'In this readable ana absorbing
book, Relman Mo ..<, uttf of our
most distinguish / * ' :n corre
spondents an ^ - ^ J c Pulitzer
Prize ww\<. <' '' J *e Pacific
tragedy in t!^ perspective of thirty
years' experience in the Far East.
IN THIS PERSPECTIVE, some of his adventures
and encounters have taken on a deeper mean
ing, some a different meaning. This is not a
book about foreign policy as such; neverthe
less, certain conclusions emerge from Mr.
Morin's long view of events in China and
Japan and these are not current stereotypes.
Mr. Morin first went to China late in
1929. In 1930 he was a student in universities
in Canton and Peking, made many friends
among Chinese students, and sensed their
passionate determination to change the con
dition of life in China. Later that year and
in 1931 he was a reporter for the Shanghai
Evening Post-Mercury. From 1937 to 1940,
after a stint in the United States, he was chief
of the Associated Press Bureau in Tokyo, and
has many vivid memories of Japan. In 1941
he was a roving correspondent in Southeast
Asia, and was interned in Saigon by the Jap
anese on the day after Pearl Harbor. After
the war, he returned to the Far East several
(continued on back flap)
JACKET DESIGN BY HAL SIEGEL
KANSAS CITY, MO PUBLIC LIBRARY
53
60-11895
, 7- frvp
wiiu risingj i 1^; 'vl.'
Pacific '.vdsi-3! jino^.C.
I960.
950 M85e 60-11895
Mbria, Belnaa, 190?- *500
Bast \diid rising; a long view
of the Pacific crisis
I960,
359P*
SEP
I960
BOOKS BY
Relman Morin
EAST WIND RISING:
A Long View of the Pacific Crisis
1960
CIRCUIT OF CONQUEST
1943
East Wind Rising:
A LONG VIEW OF TOE PACIFIC CRISIS
EAST WIND
RISING
A LONG VIEW OF
THE PACIFIC CRISIS
Relman Morin
ALFRED A. KNOPF : NEW YORK
1 9 T~xvT 6
L. C. catalog card number: 60-7298
RELMAN MORIN, 1960
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK,
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A, KNOPF, INC.
Copyright 1960 by RELMAN MOBIN. All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission
in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or
newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland & Stewart,
Ltd.
FIRST EDITION
THIS BOOK IS FOR
D. W. L.
Contents
1 The House of Ashes: 1950 3
2 Segregation in California 21
3 Chinese Adventure 34
4 Burial at Sea 39
5 * Tokyo Bay 51
6 National Schizophrenia 61
7 Akiko-saii 73
8 * Sounds in the Night So
9 Mr. Lets Castle 91
10 Shameen Island 104
11 Conversation at Midnight 120
12 Tsui 136
13 The Shanghai Story 145
14 Metropolis on the Mud Flats 160
15 JukongRoad 175
16 The Red Trail 183
17 The Blue Train 209
18 Famine in the Desert 223
19 The Glory of the Ages 247
20 Cockpit of the Orient 262
21 The Noblest Roman 272
22 * The Ticking Clock 294
23 Richard Sorge, Superspy 304
24 Quarantine 315
25 OrtfeflZ 334
26 * Minute Before Midnight 343
Epilogue 357
Index follows page 359
East Wind Rising:
A LONG VIEW OF THE PACIFIC CRISIS
Chapter I
THE HOUSE
OF ASHES: 1950
ON THE MORNING of that strange incident, there was a grayness
over Tokyo and a thin rain was falling. Veils of mist hung in
the trees that screen the Emperor's palace, as though snagged
in the branches. A skittish wind rippled the water in the moat
and spattered the gray stone walls with raindrops. It was a very
Japanese morning, green and pearly, like the pastel shades in a
Japanese print. In this light even Tokyo poor, shabby, broken-
nosed Tokyo was beautiful in a haunting, melancholy way.
I parked the jeep, locked it, and walked upstairs to the office.
The elevators observed Sunday, which was probably a good
thing for underexercised colonels. Pausing unconsciously at the
door, I felt the familiar tingle of anticipation. What would the
day bring? It was wartime.
The Japanese office boy, nicknamed "Mike," looked up from
his grammar, still frowning with concentration. He was study
ing English. He rose from the chair and bowed a slight bow,
not a deep one. Occupation or no, he clung to his customs, but
modified them for Americans.
"Was it a busy night?" I spoke slowly, spacing the words to
help him understand them.
He struggled, but couldn't quite get it.
"IsogashiiP"
4 East Wind Rising
His face brightened. Now he had it. "Not busy," he said.
"War quiet"
"There ain't no such thing/' I said. "Let's see the clip boards."
To practice his English he named each as he handed it to me:
"outgoing cables . . . incoming messages . . . Peiping Radio
. . , San Francisco broadcasts." He mangled the last.
He was right about the war. Only a few reports had come in
from Korea overnight. The story was still the same retreat.
All too accurately Peiping Radio observed: "The Americans are
buying time with land." And running short of land. The lines
on the big map of Korea had contracted again. Every day we
changed the pins and the strands of yarn, blue for us, red for
the Communists. The lines were drawing down toward the
lower right-hand corner of the map. Soon that corner would
be known as the "Pusan Perimeter."
July 1950.
A few weeks earlier the North Koreans had struck across the
38th Parallel. Now they were driving down the peninsula, rac
ing time and Douglas MacArthur.
Hospital planes had landed in Japan with the first wounded.
A Negro infantryman lay in the stretcher, softly humming. A
bearded GI, both legs in splints, called gruffly for water. A
slight, blond boy, unnaturally pale, stared at nothing, whisper
ing: "He was covered with worms. He was just laying there,
all covered with worms. Oh, Jesus, the worms were "
A few weeks before, they had been Occupation troops on soft
duty in Japan. Now they were being "blooded." The word is
used more often by officers at headquarters than men in the
field.
The first war correspondents had already died. Bill Moore
was missing. A transport plane blew up near Oshima Island. An
other piled up on a mountain. Good friends aboard both. The
casualty rate for correspondents was running ahead of World
War II. Strange. The big war was only five years behind, and
here we were, doing business at the same old stand, writing
The House of Ashes: 1950 5
about combat, trying to get on paper the essentially untrans
latable feelings of the soldiers. Nobody can do that. There are
no words for sweating, animal terror, for heartbreak and shock.
We called ourselves "retreads." Each of us claimed to have
coined the phrase "This is where I came in."
My wife had walked out to the steps of the airplane ramp.
She said: "All the best of luck." Then she walked away with a
starched smile still stuck on the corners of her mouth.
Somewhere over the Aleutians, while the plane droned on
through the night, the excitement had begun. Back to the
Orient. Back to a different yet wholly familiar world. Pictures
came crowding in like a montage: the Forbidden City; Mon
golian bandits riding in the sandstorm; the girls on Oshima
Island with camellia oil perfuming their long black hair; the
house of the headless corpses; opium fumes in the gambling
dens; a temple bell tolling; the secret message in gamelang
music; a homecoming for me in the Far East.
The wars of those years seemed far away, but were not. The
civil wars of China, the wars called "Incidents/' the Pacific
War, and the Communists* final triumph in Peking were all
links in a chain. The Korean War was no isolated event. It
descended in a direct line from those obscure conflicts of the
I had seen them more than twenty years before when I came
to China as a student. The Communists already were well or
ganized then, and I went to their meetings in Shanghai. From
Mongolia to Singapore (with the infallible aid of hindsight,
of course) I had seen the picture taking shape.
That was in the day of the Old China Hand. You went to
"tiffin," signed "chits" at the club, listened to the taipan talking
to his comprador. U.S. marines patrolled in Tientsin. The gun
boats of many nations rode on the Yangtze River, guaranteeing
"extrality" immunity from the Chinese government, police,
and courts.
High noon for the white man in the Orient.
6 East Wind Rising
High noon for the missionaries in the lush field.
High noon for the war lords. They were busy as atoms, form
ing and re-forming in changing combinations against the gov
ernment, against each other, against newcomers. They were
always amenable to the "silver bullet," a bribe, no matter who
offered it.
The Nationalist government Chiang Kai-shek, his wife, her
relatives, the Kuomintang party, and the hangers-on (not nec
essarily in that order of importance) were riding high then.
They seemed to have the future well in hand. "Let China
sleep," Napoleon had said. But in the 1930*8 China was wide
awake and stirring. The Chinese I knew best, university stu
dents, were on fire with visions of democracy, schools, factories,
hospitals, a better life for the millions of patient peasants.
Some of them were Communists. They took me to their meet
ings in Shanghai. Their main base, though, was in Kiangsi, deep
in the hills of south China. They were a small and harried
group then. The Chinese Communists did not seem dangerous
now that the Chinese Revolution was "over."
People worried more about Japan across the Yellow Sea.
"We will have trouble with Japan for fifty years," the university
students would say, "or however long it takes until China is
strong." Japan had signed the treaties renouncing war and
agreed to the naval ratios. Conservatives dominated the gov
ernment. "But look out/* said the foreign merchants and diplo
mats, "if the army takes over."
To the south, the massive colonial structure built by the
British, French, and Dutch seemed as solid and durable as
the Marble Arch in London. Nationalist movements had de
veloped, but they had little strength, and no real leaders had
appeared. Who could picture naked Malays or Indonesians
driving white men supported by modern arms out of the
Orient? Who cared, or even knew, that a thin-faced zealot,
later to be known as Ho Chi-minh, had tried to see Woodrow
Wilson at Versailles in 1919 to plead for the people of Indo-
The House of Ashes: 1950 7
china? He got no help in the Hall of Mirrors, but the reception
would be better in Moscow when the time came. Nobody un
derstood that the hour was so late. Certainly not the planters
and traders and fonctionnaires and newspapermen in that part
of the world.
In the middle IQSO'S I had come back to Japan again, this
time as a correspondent, and watched the forces that brought
on the Pacific War develop, slowly at first and then with gath
ering speed. The work had taken me all over Asia to China
again, Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, and through the golden
tropics. How incredibly remote that world seemed now. How
little we had understood.
Now it was 1950. On the long flight out I thought back to
those years and saw the story as a whole a connected, in
exorable sequence of events. The Pacific War, the end of colo
nialism, the Communist sweep in China, and now the Korean
War all were linked in the plastic flow of history, parts of a
whole.
I finished reading the files that Sunday morning in Tokyo.
Now was the moment for something that caught me in the
throat whenever I thought of it. I said I would be back in a
little while.
"Going out for coffee?"
"No," I said. "To a house."
"The girls don't work on Sunday morning."
"This is a special house. Maybe 111 let you in on it later."
I started walking, slowly at first. I wanted to get the feel of
Tokyo again.
Long years had passed, a full decade away from Tokyo. One
year roving in Southeast Asia. Then, after Pearl Harbor, long
months as a prisoner in Saigon. They ended when the famous
8 East Wind Rising
"exchange ship" took us home. Then the Second World War.
Vivid, terrible years.
But now that I was back in Tokyo in 1950, they seemed un
real. Or, rather, as though the things that had happened in
those years belonged to a different world and another time.
Walking along the street, hearing the language and seeing the
people, I had the illusion of never having left Japan. The two
edges of time, the then and the now, overlapped, melting into
each other. Many times in the most unlikely places I had
dreamed of walking around in Tokyo. These were the same
streets as the streets in the dream, and the fragments of con
versation were hauntingly familiar. Memory and dreams. Per
haps they come together somewhere in another dimension.
Who knows?
A gust of wind shook the trees in Hibiya Park and brought
down a shower of drops. Across the street a brown staff car
rolled up to the front entrance of the Imperial Hotel. An Amer
ican officer strode briskly into the lobby.
Occupied Japan. The U.S. army had dotted the cities with
PX's, snack bars, clubs (a club for every rank), movie theaters,
and all the comforts of home. Japanese cooks broiled Kansas
City steaks, Japanese bartenders mixed the Martinis. Japanese
dance bands played The Third Man theme. Military residential
districts looked exactly like American suburbs, especially at
night when American cars, bumper to bumper, lined the streets.
Who could have pictured the Sui-ko-sha, the Navy Club, as
a billet for American businessmen and correspondents? It is an
old building on a hilltop in Tokyo, architecturally a Japanese
version of Victorian, with rooms of many shapes and sizes.
Before the war Japanese officers seldom invited foreigners
there, except on formal occasions. To them it was almost a
shrine. The strange aura of mysticism that hung like incense
over the Japanese armed forces had been especially noticeable
in the blocky old place.
Now it was a hotel, more or less. Jeeps jammed the courtyard.
The House of Ashes: 1950 9
In the bar, peanuts and pretzels came with the drinks. Canned
radio shows from America, slot machines, drunken arguments,
and discussions of the latest Big Deal gave it an authentic
homeside atmosphere. Sometimes, moving through the high-
ceilinged rooms and up the wide staircase, I felt like a carpet
bagger in Gone with the Wind.
The little Japanese waitresses all seemed inexplicably buxom,
until someone discovered they had taken to wearing falsies.
"In less than a week/' said Hal Boyle, the columnist, "you can
spot the difference between Goodrich and Firestone."
Two legends had grown up about the Navy Club: one, that
the details of the attack on Pearl Harbor had been worked out
in these rooms; the other, that the dark stain on a rug marked
the spot where a Japanese admiral had committed seppuku,
the ceremonial suicide, just before Japan surrendered. The lat
ter story fascinated lady visitors. "You really mean he did it
right here?" said a wide-eyed WAG. Td love to snip off a piece
of that rug for a souvenir."
As a study in behavior, the Occupation was a fascinating
spectacle. On the whole, Americans behaved very well in the
unusual situation. Some of them saw to it that the children
of their Japanese servants had orange juice and vitamins. Many
traveled and discovered the beauty of Japan. Others estab
lished the familiar orbit, home-office-club, and never left it.
Officers without their families, no doubt pillars of the commu
nity at home, quietly acquired Japanese mistresses. A few be
came arrogant, or at best condescending, toward the Japanese.
It was curious to see American men and women, brought up
in a democratic tradition, subtly and perhaps unconsciously
develop a master-race posture. They were like the Old China
Hand of the generation before. Strangely enough, American
women seemed more prone to this than their men. Perhaps the
American woman is a natural bully. At any rate, a great many
military wives tyrannized their servants and took advantage,
generally, of their position as wives of the conquerors.
10 East Wind Rising
Otherwise, the Occupation was by no means harsh or op
pressive. Murder, rape, and robbery occurred, to be sure, but
the rates were expectable for soldiers surrounded by civilian
communities, especially defeated foreign civilians. However,
when the Korean War began, the incidence of soldier crimes
dropped radically, and for good reason. Instead of being or
dered to the stockade, the military prison on the outskirts of
Tokyo, the soldier was sent straight to Korea. "Overnight," the
commander of the stockade told me with a grin, "we got the
best-behaved army in the world." But even before that the
American Occupation had been a picnic for the Japanese com
pared to what Chinese or Russian troops would have inflicted
on them. They knew that.
Nevertheless, to a people who had never experienced defeat,
who sincerely believed that a mysterious power made Japan
invincible, the Occupation must have been a shocking experi
ence. As children, they had been taught that Jamato-damashii,
the Spirit of Japan, a mystic but to them a very real force,
would overcome any enemy, regardless of his size or strength.
Now they were a defeated nation. Had Yamato-damashii, after
all, been a myth?
It was impossible to know their feelings. Neither by word nor
deed nor by a fleeting expression did they show them. Did they
hate Americans? Would they understand, much less ever for
give, Hiroshima?
They obeyed and endured, and that was all you could know*
In a storm the bamboo bends to the ground, but never breaks.
When the wind dies, it springs up again. So with the Japanese.
Moreover, they had always lived close to natural calamity
earthquakes and typhoons. It occurred to me that perhaps they
brought the same resignation to the calamity of defeat and
Occupation.
For example, a newspaperman invited me to dinner. On the
way to the restaurant he remarked, almost too casually, that
I might find his wife somewhat changed. "She was in a shelter
The House of Ashes: 1950 11
during an air raid," he said. "Some other people were ah,
burned to death in there. My wife barely escaped. She has been
rather nervous ever since. I hope you won't be disturbed."
From his manner, he might have been describing a traffic
accident, not an act o war.
Another friend, I discovered, no longer lived in the rather
splendid family home that I had known before the war. He
now dwelt in a small cottage near one of his married daughters.
He said he had "lost" the big house during the war. There was
just a moment of awkward silence, and no explanation. Then
his daughter said, gently: "I am grateful that it brought him
closer to me." She smiled.
These were not intimate friends who might be expected to
display their deepest feelings. Another incident, however, was
different.
Soon after I returned to Tokyo, a lady called at the office.
She was formally dressed in a lovely old kimono and was
carrying flowers. She was the old cook, the "Number One" in
my house before the war. Except for a slight stoop, she had
changed very little. Her dark brown eyes were still bright and
mischievous, and her cheeks were like ivory. She used to run
the house pretty much as she pleased "squeezed" a bit on the
food bills, tyrannized us, and made us supremely comfortable.
She was a wicked and delightful old lady.
"Are you well, Danna-sanP Yes, I see you are." That was all
for me. "And Mary-chan? She is eleven now."
"Ten," I said.
"Eleven," she retorted. "She was born in Japan." In Japan.
you are considered a year old at birth.
"Mary's a big girl," I said. "As tall as you."
I showed her a snapshot. She put on her glasses and peered
at it, murmuring, and wept a little. Then, without bothering
to ask for the photograph, she tucked it in her obi.
"How is your son?" I asked. "Well, I hope."
She hesitated. He had been hurt, but he was getting better.
12 East Wind Rising
"Hurt in the war?"
"Not in the war, Danna-san. Only a short time ago."
She said some soldiers attacked him in die street one night,
robbed him, and left him unconscious. She did not say they
were Americans, but there were no other soldiers in Japan then.
"Shikatorgarnai," she said. "It can't be helped/'
You can't generalize. There may be millions of Japanese who
hate the United States now. It would not be strange if they did.
A war is not a football game, and there is no rule that compels
you to be a good loser. As for the Occupation, some Japanese
claimed to have found much good in it. They professed grati
tude for the Occupation policies and admiration for the United
States.
Not all of these professions, in my opinion, rang true. Is the
question of any importance? It is if it affects Japanese policy.
Japan is still, potentially, the most powerful nation in the
Orient. Therefore, China and the Soviet Union are bending
every effort to draw Japan into the Communist orbit. Wherever
they can find a residue of hatred for America, they try to fan
it into flame. They certainly will never permit the memory of
the atom bombs to die. They have had considerable propa
ganda success in campaigning against rearming Japan and es
tablishing missile bases on the islands. "Why should you fight
America's battles?" they say.
As against the pull of China and the Soviet Union, there are
factors of self-interest to the Japanese, primarily trade and
strategic considerations. As long as Japan finds her best inter
ests served by aligning herself with the West, there is little
danger. Should the position change, however, the bitter mem
ories of the war and the events that led to it will spring to the
surface. The Japanese, naturally, do not hold themselves solely
responsible for the Pacific War. In any case, with all her latent
power, Japan is a country to watch, now more than ever.
After the cook left that day, I had an almost uncontrollable
urge to rush out and see the house where we had lived. I could
The House of Ashes: 1950 13
hear the floors creaking and the hissing water heater threaten
ing to blow up, and saw again the Rube Goldberg contrivances
in the kitchen and the bathrooms. Some were Japanese, some
foreign, some a mixture of both. The cook worked simultane
ously on a hibachi, which burns charcoal, and a gas range. She
would flip a lamb chop with a fork or with iron chopsticks, de
pending on which utensil was near at hand.
You would hear her in the kitchen, mercilessly questioning
the tradesmen and delivery boys. She found out what every
foreign family would be having for dinner that night, who was
pregnant, the family fights, how the bachelor officers at the em
bassy were spending their evenings. Her intelligence system
worked like a vacuum cleaner, sucking in gossip about the
foreign colony in Tokyo.
Off the kitchen were three Japanese-style rooms where she
and the two maids slept on mats on the floor. One of the de
livery boys (I never discovered which) occasionally visited the
older maid at night. This had an unsettling effect on the cook,
even at her age. At breakfast one morning the magpie chatter
and giggling seemed unusually brisk in the kitchen. I asked the
younger maid what was going on there.
"Oba-s<m is teasing Hatsu-san," she said. The comers of her
mouth twitched as she tried not to smile.
"What about?"
"I don't know," she said primly. "I was asleep."
Their rooms were unheated except for the hibachi. On win-*
ter nights, with charming eagerness they would ask if they
might come into the living room. They would then sit on the
floor, around the old pot bellied stove. The cook would tell
stories about the village where she was born and about her
husband, who was gone now, and the maids would ask ques
tions about American movie stars. They would go on talking
until the coals in the stove faded to an orange glow. Warm,
happy evenings.
14 East Wind Rising
On the first free day, that rainy Sunday morning, I set out to
find the old house again. It was on a hill, set back from the
street, about three miles from the office.
A Japanese boy and girl came out of the park and signaled
a taxi. The driver passed without seeing them. As they started
walking, the girl slipped her hand inside the pocket of the
boy's raincoat. He glanced at her and smiled.
To me the simple gesture was almost dramatic. It symbolized
one of the great changes that had taken place in Japan. Before
the war an unmarried couple, as I judged these two to be,
would seldom be seen walking together and holding hands in
the park. Very few Japanese fathers, not even those who had
been educated abroad and wore Western business suits to the
office, ever gave their daughters that much freedom. What we
consider a normal boy- and-girl relationship hardly existed.
Boy simply did not meet girl nice girl, that is.
He visited the geisha if he could afford it, or went to the
unadorned prostitutes in the Yoshiwara, and nobody thought
anything about that. To have asked the girl next door for a
date, however, would have startled both her parents and his.
The young woman was supremely unimportant. She lived
only to serve. If she came from a poor family, her father might,
for cash, article her to the geisha syndicate or to a factory. In
marriage she had no legal status. She could be divorced by the
recital of a brief formula and without going to court. Regard
less of the cause of the divorce, she was not entitled to ali
mony, a division of property, or the custody of her children.
The man came and went as he pleased. If he spent the night
with another woman, it was none of his wife's business. She
was expected to be content with the simplest kindness from
him. Her friends counted her a happy woman if she said; "He
is kind to me."
The House of Ashes: 1950 15
Imagine the impact, then, of the American GL Naturally, he
romanced the Japanese girl. He took her to the movies and to
dance halls. He bought groceries from the commissary. On
payday he took her to the PX and let her select a "present-o "
She became his "moose" (the GI contraction of "mwume"
Japanese word for "maiden"). The arrangement surprised and
delighted them both.
Very soon Japanese young men imitated the soldiers. They
could not buy presents very often, but they could offer ro
mance. Instead of taking the girl for granted, they set out to
"win" her, American style. Japanese couples walked the streets,
holding hands, and embraced in the parks at night. "Student
marriage" became, not common, but by no means rare.
Who can say? This may be the only enduring product of the
Occupation. American political theory, the decentralization of
authority, swims upstream against centuries of Japanese tradi
tion. With a sneer, a Japanese politician spoke to me of "our
so-called democracy now." Land reform has given ownership
of the earth to the peasant, something his ancestors probably
never knew, and given him a new importance in his village.
That may remain. But breaking up the great industrial com
plexes and encouraging a labor-union movement these Amer
ican economic ideas, in my opinion, have small chance of sur
vival. As for erasing Japan's great military tradition, this is not
so ardently desired now as it was a few years ago. The gigantic
shadow of Red China stretches across the Orient today. So, the
Japanese military spirit and competence are almost as impor
tant in American thinking today as twenty years ago but for
quite different reasons.
A boy and girl holding hands represented a genuine social
change. But in politics and economics Japan was still Japan,
so far as I could see.
What about the Emperor?
Without realizing how far I had walked, I now found myself
at an intersection near the palace. At this intersection, before
^Q East Wind Rising
the war, a girl conductor on a streetcar would sing out in a
high-pitched voice: "Kyujo-mae-ni" It meant the car was ap
proaching the palace. People would rise from their seats, bow
ing deeply. I would usually raise my hat. In summertime, how
ever, when I would go out hatless, there would always be a
brief and difficult dilemma. Americans expect a foreigner to
take off his hat for the "Star Spangled Banner," and in a foreign
country one feels compelled to observe national amenities. But,
being without a hat, what does one do? Once I rose and bowed
with American awkwardness. Two white men in the car stared
in stark astonishment. After that, I would simply get off the
streetcar before the girl squeaked: "Kyujo-mae-ni"
Now the Emperor visited factories, called on General Mac-
Arthur, and appeared in public frequently. (He seemed to
enjoy it, too.) No more pulling down the blinds in the windows
of your office or waiting in a blocked street until his automobile
passed.
Yet in the people's faces the same expression of reverence
glowed. Perhaps there was less awe and more affection now.
But, in any case, the enormous spiritual force flowing out from
them to the Emperor was still there, unchanged by defeat and
the Occupation. It is a factor the Russians and Chinese must
reckon with in their timetable for the Orient.
A step or two more brought me to one of the main avenues
of Tokyo. Across the street stood the South Manchuria railway
building, symbol of a crumbled empire. The Sanno Hotel, like
the Imperial, had become an officers' billet. An ugly, fire-
blackened scar marked the spot where the Tokyo Club had
been.
I could almost hear the billiard balls clicking in the noontime
"snooker" game, and smell the odor of stale beer from the bar.
I thought of Admiral Nomura, the ambassador who, with
Kurusu, had been in Washington, negotiating with Roosevelt
and Cordell Hull at the moment the Japanese attacked Pearl
The House of Ashes: 1950 17
Harbor. When lie was appointed, about eighteen months be
fore the attack, I had interviewed him at the Tokyo Club.
Nomura was big, wrinkled, gray, and a little paunchy. He
wore gold-rimmed spectacles and had a benign, grandf atherly
manner. He spoke English, but not fluently. I often wondered
in later years how much may have escaped him in his discus
sions with Roosevelt and Hull. How much history may hang
on that simple linguistic failing? We sat in the deep, black
leather chairs through a long afternoon, talking about the dis
agreements between the two nations. Nomura could not un
derstand the depth of feeling in America. "Why," he asked,
"since you have so little at stake in China and we have so
much?" A formula for compromise must lie somewhere. I tried
to get him to spell out his ideas for it. But he only chuckled
and recalled what William Jennings Bryan had said, as Secre
tary of State, to an earlier Japanese ambassador:
"Nothing is ever final between friends."
Now I came into the district where we had lived. A few more
blocks, now, to the house. Unconsciously I began to walk faster.
Up the hill . . . Past Roppongi, the Six Corners . , . From
there you could see the barracks where the bloody "February
26 Incident" began on a snowy night. It was an army revolt
against the too conservative or, as they called it, "immoral"
policy of the government, a very big milestone on the road that
led Japan to Tojo. . . . Past the restaurant where we ate eels
(eel meat, they say, is better than antihistamine for avoiding
colds) . . . Past the shuttered, forbidding Soviet embassy . . .
Around another corner and into the street that leads to the
Nagai compound ... I knew every inch of it.
Oh, but it had changed! I recognized it only by relating it
x g East Wind Rising
to the pattern of the other streets and "because I could see the
brow of the hill ahead. Fire must have come through here like
a scythe. The little shops, flimsy as matchboxes, were gone, and
unfamiliar matchboxes lined the street. The fishmonger, the
mason and his stone lanterns, the man who stocked such un
likely combinations as secondhand books and baseball equip
ment, the sweet old couple who sold crockery all of them
were gone.
Well, the house would still be there. I wondered who would
be living in it. No doubt, the army. Such a pleasant compound
would be requisitioned for officers with families. High-rankers,
too, without question. "R.H.I.P./' as the Gfs say "Rank has
its privileges." I would ring the bell and explain to whoever
answered: "Haven't seen the old place since before the war
. . . Sort of a sentimental journey . . . Does the window in
the upstairs bedroom still rattle when the trains go by?"
A compound, I should explain, is a cluster of buildings sur
rounded by a wall or a hedge. Ours was like a park. Six houses
in the form of a crescent looked out across a wide lawn. There
was a round flower bed in the center. Shade trees bordered the
driveway leading to the street, The landlord, Mr. Nagai, lived
in the biggest house. He was a rich man, a retired diplomat.
All his tenants were foreigners. He could have built several
more houses on the grounds, but he liked the openness. This
way, too, there was room for a tennis court between the points
of the crescent.
A police box stood at the end of the driveway where it came
into the street. It served as a substation for the whole district,
not just the compound. In the last year or two before Pearl
Harbor, when the Japanese began seeing a spy behind every
tree, the policemen kept a record of everyone who came and
went. They noted the number on an automobile license plate,
particularly a diplomatic plate. If you had a guest from one of
the embassies for dinner, the policeman would be in the
kitchen early next day, quizzing the servants. He couldn't have
The House of Ashes: 1950 19
learned very much because none of the servants in the com
pound, so far as we knew, understood enough English to have
overheard what were called "dangerous thoughts/'
I came up the street and found the police box. It was the
only familiar object along the block, the only thing left. It
looked a little seedy. ( Showing its age, I thought, like the rest
of us. ) The cement walls were chipped and blackened. I went
to the window. A film of dust, streaked with rain, covered the
panes. Old newspapers littered the floor. The telephone had
been taken out. The station was empty. Strange.
Then I turned into the driveway and stopped short, puzzled.
Weeds and high grass lined both sides. The tall stalks bent over
in an arch. Just ahead a thick stand of bamboo pressed against
a rickety fence and had dislodged some of the boards. One of
them, hanging loose on the nail, swung in the wind like a sema
phore. Neither the bamboo nor the fence had been there be
fore.
A few more steps brought me to the place where the drive
way divided, one branch leading off to the right toward our
house. Here there should have been a clear view of the com
pound, past the houses, across the lawn, all the way to the
tennis court. Instead, another wall of weeds blocked the view.
For a moment I thought I had come in from the street at
the wrong place. This j&tfuld not be the compound. Nothing
about it was right. Yet behind me there was the police box,
undeniably the same cement cubicle, standing in the same
place, exactly as before.
I stood there, trying to get my bearings. Where were the
trees? They should be visible above the high grass and bamboo.
Where were the upper stories of the houses? It was like a
dream eerie, mocking, unreal. My cheek stung where a weed
had whipped it. My clothes were wet and cold from rain.
These sensations were real; yet they seemed parts of a dream.
Just another step, I thought, would bring the open lawn and
the houses. Then the curtain would part and everything would
20 East Wind Rising
be the same as it had been ten years before. I pushed into the
thick weeds and struggled forward. A yard, ten yards. Nothing
but bamboo and the wet, rustling underbrush.
My foot struck a solid object. Standing in the weeds was an
L-shaped fragment of concrete. Fire had scorched it. For a
moment it meant nothing. Then I understood.
This had been the corner of a foundation for a house.
I stared at it and then closed my eyes. Now the eerie, night
marish sensation welled up more strongly than before. As if
I were looking at a double-exposed film, I saw the house as
it had been and, in the same image, the scarred remains
shrouded in weeds. It took a long time for me to accept.
The wind moaned. The bamboo shuddered, spattering rain
drops. Silence closed over again. Suddenly I felt tired.
An old Chinese poem tells of a man who returns to his village
and searches for his home:
I have been away such a long time
That I do not know which street is which.
How sad and ugly the empty moors!
A thousand miles without the smoke of a hearth.
I think of the house I lived in all those years.
I am heart-tied and cannot speak.
The blackened fragment alone remained.
Let it be a gravestone for all those who died in the war.
Let it be an ugly monument to folly, ambition, and racial
hatred. Let it mark the tragedy that need never have come in
the Pacific.
Chapter II
SEGREGATION
IN CALIFORNIA
"SOMEDAY there will be war with Japan."
The immediate causes of the Pacific War developed in the
1930'$. (Mark that word "immediate.") Before then the civilian
governments had largely frustrated the Japanese Army's and
Navy's ambitions in Asia. Then, about ten years before Pearl
Harbor, the militarists succeeded in seizing power in govern
ment. Almost immediately they started operations in Man
churia and China proper. Later they prepared to move south
ward against the European colonies. The United States took
the lead in blocking, or at least retarding, these operations.
American policy is reflected in the Stimson notes, President
Roosevelt's "Quarantine Speech" in 1937, and finally in eco
nomic reprisals. So, the 1930*5 fostered the immediate causes of
Pearl Harbor.
But the story is not as simple as that, not as one-sided or by
any means as recent in origin. Long before 1930, by word and
deed, Americans helped prepare the ground. Discriminatory
laws against the Japanese in the Pacific Coast states alarmed a
President. A Secretary of State said: "I dislike to think" of the
effects of the Exclusion Act passed by Congress to choke off
Japanese immigration. A Secretary of the Navy reports that as
far back as 1913 two admirals tried to persuade him that the
22 East Wind Rising
United States must fight Japan. Labor unions, politicians, and
journalists fanned the flames for selfish purposes. Most impor
tant, millions of Americans permitted the most virulent of all
poisons race prejudice to condition their opinions and dis
tort their judgments as they looked across the Pacific. In Cali
fornia, as far back as I can remember, people said: "Someday
there will be war with Japan."
The roots of Pearl Harbor are wide and deep. Some grew
out of Tokyo, Manchuria, and north China. The seeds of others
were planted in Washington and the capitals of the Pacific
Coast states. Still others began in a few poor parcels of land
that have no name.
In the early 1920*3 there was still open country between the
western edge of Los Angeles and the little towns on the sea
shore. Dwellings stopped at a fairly distinct line. Real-estate
agents hopefully subdivided the flat stretches beyond, as far as
the Baldwin Hills. From the hills to the beach lay about ten
miles of open fields. Eucalyptus and pepper trees lined the
country roads between the main highways. Wooden pumps
sucked oil from the ground, their massive arms swinging in a
slow, elephantine rhythm. Two cement numerals, "57," set in
the face of a hill, advertised pickles. You could hunt rabbits
around there.
A heavy stench hung over this land, a compound of oil seep
age, salt water, and rotting vegetation. It was swampy land,
unfit for large-scale ranching and unattractive for real-estate
development.
Here the Japanese lived and raised vegetables. They lived in
shanties without water or electricity. They covered the boards
with tar paper that ripped when the wind blew strong from
the ocean. No curtains covered the windows. Sometimes the
Segregation in California 2,3
pale gold light of a lantern flickered inside at night; mostly,
though, the shanties were dark.
The Japanese worked like ants. They worked in the summer
heat and the chilling winter rains, on Sundays and holidays.
They went out at sunrise and remained through the brief Cali
fornia twilight, bending low over the vegetables, tending them
with knowing hands.
"They live like animals," people said. "They don't know any
thing better."
The woman worked in the vegetable rows with her husband*
She probably came to California as a "picture bride," married
by proxy in Japan to a man she had never seen. Often she
worked carrying a baby on her back, papoose fashion. The
baby's head would fall back limply and bob around with every
move the mother made. Sometimes the woman hitched herself
to a wooden "trough plow" and pulled it, while the man guided
the blade.
They were displayed for tourists, like animals in a zoo.
"Would you believe it in this day and age? You won't see any
thing like this back in Iowa."
We used to bicycle past the fields and yell: "Hey, Itchy
Scratchy, get a horse." "That ain't a horse, that's his wife." They
seldom so much as glanced at us. So then we would throw
stones and ride away fast, looking back to see if they were pur
suing.
Working incessantly, they prospered little by little. They
brought the produce to town in pickup trucks instead of push
carts. The flower shops on San Pedro Street grew bigger. It be
came rare to find a white man selling fruit and vegetables in
the markets. The proprietors were all "Japs."
"What can you do?" women said. "Their vegetables are bet
ter and cheaper. You certainly aren't going to pay more just to
trade with an American."
"They work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week," the
men would say. "How'd you like it if I worked like that? Well,
2 4 East Wind Rising
you watch one of these days the damn Japs will take over all
of California/'
Galifornians resented the competition. Far worse, they be
lieved, and were encouraged to believe, that Japan had plans
to invade the Pacific Coast. When the attack came, every
"damn Jap" had a specific sabotage assignment, people said.
There were innumerable stories. A Los Angeles newspaper re
ported that police found "quantities of high-powered radio
equipment" in a Japanese rooming house. The opposition news
paper, as opposition newspapers delight to do, debunked the
story: a gardener had been buying separate parts and building
his own receiving set; he was too poor to afford an ordinary
radio.
"Little Tokyo," the Japanese quarter in Los Angeles, was be
lieved to be the center of a spy web. It huddled in the old part
of the city, not far from the original Plaza. The alleys smelled
of rice wine, flowers, straw matting, sukiyaki, and the tiny pyra
mids of incense that predated deodorizers. There were curio
shops, wholesale florists, a newspaper office, and a branch of
the Yokohama Specie Bank in the district. A sign with three
katakana characters, ho tay ru, marked the hotel.
At night "Little Tokyo" looked deserted. On Main Street
there were burlesque shows, shooting galleries, and dance
halls. Mexicans and Filipinos fought over the taxi dancers. The
Negro quarter on Central Avenue had its own noisy night life.
But the Japanese quarter was dark and still. Occasionally the
mournful twang of a samisen came from an upstairs restaurant.
The sound of voices speaking staccato Japanese crackled in
the hotel. Otherwise it was dark and silent. Bad sign.
They worked, saved, stayed out of trouble. A Japanese name
seldom appeared on the police blotter. During the Depression
they were not seen in the bread lines; evidently they supported
their unemployed with their own means. In the charity drives
"Little Tokyo" always met the assigned quota. On all counts
Segregation in California 25
they qualified as good citizens. But in the climate of the times
this only made them more sinister.
Certainly they were not wanted as neighbors. Zoning laws
restricted them to designated areas to protect property values
elsewhere. "1 would rather have a good, clean Nigger family
next door any day than a damn Jap," a man said. "At least the
Niggers get dressed up on Sunday."
An undistinguished suburb named Rose Hill was developing
on the outskirts of the city. One morning the newspapers pub
lished a photograph of a bosomy woman standing in front of a
sign: "J a P s > keep moving! Don't let the sun set on you here.
This is Rose Hill!" The news story reported that a Japanese
family had tried to buy a lot there.
