Author: Anyi He
Chapter 6: The Overseas Connection
Readers might raise one question when reading this story: “Under such harsh conditions, where did the deserts and sweat come from?” To answer this question, we must look at the other two sisters, Fu Yueyun and Fu Suyun, after their separation because of the loss of the KMT.
The eldest sister, Fu Yueyun, married Fujanese Li Shifang and went to Fujian with her husband after the war. They devoted themselves to medical affairs for over 50 years in Fujian. They both died around the 1960s and had three daughters and sons. Their daughters were Aiyu, Suyu, and Runyu, with Anyu most prominently graduating from National Taiwan University and working in the Taiwan Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency. Their sons were Tongshan, Hongshan, and Qingshan, each worked in their respective fields.
The second sister, Fu Suyun, married to Xiaorui. Xiaorui graduated from the sixth class of Whampoa Military Academy and held various positions in the National Army after the outbreak of the Second Sino Japanese War. From 1946, he served as the chief of staff of the reorganized 11th Division of the 18th Corps, the major general and brigade commander of the 18th Corps of the reorganized 11th Division, and the chief of staff of the 12th Army. In 1948, in the Huaihai Campaign, the entire 12th army was destroyed by the Liberation Army because of their general, Huangwei’s, fatal mistake, entering a deadly trap set by the Liberation Army. Luckily, Xiaorui’s sickness saved him. A few weeks before their defeat, Xiaorui had acute appendicitis and had to return to Bengbu for medical care. This made him one of the few survivors of the 12th Army. In the summer of 1949, he went to Kinmen with his friend Hu Lian, who was accompanying the rest of the National Revolutionary Army. In the following Autumn, He and Hu Lian fought in the Battle of Guningtou and defeated the Liberation Army. Because of his accomplishments, Chiang Kai-shek himself praised Xiaorui and changed his name from Xiaolin to Xiaorui13, showing his appreciation. Later, Xiaorui became the deputy division commander and division commander of the 136th Division and deputy army commander of the 6th Army. In 1960, he was promoted to lieutenant general in the Army and served as the deputy commander of the Kinmen Defense Command. He then retired in 1964 and died around 1966. Xiaorui and Fu Suyun had one son and three daughters: Xiao Quanshao, Xiao Ji, Xiao Ji (same pronunciation but different Chinese character), and Xiao Wen. By the late 60s, the family had all moved to the United States.
At the time when Xiangyun and her daughters suffered the most inhuman wrath of the revolution, Yueyun’s family experienced a normal life in Fujian, and Suyun’s family even had the “American Dream.” After their separation, the three separate decisions completely changed the three sisters' path. Yueyun in Fujian established a decent middle-class life, holding hospitals and grasping the earliest commercial opportunities in China, connecting with Hong Kong. Suyun, in the United States, had an affluent life with the legacy of Xiaorui as a high-ranked official in KMT.
Aside from the money, the most important thing Xiangyun’s family received was numerous colored photos. By that time in China, in such a remote village, colored photos were rare and unbelievable. It was a surprising hue dropped onto their black-and-white life. Most of them are from Suyun. She was Xiangyun’s closest friend since childhood. Ever since moving to the United States, she has never stopped missing her third sister, Xiangyun. She felt enduring compassion for her, knowing how much she had endured, and she knew her money would be meager, considering the political barriers between the two nations at the time. Therefore, instead of physical support, she also passionately provided spiritual support to the family, providing a sense of hope for the family. She would send numerous photographs capturing their life in America.
The warmest photo was of Suyun seated beside a Christmas tree, a vibrant swirl of colors with countless little lights sparkling all over it. At that time, Christmas was a mystery to the Chinese–an unknown holiday from the distant world. There were other photos, too, capturing Suyun standing proudly at the entrance of a detached house in America, surrounded by lush clusters of plants in a riot of colors. She leaned elegantly on a cane, her hair a soft silver halo, her face radiating a peaceful contentment as if she had made her peace with the world. These images greatly encouraged the family's endurance in the darkest days and helped the family overcome the insurmountable fate.
Chapter 7: Rebuilding in the Post-Mao Era
Things eventually became better after the Economic Reform by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. With the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution, China began a slow and painful recovery process. Not only were there more photos and finances coming from Suyun and Yueyun, but the family itself has finished the endurance phase. It was an era of hope and fortune. Jinqing's youngest daughter had three daughters: Zhang E, Zhang Pu, and Zhang Min. Because of the Economic Reform, the youngest daughter of them all, Zhang Min, had an opportunity to leave the tiny village in Sichuan. After her, Pu and E also left where they had endured for decades.
