chongqing. He left with most of the Nationalist army in preparation for future battles, leaving only a small, disorganized and greatly undersupplied battalion of soldiers left to defend Nanking. The Japanese slowly made their way to Nanjing after the fall of Shanghai.

Nanjing was a prosperous and splendid city prior to the Japanese attacks located right by the life-giving waters of the Yangtze River. Survivors of the Nanjing Massacre later recount how “the boulevards of Nanjing were lined with parasol trees. It was beautiful.” Both my grandmother and grandfather(on my father's side) lived in Nanjing at that time. My grandmother would tell me how Nanjing was subjected to endless air raids during the summer of 1937. The sirens blared constantly, be it day or night, and they would sprint towards the bombs shelters for protection. Both my grandparents fled to Chongqing along with Chiang’s government. By the time Chiang retreated, most of the foreigners and diplomatic officials have also left the city, fully aware of the impending doom. Despite the explosion of panic and chaos surrounding the city at that time, a group of 15 brave Westerners, mostly American missionaries and European businessmen, created a two square mile area known as the Nanjing Safety Zone in order to receive all refugees fleeing from Shanghai and the counties around Nanjing as well as the hundreds of thousands of poor people who couldn’t afford to leave Nanjing. These brave Westerners’ selfless actions in the next four months would eventually determine the lives of more than 250, 000 people.

The most notable ones included John Rabe, the head of the Safety Zone known as the Oskar Schindler of Nanjing who used his political influence to save the lives of thousands of Chinese civilians, Dr. Robert Wilson, the only Western surgeon left in Nanjing at that time, and Minnie Vautrin, a courageous American missionary and Dean of Ginling Girls College who hid thousands of girls in her College while using her American status to prevent Japanese incursions into the zone. John Rabe has been the subject of numerous movies including a recent German film that won several top German Film Awards. His life eerily paralleled that of Oskar Schindler. He was the head of Siemens Corporation’s subsidiary in Nanjing and as a member of the Nazi Party, used his Nazi credentials to negotiate with the occupying Japanese forces allied at the time with Nazi Germany and would not risk hurting a German citizen. He used his Nazi seal to ward off Japanese soldiers who tried to sneak into the Safety Zone in order to abduct Chinese girls. During the air raids on Nanjing, Rabe allowed hundreds of Chinese people to stay in his yard where he set up a huge Nazi flag so that the bombers would see it and not bomb it. The amount of psychological stress, trauma and horror that the Westerners underwent during the three months following the fall of Nanjing are all recorded in gruesome detail in diaries and letters to family.

The Japanese arrived outside the city walls on December 8, 1937. After 5 days of fighting with the remaining Nationalist army, the wall was breached. The Chinese army remaining in Nanjing were vastly outnumbered and outmatched by the superior Japanese forces and weaponry. After the city fell on December 13, 1937, the Chinese army surrendered their weapons and hoped to be treated with mercy by the occupying Japanese forces. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The events that followed later became known in history as the Nanjing Massacre.

Nanjing was embroiled in total chaos and lawlessness. The state of chaos and anarchy allowed the Japanese army to do whatever they wanted to in the city. The feeling of domination and power over the civilians of Nanjing and the powerless Chinese soldiers who have given up arms eventually overwhelmed the Japanese soldiers who saw Chinese people as inherently inferior. The sense of power they felt eventually led them to pillage the entire city and commit gruesome atrocities that numb the human conscience. The Japanese Army’s motto at the time was: “Kill All, Loot All, Burn All”. During the occupation of Nanjing, the Japanese army committed a gross range of atrocities in the city which included, but were not limited to, raping women to death, burying civilians and prisoners of war alive, mass executions, beheadings, and the murdering of entire families from children to the old and infirm. Many of the soldiers who gave up their arms stole civilian clothes in order to avoid capture. John Rabe was given assurance by Japanese military officials that soldiers who have given up arms would be spared. Yet this assurance was futile. The Japanese soldiers summarily rounded up thousands of people from the Nanjing Safety Zone whom they accused of being soldiers disguised in civilian clothing, tied them up in groups and led them to the banks of the Yangtze River for mass execution. These groups of men were lined up along the banks of the Yangtze and machine gunned. Those who did not die from gunfire were later bayoneted or beheaded by Japanese soldiers. A Japanese soldier recalled seeing “rows and rows of dead body mountains.”

The masses of dead bodies were later dumped into the waters of the Yangtze River. It was said that the waters of the Yangtze were dyed crimson red with blood as the bodies were collectively thrown into the river. The Yangtze River, for thousands of years the lifeline of Chinese Civilization, had suddenly become the River Styx of death, its life-giving waters now littered with thousands of thousands of dead bodies. The putrid smell, the ghastly sight, and the deafening cries of immeasurable pain and suffering that were everywhere around the city are utterly unimaginable to the human mind. Yet it happened and records of its happening exist in countless photographs and films recorded by the Westerners in Nanjing.

