Excavations


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- David Hume



Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China. Book Review

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten (2000) is a revealing and compelling memoir of the late Canadian Michael David Kwan’s first twelve years of life in China, stretching from the Japanese occupation to the cusp of Communist takeover.  Born in 1934 to a Cambridge-educated Chinese father, who had diplomatic immunity along with positions of high influence, notably as a railway administrator, and to a young Swiss mother who deserted the child while he was still a toddler, Kwan grew up knowingly Eurasian, a “half-caste”, as it was so politely put to him - by those outside his family. 

His first memories were of considerable privilege at Beijing’s Legation Quarter where he was regarded as a curiosity piece by Caucasian children because of his light brown hair, “foreign nose”, and otherwise Chinese features.  Throughout his young life he always had trouble making friends, perhaps because he was the product of a Chinese man and western woman, considered lowest status of all, outside of, maybe, plain peasantry – this, despite his father’s importance.  As the Japanese advanced, destroying Kwan’s “magic circle”, the family retreated to the seaside at Qingdau, where the boy befriended his only close peer at a Catholic school, Shao, also of similar mixed parentage.

Behind the scenes Kwan’s conveys the activities of his father, now Commissioner of Finance in a Japanese-sponsored government, who, while residing next door to a Japanese Admiral and his wife (central to the child’s newly recreated magic circle) continued to intrigue and lead the resistance against the Japanese. The family also took in a U.S. airman (who reappears later in he story) to deal with his month-long recovery, at considerable risk to their lives, but, as Kwan senior cleverly figured, no one would suspect a thing precisely because of proximity to their distinguished Japanese neighbour.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the book is the great sense recall and detail by Kwan as the family is buffeted by both the Japanese and KMT (and implicitly by the Communists), as well as by Kwan’s schooling, which makes it a pleasurable read that develops with advancing interest.  A powerful family with fine food always at the table (save perhaps for the very end), it is worth observing that the boy’s most memorable meals were with his father’s tenant farmer outside the family villa at Beidaihe (now a summer resort for the Communist elite).  An anti-Japanese guerrilla combatant who suffered at the hands of Korean collaborators, Xiao Hu, had introduced him to the delicacies of roasted grasshopper.

Of particular historical note is the chapter “Bulldog’s Dozen” which marks Kwan’s entry into China’s so-called Boy Scouts, which was itself motivated in part by efforts to get his father released from detention by the KMT.  Kwan’s activities were more reminiscent of the Hitler Youth - or they anticipated Mao’s Red Guard of the Cultural Revolution.  To elucidate Kwan’s own point consider the following scouting activity: ”Forcing our way into strange houses, turning rooms upside down, taking armfuls of books and pamphlets without bothering to see what they were, and burning them in street-corner bonfires gave me a tremendous charge.”[1]  Clearly there were elements of Nazi Germany in China’s Republican phase under Chiang Kai-shek.

Another point of interest is the fascination KMT soldiers had with the flush toilet at the Kwan family residence in Qingdau, which they came to occupy.  Those soldiers wishing to wash rice only ended up flushing it down the toilet.  This is reminiscent of Russian troops at the end of the Second World War discovering similar modern facilities beyond the range of Communist experience in what was occupied East Germany – a problem for Stalin’s propaganda machine.

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten is a book that must not be forgotten.  In the maelstrom of war Kwan brings attention to the particular and a long view – over twelve short years - that some observers of modern China might miss.  For example, it helps give perspective to Jan Wong’s observation in Red China Blues as to why Communist bureaucracy extracts from the remaining family the cost of the bullet (amounting to a few cents) for each execution.  Kwan notes the same: alleged traitors were shot and hung by the KMT from lampposts, and remained there until family members paid for the bullet.  In other words, it might belong to a tradition of Chinese justice, however peculiar. With his rich survivor’s account of an outsider who speaks like an insider Kwan’s memoir deserves to be on your reading list.



[1] Michael David Kwan, Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2000), p. 206. 

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