A Dutch freighter, the S.S. Drente, was plowing through rough water and 45 knot winds in the Taiwan Straits on her way from Shanghai to Bangkok the morning of November 20, 1965. Shortly after 8 o'clock and about 300 miles from Shanghai, the look out sighted a small junk being tossed about helplessly by the heaped-up seas. Waving their arms madly were seven young men and a girl.
Half an hour later, all were safely aboard the Drente.
"We are running away from the Chinese Communists," Huang Ke-chai, 21, told the skipper. "We want to go to Taiwan."
Eight days later, the freighter docked at Bangkok. At their own request, the freedom seekers were taken to the Republic of China's embassy, which arranged to send them to Taiwan. On December 9, 1965, they reachd Taipei to begin, in the words of ex-plumber Lin Yao, 25, of Hangchow, "a new life away from the suffocating, spy-ridden Communist regime."
Their flight followed close on the heels of the defection of a Red air force Ilyushin-28 bomber manned by a crew of three. Once again the Peiping regime was revealed as the object of overwhelming hatred among the rank and file of mainland people.
Hu Chiu-ching, 18, the girl, and fisher man Pao Ssu-hsing, 26, are cousins. Otherwise the escapees are not related. Three of them are natives of Ninghai, Chekiang, and the other five are from Hangchow city in the same province. Some of them hadn't even met before they went aboard the dilapidated junk and left Shihpu port on November 19. It was the burning desire to "get away from the Communists" that brought them together.
Plumber Lin Yao, who contributed the biggest share of the money to buy the boat and the provisions for the journey, had wanted to escape from Communism ever since his graduation from Peiping's Meteorological School at Nanking in 1960. He was not allowed to continue his schooling because his father, an ex-textile mill operator of Shanghai, had been classified a "bourgeoisie". His 16-year-old brother was not permitted to go to senior high school.
"The Communists also see to it that youths like myself are barred from decent jobs," Lin said. "Thousands and thousands of young people with bourgeois backgrounds are compelled to do farm labor."
After working briefly at a Communist weather station in Chinghai province, Lin became a plumber in his native Hangchow. Work was scarce, he said. He earned JMP2-3 (US$0.80-1.20) for a day's work, but worked no more than 10 days a month. The employment situation of two companions, Mo Yun-chung, 27, also a plumber, and Cheng Te-ching, 24, a watch repairmen, was similar. All three are single. They said their earnings were barely sufficient to keep them from starving.
Even if you have money, there is rationing to contend with, they said: limited rice, limited cooking oil, and only nine feet of cloth a year. Pork is sold freely in Hangchow and some other mainland cities, they said, but the supply is limited and the buyer has to queue up for hours.
Abundance of Taiwan goods surprises escapees. (File photo)
Police Agents
However, Lin and his companions agreed that the low standard of living is not the worst aspect of life under the Chinese Communists. "It's the unceasing oppression of the Communist rulers," they said. "There's always an agent of the Red police among your neighbors, and you are constantly aware of it.
"There is nothing to read except newspapers and other publications put out by the Communists. Movies are the same, all Communist."
Entertainment is laced with Communist propaganda, Lin said. Even the centuries old Peiping opera has been "reconstructed" to serve Communist purposes.
In Hangchow, a renowned tourist resort, most of the Buddhist temples and monasteries that used to ring West Lake have been torn down. "The Ning Yin Temple and a couple of others have been left so the Communists can tell foreign visitors they have freedom of religion," Lin said. To become a monk or nun, you must satisfy "Communist requirements and regulations."
"People's communes" of Hangchow exist in name only, Lin said. For the last two years, the communes have not operated public mess halls. Mao Tse-tung's communes, with which he tried to destroy the Chinese pattern of family life, have become mere auxiliary administrative agencies of the Communist regime.
Conditions in rural Ninghai are similar to those in urban Hangchow, the refugees said. Pao Ssu-hsing, who lived in Ninghai all his life, said controls of rural communes are less rigid than before. People still go to the communes to work but eat and sleep at home.
Hunger and Rags
Pao had worked on his family's fishing boat since the age of five. His father owned two boats until the Communists confiscated them. The elder Pao then became a hired hand on the regime's vessels and then was relegated to farm work.
The rationing situation in Ninghai is similar to that in Hangchow. Pao and Chen Sung, a farmer, said their cloth allowance was only five yards a year. "Our stomachs were never really full and we had to go in rags the year round," Pao said.
