I am ninety-three years old this year, and I have been “running away from the rebellion” and fleeing from difficulties for many times in my Life. I fled from Shandong to Henan, and then fled several times in Henan, and spent the hard young and strong years of my life. When I reached old age, I did not stop running away. At the age of 82, I was forced to leave my country and live alone in New York City for more than a decade in order to tell the truth about AIDS in China. The United States is the most affected area in the world by the Newcastle Pneumonia Epidemic, and I was too old and sick to escape.
Yogi Ko during the epidemic. (Photo taken by Shih-Yu Lin on July 25, 2020)
(I)
In December 1927, I was born in Cao County, Shandong Province, into a wealthy Family of a deep and powerful family, with a single farm and more than 70 acres of land, a large and wealthy family famous in southwest Lu (see Cao County Records). I was the first child born to my mother, who was a sequel. My father’s former wife died and left behind two sisters. The Gao family was very eager for my mother to have a boy, but I was born a girl. In that patriarchal society, they were disappointed. In order for my mother to have another boy, she stopped breastfeeding me and hired a nurse to feed me, causing me to suffer from chronic gastrointestinal disease for the rest of my life, and I lost weight and strength compared to my peers. Among them were my father and my second uncle, who was partially paralyzed due to a stroke, and was accused of being a “Japanese traitor. At that Time, The Japanese army had not yet occupied Cao County, and my second uncle had been ill for more than a year, so how could he be accused of being a traitor? In order to ask for money, the eight-way army tortured the three of them and poured chili water into their nostrils and mouths. After half a month of torment, the Gao family came up with 300,000 cash ransom money before they let them go. At the same time, all the clothes, furniture and Food of the Gao family were looted. Not even a spoonful of rice for dinner was left behind. In desperation, my father fled with the whole family to Liuhe Township, Jiuyu Village. This was the first time I ran away, I was 11 years old at that time. (2) Jiuyuji is a large market town, in addition to the five-day rally, there are also many stores on the avenue. There is a temple at the back of town, and every assembly day, foreign visitors come to worship, very lively. There are several households in the town where the Nationalist Seventh Route Army is stationed, and the funds are paid out by the government, so they do not rob, and the town is relatively stable. My family rented a small courtyard in the town, three rooms. The upper room had three rooms, where my Parents and my little brothers lived. My two sisters, two sisters and I, five people lived in the east room. Three rooms in the west house for cooking and putting some miscellaneous things. After living there for a few months, we were afraid to go out, for fear that outsiders would know that we were a large family that had escaped from Gaoxinzhuang and had been robbed by accident. One day, our family was having lunch in the courtyard, and after waiting for a long time, my father came in in a hurry and said, “The Japs have arrived outside the fortress, hurry up! My mother took my little brother, my oldest brother, and my five sisters out of the house. At that time, the street was very confused, people were running to the east, and we were swept up in the crowd and went out the east gate. At that moment, fierce gunfire erupted from the south gate. The Seventh Route Army and the Japs were engaged in a firefight, stopping the Japs from advancing and covering the retreat of the people. People ran north out of the East Gate. My mother, who had small feet, could not walk with her two brothers. My father led the family through a one-meter-deep trench and sat down in a small forest to rest. This place was separated from the main road by only a piece of stile about fifteen meters wide, and you could clearly see the Japs walking on the main road. There were about three to four hundred men and two gun carriages, proceeding in the direction of Chengwu County. As the sun was setting, the sound of artillery was heard rumbling in the direction of Chengwu County, and several columns of grayish-yellow smoke could be seen. The Jiu Mui set was calm, and in the evening, we returned to our homes in town with the fleeing crowd. (3) My father thought that the social unrest would not calm down anytime soon, so he had to go away from his hometown and live in Sichuan behind the anti-Japanese army. But my mother wanted to go back to Gaoxinzhuang, and after much bickering, both sides compromised and decided to flee to Kaifeng, the capital of Henan Province. There were several relatives there, especially the Lu family, the maternal family of my father’s third deceased wife. She had six brothers settled in Kaifeng and usually had dealings with each other. One day in June (or July) 1939, my family left Cao County