Woman Who Could Not Forget (49 page)

On January 13, 2001, we arrived in Hong Kong and lived in City University’s guesthouse, which was located in the center of the busy district of the city. Shau-Jin was teaching physics at City University and I was learning how to get around the city via public transportation, but most of my time was spent on the computer. I was in constant touch with Iris, Michael, and all my friends in Champaign-Urbana.

On February 11, Iris called us from California and gave us some bad news. As we knew, she had had problems getting pregnant for the past two years. She was determined to find the root of the problem. She was investigating and had done a lot of research. She also saw a number of doctors and ordered many tests. Finally, she found a world-renowned fertility doctor in Chicago who also came to the Bay area once a month. She told us she was fortunate to be able to consult with this doctor and to finally find the root of her infertility problem. It turned out that she and Brett were immunity-incompatible. Her blood test showed she had had miscarriages at least four times without knowing it. And she might have activated Nature Killer (NK) cells, too. All these medical terms were new to me, and it threw me into a research spell. I was constantly on the computer, searching and understanding the problem of infertility and how to resolve it. From what I understood at the time, Brett and Iris had, unfortunately, a mismatch in their immune systems. When the fertilized egg or the embryo was formed, Iris’s body rejected it and saw the embryo as a foreign entity. The result was a miscarriage. The doctor told Iris that her body had a normal and healthy fertility apparatus in every aspect, but the immunity incompatibility with Brett threw them into a two-percent category that meant she had to either receive an immunity treatment or do in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and hire a surrogate mother to bear a baby for them.

This news saddened Iris and us immensely. On the phone, I immediately told her my thoughts about going to adoption rather than fiddling either with immunity treatment or surrogacy. We talked almost two hours and ended up using up the time limit on the phone card. The talk was very emotional. After the phone call, I felt I might have voiced my opinions about adoption too strongly, so I wrote an e-mail to apologize and told her I respected her decision, whatever it would be.

On February 13, Iris wrote back:

Dear Mom,

Please don’t apologize for your reaction over the phone—I know you spoke out of love and concern for me. I appreciate your taking the time to search for information on the Web, but I could save you the time by mailing you copies of my files. In the past few weeks, I have amassed literally hundreds of pages of data. . . .

The doctor’s assistant told me that in the Bay area office, every single one of his patients who chose the gestational surrogate route ended up having children—healthy children. (Most women, however, prefer to use the experimental drugs or IVIG therapy instead of hiring a surrogate. About eighty percent achieve successful pregnancies through immunological treatment.) . . .

Love, Iris

She told us that after hearing this bad news, she could not help but cry quietly by herself, even though Brett continually reassured her that eventually they would have a baby. The doctor told her there were two ways to have a baby in her case: to use IVIG (intravenous immune globulin) therapy together with an experimental drug, Enbrel, or to hire a surrogate mother to carry the baby. The former treatment involved blood products and had some risks and side effects; it could also depend on some other factors since the procedure was still experimental, in the early stages of its use.

In addition to this sad news, at that time stocks had plunged in the U.S. market and the economy seemed to be heading toward a recession. That news made everyone moody, and we were not exceptions; but in such a depressing atmosphere, Iris was still very positive and optimistic. She was trying to comfort me.

On March 15, 2001, she wrote:

Dear Mom,

I thought about our conversation yesterday. Oh, I know you are terribly upset about the stock market plunge. But don’t agonize over anything beyond your control. . . . In Chinese, the character for “crisis” is the same one for “opportunity.” Just remain calm, gather information, and follow a careful strategy.

We have much to be grateful for: our health, our success, our savings and debt-free finances. I have been reading books about Chinese families who had made the fateful—and often fatal—decision to stay in the PRC in 1949. The suffering they endured under the Cultural Revolution is almost as horrific as the history of those who survived the Rape of Nanking. What problems do we have, compared to those people?