Chen's hatred of the Peiping regime has its roots in his experiences at the Ninghai Third Junior High School, from which he was graduated six years ago. Chen, 22, said the Communists executed his teacher, Tsao Wen-ke, and imprisoned seven of his classmates on charges they were members of an anti-Communist organization called the "Kung Ping Tang" (Party of Fairness).
The Communists could not prove he was a member, he said, but maintained close surveillance over him and persecuted his parents, his three sisters, and his wife. They rejected him for training at the Hangchow air force academy and required him to serve in the militia.
"My parents toil on the commune farms from dawn till dusk," he said, "and get barely enough to eat."
The girl, Hu Chiu-ching, is an orphan. An elder brother and sister helped her through grade school. At 13 she began to do farm work. Recently the Communists assigned her a husband and she decided to run away.
Hu Chiu-ching tells ,of Taiwan-mainland contrasts. (File photo)
Sent to Country
The link between the escapees from Hangchow and the three from Ninghai was Hung Shan-an, 23, also a plumber and a native of Hangchow. Hung's family owned a plumbing shop. Heavy taxes and other levies forced his father out of business in 1958. Following his graduation from high school, he and his elder brother, Hung Shan-min, worked for the Communists as plumbers. However, the fact that the family formerly owned a shop classified them "bourgeoisie".
In 1924, Hung was forced to go to Ninghai under the Communists' "educated youth to the farms" program and there made the acquaintance of fisherman Pao.
Hung's intention to escape to Taiwan was made known to two of his closest friends, Huang Ke-chai and Mo Yun-chung, as early as March, 1962. Huang was branded as an "offspring of the counter-revolutionaries" because his father had been a general in the Chinese National Army. His parents were sent to a Communist concentration camp in Sinkiang in 1951.
Hung's friendship with Pao developed rapidly. Last July Hung first mentioned the hope of crossing the sea to Taiwan, and Pao responded enthusiastically. Plans for the voyage to freedom began to take shape. Hung went to Hangchow to tell his friends and raise money for a boat.
In October, Pao told Hung of a fishing junk [or sale. The price was JMP500 (US$200). Huang and Mo were already borrowing and selling their few belongings. Lin and Cheng joined them.
To Sea at Last
In Ninghai, Pao's boyhood friend Chen Sung was recruited. Cousin Hu Chiu-ching learned of the plan and demanded that she be taken along.
By November 11, the group at Hangchow had collected JMP350 and sent Mo Yun-chung to Ninghai with it. The Ninghai group made up the difference and they acquired the 6-ton sailing junk.
Embarkation was planned for November 18 at Shihpu, the Ninghai fishing harbor, which Pao knew like the back of his hand. The four from Hangchow arrived the night before, bringing 20 catties of rice and other provisions.
Inclement weather foiled a sailing on the 18th. However, it had cleared by the morning of the 19th and they set sail with a group of fishing vessels.
The sea was calm and the north wind favorable. As soon as they were well away from Shihpu, Pao burned sticks of incense and said the traditional fishermen's prayers. The others bowed and kneeled in prayer. "Pao wanted to make sure that the gods would guide us safely to our destination," said Lin Yao.
About 3 in the afternoon, the wind began to rise. By 4, the boat, which had been sailing on a southeasterly course, was near Sanmenwan between the Chekiang coast and the Choushan islands.
The wind increased to 35 or 40 knots and the skies darkened. The junk was rolling severely. Except for Pao, everyone was seasick.
Lights of Gunboats
In another three hours, the storm-tossed vessel had neared the Tachen islands, where the Chinese Communists have patrols. Pao forbade lights and smoking.
At about 10 o'clock, Lin Yao and Pao Ssu-hsing spotted two points of light dead ahead and two more on the port side. Everyone assembled on deck and they tried to think of an excuse for being so far from home in the event they were caught. However, they had no fishing gear aboard and decided to fight to the death rather than go back to the mainland.
As it turned out, the storm was a god send. The junk slipped between the lights, presumably of gunboats, in the blackness of the stormy night.
By early morning, the freedom seekers were safely away from danger of Communist pursuit. But the weather had grown worse. Winds were up to 45 knots and the seas were mountainous. The main mast snapped; the boat itself seemed ready to break into pieces at any minute. Then the Drente hove into sight.
"We've made it," said Hu Chiu-ching happily as she faced the Taipei press December 10. "Most of the people in my home town would have come with us if they had been given the chance." The eight young people are now wards of the Free China Relief Association. FCRA is a civic body devoted to helping refugees from the mainland. It will resettle the eight according to their own choice. That means school or jobs-and the freedom to live their own lives in their own way.