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| TRIP TO WEIHSIEN – NOVEMBER
9 – 11, 2007
My wife, Emma, and I had an opportunity to travel on a two-week tour to China from Vancouver, British Columbia. Fortunately for us the tour was mad up of the two of us and another couple who were friends of ours. We had the usual tour of China starting at Beijing, visiting the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace. From there we flew to Xian and saw the incredible terra cotta warriors and then on to Chonqing and the cruise down the Yangtze and the Three Gorges and finally ending our tour in Shanghai, where we left the tour. In Shanghai we met my brother Mark who is Principal of the Sino-Canada Academy a school just north of Shanghai that offers the BC curriculum to Chinese students. Our plan was to travel to Weifang, a city of eight million, to visit the site for the Weihsien internment camp where my parents and I had spent three long years. Weifang was home for one of Mark’s students and she made arrangements with her parents for us to be picked up at Quingdao and driven to Weifang. Mark had also made arrangements with the local city officials for a guide to meet us at our hotel and take us to the Weihsien site. On November 9th the three of us flew out of Hong Qiao International Airport in Shanghai on China Eastern. After a two hour flight to Quindao we were met by Alex, a driver and a Buick! It was a fascinating drive on a six lane divided highway through some of the flattest farmland I have ever seen. Shandung Province is known in China for its apples, grapes, fruit and wheat: totally at odds with what I expected. The traffic was something else. No one seemed to bother with a speed limit and police were markedly absent. We passed a large truck carrying dozens of chicken crates and another loaded with three layers of large fat pigs and a man walking on top of them poking them with a machete to keep them from lying on each other. Weifang is a city of wide streets, large stores, thousands of bicycles, many parks and a huge city square across the street from our hotel. That evening we walked through the square and like any park in North America, there were children playing tag and hacky sack, old men sitting quietly smoking, and young couples strolling across the park as dusk set in. Amazingly, beneath the city square was an immense store selling everything from food to clothing, from hardware to toys and it was filled with people. Beneath that store was another almost as large. |
The next
morning we met our guide Ms. Goa, who waved down two taxis to take us
to the camp site. The museum and one of the Weihsien buildings is on the
grounds of the Weifang Middle School and we had to wait at the gate while
our guide made arrangements for us to enter the grounds. |
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) 460 School entrance |
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) 461 |
main building --- Middle School No. 2 --- | |||||||||||||||
) 464 old Jap guard's villa, |
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| The museum is a wonderful exhibit and the city has a done a great job in staffing and maintaining it. The walls were covered with photographs of the Camp, its liberation and in particular, two of the internees, Eric Liddle and Norman Cliff. Both the curator and Ms. Goa were deeply affected when we told them that Norman had passed away. The curator, for lack of a better word, gave us three copies of the DVD they made about the Camp. Much of it is in Chinese but the interviews with the internees were in English – Norman and Mary Previtte were two in particular that I remember. We were not able to visit the Middle School seemingly because there was some Government inspection underway. | ||||||||||||||||
| The museum --- |
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| The tour of Blocks 59 and 60 and the moon gate entrance brought back many memories and I could visualize our three years in one of those tiny rooms now home to a Chinese family. | ||||||||||||||||
) 486 |
Brian, Mark and Emma --- | |||||||||||||||
) 488 in 1945, it was Block-50 |
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| The old hospital was bleak, cold and forbidding a total contrast to the warmth and beauty of LeDao Square. | ||||||||||||||||
The Hospital) 492 |
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The
“tunnel” really a hall beneath the old hospital on the west
side was most interesting. We blundered in thinking it was simply an open
space when much to our surprise two elderly gentlemen issued from a small
room off the hall. This was their home! They were most friendly and willingly
posed for us. |
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Hospital West-Wing) 563 entrance to the "tunnel" |
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| Moongate, Old blocks 59 & 60 ) 493 backside |
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Blocks 59 and 60) 496 |
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The Wall
of Remembrance, now fringed with plant life, is amazing, and to see our
family names there with all the other names was immensely moving. The
wall beside it with the bas relief of figures depicting the internees,
the American parachutists, the Chinese and the Japanese guards, is equally
as impressive. |
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The Wall of remembrance ---) 521 |
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LeDoa Square
is completely finished and the walk along the river extends for kilometers.
In the center of the Square is the large monument with the names of each
internee in Chinese on the four sides beneath the life size figures of
the internees celebrating their release from Weihsien. The Square was
alive with people of all ages enjoying the sun and the beauty of the park.
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LeDao square, near the river ---) 548 |
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Not much
of the original Camp remains but what is there has been carefully preserved.
That night when we had a special banquet with the parents who had arranged
our drive from Quindao, they told us that we, the internees, were heroes
in the eyes of the Chinese people. That statement more than even the care
with which the artifacts had been preserved, brought home how much we,
who were interned, were honoured by the Chinese. |
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) 599 Amway store in downtown Weifang |
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After we
left the Camp and retuned to our hotel we walked over to the Weifang Kite
Museum. What an incredible display of kites and if you ever have the chance
to visit Weifang, go there in April during their International Kite Festival
when “kiters” come from all over the world to fly their kites.
You will not be disappointed. Weifang is truly the Kite Capital of China. |
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| The Kite Museum --- |
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The trip is over - a memory
- and I don’t know if we will ever have an opportunity to return
but Leopold Pander, your web page keeps the memories alive and many, many
thanks to you for your incredible investment in making that happen for
all of us.
Brian Butcher |
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[click here to read the the text on the monument])
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