I wrote the first draft of Daughters of Shandong in about three months, and it was LONG. Much of the initial rounds of editing was cutting away material, and later I ended up completely rewriting the Hong Kong section. When the family finally reaches Taiwan, my original drafts included letters that Hai exchanges with the people back in China. These ended up getting deleted too, but I’ve since had many readers ask about Lucky and Mrs. Ding, so I decided to share that material here, on my website.

For background, Lucky is based on a real dog. My grandma had a dog, which she loved very much. She told my mom that this dog of hers was the smartest dog in the world, and could catch rabbits. Later, when my grandma boarded the train from Qingdao to Hong Kong, they had to leave the dog behind, and my grandma remembers watching her dog run after the train, until it could no longer run anymore. She thinks he was killed and possibly eaten, given the extreme starvation in the city at the time.

I was very surprised to learn about this dog, because the grandma that I knew never liked dogs–she was always complaining about how our dogs were spoiled, and I guess that no dog could ever compare to her “Lucky,” and she never became attached to any other pet after that loss. Mrs. Ding is an entirely fictional character, but I invented her, in part for Lucky. In my novel, Lucky does make his way back to Mrs. Ding, and lives happily ever after. This is a deviation from the true story, but I think this is what my grandmother would have wanted.

In real life, my great-grandmother returned to Qingdao to look for the people who helped her when she and her daughters were there. Policeman Wei is based on a real relative. According to what my mom was told, he and all the others who my family knew in Qingdao were gone by the time the borders between China and Taiwan opened again.

Here is the original text (unedited and fictional) from the first drafts of Daughters of Shandong, when Hai talks about her letters from China and Hong Kong:

Soon after we settled, I mailed letters to our friends in the mainland. It took several weeks, but I received replies from all of them. The first two were from Mrs. Ding and Uncle Sen. 

Mom and I read Uncle Sen’s letter together, and she was relieved to hear that her parents had also fled to Qingdao. The violence in the countryside had intensified as the Communist Party expanded its definition of class enemy and counter-revolutionary. Uncle Sen’s health improved, not through any treatment but from time and the power of his own body. He retained a cough and was weaker than before his illness, but he had recovered enough to work again. Cousin Wei helped him get a job as a policeman. Though Uncle Sen made enough to feed himself and his parents, who had no income, the family was poor. Everyone was poor. China had fallen into an even deeper economic crisis. As a result of China’s intervention in the Korean War, the United States imposed a total trade embargo on the country in 1950, with the United Nations following with collective sanctions in 1951. In the cities, there were still no jobs and businesses folded. In the rural areas, the community farming experiment had begun, the precursor to agricultural collectives which would later reap devastation due to Mao’s extreme measures and mismanagement.

Unlike Uncle Sen, Mrs. Ding was too smart to complain so blatantly about the government in writing. She told us with more subtlety that it was a dark time for many people. She said that the Communists were working hard to filter the government officials in the city, trying to determine who would serve loyally and who were Nationalist usurpers at heart. She was having trouble cooking her usual dishes because the markets had less produce in stock. Additionally, there were new arrivals in the neighborhood and she was certain they were up to no good. I could almost hear her voice as I read her words saying that she would be vigilant and monitor the alley carefully. On a bright note, Lucky had made his way back to her! He had dashed out when her tenant opened the courtyard door, but by evening he had slipped back so stealthily that she
didn’t notice his arrival until after dark when she finished sweeping and found him curled up in front of her apartment door. Mrs. Ding insisted that she still had no rabbits for stew, and still saw the occasional rat, but at least Lucky offered good company during the day and additional protection at night.

***

Though the mail system between Hong Kong and Taiwan was more reliable than between Taiwan and the mainland, Biao-Wu’s letter was the last one to arrive—probably because he had been too busy to write. He had built himself a proper cottage with help from some other soldiers, and even made himself furniture. The famous road was also finished. Now, it only took the residents 30 minutes to travel from Rennie’s Mill to Shau Kei Wan which made a day job feasible, and many refugees were returning to work. Biao-Wu found a part time job repairing automobiles and was saving his money to start a
business—an unofficial bus service from Rennie’s Mill to Shau Kei Wan. He told us that there was a school now, and he thought of us and wondered if we were also able to resume our studies in Taiwan. We were smart girls he said, and it would be a pity to let that go to waste.

***

I had sent a letter to Ms. Anita and told her about the exam, and she wrote back in Chinese that was so good that she must have asked one of the staff interpreters to help her. She was still working for the Social Welfare Office, though no longer
involved in Rennie’s Mill. The Hong Kong government had cut funding and rations, hoping to encourage the refugees to leave. By then, many of them had found some form of employment and were able to support themselves. The housing was still free
of charge, which saved a substantial amount of money given the rent in Hong Kong. Biao-Wu’s unofficial bus service had begun operating a few months ago, and he had many customers commuting each day to Shau Kei Wan. Ms. Anita meanwhile, had gotten engaged to a British naval officer. She was planning to resign in a few months and move back to London. She said she would write me again when she was at her new address. This letter however, ended up being the last exchange between us.

***

Mom lived frugally so that she could afford to send some of my stipend money to Qingdao to help Uncle Sen and her parents, who were struggling even more than we were. Through Uncle Sen, we received the heart shattering news of Cousin Wei’s death. Aside from us, Cousin Wei had helped several other families flee from Communist persecution and one of his colleagues reported him to their superiors. The government authorities in Qingdao branded Cousin Wei a counter-revolutionary and sent him to one of the early laogai prisons for re-education through forced labor. The cause of his death was unclear, but conditions in those camps were so ghastly that it could have been any number of abuses that killed him.