Most probably it was merely a real-estate salesman's idea of
publicity. The echo of Rose Hill came a few years later. In the
uproar in Japan over the Exclusion Act, Tokyo papers re
printed this picture. The sign and the bosomy woman became
symbols in Japan of, not one small community, but the whole
United States. A Japanese cartoonist had no difficulty in con
verting the figure of the woman with her upraised fist into a
parody of the Statue of Liberty. What is the message on the
statue?
Give me your tired, your poor.,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.
Not in the California of the 1920'$. "Keep moving, Japs!"
Race prejudice, particularly if you grow up in an atmosphere
of it, is an odorless, colorless poison gas. You are not aware of
breathing poison. You don't question the legends. Catholics
take orders from the Pope. The Jews are out to control all the
money. Every Negro wants to marry a white woman.
The Japs are planning to invade California. Someday there
will be war with Japan it's inevitable.
Perhaps it was. There is a theory that if you fear something
26 East Wind Rising
deeply and think about it long and hard, it will materialize. In
these circumstances it is a wonder that the war did not come
sooner. I often question whether it would have come at all had
we known the history and reason for our prejudices in Cali
fornia.
The history began with Chinese labor during the railroad-
building days in the West. Coolies were brought over in boat
loads at so much a head. When the roads were finished, the
Chinese came into the labor market. They were willing to
work long hours for low wages. Labor unions immediately per
ceived the threat. (Some Chinese were taken all the way to
North Adams, Massachusetts, to break a strike in a shoe fac
tory.) Riots broke out in the Chinese quarter in San Francisco.
Western congressmen, responding to the clamor, began de
manding laws to bar Chinese immigration. The United States
government blandly violated its treaties with China. The door
closed. China protested, but the monarchy, already collapsing,
was powerless.
A few years later Japanese immigration began. The agita
tion on the Pacific Coast now centered on the Japanese la
borer. Again San Francisco was the scene. Again the fear that
Oriental labor would damage the American standard of living
was the cause.
In 1906 this hostility created an incident which has a pecul
iar echo today segregation in the San Francisco school sys
tem. The school board removed ninety-three students of Ori
ental parentage from the regular schools and put them in a
separate institution. Of the total, twenty-five were American
citizens, having been born in the United States. The board said
it acted in response to demands from white parents, but the
Segregation in California 27
resolution added: *. . . also for the higher end that our chil
dren should not be placed in any position where their youthful
impression may be affected by associations with pupils of the
Mongolian race."
Japan reacted fiercely. Alarming cables about the violent
feeling came from the American embassy in Tokyo. Theodore
Roosevelt answered with a conciliatory message that calmed
the storm to a degree. He wrote privately to his friend Baron
Kaneko: "The movement in question is giving me the greatest
concern.**
A correspondent for The Times of London cabled from San
Francisco: "The whole agitation against the Japanese here is
causeless . . . artificial and wicked . . . The people have
been worked up to a high pitch of excitement by politicians
who believed that by raising the Japanese issue they could in
crease their own popularity/'
But "those infernal fools in California/' as Roosevelt was now
calling them, refused to be silenced. The Building Trades
Council and the Asiatic Exclusion League harshly condemned
the President. The California Federation of Labor sent a reso
lution to Congress. Concealing the unions* interests behind em
phasis on the schools, it said: 'We insist upon, and shall, to the
limit of our own power, maintain our right to safeguard the pu
pils in the public schools."
The San Francisco Chronicle hinted darkly that California
might have to secede!
There was more, and worse, to come.
As a result of the segregation incident, Washington and
Tokyo worked out a face-saver, the "Gentlemen*s Agreement.'*
Japan agreed to prohibit laborers from migrating to the United
States. The ninety-three Oriental children went back to the
regular schools in San Francisco. For a time quiet returned.
The "J a P problem," however, was an issue much too good for
politicians to resist. Within two years bills were in the Call-
2 8 East Wind Rising
fornia legislature to segregate the schools and to prohibit
Orientals from owning land.
Roosevelt succeeded in getting them pigeonholed.
Four years later Woodrow Wilson had to contend with them.
Using Roosevelt's maneuver, he sent Secretary of State Bryan
to California to head off the legislation. Josephus Daniels, Sec
retary of the Navy, wrote that Bryan had little hope of suc
ceeding. He did not succeed.
An Alien Landholding Bill became law in May 1913.
War talk started again. Daniels's description of the picture in
Washington indicates that there were officials in the capital
who wanted war. He cites the unauthorized actions of an army-
navy organization, the Joint Board, in preparing for war. The
Board, he says, "leaked" the news of this to the papers. Wilson
angrily disbanded the Joint Board.
And personal equations always play a part. In the section of
his story called "The Yellow Peril" Daniels wrote:
"All that Spring and Summer when negotiations were going
on growing out of the California land law, Admiral [Bradley
A.] Fiske, aide for operations, was incessantly talking to me
about the danger of war with Japan. He and Richmond Pear
son Hobson, who was a member of the Naval Affairs Com
mittee, were obsessed with the Yellow Peril. They sat up nights
thinking how Japan was planning to make war on America and
steal a march on us by taking the Philippine Islands and going
on to Hawaii. Hobson made speeches about it which the Presi
dent regarded as in bad taste at a time when critical matters
were at issue between two countries. Admiral Fiske, I think,
fanned the fire with Hobson and confined himself, so far as I
know, to trying to convince me that the war with Japan was in
evitable and that we ought to carry out the recommendations
of the Joint Board. He was so obsessed with this plan that he
took much of my time with his arguments."
Daniels says he gently ridiculed the admiral.
Segregation in California 29
Perhaps Fiske and Hobson sincerely feared an attack by
Japan. If so, something was wrong with their logistics. Even in
1943, with faster ships, long-range aircraft, floating bases, and
so on, the task of sustaining an attack across thousands of miles
of ocean was still staggeringly difficult. With the equipment of
1913 it was all but impossible. The man on the street could not
have been expected to know that. But Fiske and Hobson, as
technicians, must have understood it perfectly.
In any case, the refrain had begun: "War with Japan." News
paper editorials warned of the "Yellow Peril." A 1916 movie
pictured the Japanese attacking California. A book, The Great
Pacific War, visualized a series of titanic naval battles, and a
magazine review of the book said: "American sea-dogs believe
this is pretty much the way it will go."
Long ago the war drums sounded.
Not long after the end of World War I a climax came. Now the
question of Japanese immigration coincided with fears of a
flood of people from Europe. Millions there clamored for entry
to the United States. A Commissioner of Immigration in New
York said: "The world is preparing to move to America."
The old specter of a glutted labor market rose again. To Cali-
fornians it was a familiar bogey. Suddenly it confronted
Americans in every state. Congress responded with laws set
ting up the quota system for immigrants from the various na
tions.
The quota for Japan would have been small, an estimated
three hundred yearly or less. The Western states, however,
called for total exclusion. They asserted that Japan had con
sistently violated the "Gentlemen's Agreement" banning la
borers by means of the "picture-bride" system the marriage
3 o East Wind "Rising
by proxy which opened the way for Japanese women to come
in. This was one of several accusations. To head off exclusion,
Japan agreed to apply the "Gentlemen's Agreement" to la
borers' brides. Henceforth, passports would be denied them,
too.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Committee on Immi
gration, Representative Albert Johnson, of Washington, was
writing a bill providing for total exclusion. The Syracuse Post-
Standard said of Johnson: "He has the antipathy of the Pacific
Coast states to the Japanese, but he is writing a bill for all
states, not for the Pacific Coast alone."
As the bill moved through Congress, newspapers frankly set
forth the reasoning behind it.
"The industry, thrift and ability of the Japanese have already
put many American farmers and small tradesmen out of busi
ness/' said the Chicago Tribune. "Do we want this to con
tinue?"
"There are strong economic and racial reasons why they
should be barred," said the Los Angeles Times.
But the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican expressed
resentment. "A small minority of Pacific Coast and Rocky
Mountain senators and representatives are imposing their will
on the enormous majority of the American people," the paper
said.
In Japan, newspapers covered the story in great detail. One
of the most influential, Asdhi, pointed out that in ten years the
white population of California rose by about one million, while
the increase in people of Japanese parentage was thirty thou
sand. The paper asked: "Where is the cause for alarm in Cali
fornia?"
A magazine, Yorodzu, observed that "no sooner had the
farming and other industries in the coastal regions become
prosperous than the anti- Japanese agitation began/'
The papers all recalled that Japan had given money to the
victims of the San Francisco earthquake. A cartoonist depicted
Segregation in California 31
Uncle Sam taking a bag of gold from Japan with one hand
and slapping her face with the other.
A clergyman, Reverend Mr. Tamura, was quoted as saying:
"It is foolish to talk of adopting resolutions of protest. The time
will come when America and Japan will have to fight it out if
America continues her present attitude against the colored
races."
Secretary of State Hughes opposed the bill, both on legal
grounds and as unnecessary. He calculated that only two hun
dred and forty-five Japanese a year would come to the United
States under the quota system.
However, it was the Japanese ambassador, Masanao Hani-
hara, who unwittingly tripped the trigger. In one of his com
munications to Hughes he wrote: "To Japan, the mere fact that
a few hundreds or thousands of her nationals will or will not be
admitted into the domains of other countries is immaterial so
long as no question of national susceptibility is involved. The
important question is whether Japan, as a nation, is or is not
entitled to the proper respect and consideration of other na
tions." Then the fateful sentence: "I realize, as I believe you do,
the grave consequences which the enactment of the measure
. . . would inevitably bring."
A senatorial clique seized on this sentence as a "veiled
threat." The proper answer, they said, was to pass the Exclusion
Act.
In vain Hanihara protested that he intended no threat. He
said that he did not question "the sovereign right of any coun
try to regulate immigration of its own territories." The two of
fending words, "grave consequences," had to be considered in
the context of the whole message, he said.
It was too late. The damage was done.
In his careful study The Far Eastern Policy of the United
States Professor A. Whitney Griswold assessed the damage: "It
seems safe to say that the American people have never re
sented any policy pursued by Japan in China or elsewhere as
32 East Wind Rising
deeply, as unanimously, and with as poignant a sense of injus
tice as the Japanese have resented the statutory exclusion of
1924."
When the news reached Japan, a volcano of anger erupted.
The Associated Press correspondent reported "nation-wide
demonstrations and mass prayer meetings at all the Shinto
shrines throughout the country." He sent a photograph of a
crude sign, written in English, on a Japanese store front
"Yankee, don't come here. I sell no American goods."
The Rose Hill photograph now had its counterpart.
But there was exultation in California. A San Francisco
newspaper editorial said: "That American fanners cannot meet
the low-standard Japanese competition is true. That the 'Gen
tlemen's Agreement' has been made a laughing stock across the
Pacific is true. That the 'picture bride* evil, in all its ghastly in
sincerity, was a menace and a subterfuge of a colonizing em
pire is true. That the Japanese in America have remained loyal
to Japan and have sought merely to exploit America is true.
That inter-marriage of the two races is biologically dangerous
is true.
"Now we look forward to an era of purgation/'
If the syntax is weird and tortured, it is no worse than the
thinking it reflects.
Some twenty years later the most decorated unit in the U.S.
army was composed of nisei, American-born Japanese.
In Japan the Exclusion Act became known as "the slap in the
face," a mortal insult. I found the bitterness still simmering
when I went to Tokyo as a correspondent more than ten years
later. With clear prescience Secretary Hughes had written
Senator Lodge: "I dislike to think what the reaping will be
after the sowing of this seed/'
Segregation in California 33
Some of the harvest already has been gathered. More, I fear,
is still to come.
In the 1930*8 the Japanese militarists made effective use of
the California story. They recalled it in order to becloud the
real reasons for the deterioration of relations with the United
States. The average Japanese could not understand that Ameri
cans opposed his government solely because of the aggression
in China. He was told that American hostility to Japan went
back long years before that. The military merely reminded
him of "the slap in the face" and the actions that preceded it.
He read the Stimson notes and the "Quarantine Speech"
against the background of the previous decades.
The Pacific War is past Still ahead is the struggle for Asia.
Recalling colonialism and Western exploitation in the Orient is
only one arrow in the Communist quiver. The white man's as
sumption of racial superiority and the memory of discrimina
tion are also deadly weapons. It is no exaggeration to say that
much of our trouble in Asia today goes back to thoughtless
cruelties kicking a ricksha boy, abusing a servant, making it
plain that the Oriental was an inferior.
Much of the story of the Far East in the past one hundred
years or more turns on two words human dignity. National
ism, the desire for self-development, and Communist maneu
vers all played a part. But the most powerful force was the
determination of the Oriental to be accorded human dignity.
This is the significance of the California story.
Chapter III
CHINESE ADVENTURE
IT WAS a warm May morning, too sunny and blue for us to stay
in class, so we cut Geology IV and sat under a tree near the
library. Graduation day was a month away. Tsui stretched out
on the grass and closed his eyes. I thought he was asleep. Sud
denly he sat up and said: "What would you think of spending
next year in China?"
His name, in the Chinese manner which puts the family
name first, was Tsui Sik-leong. Like Jones John. However, he
called himself Sik-leong Tsui, Western fashion. When people
from China were introduced to him, they often addressed him
as "Mr. Sik" and said it was an unusual name. Tsui would agree
blandly and suggest that his ancestors, who were Hakka, might
have tampered with it.
The Ha^ka are the rebels of China the individualists, the
dissenters, the never reconstructed. They fought and connived
against every foreign race that conquered China, forming se
cret societies and revolutionary groups and raising hell, in gen
eral, against imposed authority. Hakka blood ran hot in Tsui.
His parents had emigrated from a village in south China to
Hawaii. His father became a clergyman. Tsui and his twelve
brothers and sisters were born in Honolulu.
He was small and handsome, with skin the color of old ivory,
and wide, glowing eyes. He assumed an air of Confucian
graveness that was convincing until you caught the expression
in his eyes. They often glittered with amusement while his face
Chinese Adventure 35
remained a blank. He liked practical jokes, and I thought his
question was leading up to one now. You always played along,
waiting to see what would happen.
"It's a good idea," I said. "When do we go?"
"You think I'm kidding. Listen, I've got a project." He
opened his notebook and showed me the draft of a brochure
for an Oriental Study Expedition. It would take ten freshly
minted college graduates to China for a year. They would
work in Chinese universities, each doing research in a specific
field.
"Here's the point," he said. "The revolution over there is "
"What revolution?"
"It's been going on for years. Now it's about over. The new
government is just getting under way. This is the beginning of
something so big that nobody fully understands what it means
or where it will go."
"It's all news to me," I said.
"No wonder," he said. "The newspapers and magazines have
done a crummy job of reporting on it. So much the better for
us. We each take a field government, education, banking, for
eign relations, and so on and work over there for a year. Then
we write the findings, and, bingo, out comes a brand-new book
on China at the biggest turning point in history. How about
that?"
"Well, two things," I said. "How long does it take to learn
Chinese? And what do we use for money?"
"Never mind about the language. They speak English in the
missionary schools. Besides, we won't be working much in
classes. As for the money, I figure one thousand dollars apiece
will do it."
He knew the price of a steerage ticket to China on the Japa
nese ships. We would stay in dormitories with the Chinese stu
dents, travel third-class on the trains, and save money on food
by eating Chinese meals.
"Chop suey three times a day?"
36 East Wind Rising
"Sure, why not?" he said. "You'll eat worse things than chop
suey over there."
He said he had already talked about the project with some
of his friends in college. Pomona College is a liberal-arts school,
but he had approached students who were beginning to spe
cialize. "You're going into newspaper work. Okay, you can
study newspapers over in China. Find out how much the for
eign language and Chinese papers influence public opinion.
Also, you can send stories back to the papers here. Maybe pick
up a little change."
"The only hitch is that I couldn't raise a thousand dollars," I
said. "Right now I couldn't raise ten."
"None of us can," Tsui said. "But we're going to find people
who will put up the money."
When he left, I went into the library, opened an atlas, and
looked at a map of the Pacific. Yokohama. Hong Kong. Peking.
(So that's where Peking is!) I was so ignorant that I searched
the Moluccas, trying to locate Formosa.
I suddenly realized that I knew very little next to nothing,
in fact about the Far East. No history, no economics, nothing
whatever about the literature, art, or religions of the Far East.
The American student in that day swallowed massive doses of
European history such vital information as the minor details
of the feudal system in England, for example but almost noth
ing about the breakup of China or the effects of long isolation
on modern Japan. This seems strange because, in the West
particularly, "the dawn of the Pacific Era" had become a cliche.
Great new centers of commerce and the new patterns of poli
tics and strategy were developing swiftly in the Orient and the
Western states, analysts said. We were badly prepared for
these changes. To many Americans the map west of Hawaii
was a total blank.
I began looking at Orientals with a new curiosity, especially
at the Japanese. What were the thoughts of the stolid little gar
dener edging your lawn for ten cents an hour? Was he really a
Chinese Adventure 37
spy? Did he, too, expect war one day between the United
States and Japan? In Little Tokyo there was a lunch counter
run by a Japanese and his wife. I attempted some research
there under cover of the pie and coffee. First I asked them how
to say "thank you" in Japanese and how to count to ten. Having
then, as I thought, put relations on an easy basis, I asked some
of the questions which were troubling me. They never an
swered. Mama-san would only smile and change the subject.
"Now I teach you 'good morning' in Japanese. It is easy. You
say O-hayo, like Ohio, where is city of Corumbus. Only you
must say O-hayo gozaimasu to be porite."
Californians wrote with warmth and humor of the Chinese,
the paisanos, the Filipinos, and the Serbian fishermen. In nov
els and short stories they were usually sympathetic characters.
One of the best writers, Harry Carr, was drawing affectionate
sketches of the Mexicans. But no one had anything good to say
for the "damn Jap." He remained unknown, therefore suspect.
Weeks passed without word from Tsui.
Suddenly, in July, an alarming development seemed to
threaten his whole plan. "Russia Threatens China," said the
headlines: "U.S. May Intervene." Trouble had broken out in
Manchuria. Where was Manchuria? Again I opened an atlas.
There it was, in the north, outside the Great Wall. As for the
issue between Russia and China, the news reports were hard
to understand something about a railway. In a day or two the
story disappeared from the papers. Actually, the events were
far more important than Americans realized, but in the re
porting of that day the background and significance were not
made clear.
"Don't worry about the trouble in Manchuria," Tsui wrote.
"It won't affect the parts of China where we are going."
He said the necessary money was nearly in hand. He felt
sure he would get it. The summer of 1929. The banks had
money, business had money, everybody had money. The stock
market climbed in delirious spirals. Everything was booming.
38 East Wind Rising
A chicken in every pot. Two cars in every garage. Nothing was
impossible in that fine, dizzy, champagne summer.
Then his telegram came. "Dough in hand. October sailing
date. Counting on you."
The ship sailed from San Francisco on a gusty day. I was
hot with fever from a typhoid shot and cold with misgivings.
The whole project seemed idiotic, worse than a waste of time.
Why leave the known to go roving into the unknown? Why,
when the moment came, did I do so?
The ship passed through the Golden Gate and lifted joy
ously in the first long swell of the open ocean.
"I've got a funny feeling," Tsui said. "I think this is going to
lead to something. Maybe a lot more than we figure now."
*Tve got a funny feeling, too/* I said. "I tihink I'm going to be
seasick."
Chapter IV
BURIAL AT SEA
THE Shinyo Maw came through Kaulakahi Channel, skirting
the cliffs of Kauai. As she cleared the island, her black bow
swung northwest. Ahead now lay the open sea.
It was late afternoon. Long, slanting shafts of sunlight
touched the clouds with rose and gold. Kauai and her sister is
land, Niihau, began to sink on the horizon, melting into a blue
haze. The scent of Hawaiian flowers, pikaki and ginger, grew
fainter. The sea gull that had picked up the ship off Konole
Point, hovering hopefully over the stern, uttered a last discon
solate squawk and wheeled back toward land. A hush settled
over the ocean.
The decks were almost deserted. An hour or so before, peo
ple had lined the rails and milled around, caught in the excite
ment of sailing. The Hawaiian troupe on the dock sang "Aloha
Oe" in glorious voices as the ship pulled away, and people
wept openly, as they always do, and dropped leis into the water
to make sure of seeing the islands again. Now the islands were
almost lost in the hissing white wake of the Shinyo Mara.
Two slightly alcoholic American couples on the upper deck
finished a flask, and the women said they must go below and
unpack.
"Yokohama, here we come/'
"What does maru mean, anyhow? Ever notice that all Jap
ships are something-mflfM?"
40 East Wind Rising
"Maru rhymes with barroom. Let' s go see if the barroom on
this mam is open yet."
"Nobody dresses the first night out, so I think I'll wear . . ?
Their voices died away. Silence settled over the ship. I stood
leaning against the stern rail, watching the sunset and the high-
arching sky. The air was soft and warm. Silence and the hyp
notic swell of the waves cast a spell. Time stopped. Suddenly
this moment became the whole past and the whole future,,
the eternal Present.
It is always so in the beginning of an ocean voyage. The mys
tery always repeats itself. At the instant when the lines are cast
off, the ship becomes a world in itself, apart from the world one
shore. Then, imperceptibly at first, a gulf widens between
them. The outlines of shapes on land begin to blur and the
colors change. Something has ended, completely and irreversi
bly. A strange feeling of clairvoyance comes with this moment.
It is not exactly seeing or touching the future, but a kind of
reaching into it, an acute awareness of things that lie ahead.
One night years later I was going down the Hudson on a
ship bound for England. It was wartime. Even in the "brown
out" New York glittered in the dark sky like a huge jewel box.
An icy wind was stinging my face and pinching my ears. The
wind, the cold, the lights, and the needle-point spray were
all sharply real, demanding attention. Yet suddenly I think
when the ship came into the open Atlantic some other con
sciousness intervened. An indescribable sensation, a mixture of
fear, excitement, horror, and sadness, swept through me with
such overpowering force that it blotted out the reality of the
ship, the cold, and the dark water. It seemed utterly without
cause, unrelated to any sensory perceptions of the moment.
When I was in Italy during the fighting, this sensation came
back. Beside a stone barn I looked inside a knocked-out tank
and saw what happens to men when a tank burns; one alone
had managed to get out, and only a charred torso remained.
That night a shell caught a fighter bomber above the beach.
Burial at Sea 41
Flames spurted from the wing. The plane shot upward in an
impossibly steep angle, then nosed over, heading straight to
earth. In that instant the plane, the gutted tank, the landing
at Paestum, all the indelible pictures of the fighting there,
fused into a montage of feeling.
It often happens when a ship sails some knowledge, some
certainty seems to lie just beyond a curtain, and shadowy forms
appear. But on that first voyage in November 1929 it was a
brand-new experience for me.
What were we getting into? A year in China. A year's work
in some Chinese schools. More campus life. Another ivory
tower different, perhaps, but still an ivory tower. Only that?
The strange feeling, tantalizing and touched with foreboding,
suddenly faded.
The sun sank into the Pacific. The western sky glowed like a
rose-and-gold orchestra shell. The ocean turned to molten
bronze. Then darkness came racing out from the east.
Above, on the promenade deck, a man and woman came to
the rail and stood watching the sunset. In spite of the first-
night-out tradition, they had dressed for dinner. The man had
squeezed into the tropical costume, a white, tight-fitting "mon
key jacket." The woman's gown hung like a gunny sack, with
loose, ambiguous lines. The skirt fell an inch or so below her
knees that is, so long as she was standing. When she sat down,
it would climb well above them. This was the Age of Knees
and Thighs, before the Age of Big Bosoms.
A steward brought a tray of cocktails. Almost before he
turned his back, the man and woman were calling for a sec
ond. Other people joined them, and the steward barely kept
pace with the emptying glasses. Prohibition, of course, did not
extend to ships at sea. However, it had become such a national
obsession that Americans drank feverishly even when liquor
was readily available and talked of it even more feverishly.
"Man, it's great to taste the real stuff again after the rotgut
they sell you at home. . . ."
42 East Wind Rising
"I've got a pretty good bootlegger. Oh, he charges me plenty,
but at least I don't have to worry about waking up blind on the
morning after. . . ."
"Hell, I get mine from a cop on the liquor detail. . . "
"The only really safe thing is alcohol and a mix. . . ."
"Fellow at the office always makes it a point to show up real
late at parties, and when they ask him how come, he always
says he's a card, this fellow he always says he wants to give
the gin more time to age. Haw, haw . . ."
They talked about the Stock Market.
"I see by the paper there was some pretty heavy selling last
Thursday and Friday. . . /'
"It doesn't mean a thing. Probably just some of the big boys
driving prices down to make a killing. . . /*
"I'm in it up to my neck, and I got a great kick out of my
wife. Broker told me the other day she bought quite a chunk
of oil not much margin, of course and I couldn't figure
where she would have got hold of that much money. Well, sir,
it turned out she put her furs and jewelry in hock. . . ."
"Friend of mine paid twenty per cent interest on some bor
rowed money the other day and got it all back in a week, plus
plenty more. . . ."
"Sometimes it all seems completely crazy, but, the way I fig
ure, we're on a permanent plateau. . . ."
And Politics.
"Al Smith was all right, but, hell, Hoover's a business
man, and you don't have to worry with the Republicans in
there. . . ."
"The Democrats are finished. You stop to think, they've only
elected one president in nearly forty years. . . ."
"Yes, and he was a mistake. I've always said Wilson should
have been impeached for some of his crackpot ideas. It's not
our funeral if people in Europe or anywhere else want to have
a war. Let 'em settle their own problems. . . ."
And a National Idol.
Burial at Sea 43
"I simply swoon when he sings 'The Vagabond Lover.' . . ."
"So do I, but the men hate him. George that's my husband
-swears he's going to smash the radio. . . ."
And the Best-Seller.
"I'd be afraid to go out on the street wearing a green hat
now. . . ."
"I felt sorry for her. But then George read the book and he
said she was nothing but a nymphomaniac., and I hadn't
thought of her that way, and . . ."
In the lounge the Filipino band, decked out in white trou
sers and striped blazers, assaulted a song "Running wild . . .
I've lost control."
1929. November. A decade was ending, and more than that.
The last carefree age the world would know for many years
was dying. Who could have foreseen the malignant forces al
ready moving? Who would have believed that bread lines
would soon be forming in the streets of American cities?
"Brother, can you spare a dime?" Or that other men, unhinged
with ambition, would soon be spreading death across the
world, saying: "The Democracies are decadent."
The frivolous era was passing, and we were moving into the
shadows.
"Running wild . . . I've lost control."
From below decks came the frantic clash and clangor of a brass
cymbal. That would be Leong Tong signaling the dinner hour.
Dinner in steerage! Steerage passengers lived a communal Me,
just at the ship's water line. It was the cheapest passage across
the Pacific, designed primarily for Orientals. During the first
few days of the voyage the other passengers, both in the hold
and on the upper decks, stared at us in open curiosity. We "lost
face." Then they learned we were students and commended
44 East Wind Rising
us for traveling steerage. In general, poor people were dis
tinctly unpopular in the 1920*3.
In the hold that night people from all sides were converging
on the long wooden tables. It looked like the rush in the sub
way at six o'clock, but with a curious difference. There was no
jostling or pushing. Each person, without actually pausing,
made way for the other. Later I discovered that this is a char
acteristic of Chinese crowds. No matter how jammed the
street, a coolie balancing a long carrying-pole can always go
through. A ricksha somehow navigates the thickest mass in an
alley. I have seen Chinese swarm over every inch of space on
the sides and tops of the cars in a freight train. Yet if one more
could get a foothold, there was always room for him.
This kind of courtesy the natural consideration for the
other person's need for space has become instinctive in the
Far East. ( Orientals can be brutally callous in other ways. ) It
probably came from plain necessity, the result of the terrible
overcrowding. In China and Japan and Java and certainly in
India there are just too many people for the amount of avail
able space. Two people are always occupying or moving to
ward the same square foot of space. Hence, courtesy in public
has become almost a reflex. It lies beneath the almost disinter
ested kindness that astonishes white men so much at first. It is
the lubricant that makes life bearable in an overcrowded land.
Consequently, living in steerage constituted no problem for
the Chinese and Japanese on the ship. We quickly adjusted to
the cramped quarters, the steamy air, the eternal necessity to
wait. No doubt our own forebears, for the most part, came to
America in circumstances pretty much like these. How did they
make love, I wondered, in the midst of so many people?
Each cabin held ten bunks or more, set in tiers against the
bulkheads. Being ten together, we had a cabin to ourselves,
but there was too little floor space for all of us at the same time.
At first we went to bed at night and rose in the morning in re-
Burial at Sea 45
lays. Then, like the other passengers, we went out in the corri
dors to dress and undress. Without a sign of embarrassment the
men stripped down to their underwear; the women, wrig
gling like escape artists in a vaudeville act, contrived to un
dress inside their kimonos.
Everything in steerage operated on the cafeteria principle.
There were queues for the removable copper washbasins,
queues for hot water, queues for the baths; we learned how to
wait.
There was no queue, however, for meals. Leong Tong and
his aides brought the food to long wooden tables which were
innocent of linen and rubbed smooth from years of use and
many hands. In front of each place, depending on whether the
food that day was to be Japanese or Western, chopsticks or
cutlery weighted down a paper napkin. Most of the time the
dishes were Japanese rice, fish, thin, crackly squares of blue-
green seaweed, and daikon, a giant radish pickled to be sweet
or pungent. Frequently the main dish for breakfast was miso-
shiro, a thick bean soup with a smoky flavor. The Japanese in
sist that it dispels a hangover.
Leong Tong, the steward, was a Chinese, plump and pros
perous-looking, with a round, glistening face. He wore white
coats which were a size too small, so that he invariably looked
like something half squeezed from a tube. He had a calm,
knowing manner and massive dignity. So far as I could tell, he
spoke Japanese and Chinese equally well. But his English, usu
ally so fluent, would fail at odd moments no doubt when it
was wiser not to understand. For example, he readily told of
his wife and family in Canton, and how, although Chinese, he
happened to have signed on a Japanese ship. "Work cheap in
galley first, then catch this job. Maybe topside steward bime-
by." But when I asked what he thought of Japan and how the
Japanese treated him, his face went blank and he said he did
not understand. From time to time he smuggled desserts from
46 East Wind Rising
first class to our table, beaming as he passed them around and
murmuring: "You like 'urn? Allasame Mock Hockins, yop?" He
meant the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco.
He did not assign the tables, but we went to the same one
each day and gradually it became ours. Even when we were
late, we found it unoccupied. A Russian bound for Shanghai, a
Filipino boxer and his manager going to Manila, and a loqua
cious Japanese, a Member of Parliament, became regulars at
the table. The Member of Parliament, like politicians the world
around, talked with everyone in steerage who would listen, in
cluding the sailors and even the Chinese. Who knows whence a
vote may come someday?
The Russian said he had escaped across Siberia during the
Revolution and settled in Harbin. It is not unlikely; China
swarmed with White Russians in those years. Harbin is (or
was) a lovely old city in Manchuria, originally built by Rus
sians. It was like a European oasis on the dreary northern
plain. Wide, tree-lined avenues connected the squares in the
center of the city. The gilded minarets on the churches turned
to red-gold in the late afternoon sun. At night balalaikas tin
kled in the little cafes, and anyone, even the wife of a consular
clerk, could afford to hire a complete Russian orchestra for a
party.
At that time Harbin was the control point for an unusual
railway, the Chinese Eastern. The Chinese and Russians jointly
owned and operated it. Russians held most of the administra
tive posts. The railway served, not only as a Soviet foothold in
Manchuria, after Moscow had renounced her other concessions
in China, but as a valuable channel for propaganda.
The Russian on the ship had been a clerk in the Harbin
office. He enjoyed describing his life there. All the White Rus
sians were poor, he said, hence none was really poor. They had
picnics on the Sungari River, with the beautiful Dossias and
Olgas, who also were poor and expected nothing but a little
vodka or kuass and conversation.
Burial at Sea 47
One night, after another anecdote, the Russian paused,
twisted the long holder on his cigarette, and struck a match.
"Then a new manager came from Moscow/' he said. "He
brought new regulations. Phtt! Only Communists could work
on the railroad. Of course, if we wished, we could apply for
membership in the party. Some did and kept their jobs. Some
left. I did not stay." He shrugged his thin shoulders. Sadness
came into his face.
"Wouldn't it have been simpler to join the party?" someone
asked. "You could pretend to be a Communist."
A curious expression, a mingling of pain and scorn, twisted
the Russian's face. "Perhaps," he said. "But I would rather
starve than join them. And I almost did/'
The Filipino boxer seldom spoke. He ate his meals in si
lence. If anyone spoke to him, he answered in a monosyllable,
glowering. Now he suddenly burst out: "What the hell differ
ence does it make how you pick up a buck? Everybody's gotta
eat."
"True," said the Russian. "But sometimes you have to choose
between your stomach and your soul."
"No contest," said the boxer. "Always eat."
"In Japan," said the Member of Parliament, "we are very
worried about ah Marxism."
The Russian smiled knowingly. "In the universities?"
"Yes, mostly the universities. The students talk about it.
They hold meetings. It has become popular with the mo-bo
pardon me, that is Japanese slang for 'modern boy.' "
"You will find the same in other countries," said the Russian.
"It is no accident."
In mid-ocean a fearful storm swept up from the south. For
three days the ship heeled over to starboard. Tremendous
gusts of wind pushed her over until the angle was so steep you
48 East Wind Rising
could hardly walk. Then, painfully, creaking and cracking in
every joint, she would struggle to right herself. Through the
howling of the wind you could hear dishes and glassware shat
tering.
The hold was like a pesthouse. Meals ceased. Sleep became
impossible. The passengers lay in the bunks, retching and
struggling.
On the third day the wind died down and it was possible to
go on deck.
The sea was a devil's playground. Thick, dark clouds hung
curiously low over the water. The Shinyo seemed to be moving
through a vast, murky room. Towering waves bore down on
the port side. They moved with terrible majesty, like great
black beasts.
In the hold a woman died.
She was old and alone. Nobody knew much about her. No
body could say when death came to her. No doubt she had
been frightened and filled with longing, lying in the bunk. No
body could say ... An old woman, nameless and faceless
among the many in steerage. Leong Tong told us what little in
formation there was. From some letters and her passport, it ap
peared she had lived near Fresno, California, for almost thirty
years. They found a snapshot of a lunch counter with a
wooden-faced Japanese staring from behind it. Evidently the
woman and her husband had had some lettuce property, too.
He had been killed in a traffic accident. She had sold out and
taken passage for Japan. She had a sister there, also a widow.
That was all.
For once Leong Tong's varnished impassiveness cracked.
The mask softened. He sighed and said quietly: "Must put 'um
in sea."
A tingle of horror went through me. "You mean bury her at
sea?"
He nodded.
"But why? Why not take her body home for burial?"
Burial at Sea 49
"No can/' lie said. "No can wait so long for Yokohama."
Around ten o'clock that night the ship's engines slowed. At
quarter-speed the ship was unusually quiet.
Silently, people began moving toward the stern. They clus
tered on the ladders leading to the upper decks, climbed up on
the rails, and stood in a half-circle around the shapeless form
laid out on deck. The light was deceptive. The woman's body
had been sewed inside a weighted sack and placed on a long
wooden board. A priest stood beside it now, white-robed and
still.
The storm had gone. Hardly a whitecap whispered in the
ocean. A waning moon kept scudding in and out of the broken
clouds.
An American voice murmured: "Look, we're turning."
Barely moving, the ship began nosing to starboard. When it
pointed due north, it stopped. In Japanese funeral rites, the
body is placed with the head to the north.
The priest blew a thin, reedy note on a flute. At the signal
the engines went dead.
An eerie stillness settled over the ship. The silence was
heavier and deeper without the throbbing engines and the
swish of the wake. The Shinyo rocked gently in the swell. The
only sound was an occasional splash against the side. She was a
ghost ship, adrift in a nameless sea.
The flute squealed again. Four sailors stepped forward, and
each gripped a corner of the board. Lifting the body, they
walked slowly to the rail. The priest followed, murmuring
prayers. The sailors set the foot of the board on the rail. Two
stepped aside. The other two remained at the other end, hold
ing the board level.
The priest prayed for another moment. Then he spoke to the
sailors. Slowly they began raising the head end of the board.
The body would slide into the sea, feet first.
A strange sound, a mingled sigh and murmur, came from
the people watching. They stirred uneasily. In a low, urgent
50 East Wind Rising
voice a woman said: "Get me out o here, Charles. I can't look
at this."
Slowly, inch by inch, the sailors raised the board, tilting it to
ward the sea. The body did not move. Still higher. And still, at
this steep angle, the body clung to the smooth wooden surface.
Suddenly the clouds parted. In bright moonlight the scene
was like a strange, Dali-esque painting. The priest, robed in
white and wearing a tall black helmet, stood facing the motion
less form on the plank. No one moved or spoke. The two sail
ors, both short men, slowly raised the board. I had an illusion
of seeing the woman's face beneath the shroud. Her sightless
eyes seemed fixed on the moon.
Abruptly the clouds closed again and the moon disappeared.
In that instant the body moved slightly. It slid downward with
a sudden rustling sound. It seemed eager for the dark water be
low.
There was a splash. Then silence infinite silence in the sky,
over the sea, on the ship lying dead in mid-ocean.
The ship's engines came to life. The decks shuddered. White
water boiled around the stern, like an ivory fan opening. The
whistle roared once and the vastness swallowed the sound.
Chapter V
TOKYO BAY
IN THE OUTER APPROACHES o Yokohama harbor a light stabbed
through the darkness. Another blinked far away, then another
and another. Soon the lights twinkled all around the Shinyo
Maru like a necklace of stars. A burst of excited laughter swept
over the decks. The Shinyo was inching in toward land, en
gines at dead slow. She would dock in the morning. For hours
the Japanese passengers had been milling around the decks,
pacing from side to side. It was after midnight now. Their eyes
strained toward shore. The "stoical" Japanese! Even the sailors,
to whom this must have been an old story, occasionally leaned
over the rail, peering ahead. When the lights appeared, mere
pinpoints in the blackness, a woman said: "There is Japan.
How lovely!"
Yokohama harbor and Tokyo Bay every drop of water
there holds something of America.
In these waters just over one hundred years ago Matthew Cal-
braith Perry, of the U.S. navy, anchored his warships. He came
on a peaceful mission, but the gunports were open. Rows of
cannon eyed the green, pine-covered coast of Japan.
The year was 1853.
