"We Want Her to Die Now"

Four years ago in San Francisco a 63-year-old Chinese matriarch named Sin-shee Jang decided to spend her declining years in the village of her ancestors, a hamlet named Kutow in Kwangtung Province. Sin-shee Jang was an old-country woman: her feet had been bound, and she liked the quiet scenes of her girlhood. Furthermore, in Kutow she owned a 14-room brick house and was a woman of wealth and importance. She bade her five Americanized sons goodbye, and sailed for home.

All went well with her for a while--even after the Communists took over the village. But in October she wrote her oldest son, Joe Lum Jang, a San Francisco apartment operator, a frightened letter. She had been arrested by the Communists for the peculiar crime of "mistreating her daughter-in-law." They attempted to make her "confess" by torture, but she refused. Then her face was daubed with paint--the mark of an "unlawful woman"--and she was forced to stand before the village courthouse without food or water. After a day and a night she broke down and paid a fine of $1,000.

Chains. Joe Jang had been expecting to hear something of the sort ever since Chinese Reds had begun extorting money from Chinese in the U.S. Even so, it was "a terrible jolt." His mother's letter did not include a secret symbol used by members of the Jang family if they urgently needed money. But last month a cable from a China-side cousin named Chang arrived in San Francisco. It read: "Your mother asked you cable remittance urgent needed Hong Kong dollars 10,000 [$1,750]."

Joe sent eight airmail letters to friends in China asking for the facts in the case.

Six friends replied. His mother and four other villagers had been accused of disloyalty to the "People's Government," and each had been fined 10,000 Hong Kong dollars. All had refused to pay, had been forced to kneel on the links of chains, with other heavy chains around their necks, and had then been denied food & water. In the end, all had confessed. One had been publicly executed but, pending payment, Sin-shee Jang was being forced to wear a sign reading "Landlord" and to walk miles each day on her bound feet.

The Awful Task. Joe Jang and two of his brothers held an agonized family conference, and came to an agonized decision: paying would not save their mother, but would simply cause her to be arrested and tortured again & again and would allow the Reds to make more & more blackmail demands. In the end, the Communists would do whatever they wished anyhow.

Joe took upon himself the awful task of writing the news of her sons' decision to Sin-shee Jang. "Mother has been tortured enough," he said bitterly, after the letter was mailed. "We want her to die now." He added, in helpless rage: "Those god-dammed Communists . . ."

Last week Joe Jang got one last letter from China. Sin-shee Jang had killed herself by jumping into a well in the village.

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