Unbound Spirit: Letters of Flora Belle Jan

10. I Have Been Loyal to China . . .

220 10 I Have Been Loyal to China . . . After the surrender of Japan to the United States in August of 1945, Chiang Kai-shek moved the Nationalist government to Nanking. There was a mass exodus of personnel from Chungking. Flora Belle Jan traveled alone to Shanghai in December 1945, and within weeks found employment in the editorial department of the Shanghai Herald. Her husband Charles brought their younger daughter Fiore to Shanghai in March of 1946 after finally receiving authorization to lead a government delegation of eight men to the United States. Their son Hanson had enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to Nanking. Their older daughter Fleur chose to remain in boarding school in Chungking to finish tenth grade in 1947; she then flew to Nanking to join Charles, who had returned from a tour of duty in the United States. He held a job in the Department of Social Affairs, and also taught at the Central University. Fleur attended eleventh grade in Jinling Middle School, a private school affiliated with Jinling Women’s College. She had expected to finish her senior year at Jinling, but the advance of the Chinese Communist armies and the economic disintegration of Chiang Kai-sheck’s Guomindong government caused students and faculty to flee from Nanking. On December 1, 1948, she recorded in her diary that less than one-third of the classroom seats were occupied. Rampant inflation meant that the value of the Chinese fabi currency diminished by the hour.1 As soon as Charles received his salary, he would exchange the money into American dollars. As money was needed for day-to-day expenses, Fleur used to take silver dollars to money dealers on street corners to get the most possible yuan. A measure of the inflation rate is indicated by the Shanghai wholesale price index: In 1948 the index rose tenfold from January to July. In the same year from September to December it rose another twentyfold.2 On December 3, 1948, Fleur boarded a train to Shanghai. Flora was glad to see Fleur after a separation of three years. Flora had obtained full-time editorial work after publishing some freelance articles.3 The job continued for nearly three years and she advanced to become night editor of the China Daily Tribune. The work gave her a sense of fulfillment in journalism, even though the pay was insufficient to meet basic needs in the postwar period of galloping inflation. Her household consisted of daughters Fleur and Fiore and an amah (full-time maid). Fiore, who in adulthood became a painter and printmaker, remembers drawing and painting watercolors during many solitary hours after school in their small apartment before Fleur’s arrival. This chapter consists of the last thirteen letters Flora wrote from China. Even though Flora embraced the responsibility of newspaper editorship , she continued to long to return to America. In the final months before Mao’s regime took over China, Flora made the necessary arrangements to embark with Fleur and Fiore on the journey back to California. The letters tell of her efforts to obtain passports and passage on a transpacific ship. Her ever-faithful and generous friend, Ludmelia, continued to send clothing, shoes, and other requested items, and even offered to send money, which was refused. After she reached San Francisco, Flora wrote two more letters to Ludmelia. After a separation of sixteen years, both women eagerly looked forward to their reunion. Chung Cheng Road [Shanghai] February 18, 1946 Dearest Ludmelia: I know you must have been wondering what has happened to me the last few months. But I did not wish to give you a mere tale of woe, for from Yuma, Arizona, you could not do anything to help me and you would be worried to no purpose. But now things have been set aright again, and I can write to you like a normal person, without acute mental anguish. As you can deduce from the letterhead, I never got to Hongkong, and don’t intend to go there for the present. So please address your letters to me as follows: Florabelle Wang, Editorial Department, Shanghai Herald, 160 Chung Cheng Road (formerly Avenue Edward VII), Shanghai, China. I Have Been Loyal to China . . . 221 Please let me know if you wrote to me at Hongkong, and I shall ask the United Press there (South China Morning Post Bldg., not South China...