ESCAPE TO LIFE
By Jan J.Solecki
Published by Jotolusa Trade & Management Inc. (1998)

In this book the author recreated a scenario as it happened in northern China in the years 1920-1939. The circumstances were multifaceted by the internal and external aspects. The local warlords supported by different foreign powers were still very active after the Kuomintang’s “Northern Expedition”, which did not completely gain control over the warlords in the area. Consequently the KMT’s troops were still fighting with the warlords in small wars. At the same time the Russians were encroaching from the north and the Japanese conducted mass migration into north-eastern China. Then adding to the chaos, on December 18, 1931 the Japanese troops literally marched into China’s north-eastern three provinces and part of the Inner Mongolia and thus created devastating situation.

How big were the three provinces that Japan had adopted? To give a sense of the land sizes of these provinces, the following numbers may be of interest.

The total land mass of China’s three provinces [Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning] is 305,003 sq. miles. Japan’s land mass is 145,883 sq. miles. The land size of the east-northern three provinces that Japan had adopted is twice the land size of Japan’s land mass and is the total land areas 304,734 sq. miles of U.K. and France.

(Reference: www.worldatlas.com)

The hideous 731 unit prison camp was set up near Tsitsikhar near the border of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang using prisoners of men, women and children who were a mix of Chinese POW, peasants, local citizens and Russians for live chemical and biological warfare experiments. There was not a single survivor. When the news of Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945 reached the head of 731 unit, they ordered to have all prisoners be killed and the whole establishment was burnt to ashes.

This book is based on factual occurrences as the author puts it: “The story presented in this book is a fiction, as are all the characters. However, the historical circumstances are represented as they occurred. Equally factual are the geographical and climatic features, which are reconstructed from memory by the author, who grew up in this region of China and lived there during the 1930, the years described in the book.”

Mr. Jan J. Solecki is a Polish-Russian descendant, but his dedication of this book is “To the people of China, who suffered invasion and oppression without ever giving up the fight for national freedom.” And his perceive of the Chinese as he wrote in the Introduction page: “The intent of this book is to provide a picture of the times; to place before the reader the spirit of a China which was as yet neither intensely nationalist nor communist but mainly intensely patriotic.”

I am thankful to Mr. Solecki who expresses his compassion and non-discriminatory description of the Chinese.

Mr. Solecki’s diverse life is full of colourful and interesting stories. He was born in Inner Mongolia and attended polish high school there. In 1939 he moved to Hong Kong to continue his study and in 1941 he joined voluntarily the Royal Artillery in defence of the British Colony. When Hong Kong fell in December 1941 he was captured and thrown into Sum Sui Po POW camp in Kowloon and was later taken to Nagoya, Japan for hard labour in a locomotive factory. After Japan surrendered, he went to England to continue his study and then he moved to Vancouver to further his study at UBC and later at University of Washington in Seattle. From 1964-1984, he taught at UBC; specializing in Economies of Russia and China. (Reference: back page of Escape to Life)

As the wartime population is reduced and the war history is gradually fading away, Mr. Solecki’s book makes up an important part which is missing in the history. I recommend this book for everyone who loves to learn history of WWII.

Historical information about 731 Unit Men Behind The Sun and AII POW-MIA Unit 731.

The Measure of A Man – Spiritual Autobiography (Oprah’s Book Club)
By Sidney Poitier

I was deeply touched by Mr. Poitier’s book; there are so many spiritual thoughts left to be contemplated. It is truly an excellent book to read.

In his early years there was a boundary which limited his dreams. As Mr. Poitier said: “…the outside world introduced itself to me and instructed me as to where the lines were drawn: what the style of my behaviour should be, where I should find a place to fit, and how I should rein in my expectations (never, ever reaching above the level approved for person like me, …)” This apparently showed in the making of the movie “The Heat of the Night.”

Mr. Poiter has come a long way through the dark era of racism; as a black citizen he learned to know his place but resisted constantly and strongly to be put down. He guarded his dignity and value as a human being even if it meant the possibility of loosing a movie contract. If such occurrences happened, he was very determined to find a job as kitchen helper or janitor instead of bending his principle.

From his life experiences, he has risen to a place where there is no hateful recount of the racist era he faced. I believe the positive way to deal with persecution is no hatred but forgiveness. Mr. Sidney Poitier stands as a strong example of the measure of a man.

He is one of my most respected American movie stars. In the early years of the 60s, as I recall, the left wing newspapers in Hong Kong had wrongfully accused Sidney Poiter of being a ‘negro vase’ who collaborated with Hollywood to decorate the equality between the white and the black. The leftists believed that such racial problems would lead to the collapse of America. Many have paid a price, including Mr. Poitier, to come to the present success of amalgamation.

More about Sidney Poitier:
Oprah’s Book Club
Biography.com
Wikipedia.org
IMDB Movie Database

Other reviewers:
The grits book club

Of interest, an aside:
Another blogger, Measure of a Man, Bono

Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
By Vincent Lam, The Scotiabank Giller Prize Winner
Published by Anchor Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited 2006.

This book is a collection of stories which recount the normal life of a medical doctor.

I found it interesting and a worthwhile read.