There was also a famous contest between two Japanese soldiers to be the first one to behead 100 Chinese civilians. A photograph of these two soldiers smiling triumphantly about their barbaric deeds was shown on the front page of many Japanese newspapers. In fact, many Japanese soldiers had a preference for using swords to cut off the heads of Chinese victims. There are pictures showing rows and rows of human heads lined up neatly or held by Japanese soldiers as trophies. Chinese captives were also used as target practice for Japanese bayonets. These victims were usually tied to a post and repeatedly stabbed until all that remained was a lifeless heap of flesh drenched in blood bearing little resemblance to the form of a human being. Such images will remain ingratiated in my memory forever.

The Nanjing Massacre was also known as the Rape of Nanjing due to the fact that the Japanese army raped close to 20,000 women during the 3 months following the fall of Nanjing. Japanese soldiers raped girls as young as 10 and old women as old as 60. Most of the rape victims did not survive. Some were gangraped to death, and others bayoneted or shot after being raped. None were spared, not even the pregnant women. Pregnant women would be raped and their stomach bayoneted so that the human foetuses in the womb fell out and were impaled on swords. Most girls shaved their heads and blackened their faces in order to avoid being raped. As Minnie Vautrin writes in her diary: “they would capture dozens of young girls and line them up, and they would choose the pretty ones.” Men were forced to rape their family members in front of Japanese soldiers. There were also incidents of men being forced to rape dead bodies lying on the street.

The Nanjing Massacre remains a dark and tragic chapter in world history that is known to almost every person of Chinese descent, just like the Holocaust is to the Jewish people. Yet unlike the Holocaust, the Massacre, along with the entire Chinese theatre of war, is largely unknown and virtually ignored in Western education and society. Moreover, the Japanese government have never issued an official apology to the Chinese people nor has it made any form of state reparation for the massive casualties suffered in Nanjing. The Imperial family of Japan, following the end of the war, were granted immunity by General MacArthur from criminal prosecution. The political blanket shielded the Imperial family permanently, many of whom bear direct command responsibility for the events in Nanjing. Prince Asaka, Emperor Hirohito’s uncle, was the officer in charge of the final assault on Nanjing and directly issued an order to his soldiers to “kill all captives”. There is also no question that Emperor Hirohito was implicated in the Massacre as there is incontrovertible proof that he personally ratified a proposition by the Japanese army to “remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners.” Members of the Imperial Army, some bearing full responsibility for the actions of soldiers during the occupation in Nanjing, were never prosecuted and lived until old age.

The fates of many of the Westerners saviours whose actions saved hundreds of thousands of lives were ultimately tragic. John Rabe, wrote many letters to Hitler urging him to respond to the situation in Nanjing but to no avail. Upon returning to Germany, he showed video footage of the massacre to German officials but due to Nazi Germany’s alliance with the Empire of Japan, his pleas were universally rejected by the Nazis. His documentaries of the massacre were later confiscated by the Gestapo. After the war, he was arrested by Soviets for his Nazi membership and subsequently lived in relative poverty before dying of a stroke in 1950. The Chinese people and the Nanjing government, forever thankful to this savior from heaven, sent him monthly food parcels and money to support him in his state of destitution. The American missionary Minnie Vautrin, known to the Chinese people as the Goddess of Nanjing, suffered severe psychological trauma after witnessing the countless appalling atrocities in Nanjing. In her diary, she expressed a deep sense of guilt about not being able to save more lives. Tormented by the horrible visions that were imprinted in her memories, Vautrin committed suicide in 1941.

Japanese school textbooks have largely muted the importance of the Nanjing Massacre in history, some even going as far as to delete it altogether. There still exist groups of Japanese people who deny that the massacre ever occurred. Their claim is that the Japanese army simply marched through Nanjing in peace, that the only ones whom they’ve killed are soldiers who’ve resisted. Even today, 14 of the war criminals sentenced at the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, including the Prime Minister of Japan during the war Hideki Tojo, are still enshrined today in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. One can easily imagine the consequences if monuments enshrining Nazi military officials and war criminals were erected in the middle of Berlin. The incontrovertible facts, however, are that more than 300,000 people lost their lives in the few months following the fall of Nanjing. The Japanese army committed acts of sheer barbarism and cruelty towards Chinese civilians and prisoners of war that are as unfathomable to human conscience as the mass killings of Jews during the Holocaust. The Nanjing Massacre is often treated as a subject of political controversy. I don't think it should be. Just like the Holocaust, a subject matter like this should be moved out of the political spectrum and remembered as a lesson from history of the possible extent and magnitude of man’s gross inhumanity towards his fellow men. The Nanjing Massacre is by no means an isolated event. Rather, such massacres have occurred again and again throughout history and are by no means limited to one nation. Yet the sheer magnitude of this event can serve as an effective warning sign for future generations. Even if war is a human phenomenon that can never be eliminated, then at least lessons from history can strike the conscience of men who are fighting wars and allow them to contemplate questions of morality.

