China Called Me – My Life Inside the Chinese Revolution

By Percy Chen

Published by Little Brown  (ISBN 0-316-13849-5)

Copyright 1979

Cover jacket introduction:

1925 In Trinidad, Percy Chen, son of a wealthy overseas Chinese family, plays polo and tennis, manages the family cocoa plantation, and practices law, winning his first murder case.

1926 In China, he becomes troubleshooter for his father, foreign minister in the Nationalist government. On January 1^st, 1927, he plays a key role in an incident at Wuhan that becomes the high water mark of foreign imperialism in China.

1927 … charged with the safe conduct out of China of Comintern adviser Mikhail Borodin. He leads a motor caravan through Mongolia, across the Gobi Desert into Siberia.

1928 In Russia, the author enters the Senior Infantry School of the Red Army, as Major Percei Yevgenevich Chen.

1933 He becomes General Motor’s resident sales representative in Moscow – and a committed socialist.

1935 The author returns to China on a secret mission: to persuade such powerful warlords as General Fu Tso-yi and General Feng Yu-hsieng to join in a new United Front, for resistance to the Japanese.

1942 In Chunking, as private secretary to Dr. Sun Fo, president of the Legislative Yuan, he meets the powerful figures intriguing in China’s wartime capital, among them Major General Patrick J. Hurley and Chou En-lai.

1945 At war’s end, the author embarks upon a two-year sojourn in the United States, gauging U.S. postwar intentions in China and warning against the instability and corruption of Chiang’s regime.

1949 When the People’s Republic of China is proclaimed, Chou En-lai asks Percy Chen to remain in Hong Kong and use his skills as a lawyer and negotiator, to represent various interests of the Chinese people.

Page 3: Chapter 1

I was born in a small wooden house near the bridge across the Belmont River in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, in the then British West Indies.

Trinidad is an island just off the coast of Venezuela, discovered by Columbus on his third voyage to the New World. He christened the island with its three peaks Trinidad, when he sighted it on July 31, 1498.

The second child of my parents, I first saw the light of day on June 20, 1901. My father was Eugene, the eldest son of Joseph Acham and Marie, nee Leong, who had been married in Martinique, then a French colony, now a department of France. My father was born in San Fernando, a town in the southern part of Trinidad in 1878.

En route from Kwangtung province in the southern of China to his final destination in Trinidad, my grandfather had lost his real family name. He was born of the Chan (as it is pronounced in Canton) family, who lived on the small island of Namshan, off the Kwangtung coast. We are Hakkas.

The overseas Chinese who originally settled on the lovely island of Trinidad have the most fantastic names. Some of them lost their family names when passing through immigration procedures in Hawaii. So when Chan Kam, the young man from Chungshan district, had his papers stamped, his name appeared as Chan Akam. Later, when he was baptized in Martinique, he was given the saint’s name Joseph, and “Akam” became “Acham.”

My father was christened Eugene Bernard Acham. His younger brothers were David Lionel, Joseph (Jr), Ronald, and Alfred. His sister was Bernadine.

Marie, the wife of Joseph Acham, was the eldest daughter of the Leong family. They originated in Po Kut, a district town in the county of Po On, near the borders of the Leased (New) Territories of Hong Kong. The other daughters were Angele and Eveline, and there was a son. All were born in China.

The girls all married and had numerous progeny, who were my first cousins. The son turned out to be a ne’er-do-well, and his name was never mentioned in my presence. All cousins had non-Chinese names except the children of Angele. She married a merchant from Canton called Lee Lum. Their family retained the Chinese surname of Lee. Other cousins had names like Isaac (named for a biblical figure) and Francis (after St. Francis of Assisi). In Trinidad there were also Chinese families with such names as McLeod and Huggins. These were the names of their godfathers when they were converted to Christianity.

One may ask why the Chinese of this region gave up their clan names so easily. From my grandmother, Ma Acham, I learned that China was the place of the devil; it was so horrible that she wanted to forget that she came from there. It must be remembered that at the time she and her family had left Kwangtung province, about 1860, the Taiping Rebellion was raging. Commencing in the province of Kwangsi, it had torn through China south of the Yangtze River from 1850 to 1864. Its leader was Hung Hsiu-ch’uan, who headed an army of landless peasants, porters, miners, charcoal burners (most of whom were Hakkas), and disbanded soldiers. The Taipings made their way to Nanking, where they established their capital. They attempted to march to Peking but failed. Finally they were defeated by the Manchus, Chinese local militarists, and contingents from the foreign imperialist governments. Nanking, the capital, fell in the summer of 1864, and thousands of Taipings killed themselves with their leaders.

It was a time of great turmoil during which the Chinese peasants suffered more than ever before from marauding government troops and bandits.  And there was famine.  So it became a time of exodus.  Among the families who had left China for the New World was the Leong family.  What they found in Hawaii and the United States did not please them, and they journeyed farther westward and southward.  They finally settled in Martinique.  Marie never got over her dislike of China.  She never spoke Chinese to her children.

