Beyond the Blockades

“Beyond the Blockade” is of several mind-gripping personal and historical records of things happened before and during China’s civil war in late 1940s and early 50s. These unusual experiences are recounted here like a few movies stories. The book is also subtitled as “A Hong Kong Sailor’s Stories” as the writer tells some other fascinating sea-related and close-to-his-heart stories also. In “The Making of a Sailor”, the writer tells how fate twisted and turned his life into cheating his way to join in Chinese Navy and was sent to England for training under the Royal Navy. He took part in receiving a cruiser and a destroyer from the Royal Navy and sailed them― as a quartermaster on the destroyer― to China. While stationed in Shanghai, a mutiny on board that cruiser sailed her north to the rebellious-Communist- controlled port, the leased destroyer was ordered to sail down to Hong Kong under British warship’s escort and later returned to their Navy. He then left the Navy and worked as an unlicensed deck officer on merchant ships running the blockades. The writer tells also about his elder brother in “Bing Wants to Join the Navy”. Unlike the writer who’d never thought of joining the Navy, Bing wanted to join the Navy ever since he was a little boy and suffered through out his life in his quest for it yet all in vain. “10 Days Isolation on a Ship” tells the tugging of powers over a ship during China’s civil war. In the event, each was fighting for his side’s shameful selfish gain. Thus made those hundreds of soldiers on board uncertain of their destination and fate in future while the ship’s crew had to survive for days on lifeboats’ hard biscuits and condensed milk even though the ship was not in distress but safely anchored in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor. As chief officer of the ship carrying Communist China’s much needed goods to their port Amoy (Xiamen) after running through Nationalist Navy’s blockade, the writer had to deal with the Communist Party’s trusted yet self-conceited teenage cadres. He was confronted with accusation of spying and machine-gun fire in “The Chief Officer”. The teenager cadre was so ignorant that at one point, the writer said to himself, “Oh well, what can I do? I must explain to him with patience.” So, he ended up teaching him some immediately needed knowledge to minimize the hostilities. But still, under the gun and the threat of arrest, he had to follow the cadre’s unlawful order to be able to deliver the goods. In “Duel of the Dragon and the Tiger”, the ship was in another port and the chief officer and the crew were wrongly accused of smuggling by, again, another teenager “Tou Tou” (unit-head) heading the customs and not allowed the ship to leave. The chief officer had to take the advice from the old customs officer that, in essence: “the Communist ‘Tou Tou’ must always be right, even when he is not. So, it is for you to admit ‘your wrong-doing’ by writing a statement of repentance and give it to him to ‘save his face’, then your ship can leave.” The writer tells the events here in detail and, believe it or not, how a plump, old and blind woman fortune-teller in Hong Kong amazingly foreshadowed the events of those false alarms and the symbolic duel of the dragon and tiger between the chief officer, the customs chief, a Nationalist (in Taiwan) warship and a US Navy airplane. How did the writer react when he was ‘assigned’ by secret-agent from Taiwan to hijack his ship and cargo to them thus becoming a hero and be rewarded with hundreds of ounces of gold? In “Heroes”, he relates that the secret-agent also emphasized the threat if he doesn’t do it: “You have turned against us by breaking through our blockades again and again. You must realize, you’ll be shot once you are caught…..” Did he do it because he was afraid to be shot? Or, did he do it for patriotism, heroism or for the gold? Or, did he resist doing it? Well, temptations, righteousness, needs, conscientiousness, crew safety and the necessary maneuverings, all boiled in him within those few days and nights. What did he do and how did it ended? Then the writer tells also other interesting stories like: What happened when Navy pals meet again after years of separation by political and/or military forces or by self ideological choosing and lived under two different worlds? He tells some of his meetings with different shipmates at different places in China in “When Pals Meet” “The Sailor Who Missed the Ship” tells a British sailor tried single-handedly to uphold justice against all other fellow British sailors in an English court for an unknown Chinese sailor. The writer’s few-decades-long secret and unfulfilled love affair in ‘Secret Love” brings out that thousand-year-old tradition of inhuman human behavior in China― Well, maybe some other countries too. “Life and Death in Macao” is about two suicidal cases. One is about a lady in desperation and with thorough consideration, courageously jumping overboard to sacrifice her life in order to help her children but was grabbed by the writer on her arm and dangled out at the shipside. The other one is about a man who started as a street urchin, made good, owned ships. Then was cheated by his trusted-friend-cum-assistant and lost everything to him. He wanted to die but on the brink of jumping over the tallest building in Canton (Guangzhou), something caught his eyes thus saved and changed his life. All these untold stories will lead the readers through some adventurously excited, fearfully interesting journeys and then can’t help wondering what and how this writer has done after those young, eventful years.