Catholic Church by horse-drawn carriage and arrived at noon at Liuheji train station, where we entered a vacant room next to the waiting room. It was very dirty and there were a few ragged mats on the floor, so we sat down to rest. After my father finished dealing with them, my family soon boarded the train to Kaifeng. On the train, I saw two Japanese soldiers up close for the first time. In the evening, at sunset, the train arrived at Kaifeng Nanguan Railway Station. Kaifeng was the capital city of Henan Province at that time, and it was the first time I saw such a big shed with a roof full of flowering glass. The train station had two platforms and four tracks. We exited the ticket gate and left the train station. The whole family pulled their luggage into a rented room on Temple Back Street, which was supposedly arranged by the Lv family uncles. During this period, we had frequent visits with the six uncles of the Lü family. After two months, we moved to South Juqui Lane, where there were many bedbugs, which affected our sleep. After a month, we moved to Houjia Hutong again. In the winter of that year, we moved to North Street again. My father opened a grocery store at the mouth of Jing Hutong on North Street. At that time, society was very chaotic, and traitors, scoundrels and hooligans bought things and kept accounts and never paid back. In the fall of 1943, my father bought a single yard at No. 31, Youliang City Front Street, and finally settled down. My father ran a mill to support the family.
(IV)
In the spring of 1948, I entered Kaifeng Women’s Normal School, a secondary specialized school that trained elementary school teachers. At that time, I wanted to be an elementary school teacher in the future, so that I could make a living on my own. When the first semester was about to end, the Eighth Route Army attacked Kaifeng, and the Kaifeng Women’s Teacher was the focus of the gun battle. The students were hiding in the third dormitory building under the mainland room, and the gunfire outside was as intense as rain. The casualties of Kaifeng Women’s Division at that time are not known. After three days, the 8th Route Army retreated automatically. Only to see the Kaifeng city walls inside and outside lying full of the bodies of fallen soldiers, corpses everywhere, the stench is unbearable. As Mencius said, “If you fight for land, you will kill people in the wild; if you fight for a city, you will kill people in the city.” The schools in Kaifeng were ordered by the Henan Provincial Government and the Department of Education to prepare for relocation to other countries, and students enrolled. All the students moved south with the school. Before leaving, my father sent me an old quilt with a broken bicycle. When we arrived at the entrance of the school, he said, “No one knows whether they will live or die in the future, so go with the school without fear.” I didn’t expect that I would have to say goodbye to my father forever. In the evening, all the students, led by Principal Wang Shaoming and a dozen teachers, boarded a train to Nanjing City. On the train, there were various emotions among the students: some were in tears, some were drowsy, and some sang sad songs. Everyone was thinking ahead and back, and no one could predict what the days ahead would be like. Two days later, the train stopped at the Jiangbei Shimonoseki Railway Station in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, a dock where everyone waited for a wooden boat to ferry them to Nanjing in groups (as a class). At this time, all the students were lying on the concrete floor. Fortunately, my father gave me a quilt, so I was not cold and wet. After gathering in Nanjing, the students ran to Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, which was the destination of our relocated school. Our school was relocated to Chiwan Town, Jiaxing, where the third and second grades lived in the Xizhen Temple and our first grade lived in the Chiwan Cocoon Farm, living on food donated by the local government and private citizens. We ate thin rice every day with a little oil and salt and a variety of different vegetable leaves, and no fried vegetables. In their spare time, the students went to the fields or by the river to collect wild garlic and other wild vegetables. When we got Home, we washed the wild vegetables, mixed them with salt, and shared them with everyone. I was a first grade food committee member at that time, so I remember this process very well. There were very few teachers who came with the school, and our house in the cocoon farm in Chiwan Town was so big that two classes of two grades were taught together. One room was for physics and the other for chemistry. Sometimes, one side had physical education and the other had aerobics. Some students were irritable, moody and disunited. They often cried because they were homesick. I was also sad and followed the tears, which later turned into bawling. Only Mr. and Mrs. Yin Jinde, a teacher, lived there at Cocoon Farm and took care of us. They also had three children with them. The students