Chapter 22 Section 9 Escape from Xiangxiang to Guilin

On October 21, 1938, the Japanese army landed at Dapeng Bay by sea and captured Guangzhou. The whole city was engulfed in fire. In November in Changsha, our army mistakenly thought that the Japanese army was approaching, and ordered to set fire to the city to resist with scorched earth.On December 21st, Generalissimo Chiang published the "Report to the National Army and Civilians on the Wuhan Retreat".Vow to unite the whole country, move to the southwest, and never surrender. At this time, it has been one year and three months since the Japanese military department promised the emperor and the people that they would occupy the whole of China within three months at the beginning of the invasion of China.And Southwest China.Even more mysterious than Japan imagined, the precipitous territory entangled millions of invading Japanese troops for eight years, and many of them became ghosts in foreign countries, and they couldn't even find their way home!

My mother took us to Zhongshan Middle School, and under my father's arrangement, we left Hunan, which was surrounded by the enemy, and took the Hunan-Guizhou Railway to Guilin first, and then went to Sichuan via Guizhou. After I arrived in Guilin, I thought I could take a breather, so my parents sent me to Guilin Girls’ Middle School to study in the first year of junior high school. I studied every day. My family lived in a hotel, and I lived on campus. I studied in the autumn class for about a month. During that time, I had two things that are extremely hard to forget. During the day, as long as the weather is fine, there will be Japanese planes bombing, and we all run to the suburbs when the alarm sounds.A few senior high school seniors probably arranged it by the school, and they always took me to a river where there were many coconut trees. We hid under the trees, and the plane flew overhead. I saw them drop a A string of flashing bombs followed, followed by black smoke and flames in the city.

Sometimes, the air battle seemed to start right above our heads, and the enemy and us fired machine guns at each other. When seeing the tail of the enemy plane painted with a red sun smoke and fall to the ground, everyone would applaud excitedly in panic.Once, an enemy plane landed very close, many people ran to watch and cheered.While waiting for the alarm to be cleared, I remember a senior who always sang in a low voice: "I go to Yuanshaxi every day and calculate your return date..." Although I was a girl at that time, I felt that Under the sky, listening to such a "decadent" song is very uncomfortable.

Another deep impression is that every night from nine o'clock in the evening to the long night of the next morning, walking from the dormitory To get to the toilet, you have to go through a long outdoor corridor; the corridor has pillars like a temple porch, and there are two or three large oil lamps, which are blown into shadows by the wind in the river.I always wait for someone to get up before I dare to follow. The feeling of terror is still fresh in my memory.Sometimes, after lights out, someone likes to tell ghost stories, and I have to cover my head tightly. At that time, the fear of the approaching dusk was the same as that in Xishan Sanatorium.Fortunately, my family left Guilin for Guizhou with Sun Yat-sen Middle School soon, and I was relieved.