The Nanjing Massacre is to the Chinese people what the Holocaust is to the Jews, what the Rwandan Genocide is to the Tutsis, what the Katyn massacre is to the Poles. And just like the Rwandan Genocide, the world at the time took little note of the Nanjing Massacre. And what is even worse is the still-existing neglect and relative lack of knowledge of this event in the world. It is a huge, burning scar that Chinese people have borne ever since World War II and remains a lightning rod of discordance in Sino-Japanese relations.

The Nanjing Massacre has always been a subject matter of great seriousness and personal significance to me. I have read many books and saw many film documentaries on the subject matter. They have often left me in a state of depression and sadness for days. Iris Chang’s brilliant novel, The Rape of Nanking, is a great starting point for any reader interested in the subject. It contains detailed descriptions of the events in Nanjing and various accounts of survivors. The interviews with survivors of the massacre contained in film documentaries also describe in excruciating detail the excruciating horror they went through. I strongly recommend everyone to watch the wonderful American-made documentary simply titled “Nanking”. It contains anecdotes from survivors and readings of diaries written by the Westerners present during the Nanjing Massacre. One anecdote that forever scarred me is one by a survivor 30 minutes into the film that is both graphic and emotionally draining. The Nanjing Massacre has also been the subject of many films, two of which were made quite recently. One is a German production telling the story of John Rabe during the Massacre that is simply titled “John Rabe”. It is a very powerful movie and its final scene is reminiscent of the one in Schindler’s List where the Schindler Jews express their gratitude towards Oskar Schindler’s heroic acts. The other is the graphic Chinese film titled 南京！南京! (Nanjing! Nanjing! or City of Life and Death in English) by the Chinese filmmaker Lu Chuan, filmed in stark black and white featuring many memorable scenes vividly recreating the horror and enormous despair of the people of Nanjing in the dark winter of 1937. It is my firm and unequivocal hope that books such as Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking and films such as Nanking, John Rabe and南京！南京! would be shown in schools across the world alongside Schindler’s List, The Pianist and The Diary of Anne Frank.

In 2008, I went to China and paid a visit to Nanjing. The city is highly modernized now, with tall skyscrapers and busy traffic. Nanjing remains a beautiful city, its streets still flanked on both sides by those famous lush green parasol trees. The sullen brown city walls, however, remain and circle the vicinity of the main city. The still-standing city walls serve as a constant reminder for any visitor to Nanjing of the horrors that occurred there in the winter of 1937. I could not help but think of the horrifying black and white images depicting dead bodies of innocent victims, young and old, laying motionless and stone cold near those mighty walls whenever I turned to look at them. I paid a visit to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall but unfortunately the Museum was undergoing construction the day I went and was closed. It is however a destination that every visitor to Nanjing should pay a visit to. I saw old family relatives residing in Nanjing including my grandmother’s aunt who is now almost 100 years old. She went through the war, escaping to Chongqing along with my grandmother before the Japanese occupation of Nanjing. I wanted to ask her about her experiences yet was afraid to as it was undoubtedly a traumatic one. I left Nanjing, my ancestral hometown, after a three day stay. As I sat quietly on the train gliding out of the city across the Yangtze River, I looked out the clear windowpane and stared deeply into the torrential waters of the Yangtze. At that moment, the putrid smell, the ghastly sight, and the deafening cries of immeasurable pain and suffering that were there 70 years ago once again resurfaced in my mind. I closed my eyes as they watered with tears.

阳光灿烂的日子: A Personal Review of a Chinese Masterpiece

阳光灿烂的日子 (In the Heat of the Sun) is one of a few select movies that is of deep personal significance to me and that I hold dear to my heart like a beloved family heirloom. It is in my honest opinion, one of the masterpieces of world cinema. Having recently re-watched it, I was surprised by how fresh this film felt and how many surprises it holds upon a second viewing. This was Chinese actor Jiang Wen’s (姜文) first movie as a director. He has so far made two more movies, all of which are excellent, but none can compare to the sheer cinematic brilliance that is captured in 阳光灿烂的日子.

阳光灿烂的日子is Jiang Wen’s most personal film and also, his magnum opus.阳光灿烂的日子 is known in English as “In the Heat of the Sun”. I don’t know who made the translation but it absolutely fails to convey any of the poetic meaning in the Chinese title. The title literally means “The Days when the Sun Shone Brightly.” Although the title describes the setting of the movie, taking place during one summer in the life of the main character, the more subtle meaning conveys a sense of nostalgia, of warmth, and of longing for a bygone era that exists only in scenes of memory. It sounds like the finishing words of an autobiography where the author is remembering the long gone days of his youth.

阳光灿烂的日子 is the coming-of-age story of the young Ma Xiao Jun (played by the extremely talented Xia Yu aka 夏雨) and his gang of friends as they deal with the slings and arrows of young adulthood including parents, his male comrades and that most mysterious of creatures to young teenage boys: the teenage girl. It is set in Beijing amongst the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. Ma Xiao Jun’s father is a People’s Liberation Army soldier and is always away to occupy his military post in a distant province. He lives with his mother but the film has very few scenes of him at home. Most of his days are spent out with his gang of male friends.

