The General

General Pei Kao Yeh (1903-1987) is buried in my neighborhood, at Woodlands Cemetery, its stone facing East. I am not adept at navigating Chinese history (nor even Chinese-American notes about it) but a tantalizing trace is made known through his daughter Lily Yeh.

There is a documentary film called The General's Daughter, "which documents the dramatic and emotional journey of artist Lily Yeh as she travels from her residence in Philadelphia to her ancestral home in China to confront the ghosts that haunted her father... all of his life."

The general's name is also written Yeh Kao Pei. Here is what he looked like as a young name in Chiang Kai Shek's army. His wife was Helen Yeh, and they divorced after a long marriage. Lily was born in Guizhou Province in 1941.

During what the Chinese call the "War of Resistance" against the invading Japanese, this man made a meteoric rise from a poor clerk to a victorious military commander, but in his later years Yeh was plagued by guilt. There is more information available in one or two books, and Lily, a celebrated landscape artist, lives in the area, but for now this is all I have been able to gather from the life of General Pei Kao Yeh.

The grave was looking a shade more Chinese with the afternoon sun shining through the Chinese-looking tree that grows on it.