Even at that late date Japan was still the "Hermit King-
52 East Wind Rising
dom," closed to most of the world. The government permitted
a few foreigners to live and trade at one small port. No others
could enter. Nor could any Japanese leave, on pain of death.
For over two hundred years Japan had remained aloof.
This long isolation is one of the keys to understanding mod
ern Japan. It explains much that came later.
In the sixteenth century, at about the time Shakespeare was
in his prime, the lords of Japan began to feel uneasy about the
Europeans coming into the country. The Spaniards and Dutch,
warring on the sea, connived unceasingly against each other on
land. Each demanded that the other be barred from trade with
Japan. Both intrigued with ambitious Japanese satraps. Even
in the sphere of religion there was rivalry., Jesuit pitted against
Franciscan and so on, endlessly. Europe's chief exports to the
Orient in that period were her eternal quarrels.
More important, the shoguns began to fear the rapid spread
of Christianity in Japan. Thousands of Japanese had adopted
the foreign faith. Nobody knew how many. Did they constitute
a potential ''fifth column" for the European Powers? There is a
story, true or not, that a Spanish sea captain openly admitted
that missionaries assisted the conquests of Spain by undermin
ing the loyalty of the people before any troops arrived. In any
event, the shoguns finally ordered all foreigners to leave Japan.
Not long afterward they set out to erase every vestige of the
Christian religion.
People died in horrible and obscene orgies if they refused
to recant. Parents saw children roasted alive over grills. Boiling
mineral water ate the flesh from the limbs of the Christians,
Women, stripped, were made to crawl through the streets on
hands and knees, publicly raped by lepers and convicts, then
thrown into vats with snakes. Japanese tortured and Japanese
submitted to torture. The nation produced both the persecutor
and the martyr. A Frenchman in the employ of the Dutch East
India Company, one Frangois Caron, witnessed the terrible
Tokyo Bay 53
purges. He wrote that the torments "were borne by the poor
Christians with constancy to a miracle/'
For all their cruel ingenuity, the shoguns never completely
killed Christianity in Japan. It lived on in secret. But they did
succeed in^other objectives. They isolated the country from vir
tually all contact with foreigners. Also, they taught the people
to fear and suspect all Westerners. Thus, when Portugal sent
emissaries to re-establish relations, the Japanese beheaded
them on the beach where they came ashore. When foreign
ships approached, gunfire met them; an American ship carry
ing Japanese survivors of a shipwreck was driven away. For
eign seamen who succeeded in reaching shore from shipwrecks
were imprisoned.
For over two hundred years the door stayed closed. Then
Perry came.
He dropped anchor in the bay, defying Japanese orders to go
elsewhere, and marched toward Tokyo with some three hun
dred sailors and marines. It was a dangerous gamble. Also, it
was "an act of aggression," as we would say today. The com
modore had his instructions from Washington, however, and
he carried them out to the letter. A treaty was obtained at gun
point.
What was the reason for such drastic action?
American traders had found a short cut to the Orient. In
Washington they were talking about a transpacific route to
China, quicker access to the tea and silk markets. By 1850 Cali
fornia was in American hands. Yankee merchants, studying the
map, perceived that a direct route from San Francisco would
save a considerable amount of time. The Committee on Naval
Affairs reported to Congress:
54 East Wind Rising
"The establishment of a line of steamers on the Pacific would
place New York within less than 60 days of Macao. The trade
with China in sailing vessels, which go around the Cape, now
labors under a great disadvantage in the length of time re
quired for the voyage. It may be assumed that an average of
ten months is required to make the return. . . ."
But the ships would need ports where they could put in for
water and provisions. Where else but Japan? To be successful
the line would have to have access to Japanese facilities. No
doubt Congress made this abundantly clear to the navy. Hence
Perry's firmness and daring. He coolly bluffed the Japanese,
asserting that even more powerful warships were on the high
seas, coming to join his squadron.
Some of the Japanese leaders urged their government to
fight Others, typically., counseled the "bamboo tactics/* They
said Japan should yield for the moment, learn to build ships
and guns like the Westerner, and then throw him out. It seems
probable that when the shoguns consented to a treaty, they
had this plan in mind.
Sooner or later, beyond doubt, Japan would have been
"opened" anyway. This was the Predatory Century. Europeans
were rushing to stake claims in China. They moved in exactly
like forty-niners in the gold fields. Force was the order of the
day in the Orient. So, Japan could not have escaped indefi
nitely. Destiny, in the form of commercial interest, gave the
opener's role to the United States.
Presently the first American consul came to take up his post in
Japan. Townsend Harris, of New York, was a serious, thought
ful man, alert and curious by nature. He had had some experi
ence in the Orient. He wanted very much to see Japan. It is
difficult to imagine an American better equipped to represent
Tokyo Bay 55
his country there. His diary is a fascinating record of human
experience.
First, he is conscious of the drama:
"Monday, Aug. 18, 1856. A people almost unknown to the
world is to be examined and reported on in its social, moral
and political state; a new and difficult language to be learned;
a history, which may throw some light on that of China and
Korea, to be examined; and finally, the various creeds of Japan
are to be looked at."
With self-doubt he approaches his task:
"I hope I may so conduct myself that I may have honorable
mention in the histories which will be written on Japan and
its future destiny."
Like so many Westerners, he permits first impressions to cre
ate an extravagant picture of the Japanese:
"They are superior to any people east of the Cape of Good
Hope."
Then his attitude shifts. He says the Japanese are 'liars."
They spy on him, deliver diseased fowl to his cook, try in a
thousand ways to obstruct his work. They frustrate his efforts
to obtain what he considers ordinary, nonsecret data. "The gov
ernment carefully conceals all the statistics of population, agri
culture, commerce, manufactures, and military." To his out
raged amazement, they coolly ask him to write Washington
and request his own recall. Despair grips him, and he becomes
physically ill, sick with the sense of failure.
He sticks to his task and soberly examines Japanese social
customs. In a note on mixed bathing he writes:
"I cannot account for so indelicate a proceeding on the part
of a people so generally correct. I am assured, however, that it
is not considered as dangerous to the chastity of their fe
males; on the contrary, they urge that this very exposure les
sens the desire that owes much of its power to mystery and
difficulty/'
At on6 stage he considers the Japanese social structure sadly
56 East Wind Rising
medieval. Later he says: "In no part of the world are the la
boring classes better off than at Shimoda."
He is continually conscious of the drama of his mission:
"Thursday, Sept. 4, 1856. Slept very little from excitement
and mosquitoes the latter enormous in size. Men on shore to
put up my flag staff. Heavy job. Slow work. Spar falls; breaks
crosstrees; fortunately no one hurt. At last get a reinforcement
from the ship. Flag staff erected; men form a ring around it
and at two and half PM of this day, I hoist the 'First Con
sular Flag' ever seen in this Empire. Grim reflections omi
nous of change undoubted beginning of the end. Query if
for the real good of Japan?"
What a strange flash of clairvoyance!
"Grim reflections ominous of change undoubted begin
ning of the end . . /' Townsend Harris understood that his
mere presence on Japanese soil was a source of controversy.
But he could hardly have known the depth of feeling stirred by
the sight of a foreign flag and a foreign government official.
To the samurai., the warrior class, he symbolized Japan's con
fession of weakness, a fearful disgrace to men so proud they
would readily take their own lives for much less. Moreover, to
them he was a barbarian. In the good old days they would have
summarily dealt with him. But the good old days were passing.
The samurai must have sensed that their way of life, their spe
cial position would soon go. They must have shared his "grim
reflections ominous of change/'
The statesmen and scholars of Japan, however, accepted the
new day with varying degrees of approval. Realists recognized
that Japan could no longer keep the door closed. The clock,
stopped in 1630, had started again. Some were anxious to learn
Western mechanical techniques if for no other reason than to
make Japan militarily strong. Intellectuals looked ahead to the
day when they would have access to Western learning, to a
world only dimly perceived.
Between the various groups a cleavage developed. And this
Tokyo Bay 57
is an important point to examine. For this same cleavage per
sisted. It lasted from 1855 up to the hour of Pearl Harbor and
played its part in influencing the policies of Japan. In the 1930'$
the throwback type of Japanese army officer was still con
temptuous of "politicians" and "intellectuals/' still ignorant of
the world, still prone to resolve political problems by the
sword. A distinguished newspaperman, the late Hugh Eyas,
described this attitude in Government by Assassination.
An unusual man left an earlier picture of this attitude, in his
autobiography. His name was Yukichi Fukuzawa. He was
eighteen years old when Perry came to Japan. He became a
diplomat, a linguist, a writer, a student of astronomy, book
keeping, physics, chemistry, and modern armament. Every
thing interested him. If he had been sent as a consul to the
United States, he no doubt would have been as effective for his
country as Townsend Harris was for his.
Fukuzawa went to America in the first Japanese-built ship
to cross the Pacific. American hospitality impressed him. "They
did everything for us and could not have done more. To use
our Japanese expression, it was as if our host had put us in the
palm of his hand to see that we lacked nothing/'
Again, after the ship had undergone extensive repairs in San
Francisco, and the captain asked for a bill, he says: "We were
met with a kindly smile and were obliged to sail away with our
obligations unpaid."
Studying Western political forms, he developed an admira
tion for George Washington. He asked about Washington's
family, thinking that he would pay his respects. To his surprise,
nobody could tell him where to find any Washington indeed,
whether any descendants were living. Having the Japanese
feeling for the memory of great men, Fukuzawa was deeply
puzzled.
Parliamentary customs were even more surprising. He was
told that two men were political enemies, and comments: "But
these 'enemies' were to be seen at the same table, eating and
58 East Wind Rising
drinking with each other. It took me a long time before I could
understand these mysterious facts."
The world has changed very little in some respects since
1860. A Russian tried to bribe Fukuzawa into becoming a spy!
When he came home, he observed the cleavage between the
feudal mind and that which welcomed the end of the old era.
He recognized that his own position made him suspect as one
of those who "were trying to mislead the people and prepare
the way for Westerners to exploit Japan/' He had to take pre
cautions.
"There were, on one side, the agitating clans which clamored
at the point of arms for closing the country, and on the other
side was the united power of Western nations demanding the
'open door/ " he wrote. "There were almost daily assassinations.
The country had become a fearful place to live in. I tried to
live as discreetly as possible, for my chief concern had become
how I might escape with life and limb. Militarism ran wild."
How like the 1930'$ in Japan!
Not even the most ignorant and chauvinistic Japanese knight
could fail to read the handwriting on the wall. To survive,
Japan would have to acquire power military power plus
modern industry capable of supporting it. The Japanese de
termined to learn, to modernize, to become strong.
So, from Tokyo Bay, from the same waters where Perry an
chored, an astonishing group of men went to discover the se
crets of Western strength. There were only a handful and they
were hand-picked. They studied and copied, particularly weap
ons. They remained abroad for years, examining machines and
techniques, like shoppers in a vast department store. They
chose army organization methods from France and later from
Germany, naval building and tactics from Britain and the
Tokyo Bay 59
United States, communications from one country, educational
systems from another, medicine and sanitation from others.
Primarily, however, they focused on the study of arms and the
use of arms.
Soon Japan tested her new weapons in a war with China. It
was an easy victory. A few years later, in what they considered
a necessary gamble, they fought imperial Russia. The "Pearl
Harbor" of that war was Port Arthur; the Japanese attacked
first and declared war later. Again they won.
Out of these two wars came another lesson, the next step in
the education of a people studying modern manners. They
learned that power politics is as important as military power
if you are to consolidate your gains.
In the war with China the Japanese occupied a peninsula on
the mainland. They expected to keep it as part of the spoils of
war. Other nations had their "spheres'* in China, and Japan
now attempted to get in the game. No luck. Three European
governments forced her to withdraw from the peninsula. Need
less to say, morality had nothing to do with it, for a few years
later Russia calmly annexed the same territory.
But the situation changed after the war with Russia. By that
time Russian maneuvers in Asia worried the other European
Powers more than Japan's efforts to get in the game. Thus,
when Japan checked Russian expansion by force, a great round
of applause came from the chancelleries. The peace treaty was
signed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This time Japan was
allowed to keep a peninsula Korea. There were no objections
now to letting her have a foothold on the mainland, in territory
adjacent to the Russian sphere in Manchuria.
All these events Perry, the British bombardment of Kago-
shima, and the maneuverings after two wars were lessons in
power.
The big nations, the big Power units, constantly aligned and
realigned in ever-changing combinations. Now A and B are
allies. Next time they may be enemies. Each move responded
60 East Wind Rising
strictly to considerations of self-interest. Statesmen paid lip
service to principles, the sanctity of treaties, international mo
rality, historic bonds of friendship, blah-blah-blah. But every
body understood that this was sentimental nonsense.
It was a tough world that Japan entered. If she soon began
comporting herself like a Dead End Kid, it is hardly surprising.
Tokyo Bay . . .
Some fifty years after Perry had entered Japan, American
warships again anchored in these waters. They were on a trip
around the world, ordered by Theodore Roosevelt. Not the
least of their objectives was to give the new Power unit, Japan,
some idea of America's naval might. As each American battle
ship dropped anchor, a Japanese battleship took station facing
it.
So quickly had they learned.
Chapter VI
NATIONAL
SCHIZOPHRENIA
THERE is JAPAN/' the woman on the ship had said. "How
lovely!"
Where was the loveliness? I stood on the docks in Yokohama,
looking at shipyards, steel mills, smoking factories, and a vast
confusion of shops and foundries. From the city came the clank
and roar of machines. The air quivered with a feeling of furious
activity. Beyond the city I could se^ a residential district, the
Bluff, and that was disappointing, too; Western-style houses
covered the heights. (I did not know that they had been built
primarily for Westerners. ) It was like any American industrial
city. Not even Lafcadio Hearn, who seldom took off his rose-
colored glasses when he wrote about Japan, could have found
any beauty here.
To conceal my disappointment I said to the Japanese immi
gration officer: "Busy place."
He beamed. "Very busy. Japan got lots big factories. Get
more all time."
This, I learned, was typical. Japan is a fairyland, and the
people love the mountains and forests, the silvery lakes, the
beaches. If you remark on the delicate beauty of a landscape,
they quietly agree. But if you express surprise over the vast
industrial plant, they explode with pleasure.
62 East Wind Rising
"Japan," someone has said, "is a chunk of the mechanized
West in the middle of the agricultural East." The Japanese take
great pride in this.
On the way to Tokyo from Yokohama the train passed
through a drab and melancholy district. More industry. Flimsy
little houses lined both sides of the railway; they were the
homes of factory workers. By any standard but that of the
Orient these people were poor. The steel worker had a box of
rice the size of your two fists, plus a dab of fish or pickled plum,
for lunch. (The Japanese infantryman marched and fought
all day on the same ration.) His principal pleasure was the
public bath, "the poor man's club." It cost him a penny or two.
His wife seldom had more than one dress-up kimono. His son
wore a plain, dark blue school uniform every day. His daugh
ter, in all probability, had been indentured to a textile mill for
a lump sum. Or, if she was pretty and seemed to possess some
talent, she might be leased to a syndicate to be trained as a
geisha. Labor unions existed, but in that day they were a joke.
In such conditions you would expect to find fertile ground
for Communism. We found some Communists among the uni
versity students, but apparently there were very few among the
working classes. For one thing, the government fought any
form of Leftism tooth and nail. The police were not above
using torture in order to extract information from a Communist.
Apart from that, however, Japan had barely emerged from the
feudal era. The tradition of obedience came naturally to the
people. Moreover, they were imbued with a certain mystique,
an undefined but powerful sense of belonging to a nation-
family, in which the image of the Emperor and one's ancestors
played a part. The Japanese did not reason this; he simply
felt it
Thus, in a remarkably few years Japan had built a great in
dustrial establishment and moved in formidably on world mar
kets. Only the long hours and low wages made it possible. The
Chinese Communists are attempting to build the same thing
National Schizophrenia 63
today, under the same forced draft. The Japanese of a genera
tion ago worked as he did simply because it did not occur to
him to demand a greater share of the goods he produced or
a greater reward for his labor. Even for the bare essentials,
life was an unrelenting struggle. Yet he managed to do a little
better than the bare essentials.
On the outskirts of Tokyo that day the train stopped while a
track crew finished some repairs. I was able to see into one
of the little houses opposite the car window. The shoji had
been thrown open and a mattress lay over the sill, airing. In
side was the main room of the house, where the family ate,
slept, and received friends. Except for a low table, there was
no furniture visible. (The Japanese sleep on thick mattresses
on the floor and put them in closets, clearing the room, during
the daytime. ) Everything spoke of poverty.
Two small objects softened the picture, however. One was
a vase holding a few branches of some shrub. Beside the vase
stood a slab of dark wood shaped like a rough crescent and
highly polished. Together they formed a design, clean and
simple. The color and relationship were pleasing. They drew
your eye away from the worn matting, the naked electric light
bulb dangling from the ceiling, the weathered walls.
From time to time, as the train moved on, I caught glimpses
of other such rooms. In each there was some small focal point
of beauty. To buy even flowers or a vase must have represented
a sacrifice to these people. Yet the instinct toward decoration
had been obeyed by them.
No wonder the Japanese have built temples so beautiful
that, as Charles Lindbergh remarked, "they should be kept
under glass.**
64 East Wind Rising
But the Hotel Hosenkaku was neither beautiful nor very Japa
nese. It stood on a noisy intersection in Kanda, a district in
downtown Tokyo, with a motorcycle repair shop on one side
and a wine merchant on the other. It was drafty and cold,
shabby in appearance, a hangout for Japanese traveling sales
men. We went there because it was cheap. And it turned out
to be wonderful.
The entire staff four maids, a room boy, the owner, and
his wife rushed outside when the taxis drew up at the en
trance. They bowed low, as though on cue, chanting "Irasshai,
irasshai. Welcome, welcome." Did any of us speak Japanese?
No? Never mind. The owner delivered a little speech, anyway.
The room boy translated in copy-book English. "We are most
perfectly honored. . . . Gentlemen are first foreign guests to
honor Hotel Hosenkaku. . . . We shall try most hard to render
comfortable and happiness. . . . Now please to come inside."
Well, you may go to all the Ritzes and Savoys and Waldorf s
in the world, dropping names and hundred-dollar bills, and
never receive such a greeting.
Inside, the owner led us directly to the telephone. It was a
copy of die ancient metal types you still find today in some
Paris hotels. They were very expensive, and even businessmen
waited for years to get a telephone in Japan then. "Of course,
the American gentlemen know how to use a telephone/' said
the manager. "If not, the room boy will always oblige/' He was
very proud of his telephone.
They led us to the bedrooms, which were small, dark, and
shabby, like the rest of the hotel, and furnished foreign style
with the undersized chairs and tables which fit most Japanese
but very few Westerners.
The maids and the room boy stood watching like curious
children while we unpacked. They pecked on the portable
National Schizophrenia 65
typewriters and oh'ed and ah'ed over our neckties, which were
Joe College, for the most part, and pretty bad. A dollar bill,
however, left them unimpressed; their own yen notes are larger
and more decorative. A girl's photograph stopped the show
completely. "Kirei, kirei" they said. "Pretty, pretty." And one
asked: "Koibitor
"That mean sweet-u heart-u," said the room boy, covering a
grin with his hand.
When they learned we were going on to China, one of the
maids giggled and said something to the room boy. The others
laughed.
"She say maybe you find Chinese husband for her," he said.
"We call that liands across the sea/ "
When he translated, the little maids rocked with laughter,
and the one who asked for a Chinese husband pretended to
slap at him. He must have embroidered the remark somewhat.
Eroticism in painting and drama is as old as Japan itself. The
goings-on of the ladies and gentlemen of the medieval courts
have been portrayed in detail in words and pictures. Some of
the most beautiful Japanese screens are devoted to this theme.
Plays during one period became so spicy that the authorities
suppressed them. One of the most interesting Japanese lessons
I ever had dealt with this period and the plays themselves.
I never studied more diligently.
But for some reason the Japanese consider the Chinese even
more expert in erotic pursuits. They tell countless stories of
Chinese ingenuity and credit the Chinese with the secret lore
of love potions and philters. Ching P'ing Mei, a sixteenth-
century Chinese novel, is a long legend of amorous acrobatics.
To the Japanese all Chinese are like the characters in the novel,
busily slipping into someone else's bed, just as the English
often picture the French.
(When you consider it, in fact, a parallel appears between
the British and the Japanese, on the one hand, and the French
and the Chinese, on the other. Here are two seafaring peoples
66 East Wind Rising
inhabiting two island nations that are highly industrialized
and dependent on overseas trade. In manner both appear
wooden and unemotional. Both endure hardship and pain in
silence. Both respect authority at all levels. Even in the matter
of food and cooking they are alike largely uninterested. And
here are the Chinese and French, both vivid, voluble, highly
excitable, highly individualistic, great talkers and humorists.
Politically both believe the least government is the best, and
both have gone through long periods of political chaos and,
in my opinion, even the iron Communist control will not speed
ily change this Chinese characteristic. Both adore food and
wine and, as a result, both have developed cooking to a high
art and produced an uncountable number of complex and(
beautiful dishes. So the generalization goes on and, of course,
like all generalizations, it has its flaws. )
Someone has said: "An Englishman loves France as a man
loves his mistress."
The Japanese feeling about China is different. They cherish
Chinese culture and admire much that has come from that
ancient civilization. But in the thirties they considered the
Chinese soft, luxury-loving, decadent, always susceptible to the
"silver bullet." They expressed contempt for the Chinese fight
ing forces and, in general, considered the Chinese (and cer
tainly other Asiatic people) inferior to themselves. Chiang Kai-
shek's government had just come to power. It could scarcely be
said, however, that he "governed" China yet. At best he had
achieved only an uneasy truce with the bigger war lords. A
little later, as Chiang gained more control, his regime began to
disturb the Japanese militarists. But, on the whole, at that time
China looked like easy picking.
National Schizophrenia 67
All the rooms in the Hosenkaku were Western in style except
the bath, which was Japanese. Everybody used it, even the
hotel staff. The room boy showed us the routine. First you used
the handsome little wooden buckets to throw water over your
self. Then soap. Then more water to sluice off the soap. Finally
you climbed into a vat the one at the Hosenkaku was big
enough for three persons and sat there as long as you liked,
in extremely hot water, soaking and full of euphoria. The
Japanese custom is more elaborate and certainly more fun than
solitary bathing. Also, at first it can be a little startling.
On my first night at the hotel I put on a yukata, a cotton
dressing gown, went down the hall, and slid back the panel at
the entrance to the bathroom. A lady was standing there, wet
and shiny. Instantly she covered herself, in the classic manner
of a Greek statue, and turned her back. I closed the panel,
mumbling apologies. A half -hour later, having ascertained that
the room was empty, I went inside. First I merely poured the
water over my shoulders. But then I threw a bucketful up to
ward the ceiling. It felt like warm rain. Then I threw another
and another, and, of course, burst into song. With all this splash
ing I did not hear the panel slide open. One of the chamber
maids walked in. She was fully dressed. Evidently I looked
like a startled fawn, for she burst into laughter and said: "Go-
yukkuri kudasai" which means roughly "Please relax." She
brought over a small wooden stool and indicated by signs that
I should sit down. Then she took a small hand towel and, in a
thoroughly businesslike fashion, began scrubbing my back. She
was tiny, but amazingly strong. In no time my back began to
sting. I indicated I had had enough. The maid looked puzzled,
but handed me the towel and departed. For all the interest she
displayed, she might as well have been currying a horse.
Townsend Harris was mistaken when he called mixed bath-
68 East Wind Rising
ing "so indelicate a proceeding.'* In the Victorian view, of
course, nudity could seldom be innocent, especially in the
presence of the opposite sex. It is in Japan, however. On many
occasions later, particularly in remote country inns, I saw
mixed bathing. If anyone else was in the room, a woman would
turn her back during the soaping and rinsing. Then, as she
stepped into the pool, she would cover herself with the hand
towel. On a memorable afternoon in Hailar, in Manchuria, I
had the company of no fewer than seventeen geishas in the
bath. They were more modest in the process and certainly less
self-conscious than a well-stacked woman sunbathing in a
bikini.
Today in the cities a different type of public bath has de
veloped. Here the client has a private room. A pretty little girl
conducts the proceedings. First she gives him a bath and then
a bone-cracking massage. Sex is very much in the air, but not in
the bargain. The little masseuse wears only a halter and very
short shorts. But, obviously to discourage hanky-panky, the
door is left unlocked and waitresses keep popping into the
room. One offers beer, another has tea, a third suggests fruit,
and so on. In short, privacy is a fiction and the setup is a
teaser. The customer may arrive with other ideas, but all he
gets is a bath and a rub.
This is plain prurience. Mixed bathing is a hot bath.
^O-jishin" means "Great Earthquake.'* It is a figure of speech,
symbol of the period in the late nineteenth century when Japan
stepped abruptly out of her medieval era and rushed pell-mell
to modernize and foreignize. The Great Earthquake brought
factories and railways. It put mailboxes on the streets and
Prince Alberts on the men. It changed the externals of Japan.
But the inner forms remained. Old beliefs and ways of think-
National Schizophrenia 69
ing survived, though badly shaken. Out of the shock o this
sudden change came tensions, doubt, and confusion.
The Japanese attempted to live in two different worlds at the
same time. Here was the warrior race, divinely descended,
endowed with the mysterious Japanese Spirit, superior to all
other peoples, capable of anything. In 1895 a Tokyo newspaper
serialized a sensational novel in which Japanese fleets engulfed
most of the British empire, sailed up the Thames, and took full
revenge for the British bombardment of Kagoshima.
And yet, Japan's science, her technology, and all the products
of these in fact, everything new and efficient came from for
eign brains. Doubts arose. Was Japanese superiority real?
A kind of national schizophrenia developed. In the thirties
what Japan needed was the psychiatrist's couch.
One day we came to a primary school in a village in the
north a long, two-story building. As we approached, the
windows suddenly filled with clusters of small, solemn faces.
Along the whole length of the building the children jumped up
from their desks to look, and remained staring until we were
out of sight. They were utterly silent, owl-eyed with curiosity.
Our host was a Japanese who had lived in New York and
taken graduate courses at Columbia. He laughed now.
"Quite a show," he said, "and typical of Japan. This village
is only a few hours by train from Tokyo, from modern Japan,
but I doubt that those children have ever seen a white man.
They dropped everything to look."
"As though they had seen the Abominable Snowman."
1 "Not far from it," he said. "It isn't only because you are tall
and fair-skinned. It's your eyes. Japanese demons have green
eyes, like yours. Blue is just as bad."
"They didn't seem frightened."
"Oh, no," he said. "At this stage they still believe all for
eigners are inferior to Japanese. The trouble begins a little
later." He related his own experiences. "If you study science,
particularly," he said, "the time comes when you begin to
JQ 'East Wind Rising
wonder about our alleged superiority. You begin to doubt
everything Japanese, even our culture. In studying, moreover,
you have to try to think like a Westerner. It is very hard to
think like a Japanese in the morning and like another person
in the evening. You get pulled every which way. And then,
there is the language problem to make things worse/'
Japanese is not as explicit as Western languages. It tends to
convey meaning by indirection, often by inference. It is
written in Chinese characters, and thus, over the centuries,
endless complexities of meaning and pronunciation have arisen.
Americans studying Japanese used to have a joke "This is the
e hitd of the *nin in *fin* " These are pronunciations of the same
character, "man," used in different circumstances in Japanese.
Newspapers using a complicated Chinese character frequently
set simple Japanese phonetic signs beside it to clarify it for the
reader. A Japanese politician told me he once lost an election
because the characters in his name are too difficult for the av
erage voter. '1 will change my name for the next election/' he
said.
The language is a wonderful vehicle for mood and feeling,
for poetry and philosophy. It probably conveys the misty
esoterics of Zen BuddMsm clearly to a student. But what tor
ture for the Japanese struggling to grasp the precisions of sci
ence in a language of indirection! The gears clash, our host
said. Frustration almost drove him to suicide.
Since he had mentioned religion, I wanted to ask him how
he felt about the Emperor, but hesitated for fear of offending
him. He opened the way himself, however, in discussing Jap
anese political forms.
"The Diet/' he said, "is not Parliament or the American Con
gress. Like so many other things in Japan, it is a foreign prod
uct which we attempt to graft on our own institutions. The
people don't understand democracy. When they think of gov
ernment at all, I imagine, they think of the Emperor and the
Elder Statesmen"
National Schizophrenia 71
"And the Emperor. Do you think of him as a divine being?"
He hesitated. Then he said quietly: "I think of him as a very
fine gentleman and a great spiritual force."
"Is that the well, the general feeling?''
"I couldn't say. Probably many people consider him a god.
I doubt that the educated upper classes do. It isn't something
we talk about. We seldom express our deepest feelings. Per
haps we would be less mixed up about many things if we did."
We found the Japanese students groping, searching. They
wanted change, social and economic change, but seldom de
scribed explicitly what new forms were needed. Like the young
men in many countries at the time, they were dissatisfied and
hunting for answers. Some thought they had found the an
swers in Communism. In the daybook from which we wrote
our reports there is this passage:
"At each of the universities, we have been able to get ac
quainted with groups. A large portion of the 100,000 students
of university rating in Tokyo are studying English or German.
. . . They seem much more concerned about social and polit
ical conditions than the average American collegian.
"We heard frequent talk of revolution; Marxian philosophy
is being absorbed quite widely by them, handed out in simple
doses for the less literate."
This was an understatement. Some of the Japanese students
were talking what is today recognized as a straight Communist
line. Whether there were "cells" in the schools or card-carry
ing students I do not know. However, that phrase "simple doses
for the less literate" is standard Communist technique. Some
experts must have been at work in the universities.
Very early the Japanese perceived that Communism was an
instrument of Soviet foreign policy and not merely an economic
and social theory. In 1922 the government outlawed the move
ment in Japan. Student organizations were ordered to dis
band. They retorted with a clandestinely issued manifesto
containing two significant demands "Hands off China" and
72 East Wind Rising
"Repeal the Peace Preservation Law." (The law prohibited
subversive political activity. )
You can see here the workings of long-range Communist
policy. The Communists already were established in China.
They had marked it for their own. Hence the agitation, via
Japanese student groups, for "Hands off China."
The army, of course, had other plans. The government might
talk peace. Indeed, in his year-end message to the Diet the
Prime Minister, Yukio Hamaguchi, said: "War among nations,
and racial animosities, are things of the past." But the milita
rists, eying China, coolly calculated the odds in a showdown
with Russia, as well. Some of the industrialists were with them;
some were not.
So, the many cleavages in Japan that arose from the Great
Earthquake were: a political system ill suited to the country
and not understood by the masses; unrest among the students;
the gathering struggle between the military and the civilians
for power.
One thing alone remained relatively unchanged by "O-jishin*
the Japanese woman's relation to her world.
We come now to Aldko-san.
Chapter VII
AKIKO-SAX
ON THE SCREEN Greta Garbo and the hero neared the moment
of parting. Japanese women in the dark theater sighed, mur
mured, and silently wept, luxuriating in grief.
"And now, good-by," Garbo's creamy voice sobbed.
From beside the screen came a male voice, also aquiver with
feeling. "Ima, sayonara."
' The "talkies" were new in Japan then. It was before the day
3f superimposed titles for the dialogue. Instead, a man stood on
stage, translating the lines of the players, women as well as
men, into Japanese. His own performance often surpassed
theirs. When the villain spoke, the translator snarled and
gnashed his teeth, like a samurai bent on slaughter. To convey
the words of a woman in love, he would pitch his voice to a
fluttering falsetto. The translator added a flavor to the movies.
"Good-by," Garbo said again, more slowly.
"Sa-yo-o-na-ra" groaned the translator.
The camera brought the farewell kiss into a closeup.
Akiko looked at the floor. Love scenes, she said, embarrassed
her. Especially the kissing scenes.
On the ship coming over, where I had first met her, she re
called the first kiss she had ever seen. In San Francisco, she
said, she had been riding in an automobile, and the car came
up behind a couple in an open convertible. She hesitated,
blushed, and giggled in embarrassment. "Suddenly," she said,
"they kiss."
"What of it?"
74 East Wind Rising
"But it is afternoon! On busy street! Everyone see!"
"If it's a real kiss," I said, "you don't notice the time or place.
Like to try it?"
Akiko looked at me gravely and without approval. "Kissing
is not Japanese custom/' site said. "And I am Japanese." She
walked away.
Indeed, she was Japanese consistently, unwaveringly Japa
nese.
She was short and delicately formed, with an oval face,
bright brown eyes, and dark hair. Her skin was ivory. She had
a silvery little voice full of unexpected cadence and color. Best
of all were her hands. Essays have been written about Japa
nese hands, and Akiko's were a perfect example long, supple,
beautifully contoured.
She had a thoughtful expression usually sweet, but
thoughtful. When something amused her, her smile was like a
sunburst, and the silver bells rang in her laughter.
Being young and unmarried, she was entitled to wear the
gayest kimono. She liked blue, all shades of blue, and she com
bined them with an unerring instinct for harmony. In kimono,
walking or dancing, Akiko seemed to float.
Essays also have been written about the exquisite qualities of
Japanese women their gentleness, their delicacy, and their
fragile daintiness. The first impact of these on a Western man is
apt to be shattering. Western women seldom possess these
qualities in the same degree; therefore the Japanese woman
seems like a creature from another world. Underneath, the
difference is not as great as it appears. A Japanese woman can
turn into a tigress, raging with volcanic emotions and capable
of direct and effective action.
Not that Akiko ever revealed this side. Once or twice I
caught a glimpse of her innermost feelings, but the instances
were rare. She seemed as secret and eternally serene as Fuji,
the sacred mountain.
"Akiko is my treasure," her father would say.
Akiko-ssn. 75
Unlike her, he prided himself on having acquired Western
ways. He was a wealthy businessman and he had to travel con
stantly. 'Tokyo is my home," he would say, "but New York is
my second home. Or perhaps Rio. Anywhere in the world I am
at ease." And he would add, somewhat aggressively: "I am not
like the old-fashioned Japanese. If one of my children should
wish to marry a foreigner, I would not say no."
Akiko lowered her eyes.
I took advantage of this to ask whether I might see her after
we reached Japan. "Of course, certainly. Take Akiko to the
movies like an American girl. You like cinema, don't you,
Akiko?"
"Yes, Father," she said, still staring at the deck.
On our first date in Japan, however, we went to a park in
Tokyo Ueno Koen. The kuruma, taxi, stopped across the
street from the gate. As we started toward it, I took Akiko's
arm. She pulled it away. A Japanese woman, she said, does not
need help to cross a street.
I was offended. I told her she sounded stuffy.
"What's mean "stuffy?"
"Never mind. I was only trying to be polite."
"Thank you. I'm sorry you anger. But our way is different."
We walked along the gravel paths, over gracefully arching
bridges, watching the carp and the goldfish. Considering the
Japanese genius for landscaping, Ueno is not a beautiful park.
I was disappointed, but Akiko was happy. I discovered that
where I looked at a whole scene, she admired a single detail
the shape of a branch, a reflection in the water. I saw surfaces.
She felt something beyond them. Her shy stiffness began to
ease. She smiled and talked more readily.
"Oh, park is good," she said. "Many time I walk in garden of
my home and make poem. Is right word 'poem' or 'poetry? I
wish I can speak English enough to say you my poem."
"I wish I could speak Japanese, Akiko-san. How do you say
TL love you' in Japanese?"
y6 East Wind Rising
Her eyes narrowed. She laughed, a hollow little laugh.
nese do not say that."
"What do they say?"
"They say many, many things, but not that."
"Then how do you know if somebody "
"They know. It not necessary say."
"People just sort of get the idea after a while, is that it?"
"Yes, that is our way. It's take long time. But maybe you
know first time, too."
"Now I'm confused," I said. "And I'm sorry if I offended
you."
She laughed again. This time the silver bells tinkled. "I teach
you Japanese saying. It is easy. Say 'Koi-wa shian-no hoka* "
I repeated it and asked what it meant.
She looked in her English phrase book. "It's mean, Xove is
blind,' " she said. "Yes, something like that."
"So love is not only silent but blind in Japan?"
"Yes, I think so. Now we talk other things, please."
We came to a bench on the pathway. Before we sat down,
Akiko drew a handkerchief from her obi. She flicked it over the
bench, dusting carefully first on my side, then on hers. If
there was any dust on that bench, however, it was totally in
visible. "Now," said Akiko, "please to sit down."
Ascend thy throne, O Lord and Master! Thy humble servant
has made it fitting.
Thus, with the subtle perfumes of deference and attention,
does the Japanese woman mesmerize a man. Whatever she
may think of him in her heart, she pretends he is the Lord of
the World. The Japanese, of course, expects it and takes it in
his stride. But to me it was completely devastating. Akiko
could make you feel like a combination of Hercules, Clark Ga
ble, and Winston Churchill.
It seems strange that the positions are reversed in the West.
Whereas the Japanese woman literally serves her man and con-
Akiko-saxi 77
siders tihis her rightful role whether he is worthy or not, the
American woman seems to resent her position.
As Akiko was dusting the bench, I suddenly caught a
glimpse of blood on her handkerchief and more on her hand.
"What is this?"
"Nothing." In a flash she wrapped the handkerchief around
her fingers and put her hand behind her back. "It not hurt."
I made her show me. One nail was splintered and the flesh
was torn on two fingers. I insisted on knowing how this hap
pened.
"In kuruma" she said. "Door shut. I not looking/'
When we left the taxi, she had refused, as usual, to let me
help her to the street. She had stepped down as I was paying
the fare. Without noticing her hand, I had slammed the door
on it. She had given no sign whatever.
We say misery loves company, and believe that sympathy
helps somehow. The Japanese idea is different. They try not to
show pain. Your friend suffers, albeit vicariously, on your ac
count, and in their view you have no right to bring even that
kind of pain to anyone else. I think the logic is sound.
Years later, when Japanese troops were fighting in China, I
went to tea one afternoon with a Japanese family. Everything
appeared normal in the home. The wife supervised and then
sat down and talked quietly with her guests. Afterward I
learned that on the morning of this very day they had received
word that their eldest son had been killed in battle.