He is a lanky young boy hitting puberty and slowly discovering human sexuality. There is a comical scene where Xiao Jun plays around with what looks like a balloon from his father’s drawer only to find out later that it was a condom. During the summer, he hangs out with his gang, a group of people very much like the rebellious youth from Rebel Without a Cause. They gets into fights with other gangs when one of their own gets hurt and they flirt with girls they see on the streets. The gang’s leader is a dashing and handsome older boy named Liu Yi Ku who early on in the movie wants to know a popular girl named Mi Lan. Xiao Jun, who is a talented keymaker, has a favourite pastime which involves sneaking into the apartments of strangers while they are absent. He becomes fixated with the apartment of one stranger, a beautiful young girl whose portrait instantly captivates Xiao Jun. He prowls the rooftops like a silent guardian to wait for this girl and finally meets her one day in the streets. The girl is the famous Mi Lan, who is older and much more mature than the innocent Xiao Jun. The two develop what at best can be called a brother-sister relationship but as with any boy smitten by a girl, friendship alone does not suffice. Xiao Jun later introduces Mi Lan to his friends and tries to win her heart only to ultimately lose her affections to the handsome and mature Liu Yi Ku.

阳光灿烂的日子 is unique in that it takes no political stand on the Cultural Revolution, instead choosing to focus on the everyday experiences of young kids during the Revolution and their coming-of-age within this historical context. It is a fond remembrance of those days of the Cultural Revolution where young kids roamed free without parental supervision around the city of Beijing.

My father, who lived through the Cultural Revolution, would often reminisce about those days as a time of absolute freedom and liberty. He would tell me how intellectuals such as teachers, who were the target of persecution, would often be bullied by students right in the middle of class very much like a hilarious scene in the movie in a classroom. As most of the adults have gone to work in the countryside and factories in Chairman Mao’s proletariat movement, kids in those days didn’t even attend school. My father would tell me stories about roaming around the city of Beijing, which was like a ghost town due to the exodus of people to the countryside, with friends very much like the young boys depicted in the movie and get into fights with other local gangs. He told me some of the characters in the movie are based on real life, namely Xiao Huai Dan, the old gang leader who settled the truce only to be assassinated later on by other enemy gang members.

Jiang Wen skilfully and ingeniously portrays this bygone era in 阳光灿烂的日子 while simultaneously telling a brilliant coming-of-age story that is universal in its appeal. The main characters are so well developed and reflective of genuine emotions that anyone who has ever been young can identify with them. This film is one of the most honest and powerful portrayals of the adolescent experience I have ever seen and a powerful meditation on memory and time. Jiang Wen brilliantly uses an orange-red color palette to exude a feeling of warmth and youthful vivacity. The lush music of the Sicillian Opera, Cavelleria Rusticana (which appeared in the opening scene of Raging Bull) is used to great effect here, evoking the reveries of Ma Xiao Jun. The movie is ingeniously shot with soft focus lenses to convey images of reverie springing right out of one’s memory. The sceneries in memory are often diluted and unclear, eaten away as one forgets through age. It is often hard to see images from memory in sharp focus and there are details that we cannot see like how the radiant light of the summer sun can often blind our perception. Indeed, a major theme of the movie is the unreliability of memory. The narrator in the movie, voiced by Jiang Wen himself as the adult version of Ma Xiao Jun, often finds that he is contradicting himself, speaking of events that might never have happened.

There is an amazing scene where Ma Xiao Jun sneaks into the house of the girl he has a crush on, and notices a portrait of her in a swimming suit behind white veil. His observance of the portrait slowly dissolves into a closeup shot of another girl named Hu Pei Pei who hangs out with Xiao Jun’s gang. In a later scene, the portrait disappears. When Xiao Jun asks Mi Lan where the portrait had gone, she staunchly denies ever possessing one. Did the portrait ever exist or was it simply the product of Xiao Jun’s daydreams? In fact the unreliable narrator even later says that maybe Mi Lan and Hu Pei Pei might be the same person. The movie smartly never answers those questions.

It is said that the “first loves of adolescence are so powerful because they are not based on romance but on ideals.” Boys and girls fall in love because they think the other person is perfect. In fact Xiao Jun often acts out scenes from old Soviet movies pretending to be an idealistic Bolshevik warrior as a pastime and also to impress Mi Lan. Mi Lan to Xiao Jun is an object of Pygmalion fascination. It is fair to ask whether Xiao Jun really knows Mi Lan, or does she simply represent an ideal that commands his fascination and sexual desire? Xiao Jun tells us that his initial meetings with Mi Lan were pure bliss as he would often go to her apartment, dance with her and watch her lie down on the bed. Indeed, we often remember things not as they were, but as what we want to think they were. As the older Xiao Jun tells us through narration, his meeting of Mi Lan might never have been as enchanting as he remembers. It is interesting to note that Xiao Jun, and the audience, are first introduced to Mi Lan not by a facial encounter but through her feet. There are many shots of Mi Lan’s feet later on in the movie. What is Jiang Wen suggesting here? Is it a suggestion of foot fetish like in Quentin Tarantino’s movies? I think it’s an image of perfection that is firmly ingrained in Xiao Jun’s memory such that whenever he thinks of Mi Lan, he thinks of her feet. In other words, the feet symbolize the ideal that is Mi Lan.