attended classes on the second floor of the cocoon farm during the day and went to sleep on the second floor at night. During this period, the students who had the means to do so left, and four of them, including myself and Yu Huizhang and Shi Ronghua, were transferred to the second semester of the second year of high school at Jiangsu Songyun Middle School. Within a few weeks of enrollment, the principal, Wang Zhefu, announced the move. This school moved with the then Henan provincial government and soon moved to Wanxian, Sichuan (now Wanxian, Chongqing). On the way, we rode in a wooden boat without a canopy, raining and sunning, and had the feeling of being on our own. Passing through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River was very scary and frightening. After five days of walking, we finally reached Wanxian County. The whole school lived in Auxiliary City Law School, where the school life was better and the food was improved once a weekend, so the students could finally attend classes at ease. The teachers were all local, and sometimes we couldn’t understand the Sichuanese they spoke. He used board books more often. After one semester, Yu Huizhang and Shi Ronghua, whose fathers were both Henan government officials, thought the situation was bad and took their daughters to Taiwan. We attended classes for one semester. at the end of 1949, I went to live with Shen Pi Mo, a fellow villager from Shandong and director of the Red Cross Hospital in Wanxian. I had met President Shen before when I went to see a doctor, and he knew my second uncle, Gao Shengjun, so I drew a relationship. At that time, Shen’s family was well off and had three children who were all in school. In January 1950, Mrs. Shen returned to Jinan, Shandong Province, to visit her family, and I returned to Kaifeng, Henan Province, with her. After I returned to Kaifeng, I was admitted to the medical school of Henan University in August of that year, and wrote a letter of thanks to Mrs. Shen in the 1950s, when the dean, Shen Pi Mo, became the director of the Wan County health Bureau. During the “anti-rightist” period, he was classified as a “rightist” and was eventually persecuted to death. (5) One day in late March 2009, I received a phone call from the French Embassy in China, telling me that France was going to give me the annual “Outstanding Woman Award. I didn’t hear it very well, so I said, “In mid-April, I’m going to Shanghai to attend the Southern Weekend award ceremony, and we can talk about it in person then.” The other party replied, “Okay”. Unfortunately, the “China Dream Practitioner” tribute ceremony hosted by Southern Weekend was postponed, so I didn’t go to Shanghai.
At about 9:00 a.m. on May 6, I suddenly felt that the atmosphere was not right. The phone at home was out of order again, and I couldn’t call out or in. The computer was also out of order. I went to the supermarket outside the neighborhood to buy something, and found a lot of strangers in the small area. They were looking at me strangely, which made me feel bad, much like what happened in February 2007, just before I went to the United States to receive my prize.
I didn’t have time to eat lunch, I didn’t have time to bring my dentures, and I left my house through the back door of the neighborhood in a hurry with my hands empty, only taking out the hard drive of my computer (which contained three book manuscripts that I couldn’t give up) and putting the hard drive in my underwear pocket. In this way, I left my hometown and motherland step by step, and from then on set out on a road of no return.
The reason I went out this time was to make sure that the blood and lives of AIDS patients were not lost in this world. In March 2007, I went to the United States to receive the “Voice of Life” award, and many American dignitaries and powerful people offered to let me live in the United States in my old age, but I did not accept and insisted on returning to my country. I did not accept, but insisted on returning to my country. I had a lot of unfinished business because I had to continue to fight for the justice of AIDS patients. But this time, I had no choice but to leave because I no longer had a place to talk.
I am an old man in my old age, and I would not leave my country alone unless I had to. I went out blindly, not knowing what to do, just to leave these materials (three books on the AIDS epidemic in China) to future generations. Where can I go back to in the vast land and the vast sea of people?
At the age of 82, I was hobbling on my small feet and had difficulty walking. After leaving home, I went to Chengdu and finally to Guangzhou, where I lived in a rural area and revised my manuscript every day. This place is very close to the university town, and there are many volunteers and college students who come to help me. Every day, two to three people helped me type, which gave me great comfort. But when I thought of the home I couldn’t go back to, I wept many times. It’s not that I don’t want to go home, but I can’t go home because of the truth about AIDS.
