China is a big country roughly the size of United States. It has the world’s oldest continuous civilization and Chinese writing has remained virtually unchanged for the last three thousand years.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, China was the most powerful country in Asia. The country looked inward and considered herself the centre of the world, calling herself 中國 Zhong guo, which means central country.
In 1842, China lost the Opium War. As a result, Britain took over Hong Kong and Kowloon. For about one hundred years afterwards, China suffered many humiliating defeats at the hands of all the major industrial powers, including Britain, France and Japan. Many port cities on China’s coast (such as Tianjin and Shanghai) fell under foreign control. Native Chinese were ruled by foreigners and lived as second-class citizens in their own cities.
In 1911, there was a revolution and the imperial Manchu court in Beijing was abolished. Sun Yat-sen became president and proclaimed China a republic. However, the country broke into fiefdoms ruled by war-lords who fought each other for the control of China. Chiang Kai-shek, a military general and protégé of Sun Yat-sen, took over after Sun’s death in 1925.
Japan first seized Taiwan from China in 1895. She then usurped Manchuria. In July 1937, she declared war on China and quickly occupied Beijing and Tianjin. Since my grandma was born in 1932, she had experienced a living during Japanese occupation. At that time, she was a young child who was studying in Zhong Shan, while her father was working in San Francisco. On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and declared war on the USA and Britain. On the same day, Japanese troops marched into Tianjin’s foreign Concessions.
In 1945, Japan surrendered, and the Second World War was at an end. Chiang Kai-shek was back in charge. His triumph was short-lived because a civil war soon erupted between the Nationalists under Chiang and the Communists under Mao Ze-dong. Around 1950s, my grandma brought my elder aunt (姨媽) to Macau after encountering domestic violence. At that time, Hong Kong was still a British colony. Therefore, my grandma escaped from Zhong Shan to Macau firstly, and then Hong Kong.