Love, Iris

In the meantime, Iris continued to search for ways to overcome the infertility problem. She had also explored alternative medicine such as Chinese acupuncture and Chinese herbs, which also claimed they could overcome infertility. She was visiting a good Chinese acupuncturist who indeed helped her deal with her stress and insomnia, if not the infertility.

Iris also contacted the local supporting group for infertility, called Resolve, and met many couples with similar infertility conditions as hers. In those meetings, she learned that she was not alone, and she obtained much information concerning the pros and cons of each route to fertility. It just felt good to talk to people sharing the same fears and concerns.

On the outside, Iris was very efficient at finding solutions to her problems and stayed relatively upbeat, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going through emotional ups and downs inside. One day she described to me that when she was sitting in a Chinese restaurant waiting for her order, she watched all the tables around her. She saw a mother whose child was sitting next to her, eating joyfully. She saw another mother holding her baby on her lap while eating. She felt a sting behind her nose and eyes and her tears started flowing silently down her cheeks. She felt very sad as she thought about how she could not bear a child of her own. I listened to her with great sympathy. I could not say very much, because my heart went out to her, and I could not think of the right words of comfort. I wished I were not in Hong Kong. I wanted to embrace her and to give her support not only mentally, but physically.

Not all the things that happened at this time were bad, though. Iris reported to us that some movie producers in Hollywood were interested in buying the movie rights to
The Rape of Nanking
and adapting it into a movie at long last. On February 24, 2001, Iris wrote:

Dear Mom,

As I mentioned earlier, I met with several famous Hollywood producers last Wednesday at the Mayflower restaurant near Ranch 99. (For security purposes, I will keep their names confidential for now.) They flew up to San Jose to see me, and one was literally taken aback by my age and appearance. (He was astounded—or pretended to be—to meet “such a beautiful author,” and later, in a phone conversation, said he had expected me to be older, scholarly-looking, with glasses: “Instead, in walks this lithe, willowy beauty!” he exclaimed.) Anyhow, they were absolutely passionate about my book, and believe that the film version could be an epic of the same caliber as THE LAST EMPEROR and SCHINDLER’S LIST. They are now prepared to top any offer that my agent at CAA has received so far. By next week, we should have not just one, but two bids for the motion picture rights to THE RAPE OF NANKING.

My work has also inspired a poem, written by one of my fans in New York City, who has developed some kind of obsession for me. He keeps sending letters to my PO box (by the way, I am so glad that he doesn’t have my actual physical home address—I stopped responding to his correspondence years ago). Ever since the publication of THE RAPE OF NANKING, he’s mailed me samples of his writing, cartoons, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, cards, small gifts like pens, and photographs of himself. Now he’s giving me CDs of his poetry. . . . Do you think I should be concerned? I have to admit I was a little troubled by his obsession at first, but I don’t believe he has either the imagination or the resources to track me down. Judging from his picture, he doesn’t seem particularly dangerous or threatening—just a simple, ordinary man with literary ambitions. Still, I’m relieved that I have a PO box to handle my mail. The US postal system has only my last home address, not my current one.

Love, Iris

Over the phone, Iris told me about her conversation with the Hollywood producers and their ideas about the movie, but she also stressed her own vision of it. She said if she was going to be the one to write the script, she wanted it to contain several major characters: Frank Tillman Durdin, Minnie Vautrin, John Rabe, Robert Wilson, Tang Sheng-chih, Li Xiuying, and a Japanese soldier or a Japanese news reporter.

Iris wanted the movie to include sets of characters from each different ethnic group (American, German, Chinese and Japanese), and to show the changing of characters as well as the contrast exposed during wartime. She wanted to show how a person would make decisions under pressure in the darkest, most difficult times—the conflict between self-interest and humanity. For example, Frank Tillman Durdin was a foreign correspondent for the
New York Times
in 1937. Iris said, “He was my age when he covered the Rape of Nanking. He was twenty-nine when he broke his first big story, the Rape of Nanking, and I was twenty-nine when my book was published and hit the
New York Times
‘Best Sellers’ list. For that reason, I felt a special link with him.”