Akiko's mother had died in childbirth. Akiko often spoke of
her in a curious manner, as though her mother still lived. I sup
posed that this was because, knowing so little English, she
usually spoke in the present tense. Besides, it was difficult
sometimes to know whether she meant her real mother or her
stepmother.
One day it was the day before we sailed for China she
said: "Please would you like meet my mother today?"
y8 East Wind Rising
I assumed that this was a formality, in some way connected
with the departure on the following day.
On the way, however, Akiko said: "You will not like Japa
nese grave, I think. It is dark and . . " She searched in the
phrase book. "Lonesome. Yes, here is word lonesome.' "
A moment later she stopped the taxi, saying she would get
some flowers,
"Let me get them.'*
"You do not know flowers," She pinched my wrist and made
a mischievous face. "You are baby."
She was in no way sad or depressed. On the contrary, she
prattled, pointed out the sights on the way, teased me some
more. I had never seen her so gay. "My mother will be glad to
see us," she said.
The taxi stopped in an outlying district of Tokyo, on a busy
street crowded with stores and shops. There was no indication
of a burial ground here, much less a parklike cemetery.
We entered a passageway that led between two buildings,
then between two more gray stone structures, which may have
been temples. Then we came into a square enclosure, sur
rounded by high walls. It was bleak and cold. The soui^i of
traffic outside, a mere hum, seemed to deepen the chilly si
lence.
Each grave was marked by a headstone about four feet high
and shaped somewhat like a stone lantern. They were set close
together, ranged in squares, bounded by narrow avenues.
Sticks of punk smoldered in front of some; fresh flowers in
vases decorated others.
An attendant came forward. AHko said a few words to him.
He disappeared among the headstones. "He prepare my
mother," Akiko said. "We walk a little/'
She walked slowly. Her sandals shuffled and hissed over the
flagstones. The bright colors in her kimono flamed amid the
dreary grayness. She talked about her mother without con-
Akiko-sm 79
straint and certainly without sadness. She spoke exactly as
though we were waiting to meet a living woman.
"She has never met American/' Akiko said. "I hope she like
you, yes, I hope so."
It was an eerie sensation.
The attendant beckoned. Akiko led the way along a path to
the grave. It was like the others, the headstone somehow like a
small shrine, with Chinese characters carved on one side. Thin
wisps of pale, gray-blue smoke floated upward from the sticks
of punk, freshly lighted, on the shelf.
Akiko took my arm and pulled me close to the headstone.
"This is my mother," she said cheerfully. She began arranging
the flowers, setting them in the two vases. I tried to help, but
broke the stems badly and knocked some out of the vases.
Akiko laughed. "I told you you are baby," she said.
When the flowers were all arranged, she stepped back a
pace. She bowed once and closed her eyes. A charming little
smile curved the corners of her mouth. She prayed only for a
moment, although it seemed much, much longer. Then she
bowed again and turned toward me. Her expression was radi
ant "My mother is happy," she said. "Now we go/*
The burial ground was far from her f ather s home, on the op
posite side of the city. Darkness had fallen by the time the taxi
drew up at the gate. Every other time she had said good-by
here. Now she told the driver to wait. "Come/* she said.
It was dark and still in the garden. A winter wind rustled the
branches of the plum trees. Her arms were like steel bands.
Time stopped. When I could speak again, I mimicked her
voice on the ship: "Kissing is not Japanese custom, and I am
Japanese."
"Please not laugh," Akiko whispered. "I say you good-by
now, American way/'
Chapter VIII
SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
THERE WAS GUNFIRE the first night.
Upriver from the university, rifles crackled and spat. The
sound came from somewhere near Canton. It ripped through
the chilly darkness, echoing across the campus and against the
walls of the room in the dormitory.
There was gunfire everywhere in China then. Across the
whole vast reach of the country, Chinese were killing Chinese.
They killed as soldiers, mercenaries, and bandits. They killed
unarmed peasants for loot and women and children who hap
pened to be in the way. Not infrequently they killed "foreign
devils/' too, in the sporadic eruptions of nationalist feeling
against the white man.
Battles flared up like brush fires, sometimes involving thou
sands of men, sometimes only a skirmish in a single village.
Powerful war lords and the Communists, who were weak at
that time, both contested the authority of the central govern
ment, the new government headed by Chiang Kai-shek. And
in this whirlpool of violence and chaos bandit gangs operated
purely for loot, food, and the rewards of kidnapping. They
struck like lightning, pillaging and killing, and disappeared be
fore any organized force could be brought against them.
Misery and hunger gripped the peasant. His only avenue of
escape, frequently, was to take arms as a mercenary or a ban
dit, The farmer boy gave his services to anyone who could feed
Sounds in the Night 81
him. Not that he wanted to risk his life in battle, but too often
the alternative was slow death by starvation. If he was
wounded, he lay where he fell. No medic rushed to him with
plasma and morphine. No aid station fought off the gangrene
in his torn flesh. If the government troops captured him in a
brush with the Communists, they would cut off his head in
public. If the Communists wanted to make an example of him,
he would suffer the "Death of a Thousand Cuts," in which an
artful torturer turns a man to mincemeat while keeping him
alive and conscious as long as possible.
So long as he survived, however, he did what hired fighters
have always done. He looted villages which were like his own
village. A peasant himself, he tortured peasants to make them
tell where rice or money was hidden. There was a great traffic
in actual photographs of these tortures men cutting off a
woman's breasts, perpetrating more unspeakable acts. You
could buy these photographs by the bale in China at that time.
This was December 1929 in a tortured land. There was no
peace. The sound of guns was as common as thunder.
I jumped out of bed that first night and ran to the window
of the dormitory. There was nothing to be seen, no flash of gun
fire in the blackness, no sampans fleeing down the river. A rifle
spoke somewhere, automatics answered in a staccato shatter
ing. Then silence. A moment later there was another rattle of
firing, followed by a longer silence.
The naked cement floor felt like a sheet of ice. I went back
to bed, shivering, pulled the blanket and my overcoat around
my shoulders, and wrote a note for the diary that I had just be
gun:
"Fighting broke out last night somewhere near Canton. Just
think a real battle on our first day here. A warlord, whose
name sounds like Fat Quail, is in the vicinity and apparently
his troops have clashed with the Kuomintang, the government
party. They say you never can be sure who's fighting who. We
82 East Wind Rising
heard about the various characters raising hell here, but hardly
expected to see it so soon. We came up the river from Hong
Kong yesterday/*
Coming up the river, no one spoke. The first sight of China
strikes you dumb.
China was movement and muffled thunder, animal smells,
vastness, and, above all, vitality riotous, cascading vitality.
Japan had been all greens and grays. China was red dragon's-
blood red and ancient yellow. Japan had felt clean and cool.
The breath of China was hot. Not weather-hot. A raw winter
wind was sweeping the river that day. The feeling of heat
rolled out in waves, as from a furnace the heat of so many hu
man beings, fiercely alive and hotly spawning still more life.
China leaped out like a tiger.
Approaching Canton, the river boat maneuvered through
fleets of Chinese boats, hoarsely whistling them out of its path.
Thousands more lay massed against both banks of the river.
Great ocean-going junks with lateen sails and brightly painted
eyes looked down on sampans carrying whole families. They
were all packed solidly together, side creaking against side, a
forest of spars, a floor of gently heaving decks. You could have
walked from the middle of the Pearl River to the Canton
wharf, a thousand yards away.
These were the river people. They lived out their days on
the junks and sampans. They fished, carried cargo and pas
sengers, and kept a sharp eye out for anything salvageable.
Garbage and excrement floated around the boats, and the wa
ter was alive with God knows how many types of killer bac
teria. Yet the river people bathed in it, drank it, used it for
cooking. The river suckled them.
How many river people? A million? Two million? Who could
Sounds in the Night 83
say? They lived on the water because there was not a square
yard o land left to farm. Other millions were scratching for life
on land, the number in any given area limited, inexorably, to
the number that bit of land could support and no more. Few
peasants owned land. The overwhelming majority farmed for
landowners. Yet they fiercely resisted competition from any
newcomers. Besides, by living on their boats and constantly
moving, the river people could escape the tax collector. No, the
odds on the water were no worse than on the land. Starvation
hovered close to both.
I had the impression of looking into a womb the great,
pulsing womb of China. Human beings swarming on the river,
human beings covering the fields like ants, human beings
thronging the city streets a heaving ocean of flesh and blood
stretched across the thousands of miles from Canton to the Hi
malayas and the Gobi Desert.
Sheer pressure of population was, and still is, a dangerous
problem for any Chinese government. The pressure began
mounting early in the nineteenth century. Disastrous blood
lettings from famine, flood, epidemics, and war never checked
the growth for very long. The exuberant fertility of the Chinese
went on, adding more and more millions to the total horde.
Eventually overpopulation began to outstrip the sources of
life food and the means of buying food. China groaned and
stirred uneasily. Unrest created the climate for rebellion. Long
before 1912, when the last imperial dynasty went under, waves
of strife beat against the central governments of the country.
Next came the Nationalists. History will never know whether
they could have met the problem. War with the Communists,
overlapping with the attacks of Japan, gave them small op
portunity.
^ The Communists clearly saw opportunity in the eternal
struggle for food and jobs. They began preaching their solution
in the early 1920*5. Today they claim a population of six hun
dred million, and demographers who study the Communist
84 East Wind Rising
census figures consider them fairly accurate. The net increase
probably approximates twelve million a year like adding al
most the equivalent of a new state of New York every year.
The Chinese Communists glory in the staggering figures. They
profess to believe that sheer numbers constitute "national
strength." In an age of weapons capable of snuffing out the
lives of millions in a single attack, I wonder if the men in Pei-
ping really believe this.
In any case, the burden is now with them. And the penalties
of failure will be terrible.
The river boat nosed into the pack of sampans near the wharf.
They bobbed and spun like corks in the water. A storm of
shouting and general pandemonium rose on all sides. Sampan
men hooked onto the boat and were towed toward shore,
bumping other sampans along the way. Crowds swarmed and
moiled on the wharf, obviously awaiting the river boat. As her
side groaned against the pilings, coolies swarmed over the rails.
The river people, agile as monkeys, shinnied up the poles by
which they had hooked onto the boat. It looked like an assault.
Indeed, river pirates often did attack river shipping in this
manner. The sampan men collided with the coolies pouring in
from the wharf in a dizzy, deafening swirl. Guards and the
crewmen lashed out at them with long, willowy rods. The rods
smacked bare flesh, raising welts and drawing blood.
The coolies crowded around the hatch covers, elbowing each
other out of the way, struggling to be in the front ranks when
the baggage began coming up. From the deck of a sampan be
low, a river woman watched. Her face was heartbreaking to
see. Portering the baggage meant money, and money meant
food. Far more clearly than words, the expression in her eyes
Sounds in the Night 85
bespoke the hope and pathetic eagerness that her man would
be lucky this day.
A young Chinese secretary had come up to Canton from the
university to meet us. "Quite a brawl, isn't it?" he said, smiling.
"Fantastic. Is it always like this when the boat comes in?"
"More or less. I would say a little more today, knowing for
eigners were on board. Foreigners always travel with lots of
luggage/'
"But how could they know we were coming?"
"Ah," he said, smiling more broadly, "that is one of the mys
teries of China. You will discover that these people always
know everything about you, sometimes before you know it
yourself/'
The coolies began wrestling boxes, bags, and trunks out of
the hold. They hung the heaviest pieces on carrying-poles,
shouldered by two men. They walked in short, springy steps,
chanting "Hay-ho, hay-ho" to keep a rhythm. I asked the sec
retary how they were paid for this work.
"There are no fixed rates," he said. "A few cash for a trunk, a
few more for a heavier piece of the cargo/*
"How much is a few cash?**
"In your money? Less than a penny."
Less than a penny. It took a moment to sink in ... people
so poor that even a penny had to be broken into still smaller
fractions before they could use it What could you buy in
America for less than a penny? Not a stick of gum, not even a
handful of peanuts from the machine in the railway depot*
Here it bought human labor.
"It means a bowl of rice and some vegetables," said the sec
retary. He was no longer smiling. "Many days they eat less."
I looked past the coolies toward Canton, along the streets
lined with tamarind trees, past the foreign settlement on Sha-
meen Island, and beyond to the hills and a white-walled mon
astery surrounded by terraces of ginger root.
86 East Wind Rising
China.
A coolie passed, bending low beneath a heavy trunk. He was
barefoot and naked to the waist. Patches of sweat stained his
trousers. He saw me watching him and smiled, a shy, warming
smile. His features were intelligent and sensitive. Across the
road another coolie set the shafts of his ricksha close beside the
toe of the man who had hailed him. The same rare quality of
natural refinement was in his face. He looked more cultured, in
fact, than the fat man in beautiful brocaded silk robes whom he
was pulling. Here were coolies, Chinese who lived and worked
exactly like animals, who could neither read nor write, who
knew nothing but harsh, brutalizing labor. Yet frequently they
had such faces. Who can explain this mystery? Is it possible
that five thousand years of distilled civilization can shape the
features of a coolie on the bund in Canton?
Farther down the bund an old woman, wearing the custom
ary black cotton pajamas, sat in the dust beside a little pyramid
of tangerines, calling out for buyers. Two slits alone remained
where her eyeballs had been. Syphilis or trachoma. A beggar
pulled back his sleeve and waggled the hideous, pointed
stump of a severed arm. "Gumshaw" he begged, holding out
his one hand for money. Two little boys trotted beside a white
man in a ricksha, whining over and over: "No mama, no papa,
no whisky soda. Please give cumshaw" Sometimes they said:
"Me very hungry." But they had learned that foreigners were
more apt to laugh and loosen up when they heard the "no-
whisky-soda" touch, so this was more popular.
Flies clung in black clusters to the chunks of pork and the
sausage strings hanging on hooks in front of the windowless
butcher shop. A man came out, holding a sausage in one hand
and dragging the bloody pelt of a dog with the other. He held
it by the tail. As the man walked, the dog's head, which had
been left intact in the skinning, bounced over the stones, and
the jaws seemed to be snapping at the man's heels.
Sounds in the Night 87
A squat, flat-faced whore stood in a doorway, dickering with
two young men who looked like students. Suddenly, screech*
ing with laughter, she grabbed them both in the crotch and
pulled them into the building. Nearby, a soldier in a faded uni
form staggered against the wall in a frenzy of coughing. He
spat a mouthful of blood on the pavement, almost at the feet of
an elegantly dressed Chinese, who lifted his skirt and glared.
Down the hill from the monastery came the deep voice of a
China monstrous, savage, glorious China.
The launch bound for Lingnan University honked the depar
ture signal. The university is on an island about three miles
downstream from Canton. The fare was twenty-five cents in
Chinese money, one silver coin. The conductor stood beside
the gangplank, collecting fares. As each passenger came
aboard, the conductor took his coin and dropped it on an iron
pommel, fixed in a plate. If it rang true, he stepped aside.
Passenger, clink. Passenger, clink. Then, plock, a dull leaden
sound came from the iron pommel. Without a word the con
ductor handed the coin back to the man before letting him
pass. Another was produced. It rang silver. Not so much as a
glance passed between the two men. Evidently it was only
common sense to try to pass off the counterfeit coin that some
one else had succeeded in passing off on you. There were no
hard feelings.
"You will find a great deal of counterfeit money," said the
university secretary. "Please be careful. When they are new,
the fake coins look exactly like good ones. I presume the coun
terfeiters have access to the genuine dies."
Occasionally, he said, the police caught a counterfeiter and
88 East Wind Rising
put him in jail. Somehow the lead coins kept turning up,
though. He left the inference unspoken but clear official cor
ruption.
"It is a tragedy when one of these people" he indicated the
coolies "discovers too late that he has been given a lead coin.
He will try to pass it along, of course. But the merchants and
food vendors are very watchful. They test all coins, just like the
counterfeiter here, before filling a rice bowl. When this hap
pens to a coolie, he goes hungry. Poor soul, he has many such
days as it is/*
He told the story of a kitchen maid who worked for a for
eign family on Shameen. They paid her six dollars a month,
less than two American dollars. One payday she went shop
ping. When she paid the merchant, he discovered immediately
that the dollar she gave him weighed less than it should. So
did two others. Someone had sawed the coins in half, chiseled
an ounce or two of silver from the inner sides, then neatly re-
sealed them. By a slight filing of the rims, the marks of cutting
had been blurred. Half the maid's wages for a month were
worthless.
"She killed herself," said the secretary.
It sounded incredible. "But surely if she had taken the three
coins back to her employers, they would have given her "
"Perhaps," he said, "but I doubt it. I am sorry to say that very
few employers would be so generous. Suppose they didn't
believe her?"
"Why shouldn't they believe her?"
"Because it is a very old trick. You insist that someone has
given you bad money and demand a good coin. Only the tour
ists are ever taken in by it and so they pay twice for something.
Besides, the maid could not prove that these were the same
coins."
I asked if counterfeiters also printed paper currency. The
secretary said he believed there was very little in circulation
because the engraving was difficult and expensive.
Sounds in the Night 89
"An American firm in Shanghai, by the way, prints large
amounts of Chinese currency. It is a very good business. They
must be on excellent terms with the right people to retain this
concession." He paused and then quietly added: "Of course, in
many ways China is under the thumb of the foreigners. But
things are changing."
He spoke in a "nothing-personal-mind-you * tone of voice. He
had merely stated an unhappy fact of life.
Hostility toward foreigners had been rising in China for
years. The foreigner by his very presence symbolized the era
of China's weakness. He had forced his way into the country at
gunpoint, compelled the signing of the "unequal treaties,"
carved out "spheres of influence/* and exploited his position for
all it was worth. The "concessions" in the cities were islands of
foreign territory where Chinese authority stopped at the bor
der. Foreign troops stood guard over them. The Chinese re
sented every bit of this, down to the smallest detail.
Moreover, the Old China Hand seldom bothered to disguise
his feeling that the Chinese were an inferior people. "Amus
ing people, intelligent, make good servants, did great things in
the past -yes, all that. But they'd gone to seed. China isn't a
nation. If s just a hell of a lot of people. No government. No
sense of patriotism. No idea of law and order. It's every man
for himself in this country. Poor beggars, you cant blame
them. Nine tenths are illiterate and one jump ahead of starva
tion. Too bad, but that's the way it is."
But the tide of nationalism had started to rise.
On one level it took the form of a great clamor for the revi
sion of the "unequal treaties," with or without the consent of
the West. On another it manifested itself in strikes and boy
cotts. On still another it flared into physical violence. The Nan
king Incident in 1927, when Chinese troops killed foreigners
and stripped their women and threatened to rape them, was
explained away by calling it the work of "extremists" or "Left
ist elements." But there were many, many other incidents, all
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over China, in which the fiery new nationalism vented itself
in attacks on foreigners. It did not spare the missionaries, for
all their good works. On the contrary, since many of them lived
in remote places, far from the protection of foreign troops, they
became favorite targets of the Chinese. Schools, hospitals, and
mission compounds were attacked, and a whole new crop of
Christian martyrs was growing in China.
Few Americans at home knew about this. Not many in
China realized the hour was so late. The archives of the State
Department bulge with official reports and demands for pro
tection during that period. But these were not a matter of com
mon knowledge; they were not amply reported in the newspa
pers nor were they related to the great storm sweeping China.
The illusion that China looked on Uncle Sam as her best
friend and great champion persisted. History books described
John Hay's efforts to stop further European encroachments on
China with the Open Door notes. Chinese students were study
ing in American colleges on scholarships created out of the
Boxer Indemnity. The United States had no concessions or
military bases on Chinese soil. For these and other reasons
Americans assumed that the Chinese put them in a quite dif
ferent category from other foreigners. It was the kind of illusion
Americans like, to feel firmly enrolled on the side of the angels.
The time would soon come for China's revenge on history.
When it did, Americans would not be excepted from the other
"foreign devils."
The launch veered toward shore. The pilot cut back the en
gines.
"Here we are," said the young secretary pleasantly. "Wel
come to Lingnan,"
Chapter IX
MR. LEI'S CASTLE
THE UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS covered most of Honan Island,
which lies in the Pearl River, opposite White Cloud Mountain.
The island is low and flat, with few trees. The earth has an
ashy, exhausted look. Much of the soil in China looks ex
hausted* Yet an acre there supports many more people than an
acre on an American farm in some places ten times as many.
For centuries the fanners have been using excrement, human
and animal, to make the land produce. The idea of acres lying
fallow, much less the concept of a "soil bank," would be incon
ceivable to a Chinese farmer. This is the reason why the item
for fertilizers is so large in the list of imports by the Commu
nist government today. Even so, the swarming millions will
need more and more land human locusts eating up acreage.
Who knows where they may turn next? Toward Burma and
Thailand, which are relatively crowded? Or toward Siberia,
which is relatively empty?
The village beside the wharf was called Sun Luck, "New
Happiness/* Whoever chose this name had a delicious sense of
irony. The pitiful little huts were built of mud and thatch. They
had no floors, no windows, seldom more than one room. The
women washed clothes in the river and cooked over open fires.
Life in Sun Luck was only a little less harsh, only an inch less
primitive than in a village of Australian aborigines.
Nearby stood another world, an incredibly different world.
What were the thoughts of the peasant squatting on the
g 2 East Wind Rising
earthen floor of Ms hut in Sun Luck as he looked across the
field at the university? What did he see?
First of all, he saw a cluster of sturdy two- and three-storied
buildings for dormitories, classrooms, the mess hall, student
recreation, and housing. All were solidly built of brick and
stone, Lights glowed in the windows at night and shadows
from the fireplaces danced on the walls. The blocky, unimagi
native Western lines of the buildings were relieved somewhat
by Chinese-style roofs, with graceful, upswept eaves. From a
distance the campus could pass for a small Chinese city. A net
work of paths neatly trimmed and lined with trees cut across
wide stretches of lawn. Lingnan looked something like a small
Midwestern college in Chinese fancy dress.
Actually, it was anything but fancy by Western standards.
The missionaries pampered neither the students nor them
selves. The equipment in the dormitories provided creature
comforts but little more. The students slept on pine boards, not
mattresses. (Campus joke: "Where else in the world do you
have to sleep with the board of education to stay in college?")
Not all the rooms had carpets and the floors were cement.
A naked electric light bulb hung from the ceiling over each
desk. The unsteady power supply caused the lights to flicker,
and the words in a book hopped around like fleas. There was
no central heating. As for bathing, I vacillated before the same
dilemma every day during the winter: is the trickle of hot
water in the shower worth the round trip through icy cold hall
ways to the communal bathroom and back?
In their homes the missionaries lived almost as simply. They
had more comfortable furniture, a fireplace, books, and occa
sionally a piano or a pedal-pump organ. They ate plain food,
usually Western, but sometimes Chinese. They decorated the
rooms with objects that were beautiful and, being Chinese,
beautifully cheap tiben vases, figurines, sometimes a scroll
painting, the exquisite lace that came from Swatow. And, of
Mr. Leis Castle 93
course, even on a missionary's salary they could afford serv
ants. At best, however, the missionaries led a thin, austere life.
But to the villager in Sun Luck all this must have presented
itself as the very lap of luxury, a Persian dream of palace ele
gance. He could see the tennis courts and the athletic grounds.
What wealth to be able to use land for games instead of rice!
And he could see the pretty English instructor, in her jodhpurs
and white shirt, riding every afternoon along the river bank.
How does it feel to have time for anything but work?
What else did he see when he looked at Lingnan? He saw
security. Security in the form of armed guards patrolling the
fences. Security in the sentries on duty day and night at the
two gates. Security in the brick and glass to shut out the cold
and rain and the sickness they brought every winter. And a
more special security in the bags of rice delivered daily, the
meat and provisions, and the vegetable gardens on the north
east side of the campus.
On one side of the fence a man could sleep nights, beyond
the reach of the elements, protected against bandits, assured of
food for tomorrow and next week and the week after that.
But on the other side all this was largely a matter of luck,
blind chance, and a million devils lurking in darkness. Here in
deed, across a narrow field, primitive man looked at the twen
tieth century in wonder and envy.
The missionaries knew the situation and worried about it
The difference in standards was not their fault. They could not
change the fact or escape from it, although some tried by "go
ing Chinese/' living like the peasants and coolies. I was told
they seldom succeeded. In the big cities, to be sure, the con
trast was not so great. The missionary school, the hospital, and
the compound stood among other modern, Western-style build
ings. But in the country tihese buildings, symbols of the rich and
powerful West that had forced itself on China, stood beside
mud huts. It is doubtful that the coolie perceived any differ-
94 East Wind Rising
ence between the missionary and the foreign merchant. More
and more he was beginning to believe that all white men
were in China to exploit him and to profit from his misery.
To the east of the campus stood another and still different
hallmark of the times the "castle" of a minor war lord. It was
a large, grimy confection, originally white, a maze of verandas
and arcades, surrounded by gardens and spacious courtyards.
Inside, a grand staircase connected the upper floors with the
baronial hall and grotesque dining room on the ground floor.
The whole added up to an unhappy marriage of Chinese and
early MGM.
The erstwhile owner had been a man named Lei Fuk-lum,
who had started his career as a small-time bandit and passed
through the usual cycle big-time bandit, minor war lord, pro
vincial boss then curtains. A bigger war lord did him in, ap
propriating his soldiers and his women.
One of the concubines, it was said, still lived in the castle,
having somehow avoided becoming the property of General
Lei's successor. She must have been a tough, shrewd woman to
have survived the elimination tournament regularly conducted
in a house full of concubines. The ladies used poison, strangula
tion, and intrigue to get ahead. Also, she must have had a
strong stomach. For when I saw General Lef s establishment, it
had been taken by another Cantonese general for use as a
military hospital.
Here is an excerpt from a feature story I wrote about the
hospital and sent to the home-town papers on January 17,
1930:
"The wounded lie on the stone floor, in dark, unventilated
rooms, reeking in filth, their open wounds exposed to every
sort of infection. By day and by night, giant rats worry them.
Mr. Lets Castle 95
There are no doctors, no nurses, no attendants. There are
guards who stand by the front gates with fixed bayonets to
quell disturbances. And there are stretcher crews to haul off
the corpses as, one by one, the men die from their wounds, ex
posure, malnutrition or starvation.
"At the university, we have been shivering under the lash of
a raw wind for the past two weeks, even with pounds of bed
ding. And yet some of the rebels about 300 of the original
1000 have survived, lying on the stone floor with only their
ragged uniforms and a wisp of straw for protection."
They tried to help each other. In the garden one who
seemed proficient rolled bandages and made slings out of the
pieces of uniform stripped from those who had died. Some
were hobbling around on sticks in lieu of crutches. A soldier
gingerly rolled back a knot of bloody rags and peered curiously
at the stump of his leg, amputated above the knee. He looked,
for all the world, like a monkey searching for fleas. Another,
hardly more than a boy, smiled a wan little smile when I
snapped his picture. His gentle, sensitive features look out of
the photograph today, and in the background there are the
motionless bodies on the flagstones and the great streaks of
blood on the marble. Outside the castle, as well as indoors, the
smell of death filled the air, heavy and clinging. Days after
ward I could still smell it in my clothes and on my hands, in
spite of soap and scrubbing. I went into a room, a dark and
terrible room. Here at least some straw had been spread
around the stone floor. Coarse sacks covered some of the still
figures.
It took a moment to adjust my eyes to the darkness. Then I
saw a man almost at my feet. He gasped, convulsively gulping
air. His chest and diaphragm heaved like a bellows. Each
breath sucked his stomach down to his spine, and he looked
cut in half. Then, with a last shuddering sigh, he stopped
breathing.
96 East Wind Rising
In this man's death there was no meaning, no purpose, no
glory. He was only one of many in the castle, and the castle
was only one scene in the infinite number of death-house
scenes all over China.
For this was civil war.
It is not to be compared, however, with the other civil wars
in history, the North and the South, or Lancaster against York.
No moral or constitutional or ideological issues put the armies
in the field. Except in the later years, the conflict did not lie
between two distinct groups of Chinese alone. It was many
wars in one, instigated by bosses who sent millions of men out
to die in battle and in the process killed other millions, includ
ing women and children, in their homes.
All were victims of the war lord.
A war lord was an ex-general or an ex-bandit who had ac
quired control over a given region, sometimes a province,
sometimes a bigger area. He might have seized it by military
force, inherited it, or acquired possession in some other way.
In any case, he ran it as a private preserve. He collected taxes,
organized a private army, appointed officials, and adminis
tered justice (if any). For revenue he squeezed the landlord.
The landlord squeezed his tenant farmer. And the tax collector
squeezed for all the traffic would bear, pocketing as much as
possible. Caught in the middle was the poor, patient, wonder
ful Chinese peasant.
The war lord fought for power. He fought for power and
position and the rewards they bring. He fought to advance
personal ambition nothing more. One or two at that time evi
dently dreamed of becoming masters of all China, Others, I
have no doubt, would have settled for suzerainty over a single
province.
It would be almost impossible to identify all the figures in
Mr. Lefs Castle 97
this great tragedy and fix each in his particular setting. There
were too many, literally scores, marching and countermarching
their private armies. Some commanded very large armies.
Feng Yu-hsiang, the so-called Christian General, had four hun
dred thousand troops in his gigantic fief in the northwest.
Chang Hsueh-liang, the "Young Marshal," whose father had
been the boss of Manchuria, could field an even larger force.
And there were many smaller fry.
As I have pointed out, hunger, in the main, provided the
war lords with man power, an inexhaustible supply of foot
sloggers. Some were conscripted and others took arms for other
reasons. But the majority joined up because it was the only way
to be reasonably sure of eating regularly.
The war lords paid lip service to the central governments of
China when it suited their purpose. Meanwhile, they formed
alliances with others of their ilk, shifting this way and that, first
with one group then another, always to the end of retaining
and increasing their power. Through more than a decade they
played their intricate game, using human lives for chips*
By the time I reached China in 1929 the pattern had crystal
lized, owing to the establishment of the newest central govern
ment. This was the regime set up by the Kuomintang, "Peo
ple's Party," and led by Chiang Kai-shek. After three years of
bloody struggle with the war lords, Chiang Kai-shek an
nounced the ^unification" of China on July 6, 1928. Seventeen
days later the United States recognized Chiang's group as the
legitimate central government of China.
Thus, technically, the Chinese Revolution ended and so did
the Era of the War Lord. In fact, however, the war lords still
controlled huge areas of China. They did not rush to lay their
swords at Chiang's feet and invite him to send government
officials to administrate their domains. It was as though the
true authority of the U.S. government was restricted to a perim
eter, bounded by the Ohio River in the west, the Adiron-
dacks in the north, and the Great Smokies in the south. Outside
98 East Wind Rising
the perimeter in China the Old Hands went right on with the
old game. When one of them saw an opportunity to challenge
the Nationalists, fighting broke out. When Chiang moved his
troops to meet the challenge in one region, the boss in another
would take the field. Depending on the prospects, others might
move in or remain neutral. All were opportunists and played
the game accordingly.
To illustrate a single tiny segment of all this, we return to
Lei Fuk-lum's castle.
In the diary note I wrote on the fighting around Canton, I
mentioned "a war lord whose name sounds like Fat Quail."
Actually he was only a would-be war lord, an infantry division
commander, but he had bigger ambitions. His name was
Chang Fa-kuei.
The details of his checkered career in politics and the army
are unimportant. It is enough to say he was a shifty character
who had his eye on the main chance. At one point he had been
loyal to the Nationalists. Then he began dealing with a politi
cal rival of Chiang Kai-shek. Finally, at a moment when the
Nationalists were involved in a major campaign against a coali
tion of war lords in the north, Chang seized the opportunity to
set up shop for himself.
Exactly like a one-man government, the general issued proc
lamations on political reforms and demanded that his own
man, Chiang's political rival, replace Chiang Kai-shek as head
of the central government. Then he launched his troops on a
southward drive to take Canton, biggest city in south China
and the erstwhile Nationalist base. Nationalist forces met him
near there and smashed his expedition. It was a skirmish in
this fighting about which I had heard my first night at Lingnan.
One ambitious general. One shabby little adventure. For
this, and no more, men died in agony in Lei Fuk-lum's castle.
Multiply this episode and this scene by ten thousand and you
have China at that moment in history.
Mr. Leis Castle 99
The war lord is much more than a piece of historical curiosa,
a mustachioed figure, booted and spurred, gathering dust in
the museum of Chinese horrors. In many ways he helped de
liver China into the hands of the Communists.
In the first place, he inflicted untold suffering on the Chinese
masses. Year after year hordes of hired soldiers swept through
the villages, looting, murdering, raping, and destroying. The
war lords consumed blood and treasure like Chinese Baals.
And they had a long ride. Chang Tso-lin, the "Old Marshal,"
controlled Fengtien province as early as 1913. Huge war-lord
armies were still fighting in 1930. In short, a whole generation
of Chinese grew up with little or no respite from the blood
letting and chaos caused by these men. The war lords not only
sapped the country, but delayed the formation of a strong cen
tral government, which might have given China peace and
law and order at long last.
Second, when that government finally did come, the war
lords robbed it of time, precious years. In so doing they gave
the Communists needed time. Who can say how different the
story might have been if the powerful provincial bosses had
joined with the Nationalists in 1928, creating a truly "unified 5 *
nation? Instead, from time to time they took the field against
the government. Meanwhile, the Communists were digging in,
preparing for the showdown with the Nationalists.
Third, the cruel depredations of the war lords created an
ideal climate for the Communists when their turn came to
move among the masses. They saw in the peasants' plight the
real source of power in China and shrewdly set out to tap it.
Many observers have described the iron discipline of the Com
munist troops in the villages and cities. There was no raping,
no pillaging, no carrying off of farm animals. If they took so
much as a tangerine, they paid for it. What kind of Chinese
ioo East Wind Rising
army was this? The peasants had never known such treat
ment. "The people are the sea/' said Chu Teh, the Red com
mander, "and we are the fish who swim in that sea." In Red
Star Over China Edgar Snow has described the impact of these
unheard-of tactics used by the Communists in their Long
March in 1934. The troops did more than merely treat the
peasants well; they also took from the wealthy and the land
lords who oppressed the peasants. Robin Hood with a red star
on his cap. Thus, by the time of the great civil war, after V-J
Day, the Communists were in a position to say: "We are poor
people, too. We have come to liberate you from the tax collec
tors and oppressors. All we want is peace and bread. If you
help us, these things will come sooner/' To people who had
suffered for such a long time, the Communists must have
looked like angels. It was a shrewd job of capitalizing on mis
ery.
Finally, and most important, the war lord was a product of
the disintegration of China, a process for which the West
bears a heavy share of responsibility.
The predatory white man fought the Opium War in 1839. It
led straight to another clash with Britain and France a few
years later. Then Japan moved into the picture. It was a cen
tury of foreign pressure on China, successive humiliations and
defeats. Forces inside the country and marauders on the out
side began tearing at the foundations of a proud empire.
The wars sapped the strength of the government and at the
same time exposed its military weakness. Chinese revolution
ists grew bolder. Western governments, exploiting the internal
conditions, established spheres of influence in China and
staked out concessions. In due course the British, French,
Russians, Germans, Italians, and Japanese firmly installed
themselves on Chinese soil. The "unequal treaties," obtained at
gunpoint, began to be recorded, thus giving their actions a
form of legality. The United States did not establish any
"American Concessions," as such, but Americans insisted on
Mr. Lets Castle 101
being accorded the same treaty rights as were enjoyed by
other foreigners in China.
These events also brought the Christian missionary back to
China after centuries of banishment. Unwittingly he hastened
the process of breakup. Like the merchant, he set foot in China
as a consequence of armed aggression. He was able to remain
only because foreign guns protected him. And, like the mer
chant, he was seldom loath to call on his government to use
force, or threats of force, in disputes with local Chinese au
thorities. If this seems curiously un-Christian, the missionary of
that day justified the means in terms of the end.
Christian teachings reached a man troubled by visions. His
name was Hung Hsiu-chuan. Somehow he began to identify
himself with Jesus Christ and eventually convinced himself
that he was Jesus' younger brother. He began preaching
against idol worship and, incorporating odd bits and pieces of
doctrine from a number of sources, invented his own theology.
Hung made some converts. Out of this the great Taiping rebel
lion exploded. Cutting a bloody arc across one thousand miles
of territory between Canton and Nanking, the Taipings raged
over the country for ten years.
They might have lasted longer but for the military ability of
two white men. One was an American, Frederick Ward. The
other was an Englishman, Major Charles Gordon, the famous
"Chinese" Gordon, who later met his fate in another such ad
venture in the Sudan. Ward and Gordon led an army of for
eign soldiers of fortune against the Taipings and helped put an
end to the rebellion.
At this point the Chinese authorities found themselves
squeezed between forces from within and without rebellious
Chinese elements and the voracious foreigner. Sometimes the
white man assisted the government against its rebellious ene
mies. Sometimes by his mere presence he weakened the formal
authority. Simultaneously he played a dual role the burglar
and the policeman.
102 East Wind Rising
The result, in part, was still another and more conclusive ex
plosion the Boxer rebellion of 1899-1900. It takes its name
from the secret society "Order of Righteous Harmonious
Bands" or "Fists." The Boxers struck, not at the government,
but at the foreigners, and the doughty old Empress Dowager
encouraged them. Chanting "Protect the country, destroy the
foreigners," the Boxers attacked missionaries and Chinese
Christians, especially in north China. Murders, horrible tor
tures, and destruction of foreign property took place. Then the
Boxers converged on the lovely old Legation Quarter in Peking
and laid siege to it.
The most exciting movie thriller is tame stuff compared to
the drama of this siege. The whole diplomatic corps, plus
missionaries, merchants, Chinese Christians, and hundreds of
women and children, fought through the heat and dust of June
and July, desperately defending themselves. An English news
paperman later described the siege for me. "Every night we
could hear them howling like wolves outside the walls," he
said. "They tried a few attacks, and once or twice it was a very
near thing. Then they settled down, with the idea of starving
us out, I suppose. At times the position seemed hopeless to me.
Meanwhile, of course, we kept watching the horizon for some
sign of relief. We saw a column of infantry in every dust storm.
Damn discouraging when the dust settled, I can tell you."
In mid-August a composite force which included American
troops reached Peking and scattered the Boxers. In true sce
nario tradition they arrived not a moment too soon. The be
sieged were near the end of the rope. A disgraceful epilogue
followed. The white men, grateful for deliverance, joined the
troops in looting Peking.
