The Third Son by Julie Wu Read Free Book Online Page A

the first time in my life I was nervous about them. Even so, I was unable to study systematically. I was distracted by too many things—the fields, the sky, a neighborhood dog who loved to roam and splash in the paddies when I threw sticks. Only after the dog bit me on the calf did I sit down for one or two days with my Chinese schoolbooks. This was more than I had ever done for an exam, and strangely, the pain focused my mind. I sat in the examining room, blood seeping into the iodine-soaked rags my mother had wrapped around my leg, and sorted through logic problems that I would normally have found too tedious to undertake: There are thirty legs in a roomful of turtles and storks, and twice as many turtles as storks. How many of each animal?
    In the end I passed my first hurdle: getting into the premier middle school in Taipei—Chien Kuo. Chien Kuo’s high school was likewise considered the top high school on the island, and going through the middle school was considered the inside route to Taiwan University.
    The fact that I passed Chien Kuo’s entrance examination had caused much surprise and celebration—even announcements in the newspaper and on the radio. I was the first from my elementary school ever to have passed, and I had not been one of its top students. My family considered my success a fluke; one of my uncles asked frankly whether my father had interceded on my behalf. But my mother, in a fit of appreciation, made a pair of navy-blue shorts just for me—the first brand-new clothes I had ever had. I stroked the seams, marveling at how many times my mother had poked her needle through the cotton. Of course I knew that she had made pants for Kazuo out of the same fabric. But even so—so much labor! For me! I strolled around in those shorts like a king.
    I F I WANTED to be one of the top twelve students on the island, however—the best student Taoyuan County had ever seen—I would need to actually study. I was not at all one of the top students in my class at Chien Kuo, though according to my teacher, who said so in a rather peeved way, I could be if I paid as much attention to his lectures as I did to the workmen outside who built the concrete walls of our school’s new wing.
    I resolved to turn a corner, to take my studies seriously. And so it was that, one February morning in 1947, I hopped off the train at Taipei Station having actually read the books that were in my bag. My brothers Kazuo and Jiro ran off toward their school, and I toward the part of the city by the botanical gardens. I smiled to myself, confident that from now on I would be that stellar student Teacher Lee thought I could be. I imagined myself without my brothers, in a world of movie stars, Cadillacs, and freedom.
    But in the streets, there was a sense of disquiet that I had not noticed before today. Since the Nationalist takeover there had been much grumbling in houses and behind closed doors, but now clusters of people stood together at newsstands, talking loudly.
    “She was just trying to make a living!”
    “They just want the money for their own pockets!”
    “Tell them to go try a day of work for a change!”
    “I would’ve given them something to remember—”
    A freshly painted banner hanging over the street read, THE DOGS GO AND THE PIGS COME!
    I had never seen anything so bold. We all knew that “dogs” referred to the Japanese, and “pigs” to the Nationalist Chinese, but to hang it out there in broad daylight . . . Though I never thought I would have missed the Japanese soldiers, I missed the feeling of safety and order we had had before. As my book bag slapped against my side, I hastened past a bashed-in bank and a grocery store sporting the sign RICE! BUY TODAY BEFORE PRICES RISE TOMORROW! Glass crunched under my feet and I smelled something burning.
    When I reached the school gates, I breathed out with relief and only then realized I had been holding my breath for quite some time. Inside, though, we were