In Durdin’s obituary, published in the
New York Times
in 1998, Iris was quoted as saying: “Tillman Durdin was not only writing the pages of history under pressure, but tried to save Chinese lives in Nanking. He should be remembered as an exemplar of humanity and courage in the darkest of times.” Iris said that Durdin had had to decide whether he wanted to be an impartial observer, exploiting the suffering of others for the front-page news, or to step in and help the war victims.

Minnie Vautrin, the American missionary educator, was in Nanking in 1937 when the Japanese soldiers invaded and occupied the city. She saved thousands of men, women, and children in the Safety Zone. However, when the Japanese soldiers came to the Safety Zone demanding women, she believed their claim that some prostitutes were in the Zone. She handed over the “bad” women so the “good” women in the zone could be saved. Later, Vautrin realized that some of the “bad” women had voluntarily given themselves up as “prostitutes,” sacrificing their lives to save others. She had fought fearlessly against the Japanese soldiers, but in the end she couldn’t sustain the mental sufferings and some of the decisions she’d made. After she returned to the U.S. in 1940, she committed suicide.

John Rabe, a German businessman and a Nazi, who chose to stay in Nanking to protect his employees and thousands of Nanking civilians in the Safety Zone by using his Nazi armband, was caught in his ideals of socialism and the brutal reality of Nazism after he returned to Berlin. Iris said that Rabe changed from an ordinary German citizen to a hero in China—and then to an outcast in Germany.

Dr. Robert Wilson was the only surgeon in Nanking during the Nanking Massacre. He worked extremely hard and sacrificed his own health to save the lives of others.

General Tang, who vowed to Chiang Kai-shek that he would fight to the death to defend the city of Nanking, abandoned the city and fled before the fall of Nanking. (However, he was following the orders of Chiang. It was not completely Tang’s fault.) He eventually became a high-ranking Communist after previously having been a Nationalist. Iris said the story of General Tang was a good contrast to an ordinary Chinese pregnant woman, Li Xiuying, who fought with her bare hands against two Japanese soldiers trying to rape her. She miraculously survived thirty-seven bayonet wounds.

Iris said the movie should include a Japanese character: a soldier or a news reporter who was torn between stopping the violence and obeying authority. The character needed to be sacrificed to illustrate what happened to Japanese people who defied the system. It could be a Japanese soldier who disobeyed his orders and was executed, or a news reporter who rebelled, seeking the truth, and lost his status but gained his soul.

Iris passionately described her vision of the movie to anyone who was interested in adapting her book into a movie. Finally, in March, Iris told us that a Hollywood production firm had made an offer for the movie rights to her book, but it took another several months before the formal contract was signed. She had been working on this project for so long, and finally her hard work had borne some results!

In spite of her fertility problems and the movie project, which sometimes distracted her from her writing, Iris had been working steadily on
The Chinese in America
. She mailed us a copy of the manuscript all the way to Hong Kong, about two thirds of the book, and wanted us to give her our comments. Shau-Jin and I read her manuscript carefully and gave her a list of errors we’d found, along with our thoughts, without any reservation.

On April 1, 2001, a U.S. Navy surveillance plane collided over the South China Sea with a Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it, and the surveillance plane made an emergency landing on Chinese territory, Hainan Island. We watched the news attentively in Hong Kong, which was not very far from Hainan Island. We were sensitive to any news related to China-U.S. relations because we would be affected by it. Originally we had planned to visit Guangzhou while we were there, but we decided to cancel the trip because of the high tension between China and the U.S. After a ten-day standoff between the U.S. and China, on April 11 the crew was allowed to return to the U.S. without the plane.

On April 20, Shau-Jin read a
New York Times
article reporting that the U.S. State Department had warned Americans of Chinese origin that they could be detained in China for spying if they had ever written critically about the Beijing regime or had contacts with rival Taiwan. Shau-Jin and I immediately wrote to both Iris and Michael about the news. It was especially relevant to Iris, as we knew she was always outspoken—and her previous and current books were related to China.