For all practical purposes, the Manchu dynasty ended here.
The imperial court fled far inland. With that, the last sem
blance of central government crumbled and China rushed
headlong into revolution.
From this point on for a full fifty years there would be no
Mr. Leis Castle 103
peace, and blood would flow in rivers. War lords and civil wars
crucified China through 1930. In the next year Japan struck.
The great contest between the Kuomintang and the Commu
nists already had begun and it continued into the second Japa
nese assault in 1937. Then came World War II and after it,
from 1946 to 1950, the conflict that carried Mao Tse-tung to
power and exiled Chiang Kai-shek to Formosa.
A half-century of chaos and the thunder of guns.
Of all the things the people wanted, their most fervent
prayer was for peace. Is it any wonder that the Communists,
promising peace, promising stability, promising land reform
and the end to usury and taxes, promising sufficiency, promis
ing to restore the ancient glory, but above all, promising peace
is it any wonder they succeeded in seducing so great a peo
ple?
How long now before China demands payment on these
promissory notes?
Chapter X
SHAMEEN ISLAND
THE COLD PROBED with icy fingers between the chinks in the
"board of education." A pale light came from the winter sky. A
student waddled past the window, heavy with clothing. It was
going to be another seven-shaam day.
A shaam is a long flannel shirt worn beneath a padded gown
or even a Western suit. As the temperature dropped in winter,
the Chinese put on extra shaams. They rated the weather ac
cording to the total number of shrfams they wore. Four or five
described an average cold day, but when they said "This is a
seven-shaam day/ 7 it meant a bitter cold day and a harsh wind
as well. Shaams calibrated the Chinese thermometer.
Of course, only the fortunate few met the cold with so many
layers of clothing. The river people, the coolies, and most of
the peasants went through the winter in the only garments
they owned thin cotton pajamas, rags, or a dog's pelt. Or,
rather, they tried. Not all of them made it.
On the floor beside my bed lay an English-language news
paper dated January 4, 1930. 1 had picked it up on Shameen a
few days before. I reached out from under the covers. The
cold bit through my pajamas and sweater. On the front page,
buried in a column of chitchat, there was this item: "An old-
timer says this is the most severe cold snap in 32, years. Many
poor parents, unable to feed and clothe their children, have
abandoned them in the woods and committed suicide." Very
terse journalism with the always desirable economy of words.
Shameen Island 105
The question arose again: would it make a feature story for
the papers at home? If there were a few more facts, some ac
tual cases, it might be a shocker. The trouble was it no longer
shocked me. In China such stories became commonplace very
quickly, and one's capacity for amazement diminished. I re
membered the wagon in Canton.
It had rumbled down the road and stopped beside the fig
ure of a man. He lay in the dust beside a wall. The wagon
driver and his helper bent over, shook the still figure, touched
its face. They exchanged a quiet remark. Then they picked up
the corpse by the hands and feet, swung it alley oop! and
tossed it into the wagon. The head banged against the wooden
sideboards. A handful of people stopped to watch. An old
woman, hobbling past on 'lily feet" deformed by binding, mur
mured "Ai-yah" Then life flowed on as before over the spot
where a man had frozen to death.
What was today Monday? I had an appointment in Canton
with a foreign correspondent. My study project, "J ourna ^ sm
in China: the Influence of Periodicals on Public Opinion," was
making slow progress. With each day it seemed less practical.
Perhaps the foreign correspondent would have some ideas.
My first doubts about this project had stirred during the first
language lesson I attended at Lingnan. The instructor began
by drawing a musical scale on the blackboard. He explained
that Cantonese has nine tones and Mandarin, the "official'*
language, four. Having located them on the scale, he said: "If
you pronounce a word in the wrong tone, you may say some
thing quite different from what you intended." The students
had an endless stock of rude jokes, presumably true, in which a
foreigner, attempting to express some exalted thought, used
the wrong tone and described an intimate act instead.
"Also," the instructor said, "it is because of the tones that
Chinese languages sound singsongy to a foreigner's ears/' He
illustrated in a number of different dialects. There are perhaps
one hundred million people in south China who speak differ-
106 East Wind Rising
ent Chinese dialects, communicating with difficulty among
themselves and not at all with other millions elsewhere in
China.
Apart from the spoken languages, the immense complexity
of the written language, with its uncounted thousands of char
acters, lies beyond the reach of most Chinese. "To read the
ordinary language in a newspaper/' said the instructor, "you
will need at least two thousand characters. But to read a trea
tise on philosophy, you will have to know at least twenty-five
thousand characters." He paused, smiling cozily, while we con
sidered the appalling prospect.
Then he illustrated the origins of some characters. They be
gan as pictures, drawings of definite objects. The character for
"horse" still looks like a horse, and the characters for "man,"
"woman," "moon," "mountain," and so on, are still more or less
recognizable from the original pictographs. But these are all
concrete objects. How do you draw a picture of an idea?
The instructor drew two outstretched hands on the black
board and explained how the character for "friend" or "friend
ship" developed from this. Then he drew the composite for
the word "to hinder" and pointed out, deadpan, that it con
tains the character for woman. (The Japanese have a word,
yakamashisa, which roughly means noise, gossip, chatter, idle
rumor, etc. It is written as a composite of four characters
three women under one roof! )
"Perhaps the best way for you to begin this work," the in
structor said, "would be with the thousand-basic-characters
method, developed by Doctor Y. C. Yen. After all, he has
demonstrated that totally illiterate coolies can be taught to
read in about four months." He smiled his cozy little smile and,
dismissing the class, left that thought with us.
Well, "Jimmie" Yen was doing wonderful work in China
then, but probably well over ninety per cent of the people
were still illiterate. That being so, how does one go about de
termining the effect of periodicals on public opinion?
Shameen Island 107
That morning I left the dormitory, Java Hall, and hastened
through the gate toward Sun Luck and Mr. Lew Ong's eating
house. With his assistance I had invented a breakfast.
In the college mess hall at that hour the students were lining
up around the huge vats filled with steaming white rice. Hav
ing taken some rice in their bowls, they sat down at bare
wooden tables. A plate, a porcelain spoon, a teacup, and a pair
of bone chopsticks marked each place.
The Chinese way of dining is more intimate than ours. There
are no individual servings. In the center of each table in the
mess hall were three and occasionally four dishes, one of meat
or fish, the others of stewed vegetables of some sort, usually
cabbage, kale, or chard. Another dish often contained water
melon seeds. When eating a watermelon seed, you crack the
shell between your front teeth and extract the seed with your
tongue. It is a fine art and I never mastered it. The food in the
center of the table is equally shared. Each person takes a
morsel of this and a spoonful of that, one at a time, and puts it
on his plate. At first sight it might seem that a slow eater would
be at a disadvantage. Being inexpert with the chopsticks, I
usually fell behind the others at my table* Yet they always left
some food on the dishes in the center.
The Chinese at Lingnan had exquisite manners. Mine were
less than perfect, but the students pretended not to notice. Un
til I learned better I ate "coolie style," putting the bits of meat
and vegetable in my rice bowl so that the juices would flavor
the rice. It is roughly equivalent to sopping up gravy with a
biscuit and, like so many sensible customs at table, not quite
correct.
The mess-hall food was plain, somewhat monotonous, but
perfectly adequate. If a student could afford it (and most of
them could) he would order the kitchen to prepare a special
io8 East Wind Rising
dish small, highly seasoned pork sausages, or pih fan yu, the
white-rice fish, or sam-li, a Cantonese fish that tastes something
like pompano. Once, I was told, a particularly well-off young
man even ordered the famous sam see chee, which is a kind of
hash made of chicken, pheasant, shark meat, bamboo shoots,
and other ingredients. The cooks, however, sadly reported they
didn't have all the fixings.
In no time, two or three days at the most, I no longer thought
of these dishes as Chinese "chow." They were simply lunch or
dinner, and in no way exotic. Breakfast, however, became a
problem. Boiled rice, stewed vegetables, and tea somehow
failed as a substitute for scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee.
What to do? My solution may sound a little unlikely. But it
worked. The basis of my invention was tsau mein y which is
Cantonese for "fried noodles/'
A friend came along to translate on the day I consulted with
Lew Ong in his eatery. "Tell him I will be coming here for
breakfast frequently," I said, "and I will always want exactly
the same thing fried noodles."
Mr. Lew or Mr. Ong (I have forgotten which was his sur
name) looked puzzled and replied at very great length.
"He says he doesn't usually make up noodles in the morning,
but for a little extra he can do it."
"How much extra?"
Now Mr. Lew talked even longer, obviously setting forth the
immense difficulties involved and the heavy expense to which
he must go. The "extra," when it finally came, amounted to a
penny or two in American money. As a matter of principle I
protested, and the proprietor finally agreed to shave it down a
little.
"That's not all," I said. "This is the important part. I want
the noodles fried in a special way, very tight."
"What do you mean, 'tight'?"
"Crisp," I said. "So crisp they'll stick together."
Shameen Island 109
"He says he can do it," said my friend. "But he asks why you
want the noodles spoiled?"
"They'll taste something like toast, I think. And tell him to
put two fried eggs on top, sunny side up."
"Sunny side ? Ah, yes."
It was a delicious dish. The noodles, fried into a mat, looked
something like a flattened-out bird's nest. In the first few days
the Sun Luck people came to watch, commenting gravely and
occasionally cackling with laughter. But in a week or so my in
vention ceased to interest them. I do not believe it ever became
a permanent fixture on Lew Qng's menu.
When I recommended it to Tsui, he said: "Why don't you
just get a loaf of bread on Shameen and let him make real
toast?"
I did and was surprised to find that it tasted flat and unin
teresting in comparison with the matted noodles.
From my table in Lew Ong's (there were only two) I looked
out across scores of low humpbacked mounds dotting the fields.
These were graves. Carved stone or crumbling brick work
marked the older ones. When the missionaries chose the island
as the site for Lingnan, they had to bargain long and hard to
persuade the villagers to sell. The Honan people agreed only
on condition that the missionaries paid a premium for each
grave when they opened it and removed the bones of the
Honans' ancestors. Frequently the bones were the ribs and
femurs of cattle and other animals. The villagers, however, said
Grandfather had been a very big man or an unusually small
one, as the case happened to be, and they insisted on collecting
the agreed bonus.
no East Wind Rising
It was only a step from the graveyard to the wharf, where you
went aboard the river launch or took a sampan to go to Can
ton. The launch was much faster, of course, but my appoint
ment with the foreign correspondent was not until late after
noon. Besides, I hoped to find "Tu Nip" and make the trip with
her.
She would maneuver her sampan through the mass of boats
clustered near the landing, exchanging swift and no doubt
wholly unladylike words with the other sampan people, who
clamored for the chance to earn twenty-five cents, silver. "Djoto
shun, djow shun" she would say. "Good morning, good morn
ing." Then, as I stepped aboard, she would smile, and a won
derful incandescence would light the river clear to Hong Kong.
Her eyes would sparkle like polished amber, and two dimples,
two miraculous Cathayan dimples, would blossom in each
cheek. She was about seventeen or eighteen, short, slim-
waisted, and supple and strong from oaring a sampan on the
river. It had seemed important to learn the Cantonese word for
"dimple," and a student said it was <e tu nip" He may have given
me the wrong word as a joke. Or perhaps I mispronounced it.
Anyway, one night on the down-river trip from Canton I had
touched her face and said: "Tu nip one, tu nip two." She
laughed uncontrollably. She had stopped rowing and, taking
her hands from the oar, let the boat drift sweetly with the
current.
But today the river gods were in a sour mood. No tu nip. The
usual storm of yells broke out as I came to the wharf. The river
people bumped boats, jockeying to get closest to the landing.
An old woman won. She was thin, leathery, and deeply wrin
kled, with wispy gray hair. She looked too old and emaciated
to push the sampan against the current to Canton, although it
was only a few miles. I hesitated, and she began to whine, urg-
Shameen Island 111
ing me to get into her sampan. Boy Scout deed for the day, I
thought, even if it does take her twice as long to get there.
As often happens with good intentions, this one became a
paving stone.
The old crone pushed out from the wharf and headed up
stream with a strong, steady pull. A sampan is propelled in
somewhat the same fashion as a Venetian gondola. The oars
man, standing on a deck in the stern, sweeps a long, narrow-
blade oar back and forth, twisting it, just as a fish waves its tail.
In no time, driving against the current, the old woman brought
the sampan to the stone steps leading up to the bund in Can
ton. Not once had she drawn a long breath.
I gave her a shiny new twenty-five cent piece, went up to the
street, and hailed a ricksha. As the coolie set the shaft close be
side my foot, there was a sudden clattering and commotion be
hind. The old sampan woman came running across the street,
yelping and holding something in her hand. She looked like one
of the Furies.
A young Chinese student stopped. He spoke to her. A vol
cano of words spewed out, punctuated by gestures of grief and
rage. The student turned to me. His expression was a picture of
cold contempt. "She says you have cheated her."
"Cheated her? I gave her twenty-five cents to bring me from
Lingnan. That's the regular fare."
"Yes, but you gave her this." He took the coin she was hold
ing and laid it in the palm of his hand. It was nicked and bat
tered, obviously a well-chewed counterfeit.
"I didn't give her that coin/' I said. "Anyone can see it's a
fake. I know that trick."
The student translated. The woman screamed and tore at her
hair. By this time a knot of Chinese had gathered. They began
talking, to the student, to the woman, to each other. An ordi
nary conversation on a street in China frequently sounds like a
furious argument. The din now was deafening.
There was no question in my mind that the sampan woman
112, East Wind Rising
was pulling the old trick. But the atmosphere began to feel
ominous. Then I had an idea. "Ask her why she waited until I
was up here on the street/' I said to the student. "Why didn't
she refuse to accept that phony coin on the spot?"
The old woman waved her arms and spat out words. In the
crowd a man said "Ai-yah" and glared at me.
"She says you got out of the sampan and threw this bad
money into the boat and tried to run away/' the student said.
"Well, she's lying like hell."
I sat down in the ricksha and said "Shameen" to the coolie.
He picked up the shafts.
The student said something, and the ricksha boy answered
impatiently. The student struck him on the shoulder with his
fist. Then he turned to me. His face was working with anger.
"You must give her good money/' he said. "She is poor, and you
must not cheat her."
"Nothing doing. I have paid her and I'm not paying twice/*
A low murmur rumbled through the crowd. Another man
pushed close to me. "You think because you are English "
"I'm an American."
"It's all the same. Foreigners all think they can do anything
they want in China. But you can't. Unless you pay, the ricksha
will not go."
"Okay, I'll find another/' I said.
I stepped down into the street. Without a word the men
pressed close together, a solid wall of unsmiling faces.
At that moment the old woman spoke, chattering rapidly to
the student. She handed him another coin. I did not know it,
but the inevitable face-saving compromise, a very important
thing in China, had begun.
"This is Shanghai money," the student said. "It is worth as
much as the silver pieces, but she would rather have the local
money. The money changers charge a few cents to change it,
as you may know. Will you give her twenty-five cents silver for
this?"
Shameen Island 113
"Sure," I said, vastly relieved. "It's a deal."
It was all over in an instant. The crowd broke up. The old
woman walked down toward the dock. At the bottom of the
steps she said something to the other river people. They all
laughed uproariously. Well, I thought, Til find out in Shanghai
whether she gypped me.
The ricksha boy started off in a steady, rhythmic jog. He
could trot for hours at that pace. An instant later a stone
whizzed past my head and smacked against the wall on the
other side of the street. A memory stirred in me, the memory of
a stone thrown long ago at a Japanese farmer by a boy on a
bicycle.
The ricksha coolie made it plain, with emphatic gestures, that
he could not or would not go into Shameen. He stopped on
Sha Kee Street, opposite a humpbacked bridge. A narrow canal
separated Canton from the island. On this side was China;
across the bridge was a tiny sliver of Europe, flying the flags of
Britain and France.
A short, wiry Annamite soldier stood at the island end of the
bridge on guard duty. He wore a steel helmet and carried a
rifle with bayonet.
The tableau made a curious impression on me. The little An
namite, his gun, the bridge, and Shameen gave meaning and
reality to words that had only been words before "foreign
concessions, 7 ' "unequal treaties," "the humiliation of China/' On
the Chinese New Year in 1930, for the first time in nearly sev
enty years, I was told, Chinese had been permitted to prome
nade on the bridge. Prior to 1930 the guard would stop any
Chinese from crossing the bridge except on specific business.
The gloomy old Victoria Hotel, the bank, the business offices,
the shops, and the fine foreign homes and apartments lay out-
114 East Wind Rising
side Chinese authority. Legally this was British and French ter
ritory, a little plum from the "Arrow War" of 1856. It had no
intrinsic value like that of Weihaiwei or the big foreign pre
serves up north. You could put Shameen in Jessfield Park in
Shanghai. It was only a sand bar (Shameen means "Sand
Face"), but nevertheless a microcosm of the whole Western
position in China.
In my schoolboy French I asked the Annamite if he knew
the address of the foreign correspondent. He smiled and shook
his head. Next I approached a Sikh policeman. He was a giant,
towering head and shoulders over me, a massive turbaned
figure with a magnificent black beard and mustache. He came
to attention as though on parade.
"Yes, Master?"
Master. Master, pronounced with a broad a, addressed to me
by one of my elders and doubtless one of my betters. What a
strange echo of Victoria's wars and the works of Clive and
Kitchener and Tommy Atkins!
The white man in the Orient, however hard he might try,
seldom could avoid developing a full-blown superiority com
plex, especially in China. But here I must point out a curious
fact: apparently some of the Orientals in China felt superior,
too. The little Annamite sentries seemed to enjoy threatening
the ricksha boys when they lingered near the bridge at Sha
meen. And I saw the big Sikhs wade into masses of Chinese dur
ing strikes and demonstrations in Shanghai, whaling away with
their long, stout lathis. They laughed with the sheer fun of it.
The Japanese, of course, simply held the Chinese in contempt
as weak, venal, disorganized people, and joined other foreign
ers in extracting privileges. If there was a spirit of "Asia for the
Asiatics" at that time, it did not seem to embrace China.
It was late afternoon. I passed through the park, a manicured
greensward on the river front. Chinese amahs were pushing
perambulators, gossiping, and keeping a sharp eye on the
swarms of fair-haired children chasing each other around the
Shameen Island 115
banyan trees. Three young Englishmen, probably clerks in
the bank or in the shipping offices, were working up a sweat
dribbling and passing a football (soccer style), "keeping fit"
against the easy life on the China coast.
Spacious apartments with great French windows looked out
across the park to the Pearl River. Even a consular clerk, let
alone a taipan, big boss, could afford these apartments, as well
as servants to make him comfortable. The servants called his
wife "Missy," and each of them, to secure his own position,,
made very certain that she need never lift a finger around her
home. They marketed, cooked, cleaned, cared for the baby,
washed, ironed, sewed, polished the silver with the palms of
their hands, kept the decanters filled, kept busy incessantly. If
necessary, they invented little chores so that "Missy" would
never catch them standing idle. They went to ingenious lengths
to be indispensable around the house. You have heard the
story, and doubtless considered it a fable, that foreign wives in
China often told the cook at noon and even later: "Oh, by the
way, there will be fourteen for dinner tonight." It was no
fable. Dinner would be on the table, beautifully prepared and
served, no matter what scurryings and magic had to be per
formed. To the servants "Missy" meant square meals, wages,
life itself. They knew only too well how many hungry people
would be glad to replace them.
For both "Missy" and "Master" life moved at an easy, gra
cious pace. "Master" would be in his office around nine thirty
or so. Shortly after noon he would go to the club for "tiffin."
But first he would have a gin and "it," and usually several,
rolling dice in the bar to see who paid poker dice, liar dice,
golf dice, beat-it-you-bastard dice, and ordinary cameroons.
"Three sixes all day . . . four deuces never loses." After lunch
he would often take a nap in one of the deep leather chairs in
the reading room. If he remained at the office as late as six
o'clock, it was because of something unusual. Then, especially
in summer, he might go to another club for tennis or golf, fol-
n6 East Wind Rising
lowed by some more dice and gin in the bar. But if he went
straight home, he would find a bath already drawn. His dinner
clothes, freshly pressed, would be laid out with studs and cuff
links in his shirt and a fresh handkerchief carefully set in the
breast pocket of his jacket. From close observation, the house-
boy knew the exact moment when to arrive, bringing a drink,
and ready to tie "Master's* shoelaces.
As for "Missy," unless she happened to be out of the norm,
the days were blissfully empty of much that was purposeful. In
every foreign community only a handful of wives studied lan
guages or made a hobby of one of the arts and crafts, such as
flower arrangement in Japan. The majority, however, were con
tent to shop, lunch, go to tea, play bridge and maft-jongg (not
infrequently beginning in the morning), and wait for George
to come home. This, of course, did not apply to the wives of
missionaries.
No wonder foreigners adored life in the Orient, especially in
the Treaty Ports. In the Shanghai Club one day I eavesdropped
on six men talking about where they proposed to live after re
tirement. Only one said "Homeside." The others intended to
stay in the Far East.
On their first tour of duty, however, people often "counted
boats/' The principle is the same as a convict checking off days
from the prison calendar. Knowing the date for his home leave,
a man made reservations more than two years ahead of time on
a particular ship. Then, every time that ship came into port,
he checked off the trip. Nine more round trips . . . eight more
. . . seven. "Well, my dear, we are only two more sailings of
the Cleveland from the start of our leave. I can hardly wait."
Then, as a rule, they could not wait to get back. The old
home town was a disappointment, drab and stale against the
glitter of the Orient, its color, its ease of life, its mysterious and
indefinable something in the air.
Shameen Island 117
The foreign correspondent turned out to be a lawyer. In his
spare time he acted as a "stringer" for several London dailies
and an American agency. A "stringer" is retained, or paid per
specific assignment, in cities where news develops too seldom
to require a full-time correspondent The regular correspond
ents at that time made their headquarters in Shanghai or Pe
king. They traveled as much as possible, although travel was a
grim ordeal except for the famous "Blue Train," or "Shanghai
Express." After the Kuomintang made Nanking the national
capital, the correspondents went there frequently. (Nan-king:
"Southern Capital"; Pe-king or Pel-ping: "Northern Capital.")
But it was the "stringers" who were relied upon to get the rou
tine news in outlying cities and in the interior. Quite a number
of missionaries covered fires, floods, and earthquakes along
with the work of the Lord.
I asked the lawyer what he had filed recently.
"Bits and pieces," he said. "They asked for a word or two on
Chang Fa-kuei and the Kuominchun. But of course there's a
war lord under every rock these days, and it's all too compli
cated for most editors. I expected to have a stand-by message
from some of them on that business in December. We were a
bit windy here. . . ."
He referred to a government declaration affecting the "un
equal treaties/' For several years the Chinese had been agi
tating for a revision of these treaties. Finally they simply at
tempted to wipe them off the books without discussing the
matter with the other parties. In 1926 they abruptly abrogated
the treaty with Belgium. Two years later they tried to walk out
on two treaties with Japan. The Japanese replied that they
were willing to negotiate, but would not permit the Chinese to
erase the treaties on their own.
J. V. A. MacMurray, the American Minister in Peking, wrote
East Wind Rising
a brilliant report in 1935 of China's maneuvers in "Develop
ments Affecting American Policy in the Far East." Of this pe
riod he said:
"This drive for getting rid of 'extrality' was pressed through
out the summer. The Powers . . . found it impossible to take
any firm unified stand, one element of their difficulty being that
our government postponed its decision, and throughout the
most acute stage of the controversy, gave no reply to the re
quests of the Peking Legation for instructions.
"The Chinese, conscious of the advantage accruing to them
through the disunity of the Treaty Powers, undertook to cut
the Gordian knot by simply declaring, on Dec. 29, 1929, that
the extrality provisions of the treaties would be void as of Jan.
i> 1930."
"Extrality/* or "extraterritoriality," exempted foreigners from
the jurisdiction of Chinese courts. This provision was one of the
main pillars of the "unequal treaties." The Chinese had long
been working up a head of steam against them.
Shameen, for all its smallness and relative unimportance as
a "concession/' had special reason for uneasiness over the De
cember 29 decree. Four years before, a massacre had taken
place on Sha Kee Street, near the bridge. It grew out of a clash
in Shanghai between the police and a crowd of students and
demonstrators. In Canton shortly afterward the students or
ganized a demonstration to protest the Shanghai incident.
British infantry and French marines took stations, facing Sha
Kee. Massed thousands of Chinese marched past Shameen,
without incident. Then shooting began. Both sides denied firing
first. Then a sharp exchange took place. Evidently the Chinese
military cadets were armed, but there must have been others,
as well, carrying arms in the demonstration. Chinese writers
fixed the Chinese casualties at fifty-two killed and one hundred
and seventeen wounded, "including students, laborers, mer
chants, and cadets."
Shameen Island 119
Cliinese hatred of foreigners, therefore, focused particularly
on little Shameen.
"Sooner or later we are going to have to show the Kuomin-
tang what's what," the lawyer said. "The Chinese are feeling
their oats, of course. Can't understand what's wrong with our
bloody government, or any others, for that matter, to stand for
this nonsense. Mark you, the Japs won't take much more of it."
I told him about the incident with the sampan woman and
the student and asked whether that sort of thing happened
often.
"Very seldom," he said. "More than it used to. When I first
came out here, we'd have shot a Chinese for less. Now you
have to be a bit more careful. They found an American, chap
named O'Sullivan, floating in the bay in Hong Kong not long
ago. Got in some sort of fight with a Chinese. Nobody knows
just what happened."
As I was leaving, he said: "About that project of yours I'd
give it up. Talk to the students. They're the only real influence
on public opinion right now."
Chapter XI
CONVERSATION
AT MIDNIGHT
"WHAT DO WE KNOW about the peasant?"
Martin Fong crossed the room and dropped another chunk
of coal on the fire. Sparks rose like a swarm of fireflies. The
clock on the mantle showed two fifty five. It was not the first
time a bull session in Martin's room had lasted so late. Once
we had talked until dawn. The sessions usually began in the
mess hall at dinner, or in the recreation room, Then, at closing
time, they moved to a student's room in Java Hall, preferably
a room with a fireplace. The argument went on and on, always
about China and the shapes of things they hoped to see in the
near future.
Very serious college bull sessions.
They made a deep impression on me. I assumed they were
peculiar to Lingnan. But later, at Shanghai College, St. John's,
Nankai University, Yenching (with its beautiful setting), and
every other school where we worked, there were the same pas
sionate discussions, always on the same general theme China.
In the college dormitories at home, bull sessions were going
on, too, but they were seldom political. Our perennial topics
had been What about Women? and Is There a God?
"What is there to know about the peasant?" said Eddie Chen,
looking at Martin. "He is born. He breeds. He hopes to have
Conversation at Midnight 121
enough left to eat after the landlord and tax collector have cut
him up. Then cholera, typhus, bandits, or a flood kills him, but
seldom old age. And that is all. What else is there to know
about the peasant?"
"The peasant is the heart of the problem/' said Martin.
"Everything must start with him. Therefore, we "
"For Christ's sake, don't say Ve intellectuals/ "
" we have to know a great deal more about him before
there can be any mass education or any social reforms in the
villages."
"At the risk of sounding a little old-fashioned," said Eddie,
"I contend that government, not the peasant, has to be the start
ing point. And by government I mean the elite, the scholar, the
able few, the trained official. That's the one tradition, the one
point where I believe the old Confucians were on the beam."
"You are talking about methods," said Martin, "about the
tools and the machinery. I am saying where they must be used
first. There is no basic disagreement between us."
"Hold it." Philip Li, scribbling at a desk, looked up from his
note pad. "I can't keep up with all this penetrating thought."
"No doubt this will appear in the next issue of Crescent Moon
all as your own idea."
"Maybe," he replied. "But so far you haven't said anything
worth poaching."
Phil wrote constantly for the student magazines. They paid
nothing, but he said frankly he wrote for the satisfaction of
seeing his name in print.
Literary publications mushroomed in every city and around
every Chinese college Crescent Moon, The Crier, The New
Group, The Fiction Writer, The Creatives, and a hundred other
titles. Some of these magazines published fiction in the new
literary form launched a decade earlier by the celebrated scholar
Hu Shih. "Matter is the slave of manner," he had said, breath
ing a fresh new spirit into both the content of Chinese writing
and the literary language itself. Some specialized in satire, rid-
East Wind Rising
foiling the old traditional Chinese forms, family life, social cus
toms, and the classical scholar. Some were obviously influenced
by European philosophers, notably Rousseau and Ruskin; the
Communist line bobbed up in others.
They all led a precarious existence, threatened by the police,
on the one hand, and extinction through lack of funds, on the
other. But no matter how many died, others appeared. They
reflected the enormous mental vitality of the students, the fer
ment of ideas, and the impatience of the young Chinese to
build the new order in China.
Phil Li, for his part, denied any such motives. He laughed at
idealism and professed to find what he called "the world sav
ers" as funny as the outworn patterns of life in China that they
wanted to change. Phil came from Malaya. His father had
moved to Kuala Lumpur as a young man, opened a little food
store, carefully nourished his small gains, and eventually be
come a millionaire from dealing in rubber.
Martin Fong and Eddie Chen also were the sons of rich men.
Eddie was American-born, a native of Hawaii. His parents had
sent him to Lingnan solely because they wanted him to have a
Chinese education, whether it had any practical value or not.
In this, they reversed the normal procedure of that day. Most
Chinese scrimped and saved to send their sons to the United
States or Europe for an education.
Martin's family lived in Tientsin. He intended to study en
gineering, not because he liked it or had any special aptitude
for it, but because, as he said, China needed more engineers
and fewer merchants, government officials, and scholars.
In the fashion of that day the students had taken Western
first names, and even when they talked Chinese they addressed
each other as "Eddie" and "Martin."
"You both weary me," Philip Li said. "What is all this about
peasants and good government in the 'New China'? I see China
as a jungle and not likely to be changed by any of you. All three
of us are lucky that our fathers happened to be tigers and not
Conversation at Midnight 123
sheep. I feel sorry for the millions of sheep, but there are too
many of them for anybody to do much about and I'm not going
to try. No bloody fear."
"Then why are you going into government?"
"Because I expect to find a cushy job. Preferably in Shanghai.
And preferably one that will keep me informed, in advance,
about foreign loans and the manipulations of currency by my
future colleagues. Then, in a comfortable house in the French
Concession, I should think I shall settle down quietly to writ
ing, being a gentleman, and sleeping with White Russian danc
ers and little Chinese virgins."
Martin stared into the fire. "You like to sound blase, Phil. I
wager you will join the sheep and not the tigers when the
time comes."
"Come and visit me in Shanghai in about five years, my
friend. I promise not to say 1 told you so/ "
"I'm inclined to agree with Phil," said Eddie. "China is a jun
gle now. Or, rather, a mare's nest "
"Augean stables," said Philip. "And where shall we find the
Hercules to clean them by diverting the Yangtze River?"
"Certainly not Chiang Kai-shek."
"Nor his wife's family and their mates," said Philip, "the
Soong dynasty."
"I think you're wrong," Martin said. "The Kuomintang is by
no means perfect. But give them time. What chance have they
had in these last three or four years? You must admit the war
lords and Wang Ching-wei and the Communists have kept
them pretty busy. Somehow I have confidence in Chiang. I
think he's a sincere, dedicated man who will bring it off in time."
"Hallelujah, Brother Fong. Put a nickel on the drum and be
saved."
"No doubt this government hasn't had much chance yet," said
Eddie Chen. "But, seriously, Martin, do you see any indication
that the Kuomintang know where they're going? Have a pro
gram? They talk about this being a period of political tutelage
124 E as *' Wind Rising
after which there will be democracy at all levels, national elec
tions. Well, when? They say civil liberties will be granted.
When? What have they done, in short?'*
Philip Li stuck a splinter of kindling into the fire and lit his
pipe.
"Now you put me in the position of being the devil's advo
cate," he said. "With all due respect to this silent and inscru
table Occidental, Mr. Morin here, I reluctantly applaud one
thing the Kuomintang have done."
"And what is that?"
"They have taken a stand against the white peril."
"Do you mean us foreign devils?" I said.
"Precisely. We have been talking about a starting point. Very
well, I say the starting point must be the present treaties with
the foreign devils. They must be either torn up or rewritten. I
am in favor of the Kuomintang position on that."
Martin shook his head. "It's only a smoke screen," he said,
"a move to please the extreme Chinese Nationalist. Suppose the
treaties are revised. Will that stop the corruption? The usury?
Will it put more rice in the peasant's bowl? The treaties have
nothing to do with him."
"I disagree," said Phil. "When the 'unequal treaties' are gone,
when the foreign concessions and foreign courts are gone, the
Chinese businessman will be able to compete on equal terms
with the foreigners. Exploitation will end. In the process, all
Chinese benefit."
"One billion, two hundred million dollars a year."
"Correct. The good doctor never explained how he arrived
at that figure, but whatever it may be, we could use it," said
PhiL
Chinese students were required to study the writings of Dr.
Sun Yat-sen in the universities. At patriotic services his last will
often was read publicly. In the passage to which Eddie Chen
referred, Dr. Sun had said:
Conversation at Midnight 125
"Our tribute to foreign countries is 12 billions in 10 years.
Such economic subjugation, such enormous tribute, was not in
our wildest dreams and even now it is hard to visualize. Hence
we do not feel the awful shame of it.
"If we had this tribute of $1,200,000,000 as national income
what could we not do with it! What progress our society would
make! But because of this economic mastery of China and the
consequent yearly damages our society is not free to develop
and the common people do not have the means of living. This
economic control is worse than millions of soldiers ready to
Mil us."
Philip yawned. "It's getting late. I move we adjourn. Unless,
of course, Martin can produce some of that excellent jasmine
tea. Jasmine always reminds me of a little friend I visit when
ever I am in Hong Kong. She passes her days in what our an
cestors called 'the flower boats.' "
Martin Fong set the teakettle on the fire in the grate. We
stood up and stretched. Philip wrote rapidly in his notebook.
"To show you what an excellent journalist I could be/' he said,
"and would be if it offered the opportunities of trade or gov
ernment, I have kept full notes on all wise thoughts expressed
here tonight. My own, I find, are the only ones with any true
perception."
"I can already see it," said Eddie. " 'Building the New China,
or, The Transcendent Curve,' by Philip Li, Lingnan, 1930."
"Moreover, I have classified the various points. You will not
agree with the order of importance, of course, but this is the
way I have them:
" 'First international. End the unequal treaties. Take over
foreign concessions. Stop the flow of wealth from China to for
eign countries.
" 'Second military. Need for powerful modern army to back
up demands. More military academies. Fan fire of nationalism
among all classes of people.
126 East Wind Rising
"Third domestic-political. Early national elections and
real democratic system at all levels. Civil rights. Stop trend to
ward Fascism.
" 'Fourth economic. Need for speedy industrialization. Take
more people off farms. Need to develop class of trained man
agers. Reduction of rents. Tax reform. Land reform. Stop usury
and corruption in government/ Question in brackets here
'How?'
" 'Fifth social.' Since do-gooders are completely beyond my
comprehension, the notes in this category are sketchy. I find
only a few woolly-headed propositions about universal educa
tion, as if that were possible, and replacing the Honorable Con
fucius with a modern society, whatever that may be."
He closed the book with a snap. "Well, there it is, gentle
men," he said. "Personally, I question whether the whole of it
is as important as this cup of tea." He sipped the tea, slurping
loudly.
"Quite a list," I said.
"Yes," said Martin Fong, "and it barely scratches the surface/'
The only time I ever contributed to one of these sessions was
the night they discovered I came from the city where movies
are made. To them the screen was a window on a strange and
desirable world.
In those days, much more than today, scenes were filmed on
the street. The cameraman wore his cap backward, with the
visor behind, and cranked his camera by hand. Since there was
no sound, the director could talk during the action. "Now you
see her across the street, Bicardo. You're dumbfounded. You
thought she was in Tangier. You can't understand this. Easy,
now. Don't chew the scenery. That's it. Cut." Sometimes, to as
sist an actress in displaying grief, a violinist would play "Hearts
Conversation at Midnight 127
and Flowers'* just outside the camera range. I told them about
these things and described some of the stars I had seen.
But I didn't know my audience. The students were only
mildly interested in the way Norma Talmadge looked in person
and the story of Fatty ArbucHe's troubles. What they wanted
to know was whether the movies gave an accurate picture of
life in America, whether they portrayed the effects of some
American social customs. Taking their material from the mov
ies, they wrote theses comparing American and Chinese forms:
papers on the equality of the sexes, the differences in family
life, Western attitudes toward romance and marriage. One of
these theses, perceiving the potency of the screen as an instru
ment of propaganda, advocated using Chinese-made movies to
sell the masses on the advantages of "the small family/' An
other, more earthy, suggested the screen as a medium for pro
moting the use of modern bathroom conveniences!
Always so serious. They had abandoned the old educational
system of China, but the tradition of hard, earnest study and
thought remained.
In the old system a student learned the classics by heart, as
well as Confucian ethics and the teachings of the sages. How
ever, in the examinations he also had to be able to explain the
deep meanings in these philosophies. The civil-service examina
tions were important, not only for scholastic reasons, but be
cause they opened the way to position among the elite classes
of China. Success in the examinations clothed a scholar in pres
tige and gave him great political and social importance in his
community as well. It was a system of intellectual democracy,
and the scholar was regarded as anything but an egg head.
The son of the humblest peasant might rise to the elite class
if his father could provide him with a tutor for the examina
tions. There were three types of test national, provincial, and
county. The wider the field, the more important the posts for
those who qualified.
The tutor, a venerable old classicist, would charge two silver
128 East Wind Rising
dollars a year to provide an education "in ordinary." It cost six
dollars to be trained "with honors."
Imagine the fearful strain and nervous torture that must have
beset a student when he came to the fateful day of the exami
nations. Honor, the hopes of his family, and high station rode
on his answers. There is a story that the man who, in effect,
touched off the Taiping rebellion, Hung Hsiu-chuan, failed in
the great test for office. Shortly afterward he began seeing tihe
visions in which he became Christ's younger brother.