There is a great scene where Xiao Jun first introduces Mi Lan to his friend, the gang leader Liu Yi Ku. He tries to woo and impress her, pretending to be a Bolshevik soldier and boasting that he can climb all the way to the top of a coal tower. He plays around with his friend only to see Mi Lan laughing and being touched by Liu Yi Ku. Immediately his attention is shifted to Mi Lan and Liu Yi Ku. Notice Xia Yu’s, who plays Ma Xiao Jun, subtle facial tensions as he looks on, jealousy and regret boiling underneath the surface. It is brilliant and subtle acting. Any boy who has ever stood by and watched a girl that one deeply likes laughing and being caressed by another boy can instantly identify with Xiao Jun’s rage and despair. The reaction is human and Xia Yu’s performance captures that reaction impeccably.

It is a shame that 阳光灿烂的日子is not widely known in the West. Although championed by the famous American director Quentin Tarantino, this movie has never found distribution rights in North America and remains unseen. It is a cinematic masterpiece and together with its director, Jiang Wen, deserves the same kind of honor and appreciation given to the works of Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee and Wong Kar-Wai. The film version I saw was badly deteriorated and in serious need of a restoration. I hope that one day a figure like Martin Scorsese, known for his work on film preservation and the championing of his Italian heritage by using his name to distribute Italian movies, would come and save this precious gem of a film that so wonderfully captures the essence of the adolescent experience. 阳光灿烂的日子 is not only a masterpiece of Chinese cinema, but also one of the greatest works of art, period.

My Thoughts on the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter GamesShare

After 17 days of gruelling races, stupefying performances and heart pounding tournaments, the Olympic Games once again draws to a close. The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games originally looked like it was destined to fail. The highest temperature in decades, the tragic death of an athlete in training and an embarrassing gaffe in one of the most important moments of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, the lighting of the Flame, all contributed to an aura of pessimism surrounding these Games. But somehow at the end, Vancouver and the strength of the Canadian people pulled through to give Canada the highest Gold medal count in Winter Olympic history. There is no question that despite the initial setbacks, the last 17 days were a great show. Vancouver had a high standard to meet after the sheer size and pageantry of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As I was there in Beijing during the summer of 2008 and attended many events including the Closing Ceremonies, I honestly think that Vancouver’s Opening and Closing Ceremonies paled in comparison to that of Beijing. But then again, Beijing had a much larger budget and much greater human resource than Vancouver so it is futile to compare Beijing with Vancouver. Given the circumstances surrounding these Winter Olympic Games, Vancouver delivered big.

Every two years, the Olympics represent the center stage, the focal point of the world for two weeks. It is where the full range of human emotions and drama are put on display. It is the forum where dreams can materialize in the flash of a millisecond and extraordinary strength and perseverance does not go unrewarded. The unrestrained joy, exuberance and tears broadly painted on the faces of young athletes who’ve just won a medal have never failed to uplift and inspire me. As a spectator, one cannot help but smile and cheer for and with these gifted young athletes who’ve sacrificed so much for that moment of euphoric triumph and glory. The ultimate appeal of the Olympic Games is in large part due to the fact that relative unknowns can achieve instantaneous international fame and represent their country’s brightest moment on the podium. It makes ordinary people believe that miracles can happen and that fame can knock on anyone’s door regardless of socioeconomic status. If anything like a fairy tale were to happen in real life, it would happen at the Olympic Games.

These Winter Olympic Games have produced a compendium of inspiring, heartbreaking and miraculous events. The most well-known of course is Joannie Rochette’s profile in courage as she performed a beautiful short program in a black dress only two days after her mother’s death. Rochette’s composure, courage and perseverance to realize the dreams of both mother and daughter in the aftermath of heartbreaking tragedy are exactly the qualities that the Olympic spirit enshrines and is dedicated to. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one can easily identify with Rochette’s pain and applaud for her as she pulled off the skate of her life. My mom, who lost grandmother a few years ago, watched Rochette’s skate in silence and tears. Ultimately, her bronze medal is as much a reward for her brilliant performance as a tribute to the extraordinary strength that humans can exhibit even when life is at its bleakest. Rochette finished the short program, her face strained with emotions and her eyes red with tears, to a standing ovation in the Pacific Coliseum. As Rochette sent a skyward kiss towards heaven upon completing her skate, the whole world cheered and cried for this extraordinary human being whose passion is as undying as the Olympic flame.