Young Chan Akam (Joseph Acham) also left China, but not before he had his leg amputated near the hip.  He had fought in the ranks of the Taipings.  He was one in a million.  He survived but ever afterward wore an artificial leg made of cork.  When he lived in the house in Mount Moriah Road in San Fernando, sometimes of an evening, he would scare the daylights out of his youngest son, Alfred, a sensitive boy, by jabbing a pin into the cork leg.  He must have been a tough old man.

After their marriage in Martinique, Joseph and Marie moved with the rest of the Leong family to Trinidad.  Martinique was dominated by the fearsome volcano Mount Pelée, and it lay within the hurricane belt of the Caribbean.  Trinidad was a tranquil island not known to be subject to the calamities of nature.  When the Chinese families reached Trinidad, they found a land that resembled Kwangtung in its flowers and fruits:  guavas, pineapples, sugar apples, sugarcane, papayas.  It was a kindly and fertile home.

Joseph Acham died in the early nineties.  He left Marie well off, with several retail shops in the southern part of the island.  Marie was tiny woman, not more than five feet tall.  She made the mistake of leaving the management of the shops to her brother.  He failed her, and, before she knew what was happening, she was able to salvage only one shop, in San Fernando.  Still, by dint of hard work, she was able to keep her son Eugene at St Mary's College in Port of Spain and her daughter Bernardine at St Joseph's Convent.  There Bernardine became a close friend of my mother, Alphonsin Agatha Gantaume.

In due course my father finished his studies at St Mary's College and was articled to a solicitor named Maress Smith.  After five years of study as an articled clerk, Eugene was himself admitted to practice law.  At the age of twenty-one, he became the first Chinese solicitor in Trinidad.  His practice grew and flourished, since he had most of the Chinese and Indian shopkeepers as his clients.  After he became a solicitor, it became his duty to see that his other brothers received their educations.  David and Joseph also became solicitors, Ronald became an engineer and emigrated to England, and Alfred entered the civil service of the Trinidad government.  My grandmother, Ma Acham, stayed with her shop and house in Mount Moriah Road in San Fernando and received, from time to time, visits from her numerous grandchildren.  Bernardine never married.

Like many of the other young ones, I had bad dreams because Ma Acham had a coffin resting above her bed.  This was her provision, according to the custom of Old China, for her burial.  She lived to be one hundred three years old.  To the end of her days she remained independent and self-reliant.   But she never forgave China.  Even when her son Eugene had become the minister of foreign affairs of that vast country, she still referred to him as "my poor son Eugene in China".

My mother must have been in her teens when she met my father.  It was through Aunt Bernardine that Alphonsin Agatha came to the house of the Acham family in San Fernando.  My father fell in love with the beautiful young Creole.  The young people were married as soon as Eugene became a solicitor and started his own office in St Vincent Street, opposite the "Red House" where the courts sat and near the police headquarters.

"Phonse," as Eugene lovingly called his wife, was a good helpmate.  First a girl was born to the young couple.  She was called Kim Lin.  Kim Lin died at the age of three.  She was the apple of my father's eye. He lost part of himself at her death and never gave the same amount of affection to his other children.  I, the next born, was my mother's favorite, and she helped me in every way possible.  Her father, Louis Gantaume, was descended from Admiral Gantaume of Napoleon's navy.  On one occasion Admiral Gantaume pursued Admiral Nelson, who was sailing toward the west, presumably to the West Indies. Nelson, however, doubled back on his tracks and returned to fight the Battle of Trafalgar.  Admiral Gantaume sagaciously continued on to the West Indies and settled in Martinique rather than return to France and face the wrath of the emperor.

Eugene's fortunes grew, and the family moved to a fine concrete mansion that he built in Broome Street, St Clair, about 1903, and named Kim Lin.  Altogether, my mother bore eight children - of whom, oddly, the first, third, fifth, and seventh died in early childhood or infancy.  The second, fourth, sixth, and eighth lived.  So I have two sisters.  Sylvia and Yolanda, and one brother, Jack.  All are alive.

Our family was a progressive one and, though my father did not engage in politics in Trinidad, he was active in literary affairs and debates in the Public Library in Port of Spain.  Sending my Aunt Bernardine to school in the last century showed that Ma Acham was also progressive.  My father was the first to employ a woman secretary and typist.  Her name was Blanche Faure; she was one of a large Creole family who lived in the Maraval Road near St James.  I remember her as well dressed in a white blouse and a black shirt, the costume de rigueur for a daring young lady going out to earn her own living in the year 1905.

In 1903 there occurred the so-called Water Riots in Port of Spain.  These were brought about by the passage of a law imposing rates for water.  The venerable Maress Smith was one who championed the opposition to the collection of these rates unless the elected members of the Legislative Council had a more positive say on the way the finances of the colony were to be spent.  The riots were put down with bloodshed.  My two-year-old's contribution to the whole affair was to answer the question, "who killed the governor?" by replying very seriously, "I, Percy Joseph, Lionel Vincent Brown [the name of the attorney general], Maloney [the name of the Chief of Police], killed the governor."  My interlocutors usually were the conductors of the trams that traveled around the savannah and on which I rode every afternoon with my nurse.