Like so many other ancient institutions, the old educational
system began to lose validity in Chinese eyes during the Pred
atory Century. The shock of defeat in war, the rapid foreign en
croachment, the realization that China had ceased to be a great
empire cast doubt on all the old forms. The days of glory had
passed. In all truth Sun Yat-sen could recall: "When China was
strongest, her political power inspired awe on all sides, and not
a nation south and west of China but considered it an honor to
bring her tribute."
Another morose observer wrote: "There is a Dead Sea on the
western extremity of Asia and a dead nation on the eastern."
So, China, like Japan a generation earlier, began studying
the institutions of the conquerors. In 1902 the government or
dered a Western-style educational system to be established.
Even before, the missionaries had been setting up such schools.
Now they found themselves in the main stream of the trend in
China.
Lingnan (meaning "South of the Ridge") was established by
Presbyterians before the turn of the century. Among the first
students, about a dozen in all, there were grown men. They still
considered China "The Middle Kingdom," hub of the world,
and believed that the King of England, not to mention minor
princes, paid tribute to the Emperor so that Englishmen could
live in Peking. One of the early reports from Lingnan describes
these first students as "eager, intelligent, and hard-working."
By the time we reached the university, it had four colleges,
Conversation at Midnight 129
a middle school, a primary school, and "feeder" schools in Hong
Kong and Shanghai. At Lingnan itself some three hundred men
and about sixty women were in the four colleges arts and sci
ence, business administration, agriculture, and silk raising. An
engineering school was about to be opened. In effect, there
were two faculty staffs Chinese and American. The Chinese
staff was larger.
Considering that in the older tradition a scholar did not work
with his hands or receive vocational training ( and that women
were not educated at all), these fields of study represented a
very great change indeed.
The prestige of the university was such that Chinese came
from all over Southeast Asia and even farther, as well as from
China proper. Many of them came from wealthy families, and
Lingnan was known as "a rich man's school." But, rich or poor,
as I noted earlier, nobody lived in luxury there.
What impressed me most was the Chinese students* extreme
seriousness. On an American campus we would have called the
majority of them "greasy grinds." They went in very little for
fun and games. Occasionally you could organize a rubber of
bridge after dinner, but they preferred to sit and talk when
they didn't have to work. Or they would go to Canton to a
theater or a restaurant. Men went with men always. "Dating**
was rare. Whether any heavy love affairs ever took place, off
campus or on, I do not know.
If their ways seemed strange to us, ours astonished them
even more.
Infrequently the Y.M.C.A. or a kind of college fraternity held
a social evening. For one of these the Chinese students asked
us to depict something of American college life. We rigged up
a stage-set to resemble a fraternity room, with pennants, dirty
corduroys lying around, and all the photographs of girls we
could find. I wrote a sketch, and the others acted in it. It re
volved around a poker game. The dialogue was larded with
philosophizing about women and God, and talk of Saturday's
130 East Wind Rising
football game and the big wing-ding afterward. It may not
have been good, but it was typical. I also poached some jokes
from the Two Black Crows, revamping them to fit the situa
tion. What exquisite torture to wait for the laugh that never
comes! Then we gave them a football yell, sang Alma Mater,
and dropped the theater curtain.
The whole thing sank in murderous silence.
Afterward a Chinese girl came to ask questions. Her face
was a picture of bewilderment. "It was most interesting," she
said, "but when do you study?"
"That's a good question," I said. "We study, of course, but
not as much as you do here."
"It must be different in America," she said a little wistfully.
"Very different/'
When they thought of America, conflicting emotions pulled at
the students. They admired the United States as a successful
nation. They envied the richness and power and pre-Depression
stability. The American way, therefore, must be good and the
Chinese way, obviously, outworn and inefficient. They con
demned Confucian thought for having made China "backward"
and a prey to the aggressive foreigner. According to the Con
fucian ideal, you strive for harmony, not to excel in competi
tion. You "succeed" by becoming righteous and wise, thus hon
oring your family, not by becoming rich and powerful. But in
the world as it developed after about 1840 these ideals no
longer worked.
On the other side of the coin, the students felt bitterness and
even hatred for the West. More than any other class of Chinese,
they resented humiliations and the monuments to Western priv
ilege on Chinese soil. Listen to the words of Sun Yat-sen:
"Annam and Korea are protectorates of France and Japan
Conversation at Midnight 131
and their people are slaves. We taunt the Koreans and Anna-
mites with the name f wang-kuo nu (slaves without a country),
yet while looking at their position, we seem unaware that our
position is lower than theirs. . . . China is the colony of every
nation that has made treaties with her and the treaty-making
nations are her masters. China is not the colony of one nation
but of all, and we are not the slaves of one country but of all.'*
It was the student and intellectual who organized strikes and
boycotts and stirred the lower classes to action. He led the
demonstrations that resulted in the shooting in Shanghai and
the "massacre" opposite Shameen. The murder of foreigners in
Nanking and the innumerable attacks on foreign property all
over China sprang from two interacting forces antif oreignism
and Chinese nationalism. No group felt these more keenly than
the students.
In their personal relations with foreigners they were gener
ally friendly or at least courteous. I think the incident with the
student and the sampan woman on the bund in Canton was an
accident, an isolated case. Certainly nothing like it ever hap
pened again. However, the students pulled no punches with
you about the actions of the United States if you invited their
opinions. America was not their favorite nation.
Some foreigners could see what was happening. I discovered
some who felt defensive about what their forefathers had
pulled off in China. Most, however, scoffed at the idea that a
Chinese could be patriotic in the ultimate sense. They con
tended he had no idea of a "China/* an abstract entity of which
he was a member. They insisted that he confined responsibility
and allegiance to his family, not the nation. In varying degrees
no doubt this was true. The illiterate peasant, the old-timer,
certainly the war lord all fitted the old pattern. But tc^he stu
dents "China" existed, even though it was divided by barriers
of language, inadequate communications, and fearful economic
dislocations. They were prepared to work and fight for that
China.
East Wind Rising
The ones I knew, almost without exception, supported the
new central government, the Kuomintang. They felt it offered
the hest promise of pulling China out of the pit. The extent of
their support ranged from the enthusiastic to the hopeful to the
merely watchful. They had some reservations about certain
aspects. But on the whole they seemed willing to wait for the
end of the "period of tutelage," after which the Kuomintang
promised to set democracy in motion with elections at all levels.
They resented the curtailment of civil liberties. Here again,
however, most of them believed, or said they believed, such
controls were necessary during the provisional period. Until a
constitution could be written and a national assembly elected,
they told me, the Kuomintang had no choice but to operate as
an authoritarian government. After the "period of tutelage/'
however, they expected and would demand all the rights and
liberties of citizens of a democracy. Few expressed fears of an
outright dictatorship under Chiang Kai-shek.
To be sure, they sometimes referred to Mme Chiang and her
relatives as "the Soong dynasty." Her maiden name was Soong
Mei-ling. Her brother and one of her brothers-in-law both held
top offices in the government. The sarcastic term "dynasty/ 7
however, probably was little more than a political jibe, like the
jokes aimed at presidents and prime ministers everywhere.
Now, I have been relating, primarily, the opinions of the
students in the missionary-founded schools, the private institu
tions, A very different situation unquestionably existed in the
national universities, the state schools. The students there came
from less well-to-do families. Tuition was much less, but even
so ? the struggle of these families and these young men must
have been a hard one to finance a college education. For these
and other reasons Leftist thought and indeed outright Com
munism had penetrated deeply into the state schools.
It was difficult to determine the degree of this penetration
because the government (and even some of the war lords)
fought Communism tooth and nail. Consequently, the profes-
Conversation at Midnight 133
sional organizer and agitator had to work in the dark. Never
theless, lie had made inroads, apparently deep ones.
Here, for example, is the text of a pamphlet put out by the
students in Peking. I picked it up on the street, not far from
Peking National University:
"Break capitalism; confiscate industries and banks of foreign
capitalists; do away with unjust taxation; unite with the Third
International; improve working conditions; overthrow the pres
ent government; unite China."
In 1928, with considerable fanfare and publicity, the Rus
sian Boxer Indemnity Committee announced it would turn over
to Peking National a fairly considerable sum of money, $4,500,-
ooo, stretching over a two-year period. No doubt it financed
this pamphlet and other operations.
In another case what started out as an innocent picnic turned
into a Communist demonstration. Some students at Hsiao Chu-
ang Agricultural School in Nanking organized the picnic. Sur
prisingly, the original small group grew to about two hundred
students on the day of the holiday. They went in a body to the
railway depot near the school. By the time they reached it,
some were displaying Communist banners and placards. They
boarded the train and refused, en masse, to buy tickets. "In a
Socialist state students on holiday are not required to pay rail
way fares/* they told the conductor. In effect, they comman
deered the train. Some, I was told, treated it as a lark college-
boy high jinks. But government authorities did not Chiang
Kai-shek ordered the school closed.
In the city jail in Canton a frightening dungeon, inciden
tally I talked with some students who were behind the bars
on charges of Leftist activity. Later I wrote a newspaper story
about it. I had remarked to the police official that the prisoners
seemed cheerful, and quoted his reply in the story. "Why not?
They're alive, aren't they? They know what can happen to a
Communist."
Apart from the work of the professional agitator, a simple
134 East Wind Rising
fact explains why many Chinese students felt drawn toward
Communism in that day the problem of earning a living after
graduation. There were just not enough Chinese corporations,
factories, engineering firms, public utilities, railroads, mines,
and so on ? to provide jobs for all of them. Too much of the na
tion's industry and commerce was in the hands of foreigners.
The opportunities for a Chinese in foreign firms were limited,
both in number and prospects for advancement. He had small
chance of becoming "Number Three" or "Number Two/ 7 as the
idiom went, much less of moving into the front office as taipan.
Consequently, many of the new graduates either left China
or went into government work. There they quickly became
typical bureaucrats, stretching out the work, proliferating their
duties, hanging desperately on to their offices. The number of
government offices grew rapidly during that period, with the
inevitable effect of raising taxes.
But for the ordinary graduate not even government could be
the catch-all. Another factor hedged him in, the so-called re
turned student. A Chinese who could afford to go abroad for
additional study after having finished in a Chinese school was
called a "returned student." Naturally, only the sons of wealthy
families, or the men who managed to get money some other
way, were able to go to the United States or Europe. Many
scrimped and saved for years for the chance. As China was
driving hard to modernize, the "returned student," with his
Western training, had the edge if he wanted to go into govern
ment work. By 1930 well over half, probably closer to two
thirds of the offices were held by these men. The others, in bit
terness and envy, must have reflected that nothing was possible
without money, even in the "New China/'
One "returned student" did very well for himself in the gov
ernment, although he had to wait several decades. He finished
his education in France and was a Communist before he ever
left Paris. His name was Chou En-laL
For both the Kuomintang and the Communists, the Chinese
Conversation at Midnight 135
student was a vast source of energy, a dynamo for galvanizing
the Chinese masses. Neither group, curiously enough, seemed
to fully realize this at the time. The Communists already were
concentrating on the peasants. The Kuomintang made Dr. Sun's
writings required study, and ordered many schools to observe a
moment of silence in his memory every Monday morning. But
something more than his image was needed to win the full
loyalty and support of the student class.
Nevertheless, at that moment in China's history, 1930, it ap
peared to me that the balance of student opinion was tipped
toward the Kuomintang, especially in the missionary-founded
schools. If the government could have won over larger numbers
of students and kept their allegiance, tremendous things could
have been done in China.
This did not happen. Two years later more and more stu
dents began looking toward the Communists, listening to their
arguments, wondering whether they, and not the Kuomintang,
held the key to the salvation of China.
It was a disastrous shift.
Chapter XII
TSUI
DUKING THE LONG WINTER at Lingnan a subtle change came
over Tsui. At first he merely seemed preoccupied, turned in on
himself, brooding. All the fun drained out of him and he
stopped laughing. Then he became morose. Almost impercep
tibly he began to draw away from us. More and more of the
decisions respecting our project were turned over to Warren
Scott, who had helped him launch it. Tsui seemed to lose in
terest in it* He offered no explanations and turned aside any
efforts to draw him out. Even his outward appearance changed.
The Chinese robes accounted in part for this. He had put on
a Chinese costume as a joke the first time. He stood in front of
a mirror, posturing and making Oriental faces. "Get your cam
eras," he had said. "I want a record of this." Then he began to
clown, impersonating an old-fashioned Mandarin. He folded
his arms into the sleeves of the gown, raised his eyebrows, and
stalked around the room, intoning, he said, a poem by Li Po.
Next, with only a slight change of expression, he became the
mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. He finished the performance as
Jade Flute, one of the maidens, more or less, in the novel Cliing
Ping Mel We said that not even Mei Lan-fang, the darling of
the Chinese theater, could have done better. Tsui agreed.
A little later he bought robes and shaams and began wear
ing them frequently. I tried to needle him about "going native,"
but he did not laugh. He said they were warmer and added,
Tsui 137
cryptically, I thought: "It might be better if we all went a little
bit native."
However, he appeared at the next group meeting in a suit
and his usual sweater. We met periodically to compare notes,
hear a financial report from Don Dreher, the treasurer, and
plan details of the work. On that occasion the question of place
ments in Shanghai came up. Shanghai was the next step, and
we were to split up there, using the facilities of two different
schools. Tsui said he didn't care where he was assigned. He
looked bored and said nothing except in answer to direct ques
tions.
He began finding excuses for not coming when we went to
Canton and Shameen to shop or merely explore the markets.
As a change from the Chinese food in the mess hall, we went to
the Victoria Hotel and ate through the menu from top to bot
tom: soup thick as mucilage; fish; roast beef and Yorkshire pud
ding; roast potatoes; a vegetable; trifle; savory and sulphuric
coffee. The Old China Hand never dieted.
Then the markets. What has become of the markets under
the Communists? Who can imagine China without the million-
and-one little shops and the charming, persuasive merchants,
each a one-man corporation and staunch advocate of free en
terprise?
With wonderful common sense, merchants selling the same
article used to cluster together in the same street. Jade Street.
Silk Street. Embroidery Street. Box Street. Jewelry Street. The
Edible Bird's Nest Market. It greatly simplifies shopping. If
you don't find exactly what you want in one shop, the merchant
next door may have it. Imagine how much time and effort a
housewife would save if all the department stores in town stood
cheek by jowl in the same street.
In back, and sometimes in front, you could watch an artisan
carving figurines of the gods and goddesses in ivory and wood,
fashioning bangles, inlaying silver with kingfisher feathers. The
138 East Wind Rising
merchant would stand near, smiling, but making no effort to
sell unless you showed interest in a particular article. On one
of our first trips, Tsui had explained to the merchants that we
were students, not rich American tourists. The news had an in
stant and magical effect on prices in every street. To us he ex
plained something else. "The merchant wants to sell, of course/*
he said. "That's his first objective. But his special satisfaction
comes in fitting the article to the customer, so to speak. For in
stance, say you are looking at a ring. He will try to sell you the
ring that matches his feeling about you, about your appearance
and personality. That gives him a real kick. I imagine we're the
only people in the world who have that approach in selling/'
We? Tsui was as American as a hot dog. Yet, without notic
ing, he had said "we/' When had he started identifying himself
with the Chinese?
"""'As the pale winter days passed, we saw less and less of him.
As he spoke Cantonese, he attended classes at Lingnan that
would have been meaningless to us. His dormitory room, I dis
covered, had become a rendezvous for the students at night.
He never joined our bull sessions any more. In the mess hall,
too, he ate with them. Sometimes, when he went to the big vats
to fill his rice bowl, he would pause and exchange a word and
then go back to their table. It occurred to me that he might be
having a love affair. The coeds often invited him to their dor
mitory for tea, but never a deux. However, if he had been see
ing a girl, we would have seen them together on the campus.
Instead, long periods passed when Tsui vanished entirely.
A fragment from Stanton Avery's diary says: "February z.
Tsui came back today without any of us having known he was
away. This is known as 'pulling a Tsui/ "
Could he be at Teng Wu? I remembered the expression on
his face that night. . . .
Teng Wu was a monastery hidden in the mountains beyond
Canton. Behind its massive ramparts three hundred monks and
acolytes moved quietly through the daily cycle of prayer and
Tsui 139
work. The incense, the tapers, the great Buddha, and, above
all, the silence, created a sense of peace and unimaginable
serenity.
Just at dusk we had heard the chanting. The chief celebrant,
an aged monk, began it. His eyes were open, but unseeing. Pres
ently another voice joined the chant. Then another and another.
Gongs, cymbals, and wooden percussion instruments picked up
the rhythm, locking it in cadence. More voices kept coming
into the chorus. Oriental music, with its tones and half-notes
that seem dissonant and even raucous, seldom conveys any
meaning to me and arouses no emotion. At the monastery that
night, however, the chanting conjured haunting images, shad
owy images of some other world in another time.
In the middle of the rites I had glanced at Tsui. He was
staring into the yellow-gold flame of the candles. He looked
mesmerized. When the chanting ended, he blinked his eyes and
shook his head like a man coming out of a trance.
Later, as we were going down the mountain, I said that mis
sionary work should be a two-way street and that the Buddhists
should send priests to America. Til bet they'd convert Amer
icans faster than the Christians are converting Chinese/* I said.
"What would you call the Western equivalent of a c rice Chris
tian,' in that case? A Vhole-wheat Buddhist/ probably."
Tsui smiled halfheartedly. "I'd like to go back up there and
stay awhile/' he said. "One of these days I think I will/'
He did not go back to the monastery. There was no girl, no
campus romance. He had not gone anywhere those times we
thought he had disappeared. He had simply been staying iu
his room, sometimes skipping meals. The reason for his strange
ness, when it emerged, was simple, yet complicated.
Late one afternoon, while writing a newspaper story, I came
140 East Wind Rising
to a point where I needed some information. Tsui had been
talking about the very subject some weeks before. I went to
his room. He was alone there, poring over a manuscript. As I
came in, he wrote a marginal note on the side of a page. (I
still have it today. The note, in his precise hand, says: "What
lecture could change the mind of a People?")
He gave me the information I needed, and we talked for a
moment. I asked what he was writing. He pushed the type
written pages across the table. "Junk," he said. "A real mess.
I can't seem to get it on paper. Probably because I don't know
what I'm trying to say myself.''
The sheets of manuscript looked like a rat's nest. He had
scratched out whole paragraphs and rewritten between the
lines. Phrases had been circled and carried over into other
sentences. He had obviously reached that stage, known to
writers, where words begin to wrestle with each other. His
paper appeared to be a jungle stew of observations on politics,
philosophy, and a new technique in lecturing. Here and there
his curious sense of mysticism came to the surface.
"What is this lack of order," he had written, "these evidences
of great misunderstanding?" And there were broken phrases
and unfinished sentences: "the continual struggle and readjust
ment going on in the heart of China," "some phases of that
mighty, unreasoning movement in China." A single passage
stood untouched. "How many men in positions of importance
in the world today can say of their work, 1 feel that I am in
creasing the hopes of the people, and giving them a spiritual
uplift which fills them with a sense of power, a sense of po
tentiality, a sense of victory'?"
"It looks interesting," I said. "What are you trying to get at?"
"If I knew," he said impatiently, Td write it."
"Can't you just talk it? Sometimes you can talk an idea out
of the bushes better than writing it."
Tsui hesitated. He selected one topic in his paper. This led
him into a rambling explanation of the other foundations of
Tsui 141
his idea: a conversation with a bitterly antiforeign student; Ms
personal experiences before the Chinese at Lingnan had ac
cepted him; a lecture that came through to him even though it
had been deliverd in Mandarin, a language he did not know.
He had been trying to bind all this together around a central
theme the struggle in China.
As he went on talking, he began to get excited. It was like
a small crevice in a dam which widened as more chunks broke
away until finally the dam collapsed. Words poured out of Tsui
in a flood. Suddenly he was himself again, the old Tsui.
"I want to help these people," he said. "I have to do some
thing to help them."
"What, for instance? 7 '
"That's just it. I don't know. IVe been thinking about it for
a long time, but going around in circles and getting nowhere."
He said he had talked with missionaries and the instructors
at Lingnan. He had considered going up to Teng Wu and ask
ing the monks for advice. The endless arguments among the
students, he said, had impressed him deeply and given him the
impulse to try to help the Chinese, but had only confused him
when he began searching for the way to begin.
The dinner hour came. "Let's skip it," Tsui said. "Or get
something later. I want to tell you something even more cock
eyed. I've begun to feel Chinese."
"What's surprising about that? You are only one generation
removed from China. I don't imagine a second generation
Frenchman could go back to France without feeling the tie."
"Not exactly all Chinese," he said. "Mixed up. It's hard to
explain. I seem to be looking at things through their eyes. I can
feel the way they feel, but I'm an American and I think like an
American, too. IVe become so mixed up that there are times
when I'm not kidding I wonder if I'm going crazy."
"You've been working too hard," I said. "Let's go to Canton
tonight and see a movie or try that wine that's supposed to be
an aphrodisiac.**
142 East Wind Rising
As though lie had not heard me, he said: "Do you remember
the week end on the f arm?"
The farm lay in a lovely little valley, two or three hours
northeast of Canton by train. The owner, we were told, was the
head of the twenty-sixth generation of his family. He had more
than ten thousand relatives. His first act when we arrived was
to introduce us, with his flashing smile, to the portraits of his
ancestors. More than five hundred years of Chung patriarchs
looked out from the paintings. They would have been here in
the valley of Chuk Ko Uen when the Mings still ruled China.
Some of them must have known the warrior Cheng Cheng-
kung, whom the Portuguese called "Koxinga." There is a temp
tation to find a historic parallel here. When the Manchus con
quered China, expelling the Mings, Cheng fled to Formosa,
refusing to submit. He wrested the island from the Dutch and,
like the Nationalists today, used it as a base for raids against
the Manchus in south China. You can still see his castle at the
southern tip of Formosa. He probably came through the same
valley where the Chungs lived, raiding and plundering. Sad to
say, little had changed. The twenty-sixth patriarch maintained
his own private garrison for protection against the bandits in
the valley. He said he could not permit us to sleep in the fam
ily monastery, which stood outside the walls of the compound,
for fear of kidnappers.
Father Chung was a landlord, and a big one. On the farm
were orange groves, olive orchards, litchi-nut trees, well-
stocked fish ponds, and warehouses to hold the products. But
this was not all. In neighboring villages he owned restaurants,
pottery shops, candle-making shops, rice stores, and a brick
kiln. Apparently he owned most of the land in the whole beau
tiful valley. He belonged to that class of men whom the Com
munists liquidated, usually in public executions, to impress the
peasants. Thus they hoped to give evidence of their friendship
for the poor and their policy of redistributing the land.
Mao Tse-tung's own father, while not as big an operator as
Tsui 143
Father Chung, nevertheless was also a landlord, the so-called
middle peasant. He employed peasants, sold rice in the cities,
and seems to have acquired a modest fortune. It came, as the
old-time economist used to say, from "unearned increment"
And a modern psychiatrist, no doubt, would find special mean
ing in the fact that Mao hated his father and quarreled fre
quently with him before leaving home to become a Communist.
"What about the farm?" I said to Tsui.
"I kept watching the people who worlc on it," he said. "I
thought how little hope they have of ever owning a tiny strip
of land themselves. He owns practically the whole valley."
"He provides jobs, too. A lot of the peasants wouldn't be
eating if it weren't for him."
"I know. That's what I keep telling myself. But the peasants
want land, too. I could feel, like a pain, how hard they want
land."
"But the system is essentially the same as our system," I said.
"What else built America if not private capital and the incen
tive and personal initiative to acquire it?"
"There is no parallel whatever," he said. "The Chinese peas
ant has no place to go, no undeveloped West to settle, no
education to take him off the land, no means of borrowing a
little capital to get a start. He is hopelessly trapped."
"So, something has to be changed."
"Some way must be found to give the peasants a chance/*
he said.
"And do you think the Socialists or Communists have the
answer to this?"
"Not in a million years," he said. "The peasant is a capitalist
at heart, a free enterpriser. The reason he wants to own land
is not only to have a better chance of eating, but because he
believes in personal property."
It was after midnight. Tsui leaned over the desk, pillowing
his head on his arm. For several minutes he said nothing. I
thought he had gone to sleep.
144 E ^ Wind Rising
"What are you going to do?"
He looked up. "I don't know yet. IVe been trying to think
what I can do. Maybe get a Job with the government. Maybe
see if there is a place for me in rural education. I'm thinking
of the possibilities."
"Do you know the written language well enough to get into
the rural-education movement?"
"No," he said. "In fact, right now I am sure I don't know
anything about anything. But I expect to come to some con
clusions when we get to Shanghai."
Chapter XIII
THE SHANGHAI STORY
EVERY MORNING shortly after six o'clock I went through the
front gate of Shanghai College, far out on the Whangpoo River,
and rode the bus to work. It jolted down Yangtzepoo Road,
through the factory district of Yangtzepoo, past frowning walls,
through a sea of laborers and others seeking work. As it
emerged from the smoke, a marvelous sight came into view
the skyline of Shanghai, fronting the bund.
These were the ramparts of a city-state rich, independent,
and proud. Yangtzepoo and the handsome buildings along the
bund were separate but related faces of Shanghai. A consider
able number of the silver ingots in the bank vaults over there
came from the poverty over here. Hunger and ugliness looked
across the mud flats at beauty and great wealth. Other indus
trial districts in the Orient exceeded Yangtzepoo in size, but
none in grinding injustice.
It must have looked very much like the factory districts in
England at the tune of Charles Dickens, or Chicago before the
Haymarket bomb. Textile mills, chemical plants, and factories
making shoes, hats, and cigarettes, and the go-downs bulging
with silk and tea and foodstuffs were jammed together in a
great arc formed by a bend in the Whangpoo. Most of the
buildings were like fortresses, with massive brick walls, weath
ered and sooty. Jagged shards of glass bristled on top of the
high outer walls to discourage thieves and rioters, and the iron
gates were heavy enough to stop a mob. Windows were few,
146 East Wind Rising
and those so dirty little light came through. In this great laby
rinth more than two hundred and fifty thousand men, women,
and children stood at the machines and tended the spindles.
Another million in and around Shanghai waited for work. And
in the Ningpo interior even more millions would have gladly
gone into the factories to escape the land.
Everybody knew this the workers, the employers, the labor
unions. They understood very well that for every job there
were scores of willing hands.
One morning in the heart of Yangtzepoo a torrent of men
came pouring out of an alley directly in the path of the bus.
The driver, a White Russian, hit the brakes, but not soon
enough to avoid knocking one man to the street. Another
crashed into the side of the bus and there was a metallic clang
as his head hit the hood. Both men rose, shook their heads like
prize fighters, and sprinted after the others. Now, some Shang-
hailanders used to say: "They do it on purpose. They step in
front of your car just enough so you will hit 'em, but not really
hurt 'em. The idea is to get a few dollars out of you." In this
case, however, the men were racing toward a factory gate.
The driver, in slow, careful English, said simply: "There must
be a job there."
Another time an overhead trolley wire broke. It fell into the
street, lashing around like a steel serpent, spitting and crack
ling. Wholly oblivious and probably ignorant that a touch
meant sudden death, people surged over it, thronging toward
a factory gate. I could not see whether any were killed.
Still another time, I was watching eight coolies manhandling
a steel safe that must have weighed a ton or more. They had
crisscrossed their carrying-poles to distribute the load. Each
had a deep indentation in his shoulder where, in years of lift
ing heavy weights, the pole had bitten into the bare flesh. They
would lift the safe, grunting, and carry it a few yards, chanting
<e Hay-ho > hay-ho" to keep step in rhythm, then set it down
again, panting and sweating. A sudden surge of people col-
The Shanghai Story 147
lided with them in the alley. The safe tipped over, and a man
lay there with crushed legs, screaming.
Squeezed between the big factories were scores of little
shops, scarcely more than cottage industries. In a dark,
cramped hole there would be a press, two or three buffing ma
chines, and some Rube Goldberg machines turning out cheap
forks and spoons, tin ware, and other light metal products. Of
the usual six or eight operators the majority would be children,
boys about twelve years old. They worked from six o'clock in
the morning until nine at night on the average.
Many of the women who worked in textile mills brought
their babies with them and cradled them in piles of yarn, where
they slept, breathing in lint and dust. They nursed the babies
when they themselves stopped to eat a bowl of rice and a bit
of fish. How they must have envied the woman who had no
child to nurse and the girl too young to have borne any.
Various commissions and investigations of both the factories
and the small shops indicated that wages ranged from 43^ to
$1.58 a day for men, 2Ojzf to 82$ for women, and 17^ to 40^ for
children. These were Shanghai dollars, of course silver "Mex"
equal to about 45^ in American money. But if the average
seems low, it nevertheless was higher than the pay in some
trades. The bookbinders, for example, complained that they
worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for $10 a month.
Labor unions existed more than three hundred of them at
that time. They did what they could. So did the Shanghai
Municipal Council, the missionaries, and some unofficial organ
izations. Even in the twenties serious efforts were made to
improve the conditions in Yangtzepoo. However, in the chaos
of that period, when China had no real central government
certainly none that cared about coolie labor little could be
done. Later the students came into the picture and spurred
the unions into calling strikes. The tragic incident of May 30,
iQ^S? when the Shanghai police fired into a crowd of student?
and demonstrators, grew out of a strike in a Japanese textile
148 East Wind Rising
mill. One day as we were going through the district, a stone
shattered the windshield of the bus. The streetcar employees*
union in Shanghai had gone out on strike, and the White Rus
sian bus drivers refused to support it. In fact, other White Rus
sians, timid and inexperienced, stepped into the streetcars, and
you saw their tense, anxious faces as the cars went along.
Slowly, even in the hearts of illiterate, almost destitute Chi
nese workmen, some concepts were dawning. The concept of a
"China" exploited by foreigners. The concept that to work a
man twelve hours a day even though the massive oversupply of
labor made this possible might not be just.
But the foreign mill owner held no copyright on the sweat
ing and squeezing. Chinese employers played the same game.
In fact, they paid their people even less. There was no senti
ment, no uplift-the-masses patriotism among the Chinese tai~
pans, either.
Would not all this, plus a note on the "dog boy," perhaps,
interest the readers of the Shanghai Evening Post?
The child was white, not Chinese, a result of who knows
what forgotten encounter in a city of so many nationalities. He
looked about ten years old. Rags covered his skinny little body.
He continually scratched at his scabrous, close-cropped head.
The first time I saw him, he was sitting in an alley, playing with
a length of rope. Curious to know what a white child would be
doing in Yangtzepoo, I walked toward him. He looked up. His
eyes were empty pale blue and utterly vacant. He hugged
the rope to his chest. Then his lips drew back in a snarl and
animal sounds came from his throat. I walked away. Some
thing made me stop and turn around. The boy was close be
hind, bent low. His teeth were bared. Evidently he was about
to bite my hand. When I turned, he shrank back against the
wall, growling like a wonk, one of the dangerous wild dogs
that prowled Shanghai. When I moved, he moved. If I took
a step toward him, he slunk back. He disappeared only when
I came out into the main road, where there was a Sikh police-
The Shanghai Story 149
man, a havildar major, directing traffic. The boy always stopped
there. He waited in the alleys, and every time he saw me in
Yangtzepoo he followed, snarling.
Yes, surely the dark district, with the "dog boy" and some
other oddities I had picked up, would make a story for the
paper.
The bus came into the bund. There were the big buildings,
some of them very beautiful in the old Victorian manner. The
Palace Hotel. Sassoon House. Jardine-Matheson's. The North
China Daily News. The Shanghai Club. The Hongkong &
Shanghai Bank. The Central Bank of China. The Yokohama
Specie Bank. Shanghai had nearly two hundred banks, foreign
and Chinese.
In the river, ships from every corner of the world rode at
anchor: a gleaming white Empress liner of the Canadian Pa
cific; a Conte of the Italian line; a clean-looking North German
Lloyd freighter; tankers, huge ocean-going junks staring at the
bund with painted eyes; and the symbols of "gunboat diplo
macy" sleek cruisers, military transports, the Yangtze River
warships. Guns had established Shanghai and guns would de
fend its independence if necessary.
I came into the office and told Al Meyer, the managing edi
tor, about my idea to write a series of articles on Yangtzepoo.
"Nothing new in that, pal," he said. "Ifs new to you, of
course, but not to people here. Don't want to discourage you,
pal, but it's been like that for years. In fact, conditions used to
be much worse. The Old Hands could tell you things that
would curl your hair. Only they don't like to talk about that."
He handed me a sheaf of clippings from the morning papers.
"Here's some rewrite, pal," he said. "And maskee the fancy
language."
150 East Wind Rising
Maskee was Shanghai slang for "never mind/' Al had to cau
tion me every morning because I was a slow writer. I would
slave over the rewrite, polishing and rephrasing, straining for
bright, minted words. The deadline would come closer, and
each tick of the clock would make me more nervous until, as
newspapermen say, I would "freeze" over the typewriter.
For this was my first real job on a newspaper. The sports-
writing I had done at home and my columns and features for
the college papers didn't count. That was amateur play. This
was a real newsroom, with real deadlines, and "straight" news.
Now I thought of myself as a professional reporter (intoxicat
ing thought) and took to wearing my hat in the office.
It had come about in this manner. When we reached Shang
hai, the others continued their respective studies very much as
they had done at Lingnan. We quickly discovered, however,
that Shanghai was a treasure trove of people, government offi
cials, judges, editors, writers, bankers, businessmen, educators,
and social workers, each with a different experience and a dif
ferent knowledge of China. So, interviewing, rather than class
room and library study, became the emphasis of the work. We
had several long sessions with Hu Shih, one of the greatest
minds in China, and with George Sokolsky, the brilliant and in
fluential editor of the Far Eastern Review. In the course of our
interviewing we also met the editor of the Shanghai Evening
Post, Carl Crow, a prolific writer of books on China. I told him
about my field of study and asked for a job on the paper, ex
plaining that this would be a form of "field work." Actually, all
I wanted was a job on a newspaper. When he asked about my
experience, I exaggerated shamelessly. He probably suspected
it, but smiled and said it could be arranged. There was no
mention of salary maskee that!
The day began with rewrites of items from the morning
The Shanghai Story 151
papers. . . . The provisional court sentenced eight armed rob
bers to death, and extra police had to be rushed to the court
room when their women tried to attack the judge and bailiffs.
. . . An American sailor was killed in a brawl in the Dragon
Cafe, 1637 Szechuen Road ("60 gorgeous dancing partners").
... A school for poor Russian children would be opened at
56 Route Ghisi in the French Concession. . . . The St. An
drews Society announced a meeting, and the Shanghai Paper
Hunt Club a ride to hounds. ... In Chapei, the Chinese sub
urb to the north, three army deserters were executed.
At noon the Chinese office boy brought in lunch from
Jimmy's Kitchen, an American restaurant around the corner
from the Evening Post. Jimmy specialized in "homeside chow,"
a sturdy pork-and-beans bill of fare. Americans kept his cooks
busy day and night. Shanghai had magnificent restaurants and
the dishes of virtually every country in the world. The French
cooking there equalled the greatest in Paris. You could find
Javanese nasi goring, Syrian lamb wrapped in grape leaves, a
gorgeous, saffron-colored rice dish with almonds, raisins, and
butter from India, overpowering smorgasbord, and the braised
beef a la Japonaise known as "Mongolian dog." Chinese cook
ing varies greatly according to region, and Shanghai could pro
duce it all Cantonese (most Chinese restaurants in America
are Cantonese), Hunanese, which is all pepper, and the wheat-
and-fat doughnuts, big as bicycle tires, from north China. In
food, as in other things, you could have anything you wanted
in Shanghai.
The last deadline on the paper came in the early afternoon.
Then the fate of the paper was in the hands of Ivan Mrantz
and the oddest crew of linotypers and make-up men ever seen
in a newspaper composing room. Ivan himself was a sad-faced
Russian. He supervised Russians, Chinese, stateless fugitives,
and Eurasians, who looked typically Portuguese at one mo
ment and wholly Oriental at the next. Some of Ivan's crew
knew English, but most did not. They could only copy what
152 East Wind Rising
they saw. Thus, if you misspelled a word in a story, they
would faithfully reproduce the error. Understandably, Ivan
never smiled until the last edition of the Evening Post was on
the street.
At that point, like a Chinese houseboy, I looked for chores
and invented work in order to seem useful in the newsroom.
Gradually, as no one else wanted the title, I became drama
critic. In every city in the Far East with an Anglo-American
colony of more than ten, there would surely be an amateur
dramatic club. The Orient was too distant to attract stock com
panies, so the Old China Hand created his own theater. He
loved it and called it "good fun," but worked hard on the plays
and waited impatiently for the reviews in the paper after an
opening night.
He knew what to expect, of course. No amateur dramatic-
club show ever got a bad review, not because of tolerance for
amateur actors, but because Shanghai was a small town in one
sense. The "Number Ones" and "Number Twos" in the big
commercial firms all knew each other. Their wives entertained
each other frantically. They all belonged to the same clubs.
Their political interests coincided, namely to preserve the pe
culiar international status of Shanghai. As in any small town,
big feuds grew from little disagreements. So, it was simply not
politic to report that Mrs. DeCourcey-Ketchup had been a
disaster in Journeys End and should be barred by law from
setting foot on a stage,
For all its notorious wickedness and sophistication, the city
could be prudish in matters of good taste. A fine dispute, with
hurt feelings and letters to the editor, broke out when the
Americans produced The Front Page. The play was a raucous
newspaper melodrama and the dialogue startled audiences.
It was like the storm in London a century earlier when Gerald-
ine Jewsbury's novel Zoe shocked the city's blue-blood roues
and titled trollops. Shanghailanders might indulge in what they
called "fun and games," but they did not talk about it
The Shanghai Story 153
Lines from the play:
FIRST BEPORTER (dictating from pressroom): "The con
demned man was visited today by Dr. Petrovsky, noted psy
chologist and author of The Personality Gland *
SECOND REPORTER (at poker table) : "And where to put it/"
The Englishman in front of me began to chuckle. "Oh, I say,
old girl, that's very good. Personality gland. Never thought of
it that way. Ho, ho."
His wife, frozen-faced, whispered loudly: "After this act, we
are leaving.'*
Very few Shanghailanders ever saw any Chinese theater
which, the Chinese told me, was of high quality. To be sure,
there was the language barrier. Not one white man in a thou
sand learned enough Chinese to understand a play. Apart from
that, they would say: "When you've seen one, you've seen 'em
all. They're all stylized. Damn noisy and dirty, too. People eat
and talk and spit on the floor and throw orange peel all over
the place, you know."