Another inspiring story from these games is that of the Chinese short track speedskater Zhou Yang (周洋). Zhou Yang was only 18 years old and in her first Olympics when she won the gold medal for the women’s 1500 m event. At the 1500 m finals, she was the lone Chinese athlete facing off against three extremely powerful Korean skaters. Yet with three laps remaining in the race, she outdistanced herself from the rest of the skaters and managed to cross the finish line several meters ahead of silver medalist. The little known Yang’s parents, both of whom are handicapped, are extremely poor people whose only major source of income comes from selling lottery tickets. The family lives in a dilapidated two room apartment where one room houses the lottery store and the other room is their home. Her mother sewed clothes for customers in order to earn money but it ultimately never helped the family much. Speedskating to Zhou Yang and her family was like a potential lottery ticket out of poverty and misery. Zhou Yang later told reporters how every morning, her father would wake up at 3 in the morning in order to driver her in a decrepit old motorcycle to training. Zhou Yang, after winning the gold medal in an event previously monopolized by the powerful Korean skaters and thereupon becoming a national hero, remains every bit the shy and soft spoken young girl from Changchun. Having always been a fan of the Chinese Mando-pop singer JJ Lin (林俊杰), she received a signed copy of Lin’s new album as well as a personal message of encouragement from Lin. When asked by reporters after her glorious gold medal win about what she plans to do after her win, Yang immediately answered: “Winning this medal can allow my parents to live a better life.” Those are the words of a true Olympic Champion.

Vancouver 2010 also saw the triumphant return of Shen Xue (申雪) and Zhao Hongbo’s (赵宏博) whose gold medal win in the pairs event ended Russian domination for 40 years. The veteran couple, Xue aged 31 and Hongbo aged 36, came out of retirement for one last shot at gold. Their record breaking short program skate and their gold medal win were the result of an Olympic dream that began a decade ago. The last Olympics at Turin were to be their last and I remember distinctly the words of the commentator as they skated during the Gala performance to the entrancing song from Man of La Mancha, “An Impossible Dream.” The commentator said that the pair was skating to a song written for them, a gold medal win really being an impossible dream. Nobody would ever imagine that this veteran pair can even come back to the rink four years later, let alone set a world record and win a gold medal. At last, this couple has realized their impossible dream, setting an incredible precedent for the next generation of skaters.

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games was one of Canada’s finest moments. The closing ceremonies showed the world the unique sense of humour that Canadians possess, going even as far as poking fun of their own blunders during the opening ceremonies. It was no easy feat as the Games started under the shadow of tragedy. Yet Canada’s narrative during these Games, just like the stories of many individual athletes, ended on a glorious and triumphant note.

Setting Foot in a Strange New World

I don’t remember much about my departure from China. At that time I wasn’t really aware that my parents and I would settle down in Canada permanently. I didn’t know that this trip to Canada was a one way ticket and that it wasn’t going to be a vacation lasting a mere 2 months. It was to be the first time I would set foot on a foreign country yet the only figment of memory remaining was bidding farewell to my kindergarten class. I remember being called by the teacher to the front of the class where she made a public announcement about my departure to a faraway land called Canada. Only then did I begin to realize that I would perhaps never see the teacher or my classmates ever again, at least not for a very long period of time. What the reactions of my classmates were I do not recall. Nor do I recall saying goodbye to my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. Funny it is that memories of such significant events have worn off with the unmitigated onslaught of time. Suffice it to say that I felt both excited at the prospect of living in a whole new world and sad at the idea of leaving so suddenly a place where the roots of my memories were planted at.

The departure to Canada was also going to be the first time I ever took an airplane. I recall a multitude of sentiments being on this otherworldly transportation that I have only seen before in the form of television images or play toys. I was overwhelmed with excitement, and maybe a little fear, when the airplane lurched forward and aimed towards the sky. However, whatever degree of excitement and fear I initially felt over my first plane ride were eventually beset by the excruciatingly long hours that an airplane ride across continent and ocean would take. I repeatedly asked my mother how much longer it will take until the airplane will land and thereafter complaining after hearing the answer. It took approximately 10 hours to go from Beijing to Vancouver for airplane transfer, and I was bored with every minute of it. My parents of course, were often asleep during the plane ride, leaving me sitting there engaged in a staring competition with the airplane ceiling.

Upon landing at Vancouver, I thought that the airplane ride was finally over, that at last I can step out and smell the fresh air. But it wasn’t over. I found out then that the place where we will finally settle would be Montreal and not Vancouver. Despite this discouraging discovery, the brief stay at Vancouver airport did produce one memorable event. It was the first time I personally heard people speaking the English language. I was later even more shocked when I heard my father communicating in that mysterious language. I remember asking my mother what kind of language my father was speaking to these men in uniform. She pleasantly replied that my father is able to speak “外语”, which is Chinese for a “foreign language”. I knew at that moment that the world around me has changed. I would no longer be able to communicate with the people around me in my mother tongue. Instead, I had no choice but to learn the language of the, as Chinese people would call it, “外国人”, which means foreign people, in order to communicate with them. That grim reality slowly dawned upon me and it was the first time I can say where I felt truly homesick.

