I began to attend primary school at six years old (1942). Being afraid of Japanese plane bombing, my younger brother and I entered the Dexin School near the ancestral house in the countryside. A photo of my younger brother at one year old and me at two years old. All of our photographs were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. This one was preserved by my aunt. In 1945, finally the victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression came. I was nine years old. O-ne night, someone crazily knocked the front door of the ancestral house and sho-uted loudly. All people in the house were scared, and then heard "Japan surrendered!" The whole house of more than 100 people of all ages were boiling up immediately, yelling, making hullabaloo, knocking basins and buckets, then finding gongs and drums and almost breaking them. Someone rushed to Yangli two li away to buy firecrackers and another ran to the town to inquire about the news and buy
newspapers. Later we went back town to attend another school. At that time a new school "Fu Yu Primary School" was established and founded by the Fujian businessmen in Xingning, enrolling their children and local students. Fu Yu had suffici-ent funding but the tuition was a little more expensive. Teachers
came from Fujian or were local. Courses were taught in Mandarin rather than the local dialect Hakka. All students wore light blue uniforms. Teachers guided students to social contact, such as visiting the telephone bureau, power plant, weaving factory, small vegetable and fruit farm, and holding shows of entertainmen-t. These initiatives were different from other schools, and won a good reputatio-n. Many wealthier families including most doctors in Xingning county town sent their children to the school. I, my younger brother and one sister were studyin-g there successively. Fu Yu Primary School had a great influence on me, especially Principal Deng Zhixin. He was tall, quiet, kind and very knowledgeable. He w-as an example for all the teachers and was respected by the parents of the stud-ents. He encouraged us to read extracurricular books. Under his guidance, I changed from a boy playing all day to a good boy who liked both playing and readin-g. Mr. Deng taught me to subscribe to a children’s magazine. The first time he helped me write the order form. When I went to the post office to remit money, my head was just above the counter! Afterwards I myself subscribed almost all the children’s magazines of the country in those years: "Fu You Bao (Kids Welfare)", "Children World", "New World for Children”, "Children Story", "Chinese Youth", as well as "Chinese Children Times" from Hangzhou, and “New Children” fro-m Hong Kong. The school bought a set of "The New Primary School Library" publis-hed by the Commercial Press, a total of 200 books. Mr. Deng saw that I liked to read and let me borrow them before the bibliography was cataloged. My father told me that I could buy a set if I liked, because my younger brother and sisters could also read them, but I must go to the post office to order it myself (my
father always encouraged me to act independently). Soon the books came in the mail and Mr. Deng shared my happiness! Each time before I came home from school, I would go to bookstores first. There were four bookstores on the street where my father’s clinic was located. Whenever I found a good book, I begged my parents for money to buy it. Mr. Deng told us that he had been a propagandist during th-e War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. He went to the front line to inspire the troops and was chased by Japanese soldiers several times, with bullets flying past and a bomb exploding nearby. Hearing this, we evoked profound respect to Mr. Deng as an Anti-Japanese hero. Fu Yu Primary School developed very fast. Soon after my graduation, it built a magnificent twostory building on the original site. Unfortunately, a year after the communist "liberation", the school
board members were designated as landlords or capitalists in their hometowns andsubjected to thorough liquidation. The school funding collapsed, bringing Fu Yu to a quick end. With no severance payments, teachers could not even afford travel expenses to return home. Mr. Deng and the teachers had to hold a farewell performance party appealing for donations from parents. Accused by the new governme-nt of “defrauding” and the staff had to leave Xingning in embarrassment. Fu Y-u Primary School was like a flower that faded quickly and left everyone feeling
very sad. Later, I heard by chance that Mr. Deng was charged with the “crime" o-f being a Kuomintang propagandist during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and was purged. We felt great pain and missed him terribly!
Religious Infiltration My grandfather was a devout Catholic. He assisted in building the Xingning Catholic Church in the suburbs belonging to Jia Ying (Meizhou) Diocese. The premises covered a large area. In addition to a church that could accommodate hundreds of people, there were a large dining hall and a dormitory
for believers coming on festival days, as well as a large garden. Behind the church was the cemetery. In my memory there were two priests, one was a Malayan Chinese, Father Ou. In addition to Latin, he spoke English fluently. The second was Father Liao from a neighboring county. His Latin and English also were excellen-t and he had translated and published books. In an affiliated convent two American nuns helped with missionary work and teaching catechism to us children. We loved to listen to Biblical stories, took turns serving as acolytes and participated in various other activities. One of these was "doing good things”, such as doing what you were told by your teachers and parents, helping with housework; giving aid to others, etc. Each time you did a good deed, you cut a piece of straw and put it in a matchbox which you handed it to the nuns every week. Those
straws were collected as the bedding for the manger of Holy Child at Christmas. There was a small library in the convent which often purchased books from Hong Kong. I liked to borrow story books and was always the first reader when the new books arrived. After the communists took power, the priests were arrested and sent to a labor camp; Father Ou and some other priests of the diocese died in the camp. The American nuns were deported; the church estate was confiscated and became the District government office. My mother came from a Buddhist family but after marrying my father became familiar with Catholicism. However, she did not blindly follow my father but read many books comparing Catholicism with Buddhism and other religions. She ultimately converted to the Catholic faith. Because of this, her faith was firm and unshakable. Years later  hen a communist official of the Religious Affairs Office interrogated her, she dared to debate with him, knowledgeably quoting science and philosophy. Finally the official had nothing to say but, “You Chen XX are really stubborn!” In the 1950s when the Government swept away religion nationwide, she was “requested” several times by Religious Affairs to learn politics. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, my mother was twice ordered to endure criticism and denouncement at an assembly in the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Guangzhou. When my mother was pregnant with her seventh child, she promised God: "Thank God, I have two sons and four daughters, and the seventh shall be offered unto God. If God is will -g, the boy will be a priest, the girl a nun.” The seventh was a boy, my youngest brother Augustine Tsang, who became a Jesuit priest after great effort, includ-ing prayerful study and many frustrations, but ultimate confirmation in his voc-ation.Under the guidance of my mother and our priests, I read "The Religious Vi-ew of Scientists," "Science and Religion" and other books. The former pointed out that 90 percent of great scientists such as Newton, Pasteur, Mrs. Curie, Einstein and others had clear religious beliefs. The latter described the wonders ofnature: the mystery of the universe, the earth, and especially living creatures, everything operating in order without disturbance. If there were no supernatural power in the design, management and control, it would be as ridiculous as sayi-ng that the musical clock in the hall was "a thing by itself” with no controlling mechanism or intelligent design. Later I studied medicine and learned more about the wonders and mysteries of the human body and life. For example, compared to the function and regulatory mechanism of the human eye, even themost sophisticated camera is but a child’s clumsy toy. The simple life form of a virus withits gene composition and self-replication, is a thousand times more clever than the most complex spacecraft. All sort of facts have convinced me of God's greatness. Just as a kitten cannot understand human thinking, people are not able to fully understand the mystery of God. Because my parents and grandparents set an  xample of worshiping God and loving people, and because of my own thinking and understanding during the course of growing up, my religious belief gradually de-epened. I'm glad and grateful to my parents and grandparents for guiding me to
establish this firm belief, so that when I encountered unimaginable hardships later, I wasable to glimpse hope in despair; and miracles emerged again and again. "Liberated!”