Life in the Mountains and News of My Brother’s Death

After we moved to Beishankeng, Puli, Fifth Uncle arranged for our family of seven to live in a wooden house.

Inside was one large bed where Grandmother and we four children crowded together; Father and Third Mother slept on a double bed—but everyone was in the same room. In such extraordinary times everyone had to make do.

To save money, Fifth Uncle suggested that Third Sister and I learn from his three sons to gather firewood, catch fish, pick wood ear fungus, and gather straw mushrooms.

School in the mountains was already half suspended. I had lost my transfer certificate when we moved, so I did not go back to school.

For a living, Third Sister and I worked from dawn to dark every day, the schedule packed full.

First we had to prepare the frame for carrying firewood (woven from thick wire), shoulder poles, bamboo traps for fishing (ten per person), and larger flour sacks for straw mushrooms and wood ear. Once everything was ready, work began.

After breakfast in the morning, Third Sister and I went with our three cousins to the mountain on the opposite side. We had to cross a wide stream; it took about fifty minutes to reach the top. The area was all camphor trees, with a small camphor factory. Workers felled the trees; large trunks went for oil pressing and small branches were discarded. So we could pick up the small branches, fill the wire frame, and carry them home. We five children often raced to see who got home first. I always walked ahead of Third Sister; she often felt ashamed because her strength was not equal to mine.

From the mountain back home it was already past one in the afternoon.

After a full lunch and a rest came roasting rice bran—frying it fragrant in the wok, then mixing it with congee into dumplings and putting them in the bamboo traps. At dusk we took them to the stream bed. The brook was shallow; we moved small stones aside, set each trap mouth facing upstream, and pressed small stones lightly around the trap so the water would not wash it away. Each person set ten traps, so at dusk the stream bed was lively with many people doing the same thing. Once the traps were set everyone went home; at dawn the next day we collected them, put the small fish and shrimp into basins—the catch was usually enough for our family of seven for two days.

Only after collecting the traps could we eat breakfast. After the meal and a short rest we carried water first; when that was done we went up the mountain for firewood, wood ear, and straw mushrooms.

If it had rained heavily one day, the next clear day we would cross the suspension bridge with our three cousins into the deep mountains on the other side to pick wood ear and gather straw mushrooms.

On rotted large timbers pale purple straw mushrooms grew; wood ear came from another kind of tree. Third Sister and I could each fill more than half a flour sack; we all came home loaded. At home we tipped out the wood ear and straw mushrooms onto a large board to dry in the sun and ate them slowly, because we had to wait until the next heavy rain before there would be more to gather.

Eight months in the mountains passed in busy toil. During that time something terrible happened.

Not long after Stepmother died, Eldest Brother left the family home in Taichung to join the Japanese volunteer forces as an army doctor in the South Seas.

Tragically, not long after he boarded at Kaohsiung, word came that the ship had been sunk by Allied bombers.

Because it was only rumour and no military notice had arrived, Father still hoped Eldest Brother might return safely.

But misfortune struck anyway. Not long after we moved into the mountains we received the official notice that Eldest Brother had died in battle.

The blow to Father is easy to imagine. For three days and three nights he neither ate nor drank; his tears ran dry. Again and again he regretted having let Eldest Brother join the volunteers.

Fate is cruel. When the ship went down, a comrade from Taichung who was with Eldest Brother was very lucky.

When the ship was blown apart, some were killed in the blast, some fell into the sea—he was one of the lucky ones who fell into the water. He clung to whatever floated on the surface until a ship came near, pulled them aboard, took them to that country’s port, nursed their wounds, and then sent them home.

By the time this lucky man from Taichung reached home, Japan had already surrendered.

His father and my father were good friends. Soon after he returned to Taiwan he came to see my father and told him why, at the moment the ship was sunk, Eldest Brother could not escape. After Father heard it he sobbed uncontrollably.

Eldest Brother was the idol in our siblings’ hearts. Losing him was like losing a great pillar of our family. Even now, when this is mentioned, everyone still finds it hard to bear.