5 hours later, I stepped out of the airplane with my parents and moved along with the current of travellers and a couple of other Chinese pilgrims into the empty corridors leading to the main hall of Dorval Airport in Montreal. After 15 hours of flight time, the cool summer breeze and the brightly lit blue hue of the sky reinvigorated my spirit and senses. I arrived at Montreal on June 15, 1995. Montreal was an environment so completely different from that of Beijing. I remember being struck by the extreme disparity in population between Beijing and Montreal. As we sat in a taxi driving us to the apartment where we would live in, I keenly observed the wonderful sights flashing before my eyes. I saw people walking around, hand in hand, enjoying the delightful taste of ice cream. I saw parents playing around with their children on the expansive grassfields of public parks. It was then that I began to think maybe Canada isn’t a strange place after all, and with that comforting thought I curled my lips upwards and smiled.

Taking The First Steps In China

The first four years of my life took place in Beijing. My parents lived in an apartment within the Beijing Hydrological Sciences yard (北京水科院) where my grandfather worked. Both my grandparents on my father’s side were scientists: my grandmother a famed geologist and my grandfather a dam engineer. My dad has two siblings, one older sister and a younger brother. I have an older cousin, my aunt’s daughter, who is 8 years older than me. Both my grandparents on my father’s side were originally from Nanjing and went on to settle in Beijing during the 1950s.

My mother’s family on the other hand all came from the southern province of Hunan. My grandfather on my mother’s side (外公) was a geologist and died in an avalanche before my mother was born. My grandmother then remarried and gave birth to two sons. My mother would often tell me about how she was severely mistreated by her stepfather. My mother’s parents would reside in Hunan for the rest of their lives.

My father was missing from my earliest memories. He had left for Canada before my memory started about doing its business. My father studied Chinese at the esteemed Beijing University for four and a half years but transferred to the law faculty and studied there for 2 years. He later taught law at the Beijing Legal Administration Department (北京司法局) for 7 to 8 years before making the decision to come study in Canada. Back in those days, studying abroad in a Western country meant embellishing one’s educational background with golden varnish. Western education was the fountain of career opportunities that attracted thousands of pilgrims every year, one of them was my father. He embarked on his journey to the west in 1992 and wouldn’t come back for another 3 years.

I lived with my mother in the small apartment room during those three years. After my dad left for Canada, my mother would pay a visit to my grandparents’ home every weekend and leave me there to spend the weekend with them. I was then sent to an old nanny’s house on a daily basis. This soon ended because I would cry for the entire day I was at the nanny’s house. I was later taken care of by an 18 year old country girl from Sichuan named Xiao Jiang. She stayed at our apartment and ate with us. My mom recalls nowadays how kind Xiao Jiang was to me. She was herself a poor young girl from the countryside in Sichuan with a large family and little education. I guess being a nanny in Beijing was the only way she could earn a living for her family. Xiao Jiang remained my nanny for quite a long time until my grandmother, that is my mother’s mother, came to visit from Changsha. She didn’t like the idea of a nanny watching over her grandson and persuaded my mom to fire Xiao Jiang. No one in my family has heard of Xiao Jiang ever since.

As I grew older, I started to attend kindergarten. I still have nightmarish memories of the first kindergarten I attended. As suggested in the previous chapters, I was a troublemaking boy from birth and troublemaking didn’t translate too well to the caretakers at that kindergarten. Whenever I caused trouble, I was locked in the bathroom for what seemed like eternity. I would yell until my throat was sore and nobody came to open the door. I would not be let out until I became quiet. It was the punishment I had to receive for talking too much in class or causing mischief. When my mom found out about this, she was furious and quickly transferred me to another kindergarten.

I have fond memories of the second kindergarten I attended. My mom would pick me up from school on her bicycle every day. Back then, a Japanese show called Ultraman was widely popular and every day after I came home from kindergarten I would immediately turn on the TV set to watch Ultraman. I had a lot of Ultraman-related merchandise; books, toys, even costumes and masks! I wasn’t alone in that. Practically every child in the Hydrological Sciences yard owned something related to Ultraman. I made a lot of friends at that kindergarten. I have since lost contact with many of those friends but tools like Xiaonei and Facebook can help me in my quest for reconnection. I often participated in cultural shows organized by the kindergarten, performing dancing and singing routines on stage. I still possess pictures of me dressed up in silly costumes performing on stage.

My father returned to China in 1995 to bring me and my mother with him to Canada. I saw in movies how everyone would buy a bouquet of flowers to welcome friends and family who come from faraway places and so I persuaded my mother to buy the best-looking bouquet she could find at the flower shop so that I could personally hand it over to my father when I meet him. I eagerly awaited my dad’s arrival at the airport, curious to see how much he resembled the man whom for me at that time only existed visually in the countless photographs we had at home and in the verbal descriptions my mom gave me. Three years of hard living as an international student in Canada didn’t change his appearance very much as I easily spotted him when he was entering the Passenger Arrivals Hall. My father, the pilgrim, back in China to whisk me and my mother away to a land called Canada.