Nor did the symphony on Sunday, or the chamber-music
concerts, or the soloists interest the Old China Hand very
much. Good music abounded in China for a tragic reason. The
refugee and stateless person needed no passport to enter the
Treaty Ports and stay there. In Shanghai there were about
twenty thousand Russians, probably the largest single foreign
group. They had fled from the Bolsheviks. Later another wave
of refugees, escaping from Adolf Hitler, made their way to
Shanghai. Many of them were gifted musicians. They would
perform for anything, for a meal in the kitchen. A hostess could
hire an orchestra for less than the cost of the liquor at her din
ner party.
The typical Shanghailander, untroubled by culture, devoted
his leisure to riding tough little Mongolian ponies in the Beef
Stakes at the race course, playing tennis at the Cercle Sportif
in "Frenchtown," leaning over the longest bar in the world at
the Shanghai Club. He was healthier, more light-hearted, and
154 East Wind Rising
far more relaxed than his opposite in London and New York
He played more and worried less than the man at home.
Maskee everything!
Jim Bentley, who worked next to me in the office, was a floating
reporter. The floater worked his way across the Pacific, using
the English-language newspapers in Honolulu, Manila, Tokyo,
and Kobe. He stayed on the job only long enough to acquire
money for the next step, or as long as the city interested him.
From the Philippines and Japan, he would inevitably arrive in
one of the Treaty Ports in China. He could be reasonably sure
of his chances there because so many other reporters, also
floating, were continually moving on. From China, he could try
Singapore and Bangkok. Then, depending on the state of his
liver and digestion, he might make the long jump to India be
fore starting the return trip. The floater seldom came back to
America. He was rootless, unencumbered, and he liked it that
way. Besides, life in the Far East was more pleasant than at
home, and editors in the Treaty Ports were much less demand
ing. The tramp reporters I knew in China no doubt would still
be there today but for the Communists.
Jim had a hobby and he found Shanghai the ideal place in
which to pursue it. He "collected nationalities," as he put it
That is, he studied the women of different countries and the
differences, if any, between them. What interested Jim about
a woman was, not her looks or personality, but where she came
from. He could be very attentive to some frightening creature,
lavishing money and time on her, if he had never known a
woman of the same nationality.
He professed to be wholly serious in his studies and kept
records in a file of cards, with a few terse details. . . . "Erika.
The Shanghai Story 155
22. Icelandic. Over six feet tall. Very strong. "Bites" ... or ...
"Maria. 19. Eurasian. Dutch, and Javanese. Beautiful but seri
ous inferiority complex."
There were thirty-seven cards in his file, but not one for a
Japanese girl, although he had worked in Tokyo. I asked why.
"Because that was different/' he said. "She was the only one
I ever really cared about. She worked in a bar in Yokohama,
and that's where I met her. It was almost a month before a
spot opened up on the paper in Tokyo, and the money began
running low. I didn't want to touch niy reserves, the dough I
always keep for passage, because that's a bad thing to do. You
can really wind up on the beach if you can't get out of a place.
Anyway, I mentioned it to Fumiko one time in the bar. She
didn't say anything for a minute or two. Then she said I could
come and live at her place. She had a little one-room house out
near Omori. No parents or relatives. She didn't want a damn
thing from me except companionship. I stayed with her all
the time I was in Japan and I've never been so spoiled in my
life. I guess I got pretty serious about her." He paused, remem
bering, and shook his head slightly. "I used to watch her wake
up in the morning," he said. "She looked like a rosebud bloom
ing when she opened her eyes and smiled."
"It sounds like a nice setup," I said. "Why did you leave?"
"I don't know," he said. "Just wanted to see this town, I
guess. Anyway, I don't need a card to remember her/*
Jim stayed in his apartment, nursing a hangover, on the
morning of the murders; otherwise, of course, he would have
been assigned to cover the story. The report came from the po
lice early in the morning. "Take a cab and skip out to this ad
dress on the rue de Montigny/' said Al Meyer. "Somebody
wiped out a whole family, they say."
An ambulance and two police cars stood in front of the
house, and a crowd of Chinese and foreigners stood chattering
across the street. It was a big house, surrounded by the usual
156 East Wind Rising
high wall covered with broken glass, obviously the home of
wealthy Chinese.
The French Concession had its own police force, separate
from that of the International Settlement. The officers were
native French, and the patrolmen were drawn from the colonies
of France tough little Annamites or hulking Negroes from
Madagascar. I walked up to an officer and showed him my
police card.
"It is ver* bad," he said. "Even for Shanghai. Hier soir the
assassin come here avec tin merlin." He made a gesture of
chopping with both hands.
"A sword? A knife?"
"Non, pas un couteau. Heavier. Bigger. Un merlin is for cut
meat/'
"A meat cleaver!"
"C'est ga. And he was go through the house, from this room
to this room to this room, and zoop!" He drew his forefinger
across his throat.
"Cut some throats?"
"More than that. He has take off heads, comme la guillotine"
"Holy smoke! How many?"
"Ten of them. Seven of the family and three domestiques"
"Can I go in?"
"Peut-etre. Je vais demander. But it is not pretty, monsieur"
"This is old stuff to me," I said. "You know, reporters see a
lot of "
At that moment two Annamites came out carrying a
stretcher. They apparently had wrapped the body in the bed
clothing in which the victim had died. As they passed, the
bloody sheets fell open part way. The body was headless. The
victim, man or woman, had been very fat. The headless corpse
was somehow more grotesque by reason of the corpulence
all that flesh with nothing now to hold it together. I lit a ciga
rette, a Three Castles, to help me keep down my nausea.
The officer beckoned from the doorway. I felt my knees
The Shanghai Story 157
trembling when I entered the house. He led me to another
officer. "This is le capitaine" he said.
The captain spoke flawless English. He quickly related the
known details. Shortly after daybreak a loitering ricksha boy
heard screams in the house. Suddenly a little boy, a child of
six or seven, ran out, hysterical with fright. The ricksha man
found a policeman, who went inside, saw room after room of
horror, and calmly telephoned headquarters from a bedroom
where two headless bodies lay. The killer had entered through
a large French window leading to the garden.
"It was someone who knew the house very well/* said the
captain. "He knew where to find the cleaver in the kitchen. The
little boy could not teU us much, but he said he heard nothing
and saw no lights in any of the rooms when he wakened. The
poor child, he must have run from one room to another, and
each place he found I will show you/'
"A couple more questions first, Captain. Did nobody try to
put up a fight?"
"Apparently only one of the servants. There are signs of a
struggle there. The others, however, could not have heard a
sound. He must have been a very strong man with a very sharp
cleaver/'
"I am told he killed ten people/'
"That is correct the man and his wife, his parents, two boys
and a little girl, the cook, and two houseboys/'
"Any idea who did it and why?"
"Perhaps," he said. "We know something about the gentle
man who owns this house. He had connections with some not
entirely legitimate businesses and also some political enemies.
He had reason for needing the protection of the concession.
However, it doesn't look like the work of a gang. If it were
opium or smuggling or one of the rackets, the gang would not
go to so much trouble and incur so much risk to remove a whole
family, including the children. They would handle it much
more neatly and safely with a bullet."
158 East Wind Rising
"Besides, there is the little boy. Why was he spared?"
"Exactly. Why? We have learned that the man discharged
the cook's helper last week and refused to pay him whatever
wages were due him. There was quite a row. The other serv
ants threw him bodily out o the house. We also know that the
little boy was his favorite in the family. He used to play with
the child frequently. Picture him standing over the sleeping
child last night with the cleaver raised, ready to strike. Sup
pose, at the last instant, he emerges from his insanity and re
members. A bizarre thought, is it not? Worthy of your Edgar
Allan Foe. Now I will show you the rooms. Be careful. The
floors are slippery."
When I came into the office, Al Meyer looked at me curi
ously. '"You're a little pale around the gills, pal/' he said. "How
was it, pretty juicy?"
I gave him a summary of the facts. He asked me to describe
the house. The memory of it was only too vivid.
"You'll get used to this sort of thing," he said. "When they
get started, the Chinese are rough customers. There are prob
ably a dozen cases every night like this one over in the Chi
nese city. Only we never hear about them." He glanced at the
clock. "YouVe got plenty of time, pal. Now, let me give you a
piece of advice about writing this story/'
"Yes, sir?"
"Don't write it."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't write it. Let it tell itself. Describe it just as you de
scribed it to me a minute ago. For instance, you said a cop
slipped in the blood and fell. What did he say?"
"Hesaid'menfeT
"Good. Put that in the story. Take the customers inside that
house and let 'em walk through blood and smell it on the walls.
But play it low. This is the kind of story that tells itself."
In the afternoon, when the paper was on the street, he went
out to the business office and came back with an envelope.
The Shanghai Story 159
"Here's a month's salary, pal/' lie said. "You're on the payroll
now."
There were twelve bills in the envelope, two $100 notes, the
rest in tens $300 in Shanghai dollars, equal to about $125 in
American money. In the morning it was all gone.
Chapter XIV
METROPOLIS
ON THE MUD FLATS
SHANGHAI was a world in itself two distinct cultures in one,
many nations in one, a political exoticism, a hippogriff . That
Shanghai has vanished, gone with the wind. No other city
quite like it ever rose on the earth before or is likely to appear
again. So, let us pin down the picture of Shanghai as it was
the beauty, the wealth, the wickedness, the peculiar functions
it served for good and evil, and the rare creatures who moved
through the streets.
It was a Western city, remember, standing on Chinese soil,
but not subject to Chinese authority. A political island. White
men built it out of nothing and made it the fifth busiest seaport
in the world, one of the richest. It governed itself under its
own rules and regulations efficiently and honestly. Its own
courts administered justice, based on Western legal principles
and procedures. Foreign troops protected it, and a private
army, the Shanghai Volunteers, went into uniform and took
stations in moments of danger. At one time Chinese were not
even permitted to live inside the boundaries of the foreign set
tlements. Later they flocked in, grateful for the security.
This was the proud city-state on the banks of the Whangpoo.
In physical appearance Shanghai borrowed the features of
many capitals. At one corner it was London. A handsome wide
Metropolis on the Mud Flats 161
boulevard reminded you of Paris. The skyline and some of the
bank buildings were New York. The northern suburb, Hong-
kew, was as Japanese as Tokyo. There was dragon's blood in
the city's veins as well, and this overlay of China gave it a
completely unique quality.
The mud huts in the Chinese city around Shanghai looked
at steel- and-glass skyscrapers, fine hotels and apartment houses
in the International Settlement and beautiful homes in the
French Concession. In his office, high above the bund, a busi
nessman talked with Detroit. Through the window he could
see the Walled City, eight centuries old, and hear the temple
gong, struck by a monk. It was only a step from the elegant
parfumerie and the pdtisserie smelling of napoleons in the
French Concession to the stench of Soochow Creek, where the
sampan people lived. At night a million lights put a great
golden arch in the sky above Bubbling Well Road, the Avenue
Joffre, the bund, and Kiukiang Road. Outside, surrounding the
island of light on all sides, lay China dark, silent, waiting.
One way in which to picture this is to imagine a Chinese
city in, let us say, Maryland. It would be on a bend in the
Patapsco River (the Whangpoo), twelve miles from Chesa
peake Bay (the Yangtze River) and fifty-four miles from the
Atlantic (the East China Sea) . In area it would cover between
ten and eleven square miles. The rivers, railroads, and coastal
shipping lines would bring the products of the Middle West,
the Mississippi Valley, and most of the Atlantic Seaboard
through this port. Half the foreign trade of the United States
would flow over its docks. From outside the borders of this
Oriental metropolis three million native Americans, squatting
in the doorways of their log cabins, would gaze enviously at
soaring pagodas, exquisite marble bridges, gates of red lacquer,
and buildings with glazed tile roofs and curling eaves blazing
like blue-green fire in the sunshine.
Who knows? It may happen to us when China extracts her
pound of flesh from history.
162 East Wind Rising
During the Opium War in 1841 an angry Chinese wrote
prophetically, but a century too early a manifesto:
"There is that English nation, whose ruler is as often a
woman as a man, and which devours Southern peoples, first
peeling the fat off their estates. Their island is a petty one.
They trust entirely to wooden dragons [ships]. Could we but
reach them, we should hurl them over as the blast does the
thin bamboo. If we let them settle on the river, it will be like
opening the door and bowing in Mr. Wolf! In the hour of our
patriotism, even our wives and daughters, finical and delicate
as jewels, have learned to discourse of arms. The high gods
clearly behold. Fight till the golden pool is fully restored to
honorable peace" (quoted by J. S. Thomson in The Chinese,
published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1909 ) .
He singled out the British because, of course, that was their
war. But France soon joined Britain in other wars. And the
Chinese patriot could legitimately have said a few words about
the United States. Americans had organized a thriving trade
in opium, bringing it from Turkey to China in defiance of
China's prohibition of the drug.
In any event, the "wooden dragons" prevailed with an ease
and celerity that surprised the world. The "high gods" veiled
their faces from China. The carving-up process began.
In 1842 the Chinese gave Britain a morsel of mud between
Soochow Creek and the Walled City. It was low, marshy, often
threatened by the Whangpoo. Perhaps they scorned it as a sop
to the barbarians, a cheap price for a lost war. Perhaps they
thought malaria, typhoid, and dysentery would soon rid them
of these pushy people. Or it may be that they thought nothing
of permanent importance could be build on a mud bank. They
did not know their Empire Builder. For the British have a
Metropolis on the Mud Flats 163
sixth sense, a divining rod behind their foreheads that quivers
when they set foot on land where, however unlikely it may
seem, a great commercial port will grow.
Soon after the British settled in, the American consul planted
the Stars and Stripes on the north side of Soochow Creek. The
French followed. Then, in 1854, the three consuls French,
American, and British sat down together and organized a
merger. They put the French and British concessions into one,
the International Settlement. The Americans had hopped into
the game early. Shortly after the Opium War, they had ob
tained the "most-favored-nation" status in China by treaty.
Then in 1858 in the Treaty of Tientsin they solidified their po
sition, present and future, Article 30 said the two governments
'"hereby agree that should at any time the Ta Tsing Empire
grant to any nation, or the merchants or citizens of any na
tion, any right, privilege or favor, connected either with navi
gation, political or other intercourse, which is not conferred by
this Treaty, such right, privilege and favor shall at once freely
inure to the benefit of the United States, its public officers*
merchants and citizens."
Or, in a word, if anybody succeeded in extracting another
plum from China, by force of arms or other means, Americans
automatically were to receive the same plum. An American in
the International Settlement thus, in effect, lived in an Ameri
can Concession, protected from the Chinese government and
immune to Chinese law.
A little later the French withdrew from the arrangement
(always difficult, the French), returning to the previous status
of a French Concession with its own government and courts.
Finally the Japanese arrived. They settled in Hongkew in
large numbers and quickly began to agitate for representation
on the Municipal Council, the governing organ of the Inter
national Settlement. They got it, too, even before the Chinese.
In its final form, therefore, "Shanghai" consisted of the two
164 East Wind Rising
foreign entities the International Settlement and the French
Concession plus four big Chinese communities composing
"Greater Shanghai/'
Population statistics are slippery. People came and went ac
cording to business considerations, peace or civil war in the
hinterland, or because they were "floaters." In its heyday, how
ever, before the 1937 war between Japan and China, the city
probably had about 20,000 Japanese (the figure came closer
to 30,000 by 1939), 13,000 White Russians, 12,000 British,
4,000 Americans, 3,000 French, 2,000 Germans, and 15,000
other foreign nationals. More than 1,000,000 Chinese lived in
the International Settlement, probably closer to 2,000,000 lived
in the French Concession, and around 3,000,000 lived in the
suburbs.
The flags of thirteen nations flew over Shanghai. After the
rise of the Nazis in Germany, the city undoubtedly contained
more separate nationalities than are represented today in the
United Nations.
And the Chinese resented every flag and every inch of Shang
hai. Many of them benefited by the city's existence, as will be
explained, but many more resented it. They resented it as a
symbol of China s humiliations and as a fact of foreign privi
lege. They resented the soldiers, sailors, and marines in the
streets and the warships off the bund. They resented having
no Chinese members on the Municipal Council. Most of all,
they resented "extrality," the treaty provisions that set up spe
cial courts for foreigners with foreign judges interpreting a
case under foreign codes of law.
The spirit reflected in that Opium War manifesto never died
out. Indeed, as the years passed and the students and intellec
tuals began to fight for China, the flames of national feeling
rose high in Shanghai.
Campaigns for representation in the governments of the
Settlement and the French Concession began before World
War I. The Chinese argument had a familiar ring to British
Metropolis on the Mud Flats 165
and American ears "taxation without representation/* At first
the white men made token concessions. They admitted Chinese
as "advisors." But in 1926 the Chinese breached the dike. Three
took seats as voting members. The Municipal Council then con
sisted of five British members, three Americans, three Chinese,
and two Japanese. The action was a safety-valve move, taken
under pressure of the increasingly strong spirit of nationalism.
On the matter of the courts, however, the foreigner remained
obdurate, and his home government backed him up. The
Shanghailander held that Chinese codes and legal procedures
needed a thorough overhauling before they would be suited
to modern life. But what he feared most of all were the Chinese
judges. He asserted that a Chinese judge could be bribed, that
he would be subject to governmental pressure, that he would
be biased in cases involving foreigners. Or, at the least, that a
Chinese judge too often invoked some rule-of -thumb reasoning
of his own, some personal idiosyncrasy, in his decision. No, the
Shanghailander, however deep his roots, would not have stayed
in the city under jurisdiction of Chinese courts. He couldn't
have.
In Washington at that time, a man who was less sentimental
about the Chinese and more clearheaded in his judgment of
them than many Americans was deliberating the problem of
"extrality." He was William R. Castle, Undersecretary of State.
His diary for July 23, 1929, says:
"The Department is inclining more and more to the belief
that we had better give up these rights. I am not sure yet where
I stand. If we give up the rights before the Chinese even at
tempt to reform their judicial system, all Americans might as
well get out. Obviously, we should not do it unless other na
tions do it also.
"The Secretary's [Henry L. Stimson] idea that we should
thereby gain great credit with the Chinese is bunk. The Chi
nese will do us in tibe eye whenever they can, and will certainly
not have any great sense of gratitude which will make them
166 East Wind Rising
do unto us what they would not do unto others. On the other
hand, if they announce to the world that extraterritorial rights
are abolished, I wonder what we are going to do about it? We
could not go to war, even without the Kellogg Pact/*
The Chinese, as we have seen, did unilaterally proclaim the
end of the "unequal treaties" as of December 31, 1929. How
ever, they were unable to make it stick, and the Japanese at
tack in 1931 induced them to put aside the problem for the
time being.
Apart from nationalist feeling, the Chinese attacked "extral-
ity" on two other grounds. They claimed it gave the foreign
businessman a distinct competitive advantage over the Chinese
merchant. In litigation arising out of a business dispute be
tween a foreigner and a Chinese, they insisted the foreign
judge always favored the foreigner. Furthermore, they argued
that "extrality" and the special political status of Shanghai
made the city a sanctuary for criminals, political enemies of the
Kuomintang, and other persons "wanted" by the central gov
ernment.
This certainly was a fact. If a Chinese fled to the Settlement
for political reasons to evade taxes, or because lie was having
trouble with the government over the thousand-and-one rackets
a Chinese policeman could not arrest him there, nor could
a tax collector serve him with a summons. The Chinese had to
request the Settlement police to make the arrest. Even then,
however, the Municipal Council did not automatically extra
dite the wanted man. The usual procedure was to give him a
preliminary hearing in court, with a member of the Council
in attendance.
Yes, Shanghai was a refuge. But not for the evildoer alone.
As far back as the Taiping rebellion it had become the haven
for Chinese, coolies and peasants as well as the rich, in times
of danger in the country. It was during this period that they
first received permission to enter the Settlement. Thereafter,
whenever trouble threatened in the neighborhood, the Chinese
Metropolis on the Mud Flats 167
flocked toward Shanghai for protection under foreign guns.
Moreover, a rich Chinese had a very good reason for electing
to build a beautiful house in the French Concession, even
though living there might mean commuting frequently to the
capital in Nanking. In Shanghai he felt much safer with foreign
policemen patrolling the streets than he could feel in a Chinese
city. Not that they could protect him completely from assassins
and robbers. But at least it was more difficult for kidnappers to
operate in the relatively small Settlement.
In the wild- West conditions in China during that time, kid
napping was big business. A gang even halted the famous
"Blue Train" midway between Pukow and Tientsin on one
occasion. They scooped up all the passengers, including for
eigners. (The incident resulted in a wonderful affaire diplo
matique, incidentally. Traveling with an ambassador in his
compartment on the overnight journey was a lady other than
his wife.) The bandits immediately released the captives. It
was dangerous to try to collect ransom on a foreigner. But they
held the Chinese until their families paid up. In Mongolia one
day a young Chinese and I hid for hours behind a sand dune,
waiting for a troop of mounted bandits to move off. He came
from a rich family in Tientsin. "They probably would let you
go," he said, "but they would keep me. In a few days my family
would get the letter."
The kidnappers had developed an efficient psychological
technique for extracting the ransom money from a family. The
first letter fixed the amount and the date when it must be paid.
This letter said the prisoner was in good health and would
remain so, provided the terms were met If they were not, a
follow-up letter arrived. Sometimes it contained the little finger
or perhaps the ear of the victim. If his relatives still refused
to comply, other letters with more vital parts of his body would
be sent. People learned from experience that the gangs meant
business. I was told that a foreign commercial firm in Hankow
ignored the messages when a gang kidnapped its comprador,
Easi Wind Rising
or go-between, and called in the police instead. One day a
package was found at the office door. It contained the com
pradors head.
Three other groups, all victims of the world's between-wars
malaise, also found Shanghai a haven.
The White Russians came in the early ig2o's, fleeing the
Bolsheviks. Many were well-born, but few knew a trade. How
they survived was a miracle. Obviously, they could not compete
with the coolies for the unskilled trades. They certainly could
not pull rickshas or work on the docks with a carrying-pole. A
few, being linguists, found employment as translators. All the
best-sellers in the world were copied in Shanghai and sold in
cheap editions needless to say, without royalties to the au
thors. The majority of Russians, however, became servants,
policemen, night watchmen, waiters, bodyguards. The door
man at your apartment looked like a grand duke in his winter
greatcoat, and quite possibly he was. The women went into
dance halls. They were famous throughout the Far East for
their beauty. "Going to the Far East? Lucky boy. Stop in at
the Palais de Danse, 50 Bubbling Well Road, and give my re
gards to Olga and Sonya." For her work a girl somehow ac
quired an evening gown. She mended it and tenderly nursed
it and held it together as long as possible. Every night from
nine till dawn she danced and talked with the customers; she
was pawed over by slobbering old roues, insulted by perverts,
clutched close by the scum from every ship in the Seven Seas.
She collected part of the fee for each dance, even more for
your drink. Her own drink would be tea, colored to look like
whisky, which she frankly admitted if you asked her. She had
to be tough and shrewd to stand the life, and she was. But
if you showed her the smallest courtesy, the least shred of re-
Metropolis on the Mud Flats 169
spect, it transformed her. She became sweet, gentle, under
standing. Each had her own little story, a variation on a basic
theme. . . . "In Russia I was a princess (faraway, remember
ing expression). . . . The Bolsheviks killed my parents and
my younger brother (slight pause for effect). . . . My older
brother and I managed to get to Harbin. He worked there until
he was crippled in an accident. Now, of course, I support him
( shrug of beautiful, bare shoulders ) . . . . It is very hard, but
we live (expression of fleeting sadness followed by brave
smile). . . . Nichevo or, maskee, as they say here."
/"Only the details of the story varied. Naturally, no one be
lieved them except the occasional sailor and the crying drunk.
Don't be a sucker. And yet . , .
Dossia Tcherbina looked enough like Clara Bow, the movie
star, to be her double. She always wore red, perhaps because
because the red gown was the only one she owned, and fixed
her black hair the way the actress fixed hers. It delighted her
when the customers called her "Clara." On Russian New Year
she invited me to the celebration at her apartment. There in
a wheel chair, legs covered with a robe, sat a handsome young
man. And there on the wall was a family photograph a tall,
bearded man in uniform, a queenly woman in a long white
dress, holding a baby with long curls, and two boys standing
beside her in a beautiful room.
We drank the pathetic, hopeless toast to the day when **those
murderers" would be hanging, head down, from the walls of
the Kremlin, and we would all meet again in Moscow.
Then, a decade after the Russians, came the people from
Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. All they asked
was peace and a place to live, but they discovered this was
asking a great deal, indeed, in Shanghai. For by the time they
arrived, the Russians had a firm grip on the type of work open
to white men. Not even minor clerical jobs in the business
offices remained; they went to the bilingual Chinese. So, you
saw these people sensitive, intelligent, gently bred coming
East Wind Rising
across the Garden Bridge in the morning, searching for work.
They always clutched a brief case, as they had done in Prague
or Vienna. What could be in those brief cases now? Nothing
but habit. They would go from office to office, walking, climb
ing stairs, until they dropped. To see their stricken faces made
you want to cry.
Lastly* there was a third group, composed of all nationali
ties. Shanghai was the last port of call for the derelict, the
floater, the brokenhearted, the defeated and despairing.
Oh, yes, there was a Beat Generation in the 1930*5. It existed
before World War II and before the Great Depression. Prob
ably it has always existed. But you were more aware of it in
Shanghai then elsewhere because of the high saturation there.
For years Shanghai had been the world capital of the Beat
Generation.
I See that gray-haired man with the monocle? Looks aristo
cratic, doesn't he? He is. Comes from one of the finest families
in France. Graduate of St. Cyr. Great cavalry officer. Wonder
ful war record. Rode in one of the first tank attacks. Family
pays him to stay out of France now. He's on opium. Eats one
meal a day, one bowl of rice and vegetables, and doesn't drink
or smoke. How come that diet? Don't you know that opium
is delicate stuff? You only get the full wallop on an empty
stomach. (This, I discovered in two attempts, was quite true.
All I got was a great thirst and some bad dreams.)
See that woman strolling in front of the China United apart
ments with the Chinese girl? The tall, rather severe-looking
type? She was a teacher of Romance languages in an expensive
finishing school for girls somewhere in the States. Seems she
took to seducing the young ladies, right and left, and the word
got around. Now she's the amah for her Chinese girl-friend,
who is a prostitute. Quaint old Chinese custom. In this town
you don't make the deal directly. You negotiate with the amah
who walks the streets with her. Pretty fancy floozie, wot? An
Metropolis on the Mud Flits 171
amah who speaks five languages to make the arrangements
for her.
There was the tall, grave-faced Englishman, almost a ringer
for Cordell Hull, who had been a great lawyer until he stole
an estate. There was the ex-clergyman, now a professor of re
ligion, who drank himself silly every night. His wife had run
away with his best friend. There was the man who called him
self "General" Cohen, but was better known along the length
of the China Coast as "Two Gun'* Cohen. He was a real gun
fighter, a killer, feared and respected in a city that crawled
with killers. "Two Gun" had been Sun Yat-sen's bodyguard
during the dangerous early days of the Revolution. After Sun's
death, he worked for the doctor's widow. His friends would
say affectionately of him: "That bastard would take your eye
and peel it for a grape." There was the American who shaved
his head and showed up at the tea dances in the Astor Hotel,
wearing the robes of a Buddhist monk.
The Beat Generation in plenary session.
What do you want?
A husband? The town's full of single men cultured, intelli
gent men. They will marry you just for a passport.
A mistress? You can have a genuine countess, or the daughter
of an ex-millionaire from Bucharest, or any number of Chinese
girls, all guaranteed virgins, who can be bought outright Name
your color and specifications*
Forgetfulness? Liquor is cheap, but if you want something
stronger, the whole pharmacopoeia of narcotics is available in
Shanghai hashish, opium, Heroin.
Wisdom? Philosophy? Learning in Sinology? Go over to the
Walled City and talk to the monks.
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Excitement? Tonight we tour "Blood Alley," where you will
see the most frightening stews in the world, whores so rotten
that not even a lascar stoker would touch 'em, killers, hatchet
men who can split your skull like a coconut, pickpockets, lep
ers. There will be at least one glorious brawl in "Blood Alley"
between the U.S. marines and the Seaforth Highlanders in a
bar. When its over, they will be picking broken glass and
splinters out of the heads of at least sixteen guys on both sides,
and not a stick of furniture will be left in the place. The Scot-
ties are not tall, but, brother, they're tough. I saw a stubby
little runt knock the heavyweight champion of the Asiatic fleet
clean over a table the other night Then they'll all feel fine
and go to another bar and pick a fight with the Italians or the
French.
Gambling? Anything you want for any amount. Roulette,
baccarat, vingt et un, poker, dice, fan-tan. Beautiful houses,
too, with good food and the best champagne. The Syrian on
the rue Cardinal Mercier also provides opium and girls in case
your feet give out, standing around the tables.
How about a nice substantial racket? Shanghai is the front
office of all the rackets ever invented, and you can make a lot
of money in a hurry. There is gunrunning, counterfeiting, forg
ing passports and identification papers, smuggling, and, of
course, opium and other dope. You know what your houseboy
does with your empty liquor bottle? He sells it to an outfit that
fills it with cheap wine, or maybe just colored water, recaps
and reseals it, and sells it as the real thing. Even the farmers
have a little dodge. They blow water and sand down a chick
en's gullet to make it weigh more at sale. Those are the stand
ard rackets. They've always been here. But now that the war
has started in Europe, some new ones have sprung up. For in
stance, materials and machinery addressed to firms in Shanghai
somehow get up to Vladivostok and go across the Trans-
Siberian to Russia and Germany. Another racket has to do with
the new "wonder drugs," the sulfanilamides. Here's how it
Metropolis on the Mud Flats 173
works. Inflation has set in. Money is losing its value; therefore
people are looking for things to buy that won't lose their value.
Some are putting everything they have into bottles of the sulfa
drugs. What's wrong with that? Nothing. Except that you don't
sell them genuine sulfa. You either "cut" it, as a bootlegger
cuts whisky, or you mix up a solution of chalk and water that
looks like sulfa. People can't tell the difference, even if they
open the bottles and smell the stuff. These poor refugees from
Europe are really being conned, simply because some of them
have a little money left.
Escape? You escaped when you got off the ship here, mister.
Now the problem is to escape Shanghai. A lot of people never
make it. They've got Shanghai in their blood.
It was a wicked city cynical, cruel, dangerous. It was a won
derful city, filled with kind, generous, good people, men and
women who organized benefits for the Russians and the refu
gees, worked hard for the charities, saw to it that poor chil
dren had a real Christmas. The contrasts in Shanghai were in
credibly wide in matters of money, morals, and position. And
it was a truly gay place. Good and bad, the people were all gay,
laughing at themselves and the world around them. The cyni
cism and world-weariness took the form of lighthearted rail
lery. They were dancing in the dark, and they knew it, and said
"Maskee? The good days of Shanghai were just about finished.
Either Japan or China would soon put an end to them. The
Japanese could take Shanghai any time they felt like it, and
after 1939 the British couldn't stop them and the United States
probably wouldn't. As for the Chinese, they were closing in.
Where they could get away with it, they simply canceled the
"unequal treaties," on which the Treaty Port system had been
built, and negotiated for revisions where they could not. Either
174 Rast Wind Rising
way, the days of privilege and big profits were numbered,
Maskee!
At this point I must jump ahead of the story a few years. Dur
ing the Korean War I met an Englishman who had just come
from China. When the Communists took Shanghai, some for
eign business houses attempted to stay open and go on as be
fore. They quickly discovered the impossibility of it. However,
it was no simple matter to liquidate and get out. The Commu
nists refused to let a man leave until his firm had agreed to pay
heavy severance wages to its Chinese employees. The English
said the Communists demanded the equivalent of $2000, gold,
for a janitor. They argued that this was more than the janitor
could hope to earn in his whole lifetime. The Communist offi
cial's reply is a key motif in the China of today:
"You people have had a very good thing out of China for
years. Now the time has come to pay it back to us."
Chapter XV
JUKONG ROAD
THE HOUSE on Jukong Road seemed unusually dark and silent,
considering that a party was supposed to be going on there.
It was a big, two-story house, set back from the street by a gar
den. Shutters covered the windows. Not a sound nor a ray of
light came from the inside as we stepped out of the rickshas
and passed through the gate. There a darker shadow caught
my eye. Standing in the garden, a few feet from the path, a
man watched us go to the front door. I could not see his face
in the dim light. He said nothing. George Ssu ignored him, al
though he too must have seen the man.
George was a translator on the Evening Post. He came from
Loyang, a city in the interior, five hundred miles west of Shang
hai. He had learned English at Nankai University in Tientsin.
He spoke only vaguely of his work there, of his family, of most
things in his life. He was a dour, humorless man, short-tem
pered, easily offended. We were on speaking terms in the news
room, but not friendly. I judged that he disliked all foreigners
and, after a small collision, me in particular. As a translator he
combed the Chinese newspapers for possibly useful stories to
the Evening Post. His own news interests ran to political and
economic material, editorials and so on, which seldom had any
value for the paper, On this occasion Al Meyer had told him to
translate a crime story and give it to me to rewrite. As usual, I
was watching the clock, tensing as the deadline drew near.
George worked slowly, typing out a few words at a time. The
176 East Wind Rising
clock ticked louder and louder. Finally, I asked him to let me
have as much of the story as he had translated so that I could
start. He refused. We had a brief argument. George looked at
me coldly and said: "I have my limitations, Mr. Morin." Then,
after a slight pause: "And you have yours."
So I was surprised when he invited me to the party. "J ust a
few people who meet from time to time and talk," he said. "A
kind of a discussion group. Sometimes it's interesting, some
times not."
"Friends of yours?"
"Well, yes and no," he said. "I don't always know everybody
who comes."
Riding in the ricksha through the rivers of traffic in front of
the Wing On and Sincere department stores, I asked George if
the group met regularly.
"Very irregularly/' he said. "There is nothing formal or or
ganized about it."
"And do you always meet in the house where we are going
now?"
"Oh, no," he said. "Different places, depending on who is
the host. My place is too small. I can't afford anything better,
though, on my salary and the insulting allowance my father
gives me."
He did not name the host for the meeting that night.
"You're nice to ask me," I said.
George did not answer.
In the house, he led the way through the foyer into a large,
beautifully decorated room. Paintings, Chinese and Western,
covered the walls. The furniture was a perfect blend of French
and Chinese. A heavy rug of the type made in Peking, lion-
colored and with an intricate design, lay on the floor. A mag
nificent teakwood table stood in one corner, holding a jade cat
and a tall bronze wine vessel. Both looked old and genuine. If
they were, they belonged in a museum. Whoever the owner
was, he had money and taste. I did not hear his name. George
Jukong Road 177
casually presented me to a few persons, hardly a formal intro
duction, for he did not say who they were.
About twenty people, Chinese and foreigners, were standing
around the room. A gaunt, bony woman with stringy hair and
bad teeth was speaking German with a lean, tanned man who
could have been almost any nationality. Two others, appar
ently man and wife, were examining a brass astrolabe, discus
sing it in French. In another group a Chinese girl was talking
English with two foreign men, one stubby and wearing thick-
lensed glasses, the other bearded and tall. A lumpy woman in
tweeds sat reading a Leftist American magazine, oblivious to
everyone. It was an odd assortment of people to be gathered
for a "party."
A few moments later the gaunt woman rapped for attention
and said: "Now we shall begin." The accent sounded Swiss-
German. "Dr. Ho is ready if everyone will please to take seats."
Dr. Ho was short, fat, and well groomed. He wore an air of
elegance. His black hair, streaked with gray, had been carefully
brushed. Polish glittered on the nails of his graceful little hands.
He wore a black suit with a gray vest. He reminded me of a
cultured, worldly priest.
He moved over beside the teakwood table and picked up a
sheaf of papers. The gaunt woman was saying: "Doctor Ho is
going to discuss the social policies of Wang An-shih" ( I took a
mental note: look up Wang An-shih tomorrow. The trouble
with Sinology is that every point you look up suggests ten thou
sand others that need looking up) "as there is a close similarity
between conditions then and now. Perhaps his planning could
be applicable in China today. We shall discuss that when Doc
tor Ho has told us about them."
In the policies of Wang An-shih the Chinese can legitimately
claim to have invented a Socialist system nine centuries before
Karl Marx. To the Chinese who knew his history, Communism
brought few new ideas. Something similar to it had been in
practice in the eleventh century. Wang, an odd mixture of
178 East Wind Rising
politician and philosopher, held a high office in the government
during the Sung dynasty. His accomplishments were many: he
wrote legislation designed to break up the estates of the big
landlords; sought to stabilize the prices of farm products by
setting up state-owned granaries; changed the tax structure so
that a farmer with more fertile land paid higher taxes than his
neighbor with poor land; abolished forced labor and tried to do
away with tenant farmers; took measures to prevent specula
tion in basic commodities; fought the money lenders by loaning
State funds at lower rates than they did; instituted a minimum
wage law, old-age pensions, and health insurance.
In a word, China had Socialism before there was a Russia;
in fact, she had it at about the time Sviatopolk "the Damned'*
was liquidating his brothers in the fight for power in the first
Russian dynasty.
"Imagine/ 3 said Dr. Ho, smiling. "Nearly a thousand years
ago." He paused to let the point sink in.
"It is remarkable," said Dr. Ho. "But what I have long re
garded as even more remarkable is that an important official
of the Sungs should have cared in the slightest about the
masses, had any sense of responsibility for their welfare at all.
This, it seems to me, is even more astonishing than his policies/*
"Very different from the present 'Soong dynasty/ " said the
man with thick spectacles. Everyone laughed, even George Ssu.
A hum of conversation ran around the room.
The lumpy woman in the tweed suit spoke. She had a strong
English accent, but did not appear to be British. "Then there
is a tradition in China for Socialist economic policies?"
"Hardly a tradition/' said Dr. Ho, bowing slightly, "but at
least a precedent, if I may be permitted to put it that way."
"And then did others carry them on after him?"
