Song of the Azalea: Memoirs of a Chinese Son

Gary Watson is a former lecturer in Chinese studies at Queen’s University and is now a multimedia developer in Mississauga.

Kenneth Ore was the model Chinese Communist Party (CCP) recruit:
dutiful, dependable, and utterly delusional about the price such loyalty
might carry in terms of his private life. Ore’s sombre memoir explores
a life lived through “interesting times” spanning the epic upheavals
of the post–Pearl Harbor invasion of Hong Kong and South China by
Japanese forces and the Chinese Civil War that coincided with his
adolescence and young adulthood.

Despite the love and support of his indomitable mother, Ore was an
alienated and lonely high-school student in late 1940s Hong Kong. At
that time, the CCP actively vied for the allegiance of youth in the
Crown colony through underground organizations in high schools and
colleges. Although Ore was a true believer in socialism, his commitment
to the CCP was less ideological than idealistic, and he never recognized
how careerists in the shadowy Hong Kong Communist organization exploited
him and other energetic students who served the Party selflessly. Their
sacrifices built the Party’s extensive underground connections among
students and workers during the 1950s and 1960s. Ore’s devotion
blinded him to the hypocrisy of Party cadres, who rarely lived up to the
expectations of selflessness they inflicted on volunteer activists. This
became belatedly apparent to Ore in connection with his female friends,
whom the Party approved or rejected on the basis of their ideological
correctness and political pedigrees. While Ore was expected to hold a
job—usually with import/export companies, where his English-language
skills assured him of work—he was also obliged to donate much of his
salary to the Party by funding his own work among the student community.
The result was near-exhaustion from his paid job and volunteer Party
work, as well as virtual penury thanks to his generous support of
underground CCP activities.

Ore finally broke with the Party over its reluctance to allow him and
his family to visit Canada to attend to his ailing mother. When he later
emigrated to British Columbia, the Hong Kong CCP underground discredited
the contributions made by him and his wife and portrayed them as selfish
and alienated traitors. Shunned and disillusioned, Ore made a new life
in Canada after years of service to a political cause that exploited his
youth, patriotism, and idealism with little concern for his well-being.

This unique recounting of a life spent in service to a political cause
offers a rare opportunity to understand the high price that
authoritarian regimes place on blind loyalty. Ore’s engrossing memoir
demonstrates that while the courage to resist such dehumanization is
rare, it remains the only ticket to freedom.