A Genesis Story

Life for me began on the afternoon of August 21, 1990 in the Beijing Marine Hospital (北京海军医院). I was the only boy born in that ward on that day. One could imagine how happy my parents were over the fact that their first and only child was a boy. It certainly made my grandmother happy, as she immediately rushed to the hospital the moment she heard I was born. My mother later told me that she was the one who carried me home from the hospital. Boys certainly are well regarded amongst Chinese families. They are the ones who preserve the family title and because of the one-child policy in China, the birth of male babies certainly carried with it a lot of importance.

My parents named me 方舟, which are the Chinese words for the Great Ark that Noah built in the Great Deluge. My friends nowadays often ask me whether my parents are Christians or not for naming me after one of the most famous stories in the Genesis portion of the Bible. But no one in my family is a Christian and I was named after Noah’s Ark due to the belief that it meant good fortune and future to my parents.

Many years have since passed and memory fades a little. Yet there are select moments from my early childhood that are still retrievable from the archives of my memory and play like a grainy silent motion picture from the early 1920s. Piecing those together with accounts and memories from my family and one gets a clear picture of those early years.

I was frequently sick when I was an infant. My mother often jokes about me attending the hospital more than a doctor does for work. I would spend weeks in the hospital, where my aunt came to look over me like a guardian angel when my parents were busy. My frail health led to one crucial incident that nearly killed me. I was slowly recovering from fever and that was when my parents took me to the serene Beihai (北海) Park one warm spring day for a walk. Afraid that the gentle breeze would exacerbate my fever, they wrapped me up in layers and layers of clothing like a stiff mummy. The heat produced by all those layers of clothing stifled me. This took a turn for the worst when I slowly lapsed into a seizure. Frantic, my parents rushed to the roadside to call a cab. Alas, there weren’t a lot of cabs back then. My parents finally hitched a ride on a small minivan or 面包车 which drove me to the hospital. My life was saved right there and then by the engine of a kind stranger. The incident led to another extended stay in the hospital. The incident took a toll on my health and I would remain a sick child in many years to come. I attended hospitals so often that I started to have a phobia for doctors. Once a good doctor tried to fix my dislocated arm but I resisted him like I was fighting for my life. My mother told me that I fought so hard that I tore his watch right from his wrist. Thinking about these stories nowadays, I often thought that it’d be a good idea if I had tracked down the identities of the kind stranger who drove me to the hospital and this good doctor whom I treated like a Gestapo officer, repay the driver for his kindness and apologize to the doctor for my abhorrent behavior (maybe buy him a nice watch too).

Memoirs of my Life: Prologue

The lights shone bright into my eyes. I looked forward into the distance and saw, beyond the blinding lights, an entire roomful of people sitting still and silent. People of all ages, race, gender and cultural backgrounds, with their eyes fixated on me as I stood on the vast stage. A podium stands before me and on it, a couple of pages of a speech I had written only two days prior. On those couple of pages were printed words that represented my heart and soul at that point in my life. It contained memories, anecdotes, thoughts, jokes and laments. Most important of all, it was the first speech I had ever written that was meant to be communicated to a large public. It was hard uttering the first sentence, with so many eyes examining me that an acute pang of stage fright almost overwhelmed me. But once I uttered the first word, the rest followed like clockwork. I dedicated the speech to my grandmother, whose life was rapidly slipping away as she was terminally ill with leukemia. I felt grateful that she would at least have the chance to know that I stood there on that stage. By the end of my speech, the entire room was filled with the deafening sound of applause. I could barely see, only hear the standing ovation that was given to me by the crowd. “It was one of the most successful and touching valedictory speeches ever given,” said one teacher. The people amongst the crowd included people I admired, people I loved, people I was friends with and people who have supported me all my life. That all happened on June 20, 2006, the day of my graduation from high school. I was 15 years old by the time I graduated from high school. What did I know about being the voice of our graduating class?

As I stepped down that stage after being handed the Governor General’s Award for Academic Merit, I went past a mirror and for a brief moment I looked at my own reflection. The young boy looking back at me is one teetering on that murky edge separating childhood from adulthood. I thought to myself: “How did I ever get here, in this room, with all these people applauding me?” Everything that went before it seemed so far away, so radically different from what I was then. “How did it come to this?” was the question nudging me at the back of my brain. Only a year before, I was one of the most notorious students in school with no foreseeable future. How did I ever get to be where I was, having the chance to communicate my heart and soul to such a receptive crowd?

To define that moment of my life as meaningful would be a vast understatement. There is no way to communicate in words what that moment meant for me, my family and my closest friends. I didn’t want to look back, for that moment was too enchanting and spellbinding. But it was my past that got me there even though it was a past that I could not remember without feeling bittersweet. It is said that those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. I guess the past would always be by our side, whether we choose to ignore it or not. It makes us who we are and constitute the building blocks of our being. As for my past, it certainly is one I can never hope to forget.