A pebble hit my back, signaling it was my turn. With shaky steps I moved to the side door. I walked slowly so as to see what it was like outside and to assess the situation. Some GIs stood at the entrances to the white tents, all having MP painted on their helmets and on their dark blue brassards. An idea finally came to mind: if the arbiters forced me to go to Taiwan I would rush out of the tent and beg the GIs to send me to the group heading for the mainland. If I spoke to them in English, they might help me, I guessed.
After entering a tent, I was ordered to sit down in front of two American officers, with a folding table between us. One of them was a Caucasian, tall with a long face and in a pea-green shirt; the other was a stocky Chinese. The white man, a captain, began speaking to me about the Geneva Convention and the consequences of my decision. I was amazed that he could speak Mandarin, while the other officer, who was a lieutenant, kept smiling knowingly. Once in a while the Chinese man put in a few words in Cantonese, which I couldn't understand.
I must have looked absentminded, for the white officer grew impatient and said to me, "All right, tell me now, do you want to go to Taiwan or mainland China?"
"To the mainland," I replied firmly.
He looked me in the face for a moment, as though in disbelief. Then he handed me a card, saying, "Go straight to the front gate and give this card to the guards."
With tears on my face I bowed to both of them and said, "Thank you," then hurried out toward the gate. The card in my hand was five by three inches, bearing these words: "The People's Republic of China."
I handed it to the GI standing at the middle of the gate with a rifle hung across his chest. He glanced at the card, grabbed my shoulder, and shoved me out of the compound. Near the sentry post was parked a truck whose back was under canvas. A GI beckoned me to get onto the vehicle by the ladder at its rear. Climbing up, I turned around to look at the white tents in hopes that Dajian would be following me.
"Don't look around, you motherfucker!" another GI yelled and pushed me into the back of the truck. There were only about a dozen men in it, most of whom looked unfamiliar to me. I grew more anxious. If only I had given Dajian an eye signal just now! I felt awful for having left him in the lurch.
About ten minutes later the truck rolled away toward a new compound, number 602, where all the would-be repatriates were assembled. Later I heard from a fellow who had joined us in the afternoon that after Dajian returned to my former company, he kept asking others, "Where's Feng Yan? Did you see him?" They all shook their heads. For hours he wept quietly alone. What had happened that morning was that before entering a screening tent, he was sandwiched between two pro-Nationalists, who told him I had just made "the wise choice." So Dajian declared to the arbiters that he would go to Taiwan too.
11. COMPOUND 602
As we were approaching Compound 602, which was just a few minutes' drive from Compound 72, I saw a piece of reddish cloth dangling atop a bamboo pole. Coming closer, I recognized it as our national flag, self-made and with five golden stars on it. The sight of the flag excited us, and we realized this place must be controlled by the Communists.
More than four thousand men had already been here for days, all determined to return to our homeland. This meant we had come back to the ranks of our comrades. Indeed, this place differed greatly from Compound 72. All the tents were the same size and we shared the same mess. Most men looked cheerful and congenial, ready to help others. Later I heard that this place was nicknamed the Mainland Compound and that such an establishment had been achieved only through an arduous struggle. Many of these men had demonstrated and written letters, demanding that they be separated from the non-repatriates. They sent delegates to negotiate with the prison authorities and the pro-Nationalist representatives for three days to little avail. Finally two Swiss from the Red Cross stepped in and mediated a settlement, and thus the Chinese POWs were separated according to our different destinations.
Out of the eight thousand men in Compound 72, only about seven hundred made it here. The rest of them all remained in the old barracks, eagerly waiting to board the ships sent over by Taiwan, as they had been told. But that was a lie or an illusion. No ship whatsoever had come to fetch them.
On the day of my arrival at Compound 602, I was delighted to run into Chang Ming, the editor of our former division's bulletin who had met me regularly across the barbed wire. He and I hugged and broke into tears. He gave me a pack of Korean cigarettes, whose brand I couldn't make out but there were two dolphins printed below some red words. He said we might not be here for long; the Americans hadn't even bothered to organize us into units and everything had been left in our own hands. This state of affairs indicated that the compound must be temporary.
"Where did you hear this?" I asked him, taking a short drag on my cigarette.
"It's just my observation."
"Boy, you're sharp."
He seemed much more experienced and hardened than before, yet his thick lips and broad eyes still betrayed a lot of innocence and good nature. Like an editor, he carried a stout fountain pen in his breast pocket. I asked him how he had managed to keep that. He grinned, and said actually he could not use it for lack of ink. He invited me to join him in his tent, saying that before all the men were put into different units, we had better stay together. I was happy to do that. We two walked to the third tent in the first row of the barracks, in which I was given a mat spread below an opening that served as a window. The air in there smelled grassy – the tent must have been pitched recently. I put down my blanket roll, pleased with the daylight I could use when staying indoors. Ming left for a meeting as soon as I settled down. He must have assumed some kind of leadership in this compound.
That same afternoon I bumped into Hao Chaolin, who didn't greet me enthusiastically. He told me that he had been busy helping Commissar Pei organize the comrades here. Perhaps because he had held a much higher rank than mine in our former division, he was reluctant to be too convivial with me. In any case, I was glad to hear that Commissar Pei was also here and had taken the leadership. I wondered why the Americans had let him join us. This was like releasing a dragon into its native water. What a blunder.
On the other hand, I was saddened to see that there were many more wounded men in the new compound than in the other ones, men missing an arm, men wearing eyeshades to cover their empty eye sockets, men who had lost their hair, ears, and noses to napalm, men who had gone deaf and had to communicate by signs, and men without legs who moved around with the help of crutches and with thick wooden sticks affixed to their stumps. The thought came to me that no country would want these men, who were mere war trash and had no choice but to go back to China, where they still had their families. They had to follow the Communists home.
Dinner was the same stuff, boiled barley and soy sauce soup, but people were equal here and even friendly. There was no fighting over food, and officers didn't get special meals. That evening I went to see Commissar Pei in the tent that served as the headquarters of the compound. Many people lounged on the grass outside that tent, smoking and chatting. They looked relaxed and hopeful, as if we were to depart for home within a few days. This was another reason I wanted to see the commissar, to find out when we could head home. Inside the tent a meeting was in full swing, so a guard stopped me at the entrance, but he announced me without delay.