47
Storm Brewing
(1930-31)

With Bob away, the family gathering for Christmas that year was reduced to Dick and me. In Szechwan, Bob had an infected hand. Typically, I heard about it, not from Bob, but from a friend in. Shanghai who had received a letter from a friend in Chengtu. When I learned the identity of the Chengtu friend, I stopped worrying. He was famous as an inveterate purveyor of bad news. Time proved that I was right, and Bob came home safely soon after the new year of 1930 had begun.

At the end of January I had a tiffin for members of my college fraternity; a dozen of us celebrated Founders' Day of Kappa Alpha Theta with as good a lunch as my Boy could produce. The next month I had the flu and was laid up in bed for some days. Then, one day, I hemmed three towels, read over three hundred pages, wrote a long letter and two book reviews, played Parcheesi with Dick, and had some bedside visitors. So I felt that I might as well get up.

In April I had a terrible fall on our stairs. Fortunately, I was wearing my heavy fur coat. After resting a few moments, I went on to a Chinese meal with some YW secretaries. When I got to the restaurant I began to feel faint, and even hot tea did not help. So I crept down the stairs and went home in our car. A friend came to spend the night, and the doctor carne and ordered bed rest. For days I lay flat as a flounder, cross and suffering. Dick did everything he could for me. Bob was away again, for he had taken Dr. and Mrs. David Yui to Szechwan. This was the first time that a general secretary of the YMCA National Committee had visited Szechwan. Bob had encouraged and arranged their trip, so it was right that he accompany them.

When I was just able to get about from my injury, I had a telephone call one morning from a man in the business office of the American Methodist Mission. He had received a telegram from Chengtu asking him to pay for a piano which I was to purchase and send west by a man in the Baptist Mission. Then I discovered that the man was leaving Shanghai the next day.

And, in true Shanghai fashion, it was pouring rain. I had to find someone to go with me to hear the tone of the instrument, and then it had to be re-tuned to international pitch. Finally, there were the details of packing, customs clearance, insurance, and obtaining the bill of lading so that it could accompany the piano. My next outside task was to purchase two thousand dollars worth of lingerie for friends in America who wanted to sell it at a hospital benefit. It was rather fun spending such a sum of money so delightfully.

We had arranged to rent a house at Tsingtao for the month of August. In mid-July, with our steamer tickets bought, we had a wire from the owners that it would not be convenient for them to let us have the house. It had been a very hot summer in Shanghai, and we were greatly disappointed. Furthermore, we had to forfeit money on our steamer tickets. The owners were upset that we felt they should pay us that amount, but they did send a check. It was too late to make other plans, so we stayed on in Shanghai. I had recently been elected corresponding secretary of the American Women's Club. That included editing the club yearbook. So most of the hot days of our holiday month, which Bob had expected to spend with Dick and me in Tsingtao, were devoted to typing lists of names and all the other details of publication.

With autumn, Bob was away again, and we had a succession of house guests. In November some of us went to the airfield to meet an English aviatrix, The Honorable Mrs. Bruce, who was making a record-breaking trip, all alone in an open cockpit plane, from London to Tokyo. I found it difficult to imagine such a long flight in so tiny a plane—it was so small that she almost seemed to be riding on the back of some large bird. We women of the Joint Committee entertained her at tiffin. I had expected to find her eager for publicity and excitement; she turned out to be a person of poise, character, and courage, who acted as though she had not done anything unusual.

On his trip to Szechwan, Bob had taken Professor Robertson of the YMCA Lecture Bureau.^[1] It was possible, by that time, to travel between Chungking and Chengtu by motor vehicle.^[2] Because Professor Robertson had a good deal of equipment, they were traveling by truck. While Bob was standing in the back of the truck trying to improve the placement of some of the boxes, an apprentice driver suddenly let in the clutch, causing the truck suddenly to lurch forward. Bob fell backward out of the truck and landed fiat on his back. He had a great deal of pain. When he could be examined by doctors in Chengtu, they decided that he had probably cracked a couple of ribs.

Christmas was shadowed by tragedy. The chairman of the YMCA Na-

tional Committee, Mr. S.C. Chu, was kidnapped as he was leaving his home on the morning of the twenty-third. He had a bodyguard, and numerous shots were fired.^[3] It was known that Mr. Chu was wounded. On Christmas Eve he was found, close to death, on a remote street. Although he was rushed to a hospital, it was impossible to save his life.

The funeral, on the last day of 1930, was like no other that I have ever seen. Hundreds of people were there. The large Chinese coffin was in the middle of the large hall. Mr. Chu's body, laid out on a light bamboo cot and covered with a gorgeous red satin embroidered pall, was carried down the stairs into the room. In life, he was a tall, striking-looking man with clear-cut features. In death, his face was like one carved of ivory. The body was placed in the coffin and packed around with small rolls of aromatic herbs. The casket was then sealed with ceremony. Then came the service, conducted according to the Christian procedure, but affecting beyond the ordinary.

The manner of his going, the sadness of knowing that so good a man had been struck down in a craven way while he had been going about his own affairs, the feeling of insecurity that seemed to gather about our thoughts of life, cast a spell on every person in that assembly. Chinese gentlemen in middle life, older people, youths, all had the look of inarticulate suffering that we seldom see in mass expression.

Early in 1931 the question of home leave appeared on the horizon. Normally, we would be due that spring. But, by this time, money was tight: Bob felt that we should offer to remain in China another year.^[4] I was not much in favor of this: Jack was graduating from Oberlin, and Dick was due to go to America to start college. In addition, I was tired of our always being the ones whose furlough was postponed for some reasons connected with the welfare of our organization. It was twenty-six years that spring since we had been appointed to China. We had had only two home leaves, and my health had never been really robust. However, it was decided that we would remain in China.

