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China in My Life — a Personal Journey: the 1950S

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China in My Life — a Personal Journey: the 1950S Print | Go Back to Story Globalist Analysis> Global History China in My Life — A Personal Journey: The 1950s By Jean-Pierre Lehmann | Monday, February 11, 2008 While 2008 is the "Year of China," many people only know the country through headlines, political rhetoric and economic data — and cannot consider China from a first-person historical perspective. In this six-part series, Jean-Pierre Lehmann examines China from his personal experiences beginning five decades ago. In this first installment, he explores the perceptions and realities of China in the immediate post-World War II period. When I was four years old, my parents took my sister, my maternal grandmother and myself by boat to Yokohama, Japan. We went from France’s port city of Le Havre to New York, then crossed the entire United States by land, to take a ship from San Francisco. The year was 1949 — the year of China’s Liberation. On the way to Japan, we stopped in Hong Kong. Later on, I found myself returning to Hong Kong throughout the 1950s. To this day, I remember the constant stream of refugees and the poverty, the thousands of people living on the barges with which they had escaped from mainland China. Rumors of cruelty At my first primary school, run by missionary nuns, in Tokyo — initially still under U.S. occupation — I remember when news circulated that one of the nuns had managed to escape from China and was being reunited Seen from my with her sisters in Japan. There was great jubilation. childhood years, the prevailing The stories of cruelty by the Chinese communists that image of China circulated at the time were truly atrocious. The one I recall the most was that Christians had chop-sticks at the time was inserted in both their ears — until they met in the still that of a middle of the head. For sure, the anti-Chinese poor, cruel propaganda was fierce — even if somewhat heavy. country – and the enemy. Then, there was the Korean War, with U.S. and allied soldiers stopping on their way to the battlefield, or on R&R (that is, rest and recuperation) — or to be hospitalized. U.S. military presence My mother worked as a volunteer nurse for wounded Spanish-speaking U.S. soldiers. She helped them write letters home, mainly to Puerto Rico, to tell their families what had happened to them. As a result of the occupation, combined with the follow-on events of the Korean War, the Cold War and the Security Treaty which the United States and Japan signed in 1952, there was a strong U.S. military presence in Japan. Many of my schoolmates and friends were the sons of U.S. military and administrative personnel. Poor, cruel enemies Seen from my childhood years, the picture of China that emerged was clear enough: The Chinese were poor, cruel — and the arch-enemy. That sense of considerable poverty was confirmed both by the repeated visits to Hong Kong — even if by the The stories of late 1950s it was becoming more prosperous — and by cruelty by the the condition of the people living in the quite large Chinese Chinatown that existed at the time in Yokohama. communists that During my childhood, the cruelty and enemy images circulated at the were constantly reinforced by the films and literature, time were truly including comic books, of the period. atrocious. Next stop — Washington, D.C. My parents had a number of friends from Taiwan — which at the time we never called anything else than the Republic of China — who, not surprisingly, confirmed the perspective of (mainland) China as enemy. My next stop, in 1960, actually was Washington, D.C., where I remained until 1966. Reactionary academics In those heady years of the Kennedy Administration and the ensuing tragedy of his assassination, I attended the School of Foreign Service During my at Georgetown University, which at the time was a childhood, the highly conservative, not to say reactionary, institution. cruelty and enemy images of It was the founder of Georgetown University's now- famous School of Foreign Service, Father Edmund China were Walsh, SJ, who initially gave Senator Joe McCarthy, a constantly fellow Catholic, the idea that he might focus on the reinforced by the threat of communism in the United States in his films and campaign — though he did subsequently distance literature, himself from him. including comic books, of the This was a time when the United States — and all its allies — followed the “one China” policy, with the one period. being the Republic of China and its government in Taipei under the military rule of General Chiang Kaishek. De Gaulle’s approval It was while I was in Georgetown, in 1964, that French President Charles de Gaulle bucked and proceeded to declare the government in Beijing as the legitimate government of China. I do not think the animosity against the French in 1964 was as strong as it was in the United States in 2003 over the Iraq war. There was no proposal to rename French fries, French toast or, indeed, the French kiss — but it was nevertheless quite strong. Disapproval of De Gaulle The curiously circular perspective in the United States at the time was that, since all “baddies” were communists, then de Gaulle — and, by logical extension, France — had to be communist as well. As a French citizen who by accident of family history had been born in Washington, D.C., I spent much of my Trivial as it may time trying to explain, quite fruitlessly, that this sound, I took my perspective was incorrect. It was an early lesson in the dirty clothes to a perils of intercultural dialogue at critical junctures. Chinese laundry. What remained consistent, though, was the leitmotif in This was, so far our political science classes, of casting China as the as I can enemy. The “bamboo curtain” – not just the iron recollect, the curtain (reserved for the Soviets) — was always only actual prominent. contact I had with Chinese. Insurrection movements And in those classes at Georgetown, we also learned about how the Chinese were assisting insurrection movements in Southeast Asia generally — and in North Vietnam (and the Viet Cong, with whom the United States was by then in full-throttle war) in particular. France’s president de Gaulle only further incensed the Americans — by voicing his opposition to the war in Vietnam and, in a major speech delivered in Phnom Penh on September 1, 1966, by urging the United States to withdraw. The poor Chinese He may have spoken from painful experience, and in order to warn a nation, which he admired due to the heroics of rescuing France during WWII. But who in Washington ever considers those outsiders really caring about The leitmotif in Washington’s fate anyway? our political science classes, Although the literary genre of the “poor Chinese” was of casting China launched by Pearl Buck, in her epic 1931 novel "The Good Earth," raising the topic as a constant refrain still as the enemy — had a considerable influence on my generation. the "bamboo curtain" — was Truth be told, even inside the United States, there was always a noticeable pro-Chinese lobby, made up of prominent. missionaries. Even so, the mantra of the “poor Chinese” remained prevalent. Chinatown, USA The fact that this image of poverty inside China also corresponded to a large extent to the reality of the Chinese community inside the United States gave additional firepower to this view. Trivial as it may sound, throughout my years at Georgetown University, I took my dirty clothes to a Chinese laundry. This was, so far as I can recollect, the only actual contact I had with Chinese. A change in policy — and perception Of course, there were also the supposedly Chinese restaurants, run by Chinese. But the fare they served at that time was cruelly bastardized to appeal to American tastes and consisted of bland Chinese-American inventions, such as chow mein and chop suey. It was only after 1965 — as Peter Kwong and Dusanka Miscevic point out in “Chinese America” — when the I remember the United States changed its immigration policy and began constant stream actively searching for foreign scientific talent that of refugees and Chinese students and professionals began arriving on U.S. shores. the poverty, the thousands of I left the country in 1966 and was hence not exposed to people living on that new wave. Still, I was impressed, when I returned the barges with to the United States in the 1980s that I learned that which they had MIT was now being referred to as “Made in Taiwan.” escaped from Times had changed indeed. mainland China. A notable name During my time at Georgetown, there were a few Asian students – including the current president of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Some of them were no doubt of ethnic Chinese descent, but there were no “real” Chinese — whether from mainland China, Taiwan or Hong Kong — that I can remember. Although my own views of China began undergoing radical change in the course of the 1960s, the prevailing image of the country at the time was still that of a poor, cruel country — and the enemy. The Manchurian Candidate effect The fare that Chinese restaurants served at that time was cruelly bastardized to appeal to U.S. tastes — and consisted of bland Chinese- American The cruelty/enemy perspective also made for popular inventions, such fare in the movies, notably in the Manchurian Candidate, a great box office hit, starring Frank Sinatra, as chow mein Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury and Janet Leigh.
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