“Like a sacrificial lamb?”
Mr. Kan nodded. “I guess so. We had no training and no support, and we lost more than we won. Behind you, officers with machine guns would shoot you if you tried to run. In front of you, the Japanese charged at you with bayonets. When you used up your bullets, you looked for more from your dead comrades. I wanted revenge for my dead family, but how could I get my revenge? I didn’t even know which Japanese soldiers killed them.
“That was when I began to understand another kind of magic. Men spoke of the glory of Japan and the weakness of China, that Japan wants the best for Asia, and that China should accept what Japan wants and give up. But what do these words mean? How can ‘Japan’ want something? ‘Japan’ and ‘China’ do not exist. They are just words, fiction. An individual Japanese may be glorious, and an individual Chinese may want something, but how can you speak of ‘Japan’ or ‘China’ wanting, believing, accepting anything? It is all just empty words, myths. But these myths have powerful magic, and they require sacrifices. They require the slaughter of men like sheep.
“When America finally entered the war, I was so happy. I knew that China was saved. Ah, see how powerful that magic is, that I can speak of these nonexistent things as though they are real. No matter. As soon as the war with Japan was over, I was told that we Nationalists now had to fight the Communists, who were our brothers-in-arms just days earlier against the Japanese. The Communists were evil and had to be stopped.”
Mr. Kan wrote another character.
“This is the character yi, which used to mean ‘righteousness,’ and now also means ‘-ism,’ as in Communism, Nationalism, Imperialism, Capitalism, Liberalism. It’s formed from the character for ‘sheep,’ which you know, on top, and the character for ‘I,’ on the bottom. A man holds up a sheep for sacrifice, and he thinks he has truth, justice, and the magic that will save the world. It’s funny, isn’t it?
“But here’s the thing. Even though the Communists had even worse equipment than we did, and less training, they kept on winning. I couldn’t understand it until one day, my unit was ambushed by the Communists, and I surrendered and joined them. You see, the Communists really were bandits. They would take the land from the landlords and distribute it to the landless peasants, and this made them very popular. They couldn’t care less about the fiction of laws and property rights. Why should they? The rich and educated had made a mess of things, so why shouldn’t the poor and illiterate have a chance at it? No one before the Communists had ever thought much of the lowly peasants, but when you have nothing, not even shoes for your feet, you are not afraid to die. The world had many more people who were poor and therefore fearless than people who were rich and afraid. I could see the logic of the Communists.
“But I was tired. I had been fighting for almost a decade of my life, and I was alone in the world. My family had been rich, and the Communists would have killed them, too. I did not want to fight for the Communists, even if I could understand them. I wanted to stop. A few friends and I slipped away in the middle of the night and stole a boat. We were going to try to get to Hong Kong and leave all this slaughter behind.
“But we did not know navigation, and the waves took us into the open sea. We ran out of water and food and waited to die. But a week later, we saw land on the horizon. We rowed with our last bits of strength until we came ashore, and we found ourselves in Taiwan.
“We swore each other to secrecy about our time with the Communists and our desertion. We each went about our own ways, determined to never have to fight again. Because I was good with the abacus and the brush, I was hired by a Taiwanese couple who owned a small general store, and I kept their books and ran the place for them.
“Most of ??Taiwan had been settled by immigrants from Fukien several centuries earlier, and after Japan took Taiwan from China in 1885, the Japanese tried to Japanize the island, much as they had done in Okinawa, and remake the penshengjen into loyal subjects of the Emperor. Many of the men fought in Japan’s armies during the war. After Japan lost, Taiwan was to be given back to the Republic of China. The Nationalists came to Taiwan and brought a new wave of immigrants with them, the waishengjen. The penshengjen hated the Nationalist waishengjen, who took away the best jobs, and the Nationalist waishengjen hated the penshengjen, who had been traitors to their race during the war.
“I was working in the shop one day when a mob gathered in the streets. They shouted in Fukienese, and so I knew they were penshengjen. They stopped everyone they met, and if the person spoke Mandarin, they knew him to be a waishengjen and attacked him. There was no reasoning and no hesitation. They wanted blood. I was terrified and tried to hide under the counter.”
“The character for ‘mob’ is formed from the character for ‘nobility’ on one side and the character for ‘sheep’ on the other. So that’s what a mob is, a herd of sheep that turns into a pack of wolves because they believe themselves to be serving a noble cause.
“The penshengjen couple tried to protect me, saying that I was a good man. Someone in the mob shouted that they were traitors, and they attacked all of us and burned the shop down. I managed to crawl out of the fire, but the couple died.”
“They were my uncle and aunt,” ?Teddy said. Mr. Kan nodded and put a hand on his shoulder.
“The penshengjen rebellion began on February 28, 1947, and lasted for months. Because some of the rebels were led by Communists, the Nationalists were especially brutal. It took the Nationalists a long time to finally put down the rebellion, and thousands were killed.
“In those killings a new kind of magic was born. Now, no one is allowed to talk about the 228 Massacre. The number 228 is taboo.
“I took Teddy in after his parents were executed for trying to commemorate that day. I came here, away from the city, so that I could live in a small cottage and drink my tea in peace. The villagers respect those who have read books, and they come to me to ask my advice on picking names for their children that will bring good fortune. Even after so many men died because of a few magic words, we continue to have faith in the power of words to do good.
“I have not heard from my baby sister for decades. I believe she is still alive on the mainland. Someday, before I die, I hope to see her again.”
The three sat around the table, and no one said anything for a while. Mr. Kan wiped his eyes.
“I’m sorry to have told you such a sad story, Lilly. But the Chinese have not had happy stories to tell for a long time.”
Lilly looked at the paper before Mr. Kan, filled with characters made from sheep. “Can you look into the future? Will there be good stories then?”
Mr. Kan’s eyes brightened. “Good idea. What character should I write?”
“What about the character for China?”
Mr. Kan thought about this. “That’s a difficult request, Lilly. ‘China’ may be a simple word in English, but it is not so easy in Chinese. We have many words for China and the people who call themselves Chinese. Most of these words are named after ancient dynasties, and the modern words are empty shells, devoid of real magic. What is the People’s Republic? What is the Republic? These are not true words. Only more altars for sacrifices.”
After thinking some more, he wrote another character.