The next thing to give us pause was the sale of the house that we rented. The new owners wanted a much higher rent, beyond what we could ask the Y to pay in hard times. With Dick soon to be leaving, and Bob away so much

of the time, I felt that the thing was for us to move into an apartment. We found an attractive four-room place at one of the most convenient and fascinating street corners in Shanghai.^[5] Because of the multiple intersections, the building was shaped like a flatiron, and our apartment was on the seventh floor in the nose of the flatiron.

We settled in happily, and Dick was thrilled with a secondhand motorcycle, which ate up the distance to his school each morning. One good servant was all we needed, and I reveled in a super-clean electric range and other modern equipment. Our servant was a coolie-boy, not a cook-boy, and I planned to do much of the cooking myself. The Boy was so careful of the kitchen that each night before he left, he washed the white-tiled floor on hands and knees, backing himself out of the apartment—thus leaving his realm spotless.

But it was not a restful year. Soon after we moved, word came from New York that some of the Y men were to be "demobilized" (I never could bear having that word applied to religious work!). Bob actually received one of these letters. Incredibly, an office blunder sent it to him after the New York office had already decided that he was to be kept on in China. Only the prompt despatch of a cable to the Shanghai office saved Bob the deepest sorrow. I would not minimize by one iota the devotion of every man who had served, or was serving, the YMCA in China, but I doubt if any of them was as deeply affected as Bob by thoughts of change. For one thing, he had been a longer time with the Y than any of the other men involved. And his work was truly his life.

That spring was a terrible one for him. Night after night he lay awake. When Dick was out, he walked the floor—up and down, up and down, through the length of the hall, into the bedroom, and around to the living room again—until I feared that we would have complaints from those living below. Sometimes he walked on the roof. I tried a thousand things to divert him and to change his feeling about the shame that he felt. "It is no shame to lose a position when there is no money to pay employees," I said. But he always countered that the Y was a brotherhood; he had given his life to the work; he knew only China: what could he do in America.

Although Bob stayed, the nearness of his own calamity, and the fact that many of his friends were dropped, oppressed him in a way that even I found hard to understand. His whole life had been shaken. He begged me not to tell our sons of the letter.^[6] He was still devoted to the Chinese Y organization,

but I was amazed at the depth of his feeling about the broader situation. He had used his own money freely for the work. When the new Y building was put up in Chengtu, he gave the gymnasium. Many secretaries owed their training to his financial assistance. Few people knew of these benefactions, and he preferred to give in that quiet way. But-he had relied upon the Retirement Fund for his old age. It was a terrible blow that his future income was jeopardized and his whole life threatened.

He talked over every detail of his past life, asking me where he had failed. I assured him that there was no implication of failure. The unintended slight caused him such poignant suffering that, in the end, I wished that what had happened could have been anything else. I felt almost sorry that he had ever gone to China under the Y. But I well knew that the other mission boards had also had to retrench, and that many good and worthy men and women were facing the same problems that had brought him such heart searching.

In the midst of all this, Bob made up his mind to go to America at his own expense. He would see Jack graduate; advise young Bob, who seemed to be unhappy at Berkeley; and welcome Dick when he arrived. Almost as soon as this decision was made, a cable informed us that young Bob was already on the ocean on his way to Shanghai. Having sent him no travel money, we were interested, when he arrived, in how he had financed his trip. Very calmly, he said that he had simply drawn his own funds from his bank account. Young Bob was a hard worker who always delighted to stand on his own in financial matters. He was not satisfied with college life and wanted our permission to go into aviation. I longed to keep him in China, but our own existence seemed uncertain, and we knew of no immediate opening for him. We gave our consent to the aviation venture. But, back in California, he changed his plans again and entered the College of Commerce at UC. His father gave up his intended trip to America.

Our next parting was with Dick, who left soon after his high school graduation. He had arranged to help a family of American friends from Shanghai drive across the American continent.^[7] He saw a lot of his own

country, visited Washington, D.C., and returned to California by bus.^[8] That September he entered Pomona College.

It had been hard to see the other boys go, but to lose Dick was a calamity. As long as we had him, we felt that we were not bereft. It is a difficult thing to have to part from children during their most formative years; and at the time that Richard left us, we needed all the solace we could get from our own. But, by Bob's choice, Dick left without knowing the circumstances which had oppressed us so for the past several months.

We continued on as usual. Bob went to Szechwan again that autumn. I was occupied with the various activities that would have filled my life to overflowing had I permitted it. I had to hold back constantly because of the doctor's orders.^[9] In September the Japanese had gone into Manchuria and, ignoring the League of Nations, had speedily set up their puppet empire of Manchukuo. Some of our friends among the Japanese club women in Shanghai were pressured into a rather amusing effort to propagandize us about the "kind" intentions of the Japanese.

Bob reached home on December 23 just in time for Christmas. Then we were surprised by a cable from New York telling us to leave for furlough as soon as possible. We had a hectic month. We were fortunate in selling our lease (and the Austrian doctor who bought it considered himself fortunate). Then we had to pack. And Bob, as always, had a long list of commissions and orders from his recent trip. As the time for the ship sailing came close, the tension with the Japanese in Shanghai increased each day. On the day we sailed, in late January [1932], Chinese friends seeing us off said they felt certain that serious trouble would begin within a few days.