[excerpts] ...

[...]

The block in front of us was also classrooms, but that too was now used as dormitories for priests and nuns.

`Where do you live Granny?’ I asked.
`Not very far away in Block 13,’ she replied. `I am going to take you there as Grandpa should be back now from Kitchen No. 1. In the meantime, I thought I would show you this area.’

`Why has he been at the kitchen? Surely, he doesn’t work there?’ I commented.
`Oh, yes he does. All the internees here at Weihsien have to do something for the Community, we have no servants like we all used to have before the Japanese came. I believe that the present rules excuse ladies with children under two and the one or two ladies expecting babies. I peel vegetables in No. 1 Kitchen.’

We carried on walking across the near open place with all the trees.

[excerpts] ...

It was difficult trying to keep Roger clean; Mum washed his nappies, but I was left to my own devices. All the adults had had their luxury lifestyles abruptly terminated. The ladies suffered much more, doing their own chores. They had always been spoiled, with servants to do the domestic work.

In about ten days our trunks and beds arrived, dumped on the road near Kitchen No. 2. There was a general feeling of `I’ll help you if you will help me,’ and the items got put on the ground in front of each room. The trunks had been broken into, but as they were mostly clothes nothing much had been taken.

The beds were intact but three full-sized beds and a cot would take more floor room than our room possessed. My parents realised that the only solution was bunks. The packing cases had to stay on the ground until they were dismantled, and the beds assembled. That was not an easy process as the door was too narrow to take an assembled bed unless turned on its side! Borrowing a claw hammer, Dad was able to retrieve the nails from our crates and straighten them on a stone.

Then Dad needed to borrow a saw. Our next-door neighbours were [...] ...

[excerpts] ...

I also sneaked into the men’s lavatories near the playing field when caught with the need, the urinals there basic but useable. One day I heard Mum having a whispered exchange with Dad on the subject, and he had told her quietly `Don’t let him go there, Margot, he can use your ferry in the hut here for the time being. The nearest “gents” are just not suitable for youngsters yet.’ Naturally, this aroused my curiosity, and as soon as I could get away from my parents I did so.

I recruited my new Weihsien friend, Joe Wilson, who lived in Block 41 Room 1, across the path from us but in the same compound.

Joe was eighteen months younger, but nonetheless someone to play with. Anyhow, we found our way to the men’s toilet block near the end of Block 23. It smelt pretty unpleasant as we approached and on entering found out why.

There were no toilet units or seats, just shallow square cement `basins’ with two raised foot plates each side of a hole in the middle.

There was no cistern and the means of flushing was a bucket which was filled under a pathetic tap in the far end. The whole place was running with sewage and even we, scruffy schoolboys, were horrified.

There was a man taking his trousers down balancing on the foot rests, trying desperately to keep his trousers out of the various liquids, he shouted at us to get out as we stood gaping, whilst he bent and tried to align himself with the hole in the floor. We fled giggling and took to doing what we had to do against the toilet block wall, having made sure we were not seen. As to my father’s edict, I had no intention of using a potty, which I considered was for babies only. Mum could make her own arrangements, but I was not going down that route.

`I do not know what the fuss is about, Joe,’ I said, `The facilities are no different to the ones we provide for the servants in Tianjin, although we do give them a short piece of hose with a working tap.

Puzzles me, where do they keep the paper? It can’t be in reach’ I continued. And then changed the subject.

After a few weeks, the loo problem was largely cured.

Amongst the camp inmates there were engineers of every kind, architects, builders and designers, not to mention doctors and teachers. Some form of engineer rigged up a way to flush the formerly un-flushable and we were allowed permission to use the cleaned-up facilities, with the caveat being `only when wearing shorts’.

When I looked puzzled, Mum said, `If you go in there and try and take long trousers down you will get them into the filth. And you will then stink and I am not washing stinking trousers. You know there is no laundry. The Japanese had one about six miles away and people started sending sheets and towels, only to find that they came back both torn and dirtier than they went in, if they were indeed returned. So we ladies have decided to boycott the laundry until a better one is provided.’

During April and May us boys kept clear of the blackened rubbish tip, which was adjacent to Blocks 23 and 24 yet only just over the wall from Block 41; there were too many adults trying their hands at scrounging bits to salvage. This pile of partly burnt furniture and laboratory equipment I had first seen on my walk with Granny the day after we arrived.