My father continued to prosper.  He invested in cocoa estates, of which St Isadore in the Manzanilla district was the largest and most productive.  He also was one of the first men to buy some oil lands in La Brea.  On one of the islands in the Gulf of Paria he owned a villa.  Our life was pleasant.

I was lucky in my parents.  My mother was beautiful and petite.  Her features were refined.  She was artistic, athletic, and with a sweet disposition, but, when roused, could be a tigress.  I remember her earliest as the chatelaine of Kim Lin, in a garden luxuriant with the beautiful flowers of the Caribbean as well as roses imported from England and the United States.  Hummingbirds, so familiar in Trinidad, were busy there.

My father was an elegant, studious man given to a lot of reading when at home.  He used to take me with him to some of the country courts where he practiced law.  At Christmas I would return home laden with presents given me by his clients.  Once I received a small pony, which was sent to our country estate, St. Isadore.  I also had a Shetland pony that I rode in the savannah near our house.

Kim Lin had stables for the horses, including an American trotter, or high-stepper, as the stylish animals were called in those days.  It was one of the few to be seen in Trinidad.  It was a lovely animal with glossy hide and a noble head, and it raised its legs in a graceful dressage as it trotted down the road from St. Clair to St. Vincent Street, taking my father to his office and bringing him back in the afternoon.  The trotter’s front hooves had to be shod with rubber shoes.

We had an Indian coachman called Joseph, who was dressed very elegantly in a well-fitting dark suit.  He spurned a hat, so that his glossy black hair gleamed in the sunlight, as did the hide of his horse and the lacquer of the landau in which our family rode, I on the high seat beside Joseph, mother and father in the rear seat, and Sylvia and small Jack on the pull-out seat, which faced my parents.

We learned to shoot from my mother, who owned and used a small-bore rifle.  We children had to make do with air rifles, which shot pellets or small ball shot.  Nonetheless, we could bring down birds, which abounded in the St. Clair savannah across from the block of houses my father owned.  On these shooting expeditions we were accompanied by our friends, Boy and Baby Massey, American, who lived on the opposite side of Broome Street.  Frank Pouchet, my special friend, whose family lived next door, went along with us.  The Maraval River was a favorite haunt.  It was nearly empty of water during the dry season, but small crayfish still managed to survive for us to catch.  But when the rainy season came, the Maraval was a raging torrent, to be compared in my mind with the Zambezi, the Nile, and the Yangtze.

A journey to the country was an event looked forward to with anticipation.  Hampers of food and bottles of aerated water, as well as blocks of ice, were packed for an early morning departure.  The provisions were stowed on a mule-drawn cart, on which the servants would set off in good time to catch the 8:00 A.M. train for Sangre Grande.  The family would leave by carriage later, and usually we were met at the station by relatives and friends who would make up the vacation party.  It was our custom to spend a month in the country, which seemed all too short a time for all the things to be done: picnicking in the highlands of Manzanilla, bathing on the beautiful white beaches of the Atlantic coast, venturing into the dense forests to bring out the rare balata fruit that grew on some of the largest trees, hunting to shoot deer, agouti, and mongoose, and to snare armadillo and lap.  There were fishing expeditions into the cocoa plantations and the swamps to bring back crayfish and “cascadu,” a mud fish with a very scaly body like armor.  This last made the most delicious meal, so much so that it is said that “if you eat cascadu in Trinidad, you will always return to Trinidad, the Land of the Hummingbird.”  In my case this remains to be proven true.

The distance from Port of Spain was about thirty miles and the train journey took three hours – three hours spent in a continual orgy of eating and drinking.  The windows of the railway carriages had to be open on account of the heat.  The cinders from the track and from the funnel of the engine mingled with the sandwiches, the roast chicken, the pilau, and the pastilles.  This delicacy was inevitable if the vacation was at Christmas time.

My early education was received from a young lady, Edith McVorhan.  She was one of many daughters of the McVorhan family who lived in Woodford Street.  She tutored me until 1908, when I left for a stay in England with my mother and father, at the age of seven.  In London we lived in Earl’s Court.  My parents returned to Trinidad, and I spent a school year at Grosvenor House, a girl’s school in Bath, in company with my cousin Stella Rooks, a striking blonde.  The school was for girls only but, on account of my undoubted charm, I was accepted as a student – the only boy.  I remember that on Saturdays I was allowed to buy a box of chocolates with delicious marzipan centers.  Since then I cannot pass a shop selling marzipan, be it in Vienna, Paris, or New York, without purchasing at least an ounce or two.  Another sweetmeat to which I am partial is marrons glacés.  I got this taste from my father, who used to drive specially to a house in Woodford Street, Port of Spain, where an old lady of French extraction made these sweets.

In the summer of 1909 I returned to Trinidad and entered Queen’s Royal College.  This was the Protestant college in Port of Spain.  Although I had been brought up in the Catholic faith and attended church regularly every Sunday, my father refused to go to the church.  He had had enough of church and masses when he had been at St. Mary’s College.  He told us that he had had to attend communion every day.  So after he left the school, he never put foot inside a church again.  He used to sit in the carriage in the churchyard and wait until the service was over.  I suppose that this strong aversion to religion prevailed over my mother’s Catholicism in choosing a school for me.