Then many years passed. Time in China was a "non-topic".
I was told to put it behind me and forget.
I even lost touch with my best friend Sandra.
The last contact was a wedding photo of her when we were both in our early 20s.
Later nothing.
The worst thing people could say to me growing up was: "You should go out as a missionary, you, and finish the work your father started." It felt like enormous pressure. I didn't have the slightest desire to go out again, and I felt that undue pressure was being put on me. Maybe I can say: Fortunately, China was closed at the time, so it was impossible to get there.
It almost felt like a relief.
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Mother and I moved to Asker in Akershus in 1950. I had acquired the Grimstad dialect and was bullied for it at school. At that time, Mother developed Parkinson's disease. Perhaps all the stress she had been through had accelerated the disease. After all, she had become a widow at only 29 years old, and she had experienced some traumatic things. Fortunately, she lived until 1968. I was then 28 years old. In the meantime, I had completed the "examen artium" in 1959 and trained as a teacher.
Especially at the age of 15-16, I started to dream about the time out there. I remember one morning in particular when I began to describe the camp to my mother. But she said, "No, it didn't look like that." Of course I gave in. She was an adult and probably remembered things better than me, I thought.
She kept walking and brooding while I was at school. Then she realised that she had a map of the camp lying in the attic. She found it and realised that what I had dreamed was correct and that she remembered wrongly. Strange how things are stored in the subconscious.
I had difficulty living with all these unanswered questions. Eventually I struggled with both sleep problems and anxiety. It was difficult to see pictures from the war.
Many years passed. China became an open country again. From time to time, the thought of taking a trip back crossed my mind. But no, it wasn't tempting.
It was not until autumn 1994 that I contacted the Norwegian embassy in Beijing. After a long time, I got a reply back that they had found out where the camp had been, and that there was still a hospital in Qingdao where Mother had worked in 1941. They said I was most welcome to visit, and a Mr Xu Peifeng would gladly arrange it for me.
But still this was a completely impossible thought. China was too far away. I didn't have the courage. At this time I was living in Kristiansand.
Two years later, I got to see one of Tore Strømøy's programs on TV — "Tore på sporet". People were asked to write and I jumped at the chance. What I didn't know at the time was that Per Gerhard, my son, and Randi, his wife, who lived in France at the time, had already written to Tore, and so had Rolf Andersen (my curator at National Help). Tore told me later that it was the first time he had received three different letters on the same matter. He was also very startled, because it was completely new to him that there had been Norwegians in captivity in the Far East. This sounded interesting.
He called me in the fall of 1996 and said, "We're going to China." It sounded so easy, and I was shocked. But time passed, week after week, and I heard no more. So I tried to come to terms with the fact that it probably wouldn't happen.
But then on 21 February 1997 the phone rang, and it was Ma Rosnes from NRK who called. A pleasant lady's voice could tell that they were planning a trip to China, and the question was whether I could go on March 11 that year. There were only 18 days left and I was completely speechless. My blood pressure rose, my tears streamed, and I couldn't say a word. After a while I calmed down and we had a long and pleasant chat.
The following week was incredibly hectic. New photos and a new passport had to be obtained. The visa application had to be faxed to Trondheim, and everything was in place within a week and a half.
Souvenirs from the prison camp in China: Prisoner's badge and wooden shoes. [clogs]
Then the Chinese authorities postponed the trip for one month. Something was clearly not quite right.
There were many phone calls and letters between Trondheim and Kristiansand in the future.
The trip was postponed until 19 May, but everything came to a standstill when NRK did not get permission to film in China. The days came and went, but nothing happened. On 23 May, positive signals came from China, but I did not dare to let go of my joy just yet.
Nevertheless, I slowly began to enjoy myself and prepare myself. I so desperately hoped to find my father's grave. That's why I got Mette Høy, a colleague, to make a love bouquet from dried flowers. I would possibly take it with me and put it in a suitable place, preferably in the cemetery.
I kept getting new calls about departure dates, both 2 and 5 June. At the end of the day on 5 June, another phone call came. “Hi, it's Ma. It will be a turn. You are leaving on Monday 9 June."
I managed to jot down the practical details, but then it suddenly dawned on me what was about to happen, and then the tears came. The last message I understood was that I had to stay at home on Friday, because then the ticket would be delivered to my door.
Friday 6 June I sat in the kitchen with my morning coffee. It was 8.25 when Tina (our dog) suddenly started barking terribly. I looked out of the window, and believe it or not, there was a Chinese coming down the stairs! He handed over an envelope and disappeared. It turned out to be the tickets.
I tried to get ground contact before I left for the hairdresser. While I was sitting there, my husband Frithjof called rather frantically and asked me to come home as soon as possible, because NRK was coming to film.
Panic rose. How was I supposed to achieve this? I drove home and tried to stay calm. But when I got stuck in a traffic jam in Kjosbukta, it was tough. Once at home, I found what I needed for the NRK interview.
It went on for a good two hours.
The itinerary came per express mail and looked incredibly exciting. Even the day before departure I wrote in my diary that I had my nerves under control. Incredible! The night before I was to leave, I slept rather restlessly. But everything went well until Joachim called to wish Grandma a good trip. Then the dam burst, and I barely managed to stop before the taxi arrived.
The trip to Fornebu also went well, as did the meeting with Tore Strømøy, Harald Eggen (soundman) and Torstein Lillevik (photographer), my three companions on the trip. We were supposed to fly via Frankfurt. At 15.15 we were down in Germany, and then we sat in a rather lugubrious cafe with each a beer and waited for our flight to China at 17.
The jumbo jet roared off precisely. It was far from full, and we were able to place ourselves comfortably in each of our seats. It didn't take long before Tore started doing interviews. I remember saying that there was very little I remembered from my childhood, and Mother rarely if ever talked about the time out there. It was soon to be seen that what emerged was incredible. It's strange about the subconscious, it stores more than we realise.
Tore describes the trip out in this way: "51 years after she came home to Norway, AnWei is on her way back. Ahead of us is a nine-hour flight, the same journey that took AnWei's mother and father several months. Seven thousand eight hundred kilometres through the air, then everything AnWei was asked to forget will be brought up again. This will be a journey both in time, space and not least in feelings and memories."
The trip went incredibly fast, and at 7 o'clock local time we flew in over Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, and on into the Gobi Desert. First mountains appeared and later endless green plains.