Joe and I with one or two others used to sift through the ash to see if we could find anything for us to play with. We had got the idea from adults who had salvaged half-burnt furniture and repaired it to make it useable. Dad had even used some of the wood to make the headboards of our bunk beds. The certainty, to us boys, was that you got filthy, but by then we had worked out that if you finished by five in the afternoon you could get down to the showers and have a near hot shower because the sun had heated the water in the tank.

[excerpt] ...

I knew very little about the workings of the kitchens, as children were prohibited to go in them. I did take a peek a few times. They were hot, with open fires, with a decking over in which up to five large `woks’ or `Kongs’ were set.

These were about five feet across (11/2 metres) with a wooden lid, used to boil water and make stew. (Recipe: water, lots of vegetables and an occasional cube of meat.)

Often one of the men had to balance precariously over the lid to retrieve something and it was also not unknown for the lid to collapse and the volunteer cook then got scalded legs. The cooks did make tempting smells with their soups and stews.

Sadly, lack of supplies meant second helpings were few and one had to be satisfied with the aroma.

These thin stews were generally our daily fare for at least one meal. I did not think too much of them: the meat, if you could find it, was stringy, the vegetables overcooked, even if they were often soya beans or soya bean leaves, and almost a mush. I also missed having any milk to drink.

The alternative was water, and even that was a problem as the shallow wells were only five metres from the cesspits. Mum felt that water should be boiled — definitely a desirable policy — but most of the time there was no fuel, so that was but seldom implemented.

There were three cows grazing in the graveyard in the Japanese area of camp.

[excerpts] ...

More immediately, and after we had digested the school division policy, a couple of days later, at supper, Dad said that he had now finished the stove but that we would need fuel to burn in it. Dad was still working as a kitchen stoker, but with the move to Block 13 he had been transferred to No. 1 Kitchen, across the rocky road from our new block, but a bit further north.

`There is nothing for it Ronald,’ said Dad, `you will have to make coal balls as the coal we are to be given for burning is literally dust. I know, as I am having to try and burn it in Kitchen 1. Dad was having some success, which he attributed to the fact that they had bigger fireplaces there, under the kitchen Kongs.

So, after asking around, I started my new job.

The coal ball recipe was 60 per cent coal dust and 40 per cent mud, with enough water to make a really thick paste. You had to take a handful and using both hands mould it like a small snowball. Then you placed it on the ground to dry. If you really wanted one to burn quicker add 10% sawdust.

That was the easy part; getting the residue off your hands and arms was a different matter. Soap was in short supply and hard to get hold of. My suggestion to Mum that I be allowed to help do the clothes washing fell on stony ground. It was a huge concession by me, as I had never thought much of soap, and only used it in the past under the direct persuasion of Funainai.

`You are not coming near to the washing with those hands — find a bucket of water and scrub!’

After a couple of times with this method, Grandpa came to the rescue. `Ronald, I’ve got a half-sized tin, which used to have salmon or fish in it. With a couple of nails we can fix it to a piece of wood, and then with another piece of wood you can fill the tin, press the coal mixture down hard and then, if you bang it on a brick, you will get a perfectly round, if flattened, coal ball.’

This I tried and found that it worked, and so from then on I got less black dust under my fingernails. The semi-mechanised coal-ball production got into its stride and continued intermittently, whenever the weather turned cold.

By now Mum, who had always been an inveterate letter-writer, had established correspondence with my Aunt Freda, as well as Danish and French friends in Tianjin. In addition to guarded exchange of news, food parcels sometimes used to get through. Along with the little luxuries like tea and coffee, Mum found that the more substantial food like tinned corned beef had generally been `liberated’, probably when the parcels were inspected by `Postal Customs’.

Mum was still excused work, although come 8th October, which was Roger’s second birthday, she started vegetable peeling and cooking in Kitchen No. 1, but on a different shift to Granny, so that one of them could look after Roger.

These two somehow thickened our soups or stews heated up in the room stove by adding selected bits of vegetable peelings or soya beans. This policy did allow me free rein; I was no longer tied to Roger.

The way we boys played was very territorial, based either on the physical location of our rooms or the kitchen in which we ate. As I had changed kitchens and moved well away, I felt resignation from my first gang was a better way out than the inevitable eviction. I soon caught up with Michael and Peter Turner, twins from Tianjin, who had a young sister, Barbara, in Block 2. Their parents again were good friends with Mum and Dad.

[further reading]
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/books/NoSoapLessSchool/book(pages)WEB.pdf

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