I was particularly drawn to the portrayal of the night shift work, which explains why patients have to wait hours in the ER before the doctor can attend the sick? Dr. Lam explains by giving an example of one normal night shift in Toronto General Hospital. As the doctor stepped in the ER to begin his night shift, the nurse told him that there were twenty-three patients waiting and was about six hours behind schedule. In the eight hours of his shift, the doctor did the most to clear the entire backlog, plus the stream of patients who were taken in by ambulances. Non-stopping and exerting all his effort, he managed to catch up and clear the entire backlog for the day shift doctor who comes in in the morning.

As I laid down the book, my mind filled with the hapless experiences about my mother’s many experiences in ERs, I fell pensively into a thought which has long been profoundly disturbing my mind, that is the question of “how far a medical doctor’s responsibility goes?”

Accidentally, I found the possible answer to my question in a documentary film. The story is about Dr. Young who, at age seventy-six, has retired as Professor of Medicine at Hong Kong University. Dr. Rosie Young Tse Tse still practices part-time at Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong and occasionally teaches HKU medical students. To her students, she always says that being a medical doctor is not just an occupation but a life long mission. You must have good heart and you must care both for your patients and their family members. She has worked tirelessly all her life in education, research and in serving the community. I believe that Dr. Young is a role model for all medical students. Her ethics and beliefs go far beyond just “Do no Harm.”

Of interest:
Honorary Doctor of Science Professor Rosie Tse-tse YOUNG (PDF)
(Google Cache of HTML Version)

Ten Green Bottles: Vienna to Shanghai – Journey of Fear and Hope
By Vivian Jeannette Kaplan
Published 2002 by Robin Brass Studio Inc.

Detailed stories illustrate the lives of Jews in Vienna during the era of WWII. It is a valuable record of the history of those years that the Jew’s freedom of livelihood was gradually taken away and worsened everyday until finally they were reduced to a life and death situation. Thousands had been sent to concentration camps, many of the Jewish businesses and properties had been confiscated by the Nazis. Since all bank accounts were frozen by the authority, the Jews were struggling to exist. Tensed and worried, they were seeking ways to escape this brutality and struggle. Very fortunately, the author and her family finally received help from an Austrian lawyer who risked his life to secure their exit documents and paid for the train and sea passage to Shanghai, China. The Austrian lawyer Herr Bergen had been arrested and shot in 1939.

Although given a new opportunity, the author seemed indifferent to the Shanghai Chinese who had suffered persecution, starvation and atrocities by the invading Japanese Imperial Army in January 28, 1932 and August 13, 1937. It was the same situation that the Jews had experienced under the German occupation in the areas of Vienna and others countries in Europe. One such example is as the author wrote: “Debarking from the ship and setting foot for the first time on the wharf, I am filled with overwhelming nausea. Heavy, sickly odours attack my nostrils. Thick hordes of people swarm the pier and coalesce into one throbbing dark mass, a monster with hundred of wriggling arms and legs that surrounds and threatens to devour us whole. Staring at my white skin and round blue eyes, the filthy, ragged strangers laugh and cajole in their unintelligible language.” How a foreigner can judge the local language as “unintelligible language”? Another such example is as the author wrote: “I am appalled and believe this to be the most uncivilized country on earth…” There are very few paragraphs and sentences that show the author’s passion for China and its populace.

There is also one fact that was not mentioned in the book and that was that there was a Chinese ‘Schindler’— “a diplomat who ushered more than 1,000 Jews out of Austria during the Second World War.” In fact, this Chinese diplomat was a Chinese Consulate General in Nazi occupied Vienna, Mr. Ho Fengshan, who resisted his own government’s will issuing more than 4,000 visa (the number was indicated by Ho’s daughter—reference Jerusalem Post) enabling the Jews and the defiant locals to leave Austria.

Of interest:
http://www.bibleprobe.com/ho_fengshan.htm
The Angel of Austria’s Jews:
http://www.members.tripod.com/~journeyeast/angel_of_austria_s_jews.html

The Girl Who Played Go, a Novel - by Shan Sa, translated by Adriana Hunter
There are two main characters in the story, a Manchuria girl and a Japanese soldier. The girl lived in Manchuria, and the Japanese soldier was sent to colonize Manchuria before 1931. The back drop of the story was in the era of the Japanese invasion of China in 1931-1937.

They met in the Square of a Thousand Winds, and played Go on a checkerboard which was engraved on a granite table. The girl was an excellent Go player, and the Japanese soldier, who spoke fluent mandarin, was undercover spying on the resistant activities in the public gathering places of the city. In the end the Japanese soldier fell in love with this young Chinese girl, when she was arrested he risked his life to protect her from torture and rape by other Japanese soldiers.

Though the author—Shan Sa was born in 1972, long after the era of War Against Japanese, she described the era with such accuracy. She is a respectable painter and writer.

The book is a well written novel first published in France 2001 and later translated and published in Great Britain in 2003. The author shows her readers a story frame by frame through each chapter like in a movie, which allows her readers to evaluate each of the characters’ inner worlds.

More commentary can be found here, here, here, and from Word Without Borders you can read an excerpt.