I am still speaking up for the disadvantaged people with AIDS and helping them. In the past, all my activities were self-funded, and I did not dare to accept money from anyone. Even if I accepted money when I was embarrassed, I would return the money to them another day. For example, one day in August 2000, Wan Yanhai, the director of “AIC” in Beijing, came to Zhengzhou to give me money, and he gave me 28,000 yuan twice.
It is my duty as a doctor to cry out for AIDS victims, why all kinds of suppression, disinformation and slander against me? Why should I be obstructed in my work? I was even offered a reward of $500 to report me in rural infected areas to prevent me from entering AIDS villages. The books and clothes I mailed to the poor areas were often lost. My phone number is always out of order, and I am often followed when I go out. All these are unbearable!
I don’t know how many times I cried when I thought about it!
I weighed the pros and cons and thought, “If I die without a sound, the information in my hands will sink into the sea, and the outside world will know nothing about it, so I decided to leave. I asked a friend in Hong Kong to contact me and ask him to call a friend I had met in 2007, saying that I had left home and had nowhere else to go and needed to leave the country. A friend asked a Chinese organization in the U.S. to send someone to pick me up and take me out of the country.
On August 7, I left Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou, changed planes three times on the way, and arrived at my destination on the 8th. When I arrived in the United States, a huge stone fell from my heart. I was received by a fellow countryman from Shandong, and I stayed in his house. The family took good care of my life, and I stayed there for more than half a year. In March 2010, I was appointed as a visiting scholar at Columbia University and moved from out of state to New York, where I now live in an apartment. I live deeply and do my best to get my book manuscript ready.
Gao Yaojie’s apartment in New York.
Since the beginning of time, who can live without death? I am not afraid of death, what I am afraid of is the annihilation of the real information about the AIDS epidemic in China. In the first half of 2010, all three books were published, and a revised and updated edition of Gao Jie’s Soul was published. The book was released in December 2010, and has received a great response from the society, and won the 4th Hong Kong Book Award, and was translated into English.
It’s been more than ten years since I left the country in 2009! I have been separated from my relatives, and it is sad to think about it. Being in a foreign country, I am not used to living there, and I do not speak the same language, which is very inconvenient. I was often visited by many Chinese people, some of whom were from unknown origins and had no pure intentions.
The night was long when the wind was blowing in the west, and I was at the end of the world!
I am deaf and dizzy, old and sick, and I have been living on medication for many years. I am usually weak and drowsy, walking hobbled, and my energy and strength are not strong enough, so I am unable to participate in social activities, and I can only spend the last days of my life with my head buried in finishing my books and manuscripts.
The terrible thing is that in the past two years, I have been bedridden and on oxygen due to lung disease, and I am dying of old age. Even so, I still want to do my best to leave to future generations what I have seen and heard in my life, so that you can see what has happened in China.
On New Year’s Eve 2019, thinking that my children are, after all, a piece of flesh that has fallen from my body, I wrote the following poem: Thoughts
My night is your day, you go to sleep when I think of you. At ninety-two years old, I miss the indefinite time, thinking back to your young faces, your lively and flawless actions, your milky cries, the joyful scenes of those years, which now remain between Dreams. (This article was originally published in “Tuan Media” on September 5, 2020. With the consent of Mr. Gao Yaojie, some textual changes were made and published on this public website. (The article on Gao Yaojie was previously published on this website.
–END–
[Introduction] Gao Yaojie was born in Cao County, Shandong Province in 1927 and graduated from Henan University School of Medicine in 1954. He is a retired professor of Henan Medical College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and an expert in gynecological oncology, and in 1996 he discovered a case of HIV infection through blood transfusion and devoted himself to AIDS prevention and investigation, helping AIDS patients and AIDS orphans, and is known as “the first person to prevent AIDS in China”. He is the recipient of the Jonathan Mann World Health and Human Rights Award. She has received international awards such as the Jonathan Mann World Health and Human Rights Award and the Global Women’s Leadership Award. She was named “Hero of Asia” by Time Magazine and “Star of Asia” by Business Week, and one of the “Moving People of China” by China Central Television in 2003. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union named asteroid 38980 as “Gao Yaojie”. He has published more than 30 books in his life.
Recent Comments