Min’s cousin Tang Hongying (Xiangyun’s second daughter, Tang Junqing’s eldest son), had a son named Jiang Fangming. Although Hongying did not leave Panzhihua, the poor city where he endured during the Cultural Revolution in Sichuan, he educated his son well. Being a teacher himself, he knew education was the best way forward under political turbulence. After years of hard work, Jiang Fangming graduated from Tsinghua University, the number one college in China.
Around the year 2000, with the contact information obtained from Jinqing, which included Suyun’s phone numbers and email addresses, Fangming had the opportunity to find them in the U.S. A few years later, Fangming participated in a month-long training program at the Lehman Brothers headquarters in New York. Because of this opportunity, Fangming contacted Xiao Ji, Suyun's second daughter. She took Fangming to their home in New Jersey, where they spent the entire weekends together. The family that separated nearly a century ago is now finally reunited.
In October 2011, Fangming embarked on a trip to New York again. Xiao Ji once again welcomed them. She let her daughter, Christina, drive to their villa from Philadelphia–where they were staying in a hotel. They spent a delightful evening at her home, and that was the time when the other timeline was revealed. We learned what happened to the Suyun family after their separation with warming stories and precious photographs.
After Suyun’s family traveled to the United States, their eldest daughter, Xiao Ji (肖绮), resided in Seattle, Washington. Then there was the second daughter, Xiao Ji (肖绩), who married Zhu Shicang in the U.S. Xiao Ji (肖绩) had two daughters, Xiaopei and Xiao Ju. Both of her daughters achieved remarkable success. Her eldest daughter Xiaopei holds a master’s degree from Yale University, while her youngest daughter Xiaoju (a.k.a Christina, mentioned earlier) completed her Ph.D. at Stanford University. Christina is now an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, reflecting the high academic and professional standards upheld by their family. At the moment of departure, Xiao Ji’s son-in-law, also of Korean descent, while driving them back to the hotel, kindly asked, “Will we ever have another chance to see each other in this lifetime?” That was the end of this short unification.
The other sister of Xiangyun, Yueyun’s grandson Lee-Lean Shu, visited Xiangyun’s descendent in early 2007. That was when the other line of the family was completed. Lee-Lean Shu was Yueyun’s second daughter, Aiyu’s first child. After Yueyun’s departure to Fujian, Aiyu studied in Taiwan and eventually resided there. In pursuit of higher education and the American dream, Lee-Lean Shu studied at the Tatung Institute of Technology and then traveled to the U.S. with only 80 dollars in his pocket. Despite all the challenges, he completed a B.S. degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2007, Su Lili’s company (GSI Technology) was valued at around $100 million and was being assisted by Goldman Sachs in preparation for an IPO.
Chapter 8: The Unfinished Story
I am the descendent of Zhang Min, the youngest daughter Xiangyun’s youngest daughter Jinqing’s youngest daughter. Her name now is Zhang Xiaofang because of a mistaken communication with the identification register person. Born in 2007, I was far after the worst time in our family. Ever since growing up, I have heard scattered stories about the family heritage and some fragmented legends about the ancient past. When a story climaxes, the family elders will often use political sensitivity to stop talking about it. Therefore, all I got were pieces of timelines that sometimes did not even match. Sometimes, I even wonder, did all of these actually happen? A lot of the stories sounded too absurd to be true. This got worse when the family elders got older. My grandmother, Tang Jinqing’s memory became increasingly fragmented as she turned his 70s. It became harder and harder to figure out what actually happened in the past. When I went to high school, I thought the family story was finished for our generation. Luckily though, my uncle, Hongying, or in direct translation, “Red Eagle,” still had some information documented. In one afternoon in 2022, he sent me a long list of information, and that was how the quest could have begun. Because of his help, I had some solid information to get started, and it was also because of his information that I could clarify what was real and what was fiction in many of the elders’ stories. Building upon his storyline, I successfully constructed a history of nearly 10000 words in the recent past.
Despite the effort done in the past 2 years, there is still a lot more to be done. Due to the difficulties of the cultural revolution, much of the documentation was inevitably lost or destroyed. Therefore, despite my efforts, all I could have accomplished was mostly the recent 100 years of history. By going to the U.S. next year, I hope to reunify with Suyun’s and Yueyun’s bloodlines, just like my cousin Fangming did 15 years ago. This time, I hope to gather more information and actually complete the 400-year history of the family. It would also be a remarkable family reunion after 100 years of endurance, and it would find us all unified in the United States, continuing the unfinished story.Since I was young, I always found it difficult to access my family heritage. Although my cousin Fangming tried to reestablish connections, and my grandmother Jinqing tried to preserve the old photographs and letters, none of them actually formally documented the histories. That caused a large proportion of the historical facts to be distorted or lost. I hope that by formally putting all of the history in this document, the next time my children ask me about the family's history, I can confidently throw this document to him without equivocally
narrating the fragmented tales.