"Unfortunately/' he said, "much of what he proposed never
came into practice during his own lifetime. The State-owned
granaries functioned for a time. And of course we know that the
State did loan money at interest rates of less than half what the
Jukong Road 179
usurers charged the fanners. As for the rest, the landlords, the
merchants, and the wealthy aligned themselves against Wang
and succeeded in blocking the reforms he proposed."
"History repeats itself," said a middle-aged Chinese man.
This time no one laughed.
Across the room from me a pretty Chinese girl, tall and
rounded, shifted in her chair, crossing her legs. The slit in her
tight-fitting sheath gown exposed a generous length of silk calf.
She caught me examining it and grinned impishly.
Her name was Lola Liang, and it was largely because of her
that I came to the subsequent meetings. Why had she chosen
that name? "Because I wish to be like Lola Montez naughty."
I asked her if the people who attended the meetings were Com
munists. She thought a few were, but the others were only
^candidates," as she put it. She doubted that George Ssu was a
Communist. "He is only a grouch, sore at the world." Lola was
no Communist, either, or anything else. She held somewhat the
same view as Philip Li, the student at Lingnan, namely that
nothing could be done for the millions of poor people in China
and that one was lucky not to be among them. Then why did
she attend the meetings? "Excitement. Perhaps some night the
police will raid one. Also, to meet rather stupid Americans who
will take me to the Little Club. Now, stop asking questions and
drink that wine unless, of course, you are afraid of Chinese
wine."
I went to two more meetings. They came at irregular inter
vals and were held in different places, as George Ssu had said.
Only a few of the same people appeared regularly the gaunt
woman, the man with thick glasses, some of the same Chinese.
Lola said the thin, tanned man was a naturalized Frenchman,
a journalist.
In Shanghai it was not always easy to identify a man's na
tionality. However, I do not believe any Russians came to the
meetings. (Dr. Richard Sorge, the great Red spy, must have
been in the city then, organizing his first espionage network. I
i8o East Wind Rising
did not meet him until several years later in Tokyo. Soviet in
telligence agents steered clear of ordinary Party members in
China and Japan.) Neither the Soviet Union nor any of its
works ever came into the discussions as topics. The words
"Communist" or "Communism" never were uttered by any of
the regulars. Superficially the sessions appeared to be pleasant
little discussions of economic and social problems, not always
even contemporary problems. If the police had raided a meet
ing, they would have heard little that could be called danger
ous* The man in the garden at Jukong Road evidently was a
lookout, however, and there may have been lookouts each time.
The Chinese police, remember, could not make arrests in the
foreign-concession areas of Shanghai, but they could request
foreign police to pick up people. Someone obviously considered
the lookout a desirable precaution.
The format varied only in detail: a speaker, sometimes two,
was followed by questions and answers and general discussion.
The subjects seemed eminently innocent. Once a Chinese
woman described current educational movements in China
vocational, rural, citizenship training, and so on. She even de
scribed projects organized by the Nationalist government, the
missionaries, and others! I thought I detected a note of anxiety
in one of the questions put to her. "Are these likely to succeed?"
The woman thought not. A man reported on the famine in Sui-
yuan province in the northwest. Quietly, with studied under
statement, he noted that landlords and speculators were taking
advantage of the tragedy to buy up land from the peasants.
The regulars made no obvious moves to use any of this ma
terial for propaganda. They circuitously planted suggestions. In
the discussion of Wang An-shih, for example, Dr. Ho asked
how many in the room were familiar with the man and his
story. Three Chinese and one foreigner raised their hands. With
mock dismay he asked: "What is happening in our universities?
What do they teach our young men and women about the his
tory of China?"
Jukong Road 181
The French journalist wondered, casually, whether means
could not be found to bring that type of information to the at
tention of the professors and students. "Through a series of
pamphlets, perhaps?"
Taken separately, none of the reports and not much of the
ensuing discussion could be called subversive. There was no
frantic arise-ye-masses atmosphere. From the total effect, how
ever, a picture of China emerged, a picture of conditions grow
ing steadily worse, a picture of a central government that re
fused to do anything about them. It is what we call today "the
soft sell."
The third meeting contrasted greatly with the first two that
I attended. An undercurrent of excitement crackled in the
room. This time a foreigner I had not seen before acted as
chairman. He hurried the guests into seats and then introduced
the speaker. "Mister Ling brings information of an important
event in the south," he said.
Mr. Ling looked tough and weather-beaten, as though he had
spent a good many days out of doors. He said he had just come
from Elangsi, a mountainous province in South China. He lost
no time in delivering an announcement. "A people's govern
ment has been established in Kiangsi," he said.
It meant little to me. War lords, dissident elements in the
Kuomintang, rivals of Chiang Kai-shek and their supporters reg
ularly announced the formation of another "government" some
where in China. One by one, as he could get around to them,
Chiang either persuaded them to disband, or destroyed them.
But he never succeeded in destroying the one that began in
Kiangsi. It became the seed of the regime now ruling China.
Long afterward a terrifying echo came from the meetings in
Shanghai.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, I was in Indo-
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china. It was then a French colony, but the Vichy government
had agreed to permit Japan to station an army in the country*
Ostensibly, the reason for the presence of Japanese troops in
Indochina was to prevent arms from reaching China via Hai
phong and Hanoi* Actually, the colony was the springboard for
the attack on Malaya and Singapore. On Pearl Harbor day the
Japanese interned all British and Americans. I was among
them.
Not long afterward they put me through a long examination.
They had compiled a very complete dossier on me. To my
amazement, I found that they believed I had been a spy!
The dossier contained a note about the Shanghai meetings.
"I went to two or three of them," I said, "but I am neither a
Communist nor a spy' 9
Who asked me the first time? I couldn't remember. What
were the names of some others at the meetings? Here I could
truthfully say I did not know, and that anyway they probably
used false names. The Kempei-tai, secret police, officers agreed.
Had I ever seen any of the same people anywhere else? Never.
None had come to Japan? I had not seen or heard of them
there.
"I was a completely unimportant reporter at the time," I said.
"Why would the Communists be interested in me?"
The officers looked at me as if I were an idiot. "They were
interested in all journalists/* one said. "You were just one of
many."
Chapter XVI
THE RED TRAIL
MILESTONES on the Red Trail:
1919: Russia dazzles China with a glittering offer to cancel
all concessions.
1921: Chinese Communist party formed in Shanghai.
1922: Dr. Sun Yat-sen, "father of the Chinese Revolution,"
meets an amiable Russian salesman.
1923: Sun sends Chiang Kai-shek to Russia.
1924; Russia renounces all territory, privileges, and conces
sions seized by Tsarist Russia. The Sino-Soviet "honeymoon"
begins.
1925: Sun Yat-sen dies. Chiang Kai-shek comes to power.
1926: Chiang launches the Northern Expedition, leading to
the "unification" of China.
1927: Chinese troops, under Leftist commanders, murder for
eigners in Nanking; Chiang splits with the Communists in a
bloody purge; first local "soviet" is set up in Hunan; the "honey
moon" ends.
1928: United States recognizes the Kuomintang as the legal
central government of China.
1929: The war lords again take the field against Chiang.
1930: Communists establish first "provisional government" in
Bangsi. Chiang launches first "extermination campaign" to
crush the Red regime.
1931: "Extermination campaign" fails. Communists set up
first "Central Soviet Government of the Soviet Republic of
184 East Wind Rising
China/' Japan attacks Manchuria; Chiang elects not to fight.
1932: Communists win immense propaganda victory by "de
claring war** on Japan although fifteen hundred miles from
the combat area.
1934: Fifth "extermination campaign" forces Communists to
leave Kiangsi. Famous Long March begins.
1935: Communists, after six-thousand mile Long March,
reach northern Shensi and establish new base of operations
against Chiang.
1936: A war lord kidnaps Chiang Kai-shek. His government
and the Communists join forces again in a "united front"
against Japan.
1937: Japan attacks north China, and the "undeclared war"
begins.
1939: World War II starts in Europe.
1940: Japan joins Germany and Italy in the Axis alliance.
1941: Pearl Harbor.
1945: The United States and Britain hand over invaluable
territory to Russia in the Far East, concealing the agreement
from China. Russia enters Manchuria in the "five days* " war
against Japan.
1946: Russians withdraw from Manchuria and it becomes the
main base of Communist operations against the Nationalist
government.
1947: Communists gain time, talking, while American envoys
keep urging Chiang to bring the Reds into his central govern
ment.
1949: Communists complete conquest of China.
The Red Trail 185
The foregoing information is intended as a sketch map of the
tortuous journey that began in Moscow in 1919 and ended
thirty years later when the Communists raised the Red flag in
Peiping in 1949.
Between these two dates lies a vast, tangled forest of history.
The light of incontrovertible fact has not yet penetrated to all
the twists and turns in the wilderness, and probably never will.
Contradictory testimony, like a low cloud, fogs over much of it
Much remains to be explained. The footprints of many princi
pals Chinese, Americans, Russians, and Japanese disappear
in the underbrush. The main road, however, is visible. Along it
are some tall peaks, like cardinal points, which remain always
in view. They are:
1. Russia's long-view policy on China. Even before 1919 So
viet leaders perceived the importance of the Chinese Revolu
tion in the blueprint of world revolution.
2. Misery in China. The Nationalists inherited it The Com
munists, not having power or responsibility, were able to cap
italize on the sufferings of the Chinese people. They needed
only to promise.
3. Chiang Kai-shek's enemies. They gave him no peace. His
government fought the war lords, Communists, and Japanese
continually, sometimes in overlapping struggles. There were no
long intervals of peace during which measures could be taken
to alleviate conditions in China.
4. Communist public relations. They were good. The Reds
succeeded, through various means, in bamboozling the peasants
into considering them "the poor man's army," and in winning
the support of students and intellectuals.
5. The role of the United States. Here the undergrowth is al
most impenetrable. Volumes have been written on the Yalta
Conference and the concessions to Russia which put Soviet ar-
186 East Wind Rising
mies in Manchuria, the importance of Manchuria in the civil
war that began almost immediately, General George C. Mar
shall's assignment to bring the Communists into the National
government and Washington's alleged blackmailing of the Na
tionalists. Where, in all the pros and cons, in the conflicting
statements of principles and the furiously diverse judgments,
lies the truth?
Now to examine some of the milestones,
On July 15, 1919, the new Communist government of Russia
issued a dramatic announcement: "The Soviet government re
turns to the Chinese people, without demanding any kind of
compensation, the Chinese Eastern railway, as well as all the
mining concessions, forestry, gold mines, and all the other
things which were seized from them by the government of the
Tsars" and other Russians,
The effect of this dazzling offer on Chinese public opinion
can easily be imagined. Mark the date. Two months earlier the
terms of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War I, had
been announced. Chinese delegates to the Peace Conference,
outraged on several counts, refused to sign. In China, student
demonstrations exploded. Fury against the "imperialists" and
the "unequal treaties" made China a tinderbox. Now, more than
ever, hatred for the West became a consuming passion.
At this strategic moment, and apparently for no other motive
than to render justice, one Western government restored to
China the "things which were seized from them."
To be sure, five years would elapse before the Soviets made
good on the promise. Even then they did not implement all of
it They retained their interest in the Chinese Eastern railway,
as we have seen. From the start, it seems, welching on agree
ments has been standard Communist practice. Nevertheless, as
The Red Trail 187
a stroke of public relations the offer was a gem. The Russians
asked nothing in return except Chinese recognition of the Bol
shevik government.
In his early struggle for recognition and assistance from the
powers, Dr. Sun Yat-sen had appealed to the United States
(twice), Britain, Germany, Canada, and Tsarist Russia. They
all turned him away. Now, at last, one government extended a
helping hand. Not specifically to Dr. Sun (there is some indica
tion that the Russians may have preferred one of the war
lords ) , but to the Chinese people.
The effect on Dr. Sun appears in his own words, in his lec
tures and his will. "We no longer look toward the West. Our
faces are turned toward Russia.
"My experiences during these forty years have firmly con
vinced me that . . . we must ally ourselves in a common strug
gle with those people of the world who treat us on a basis of
equality." ( Only the Russians had done so. )
In a deathbed letter to the Soviets he wrote: "In taking leave
of you, dear comrades, I express the hope that the day is ap
proaching when the Soviet Union will greet, in a free and
strong China, its friend and ally, and that the two states will
proceed hand in hand as allies in the great fight for the eman
cipation of the oppressed of the whole world/*
So the ground was prepared for the meeting in Shanghai in
1921, when the Chinese Communist party formally came into
existence. Among those present was an eager, vivid, moon
faced student and erstwhile farm boy Mao Tse-tung.
The honeymoon between the Communists and the Kuomin-
tang party began.
A number of Russian envoys visited Dr. Sun. In December
1922 Sun held detailed talks with the smoothest of them all, a
dark, thick-set little man of immense charm and persuasiveness
Adolf Joffe. A month later the two men issued a Joint state
ment, setting the terms of collaboration. The first paragraph is
especially significant:
i88 East Wind Rising
"Dr. Sun holds that the Communistic order, or even the So
viet system, cannot actually be introduced into China because
there do not exist here the conditions for the successful estab
lishment of either Communism or Sovietism. This view is en
tirely shared by Mr. Joffe [italics mine] who is further of the
opinion that China's paramount and most pressing problem is
to achieve national unification and to attain full national inde
pendence, and regarding this task, he has assured Dr. Sun that
China has the warmest sympathy of the Russian people and
can count on the support of Russia."
In that day few people understood that a Communist seldom
looks where he is really aiming. Here, perhaps, appears the
basis of the fiction that the Chinese Communists were not Rus
sian-type Communists, but merely "agrarian reformers/*
Soon afterward Dr. Sun sent his chief of staff, Chiang Kai-
shek, to Moscow. Chiang remained three months. He traveled,
listened to Soviet leaders, observed and came home impressed
by the Russians, but disenchanted about their motives respect
ing China. In his book Soviet Russia in China (published by
Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in 1957) Chiang reproduces a letter
he says he circularized to the Standing Committee of the Kuo-
mintang. It reads in part:
"According to my observation, the Russian Communist Party
is not to be trusted. I told you before that only thirty percent
of what the Russians say may be believed. That was really an
understatement . . . The Russian Communist Party, in its
dealings with China, has only one aim, namely to make the
Chinese Communist Party its chosen instrument/*
Meanwhile, Russian military officers had been arriving in
China to act as instructors in a newly founded military acad
emy. ( Chiang himself and a number of other top Chinese com
manders received their military education in Japanese acad
emies. ) The famous commander, General Galen, or Blucher,
headed a team of thirty instructors, A political advisor, Mikhail
Mikhailovitch Borodin, also appeared. Borodin had studied in
The Red Trail 189
Chicago and lived in Scotland, Mexico, and other countries.
Like most Communists he used different names Berg, Grusen-
berg, Borodin, etc. It was Borodin who persuaded Dr. Sun to
bring the Communists into the Kuomintang party. Thereafter,
training centers in Moscow sent scores of indoctrinated Chinese
back to China to infiltrate the army, establish "cells" in the
universities, move into the labor unions, and find means of
reaching the masses of peasants.
The honeymoon lasted until 1927.
To anyone who wishes to see this period, with all its com
plex maneuverings, as the Communists saw it, I would recom
mend a Columbia University publication of 1956 Documents
on Communism, Nationalism and Soviet Advisors in China,
1918-1927. These documents are part of a collection of papers
seized by the Chinese in a raid on the office of the Soviet mili
tary attache in Peking in 1927. They have been edited by C.
Martin Wilbur and Julie Lien-ying How, who added excellent
background and explanatory material. They are extraordinarily
interesting because the men who wrote them were eyewit
nesses, living and working in the midst of the events of those
turbulent years.
In these documents, and from Chiang Kai-shek's diaries, you
discover that Chiang's opinions of the Russians which he ac
quired on his trip to Moscow were not changed by working
with them. Vice versa, they saw him as potentially useful, but
dangerous.
"I treat them with sincerity but they reciprocate with deceit,'*
Ms diary says at one point. "It is impossible to work with them.**
And again: "My Russian associates are suspicious and envious
of me. They deceive me. In the circumstances, the only course
for me is to be guided by sincerity."
And here, contained in a military report, the Russian ad
visor to Chiang's First Army, reveals his estimate of Chiang:
"We consider Chiang Kai-shek a peculiar person with pe
culiar characteristics, most prominent of these being his lust
190 East Wind Rising
for glory and craving to be the hero of China. He claims that
he stands not only for the Chinese National Revolution but for
World Revolution. Needless to say, the degree of his actual un
derstanding is quite another matter.
"To achieve his goal, power and money are required. He
does not, however, use the money to enrich his own pocket. He
never hesitates to spend huge sums of money for grants and re
wards. He is extremely fond of subsidizing newspapers in order
to enlist support for his programs. His analysis of Chinese and
world problems is extremely good."
In another report the same advisor writes:
"Chiang possesses much determination and endurance. Com
pared with the average Chinese, he is unusually forthright
... he is not free from suspicion and jealousy ... a man of
intelligence and ambition/'
As though coming from an agent operating in enemy terri
tory, another document stresses the need for complete secrecy
in communications between the Soviet embassy in Peking and
the advisors to Chiang:
"Send us the military code, without which communication
with your office is handicapped because ( i ) there is only one
secret code at Borodin's place. Those of us who are scattered
at various places have to wait our chance to send telegrams
through Borodin, thus causing great delays; (2) the present
procedure does not ensure secrecy as the secret code is known
to many people; (3) Borodin's decoding clerk often piles up
telegrams without transmitting them.'*
The documents contain page after brain-numbing page of
thorough, detailed instructions on the means of reaching the
people with the Communist Word, the importance of the "cell,"
how to organize study groups (perhaps the Shanghai discus
sion group came from this), the need for hard study and fre
quent self-examination. If the Americans are to compete with
the Communists, they are going to have to work as they do!
The Red Trail 191
Prophetically for the Comrnunist-Kuomintang honeymoon
was nearing its end a Russian officer wrote his superior:
"It would naturally be unfortunate both for the Revolution
and for himself if Chiang actually wants further to attack the
Left. Yet Chiang can never destroy the Left for, warmly re
ceived everywhere, the Left has substantial force/*
Chiang broke with the Communists abruptly, and in a sea of
blood, in the summer of 1927.
The Northern Expedition, Chiang's military campaign that
opened the way for the establishment of the Kuomintang as
the National government, had swept north from Canton, past
Shanghai, and into the Yangtze Valley in a series of swift vic
tories. On March 24 the army entered Nanking.
An evil spirit must hang over Nanking. It is the scene of two
terrible incidents. In the first, Chinese troops entering the city
suddenly began attacking foreigners. They killed some and
threatened others. Women were stripped of their clothing. The
soldiers systematically looted foreign property and destroyed a
considerable amount. Foreign gunboats in the Yangtze River
opened fire, laying down a barrage under which the mission
aries and other foreigners escaped. Otherwise the dimensions
of the incident might have been much worse. It was bad
enough, but not to be compared with the savagery of the Jap
anese troops when they captured Nanking in 1937 and were
permitted to run wild in an orgy of rape, torture, and murder.
Dr. Hu Shih believes Russia deliberately planned the Nan
king Incident of 1927. Her purpose, he believes, was to pro
voke military intervention in China by the United States and
other Western governments so that an "imperialist war" would
hasten the Communist take-over in China. In his article in For
eign Affairs* October 1950, shortly after the start of the Korean
War, Dr. Hu said:
"The Nanking Incident seems to be the last of a series of
deliberate anti-foreign moves designed to force the foreign
East Wind Rising
powers to resort to armed intervention and thereby create a
situation of a real 'imperialist war' which, we must remember,
Stalin and the Comintern regards as the necessary 'objective
condition for the victory of the Revolution. The commanding
general of the offending army in the Nanking Incident was
General Ch'en Ch'ien, who is now with the Chinese Commu
nist regime. And , . . Mr. Lin Tsu-han, the chief political
commissar of the Army, is one of the most prominent Commu
nist leaders today/'
A month later Chiang Kai-shek split with the Communists.
Borodin and the other advisors hastily fled. Heads rolled.
From that moment forward, including the period when the
two parties ostensibly united in a common front against Japan,
it would be war to the knife between the Communists and the
Kuomintang.
The Communists, gathering in mountainous regions of south
China, soon began setting up local Soviets, and finally in 1931
they established the "Central Soviet Government" of China.
Chiang Kai-shek organized four major "extermination cam
paigns/" but failed to dislodge them. The fifth, in 1934, suc
ceeded.
Had he been let alone in the 1930*8, Chiang probably would
have destroyed the Communist "government" and crushed its
army. No doubt the Communists would have continued to
foment revolution, but they would have been underground and
dispersed. Instead, the Red regime was able to remain secure
in a fixed base of operations, guarded by organized armed
forces.
Chiang was not to be left free to concentrate on the Com
munists. In 1929 and 1930 a coalition of war lords forced him
to fight a major campaign. Then, in 1931, Japan struck. Japa
nese troops quickly overran Manchuria.
Chiang did not oppose them. Why? Hollington Tong, in his
biography Chiang Kai-shek, says the Generalissimo had two
alternatives armed action, or an appeal to the Powers to force
The Red Trail 193
the Japanese to withdraw from Manchuria. "The second al
ternative had worked in the Shantung impasse of 1921," Tong
writes. "It held out promise in the present instance in view of
the fact that the Manchuria move had been made on the initia
tive of the Army, obviously without consultation with the civil
authorities in Tokyo.*' Tong quotes Chiang himself as saying:
"Politically, the National Government . . . was compelled to
make compromises and to swallow criticism; in short, it had to
do its best to tide over the difficult internal situation."
Hu Shih (in Foreign Affairs, October 1950) says: "Hie Gen
eralissimo was determined to exterminate the military power
of Chinese Communists before he had to face the greater war
of resistance against Japan."
In any case, a wave of indignation against Chiang's decision
swept China. Demonstrations broke out and mass meetings
called for war with Japan. Some of these were Communist-or
ganized, but not all. A number of my personal friends went to
jail for participating in the demonstrations. They say, even to
day, their sole purpose was to force the National government to
fight
All this was a juicy dish for the Communists. What better
way to take the military pressure off their strongholds in south
China? The Communists do not believe in heaven, but perhaps
there is a special Red heaven that brought the Japanese attack
at this critical moment in their struggle against the Nationalist
armies. They milked the situation for all it was worth. They
offered to co-operate against the Japanese with any "white"
army, under certain conditions. They organized student dem
onstrations and "Resistance-to-japan" societies, and posed as
the only true reliquaries of patriotism in China. Although their
forces were more than a thousand miles distant from combat
theater in Manchuria, they "declared war" on Japan.
It reminds you of that old joke in which the manager says to
his battered and groggy prize fighter: "Tear right in there, kid.
He can't hurt us."
1Q4 East Wind Rising
For the Communists were not only a great distance away
from Manchuria, but they could be pretty sure the terms they
laid down for sending their forces into battle would not be ac
cepted. Remember, they had not offered to co-operate with the
National government as such, but only with any of its armies.
Even if their terms were accepted, they stood to gain more than
they would lose, as we shall see.
The man on the street, however, outraged and shouting for
action against Japan, saw only the surface fact the Commu
nists had made an offer, and Chiang, instead of accepting, per
mitted Japanese troops to overrun Manchuria. At this point,
without question, great numbers of students and intellectuals
who had been loyal to Chiang Kai-shek began to withdraw
support from him and the government. This is not to say that
they switched immediately to the Communists. It was not a
straight either/or case. My friends told me they were simply
confused, disheartened, badly disappointed in the Generalis
simo and his associates. The wedge had been driven.
It added up to a major propaganda victory, almost a triumph,
for the Communist directors of public relations.
Militarily, however, the Communist position in Kiangsi soon
became critical. In the fifth and last of the "extermination cam
paigns" the Nationalists achieved a degree of success. A plan
devised by the German generals advising the government cast
a net around the Communist strongholds. Gradually, it began
to tighten. Nearly a million Nationalist troops engaged in the
operation. The Communists, faced with annihilation, laid plans
to escape and find another haven in a more remote part of
China.
On the night of October 16, 1934, having concentrated most
of their forces at one point of the Nationalist ring, they attacked
and broke out of the net. Then began one of the most spectac
ular achievements in human history. An army of men, women,
and children, fighting much of the way, through wilderness
The Red Trail 195
and over mountains, walked six thousand miles to new posi
tions, This was the famous Long March, a truly great feat
The best account I know of it is in Edgar Snow's remarkable
book Red Star Over China (published by Random House in
1938). Snow, a meticulous reporter and a suction pump for in
formation, tells in detail what the Communists told him of the
Long March soon after it ended.
In October 1935, only a year after they began their march,
the Communists came into northern Shensi in the remote north
west. They had walked a distance nearly twice the width of the
United States, in a giant arc, and settled down at a point about
as far from Nanking, the Nationalist capital, as Kansas City is
from Washington.
They escaped the net and the pursuing Nationalist troops.
They survived as an organized group. They preserved the Red
army. And they accomplished another result of priceless value.
Again, it is in the field of public relations.
In their long retreat they passed through villages and towns,
through uncounted millions of people. Remember that in the
years of civil war the arrival of a Chinese army always signaled
one thing to the civilians rape, looting, and killing. The Com
munists maintained iron discipline, treated the people kindly.
Shrewdly gauging the effect, they paid for everything and let
the women alone. On the other hand, they seized food supplies
and money from the landlords and gentry along the route and
distributed these among the peasants, Edgar Snow reported.
Even before the Long March, he says, they had formulated
eight rules of conduct in their meetings with civilians:
"i. Replace all doors and windows when you leave a house.
"2. Return and roll up the straw matting on which you sleep.
"3. Be courteous and polite to the people and help them
when you can.
"4. Return all borrowed articles.
"5. Replace all damaged articles.
196 East Wind Rising
"6. Be honest in transactions with the peasants.
"7. Pay for all articles purchased.
"8. Be sanitary, and especially establish latrines a safe dis
tance from people's houses.'*
The most powerful of all advertising influences is what thea
ter managers call "the word of mouth," the chain-reaction effect
of one person telling others, who tell others. Imagine, then, the
impact on millions of Chinese when the peasants told each
other of this strange new army. Verily it was an army of liber
ators "the poor man's army." They could not know what lay
behind this strategy or the tyranny that would spring from it.
The next great turning point appeared a year later on De
cember 7, 1936. It is curious to see how frequently this date,
December 7, comes into the star-crossed story of the Far East.
It is the date of Pearl Harbor, of course, and of another event
involving the United States, China, and Japan the mysterious
Sian Incident.
Sian-fu is a city in south central Shensi, not far from the re
gion where the Communists had established their new base.
The full story of what happened has never been told. There
are several versions, different interpretations. The surface facts,
however, are these: Chiang Kai-shek flew to Sian, ostensibly to
plan a sixth great campaign against the Reds. Chang Hsueh-
liang, erstwhile boss of Manchuria, now deposed, arrested him
after killing some thirty of his bodyguards. Chou En-lai, one of
the three top Red leaders, then turned up in Sian and talked
face to face with the Nationalist leader. On December 25
Chiang was released amid a flurry of apologies and breast-
beating quotes from the principals. And finally, soon afterward,
it was announced that the Communists and Nationalists had
agreed to rejoin, forming a "united front" against Japan.
Nobody 'lost face." Chang Hsueh-liang went unpunished; in
fact, he was publicly forgiven. The proposed sixth campaign
against the Communists was called off. Strange goings on.
Who induced Chang Hsueh-liang to kidnap Chiang Kai-
The Red Trail 197
shek? How was it that Chou En-lai could freely come to Sian
for the talks? Did the Nationalists have to make concessions to
save Chiang from being killed? If they did make a deal, what
were the terms? And who, in fact, arranged for Chiang's re
lease? The answers are not yet fully known.
In "United States Relations with China/' dated July 30, 1949,
the State Department says:
"The Chinese Communist Party ... at first favored the exe
cution of the Generalissimo, but apparently on orders from
Moscow shifted to a policy of saving his life. The Chinese Com
munist concept, inspired from Moscow, became one of promot
ing a 'united front' with the Generalissimo and the National
Government against the Japanese; this concept seems to have
played a considerable role in saving the Generalissimo's life."
In Chiang Kai-shek, however, Hollington Tong says that
Chiang himself formulated the idea of calling the Communist
into a common front against Japan:
"Chiang's attitude toward the Communists had not altered
after his experience at Sian. However, in the uncertainty of the
Northwest situation, he saw little gain to the government in ex
hausting its resources in further military action against them
. . . He began to explore in his mind the advantages of reach
ing an agreement with Mao Tse-tung's forces, and assuring
their cooperation in the inevitable showdown with Japan/*
Whatever the truth, something happened at Sian that in
duced Chiang Kai-shek to abandon plans for another major
operation against the Communists. Once before they had es
caped by flight, that time through some labyrinthine conspir
acy.
Sian marks a vital point along the road. For, as many special
ists believe, it probably accelerated Japan's second attack on
China in 1937. As long as the Nationalists and Communists
kept busy killing each other and expending national resources,
the Japanese militarists could precede leisurely with whatever
timetable they had drawn for further operations in China. A
198 East Wind Rising
united China, however, would be a much more formidable
problem. Seven months after the Sian Incident, the "undeclared
war" began in north China.
If the State Department is correct in its assertion that Mos
cow ordered Chiang to be spared at Sian, the question arises:
why? What was Stalin's motive in the paper coalition between
the Nationalists and the Communists?
The conjecture is that he foresaw another Japanese attack
on China. When it came, the Nationalist armies would bear the
brunt of the fighting and take the heavier casualties. The lightly
armed Reds, operating guerrilla fashion behind the lines, would
suffer much less. Whatever the final outcome, the Nationalists
would be weaker and the Communists stronger in the end. This
is the theory. If it is accurate, Stalin was a very shrewd fore
caster, indeed, for it is precisely what did happen. In the depths
of World War II, with the Japanese occupying cities and con
trol points in a wide area of China, the Communists, like will-
o'-the-wisps, operated in the same territory under their very
noses.
Japan need never have worried about the "united front." It
was little more than a myth. The two Chinese groups always
watched each other more closely than they watched the Jap
anese, seldom stopped skirmishing, and were several times near
an open break* This is part of the reason for the heartbreaking
struggle between the late Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell
and Chiang Kai-shek. "J oe " Stilwell was a warm, wonderful
personality, an inspired leader, a great soldier. We all loved
him in Burma. He wanted to use Chinese divisions, trained and
equipped by Americans, to drive the Japanese out of Burma.
The plan never came into actual practice, however, because
as Stilwell saw it, Chiang preferred to hold those divisions for
eventual use against the Communists.
The Nationalists seriously damaged their cause in the eyes
of the Americans in Burma at that time, not only because of
The Red Trail 199
that strategic matter, but because of the peculations and thiev
ery that already had begun. It could not help but affect your
view of the government, even though the regime, far away in
Chungking, was virtually powerless to stop it. Even the ordi
nary GI was affected.
One day a blond youngster from Oklahoma, barely nineteen
years old, but already with battlefield decorations, came into
the press billet, cussing a blue streak. He said he had been
heating some rations near a stream when a Chinese soldier
came and squatted down beside him. "He sat there for a few
minutes," the boy said, "holding up his thumb and saying
* 'Melicans ding how, 'Melicans ding how/ Seemed to want a
cigarette, so I gave him a handful. He said "ding how* a couple
more times and walked away. And the sonofabitch took my
musette bag with him."
One of my colleagues arranged, through a hush-hush Amer
ican unit, to join a Nationalist commando unit operating in
Japanese-held territory in the CBL He came back soon after
ward. I asked him what they were doing against the Japanese.
"Not much against the Japs/' he said. "Occasionally, they
pick up a prisoner or knock off an outpost. Mostly, though, they
keep busy raising hell with the Communists in the neighbor
hood. I suppose that's why they wouldn't let me stay,"
On February 8, 1941, a message came to Chiang Kai-shek from
President Roosevelt. It said:
"It appears at ten thousand miles away that the Chinese
Communists are what in our country we call Socialists. We like
their attitude toward the peasants, towards women, and to^
wards Japan. It seems to me that these so-called Communists
and the National Government have more in common than they
20O East Wind "Rising
have differences. We hope they can work out their differences
and work more closely together in the interest of our common
objective of fighting Japan."
The message is important on two counts.
First, the date. It was ten months minus one day before
Pearl Harbor. Was Roosevelt already at war? Only four months
before this message, he had made the "again-and-again" speech
assuring the voters their sons would not be sent into foreign
wars. Did his message mean fighting Japan with economic
measures, "measures short of war?" Or did it mean exactly what
it said? Watching Roosevelt's policies, from various points in
the Orient during the last fateful years, it seemed to me there
could be no other answer than that he had decided on a shoot
ing war.
Second, the phrase; "Communists are what in our country
we call Socialists. 7 '
To be sure, in 1941 very few persons had seen the true face
of Communism and could appreciate its deadly purpose.
But more than three years later, on June 21, 1944, Vice-
President Henry Wallace, on an official mission, held a conver
sation with Chiang Kai-shek. In the notes summarizing the dis
cussion appears a somewhat similar note:
"Mr. Wallace said that President Roosevelt had talked about
the Communists in China. President Roosevelt had assumed
that inasmuch as the Communists and the members of the Kuo-
mintang were all Chinese they were basically friends [italics
mine] and that 'nothing should be final between friends/ "
The message is published in Hollington Tong's biography of
Chiang Kai-shek. Tong held a number of high posts in the
Chinese government at the time and later became ambassador
to the United States. He says the President's special envoy,
Lauchlin Currie, delivered this message to Chiang. The Wal
lace conversation summary appears in the American White Pa
per on China.
Over and over, Americans ask how we could have misjudged
The Red Trail 201
the Communists so completely, failed to see their true purpose
in China, called them "agrarian reformers," and propounded
the belief that they could be induced to put aside their differ
ences and join the Nationalists. Controversy still swirls around
the point and recriminations are still flying. To some Amer
icans it smells of treachery somewhere. Others more charitably
regard it as an error in judgment terribly fateful, but still an
honest error.
Roosevelt prided himself on his knowledge of China. He
lilced to describe how his ancestors had traded with the Chinese
and what he had learned. StUwell relates in his memoirs how
the President filibustered on this subject while Stilwell waited
for an answer to a key question on wartime China. Perhaps in
1941 Roosevelt thought, as did others, that the culture, the
psychology, and the traditions of China made it stony ground
for the growth of Communism. Perhaps in 1944 he thought
that the important thing was to get the Nationalists and Com
munists together so that China would fight more effectively
against the Japanese.
In any case, it was a fatal misconception that the so-called
Communists were "basically friends" with the Nationalists.
The President's view of the situation could not help but affect
the views of Americans generally. . . . "After all, he has sources
of up-to-date information on conditions in China and the back
ground of knowledge and experience on which to formulate his
judgments. In short, the Boss must know what he's talking
about."
Moreover, the effect of this attitude on the State Department
and Foreign Service officers all along the line must be taken
into account. Among the functions of an embassy are to gather
facts, to analyze and evaluate them, and to report to Wash
ington. If you know "the line" Washington is taking, and es
pecially if it is "the line" of the President himself, there is a
great temptation to go along with it in your reports and evalu
ations. The ambassador who likes his job, the counselor of em-
202, East Wind Rising
bassy who wants to be an ambassador, and the officers farther
down the ladder do not like to disagree with Washington's view
of a given situation. At best they may be ignored, at worse they
may be transferred to a less important post. I dare say that not
even the Soviet embassy in Washington often challenges Mr.
Khrushchev's evaluations of the situation in the United States
on a given point.
In any case, the United States apparently had adopted this
as a policy toward the Chinese Communists. Hollington Tong
describes it as "the American inclination towards appeasement
of the Chinese Communists." Thereafter, he continues: "... a
procession of well-meaning American envoys came and went in
China, from 1941 to 1949, in an effort to bring the National
Government and the Communists together."
Then Yalta. In February 1945 the Big Three met. The United
States and Russia wrote the terms of the deal by which Russia
would come into the war against Japan after V-E Day. Not all
the top American military commanders wanted the Soviets in,
and it has been suggested many times that Stalin would have
rushed into Manchuria anyway to seize the fruits of victory.
In addition, the terms of the agreement affected Manchuria
and the ports of Dairen and Port Arthur, to all of which China
could lay legitimate claim. No Chinese delegates attended the
conference, however.
The agreement stipulated that Russia's "former interests" in
the Far East should be restored, promised to safeguard her
"pre-eminent interests" in the railways and Dairen, and gave
Russia the Kurile Islands and other Pacific territory. The "pre
eminent interests" were not defined.
"It was unfortunate," said the White Paper, "that China was
not previously consulted." It further says: "The primary moti
vation of the Yalta Agreement was military."
Britain joined the agreement, but Winston Churchill says
in Triumph and Tragedy that neither he nor Anthony Eden
The Red Trail 203
played any part in shaping it. He adds: "We were not consulted
but only asked to approve. This we did. In the United States
there have been many reproaches about the concessions made
to Soviet Russia. The responsibility rests with their own repre
sentatives."
China not only was not consulted about the terms, but was
not even advised for some months. Churchill says he notified
the dominion prime ministers "in the most rigid secrecy 7 The
White Paper's explanation of the fact that China was not ad
vised is that Roosevelt and Stalin "based this reticence (sic) on
the already well-known and growing danger of leaks* to the
Japanese from Chinese sources." One may ask: suppose they
had "leaked?" Would this have moved Japan to greater efforts,
or convinced her that the cause was utterly hopeless? In any
case, that is the official explanation.
Finally, Chiang Kai-shek was to be presented with a fait ac
compli and asked to concur without having been consulted.
"The President will take measures in order to obtain this con
currence on advice from Marshal Stalin," said the agreement.
Roosevelt had been maneuvered into a position where, in Chi
nese eyes, the United States would bear the major responsibility
for Yalta.
"At no point did President Roosevelt consider that he was
compromising vital Chinese interests," says the White Paper.
Roosevelt was a tired, sick man. He had only two more
months to live.
Thus the ground was prepared for Russian troops to come
into Manchuria, the cockpit of the Far East, which would
quickly be converted into the main base for the Chinese Com
munists.
The war ended. Swiftly four Chinese Red armies moved into
the four northern provinces Jehol, Kirin, Chahar, and Liao-
ning. As the Russian divisions disarmed the Japanese, they
moved out, leaving arms and ammunitions to the Chinese.
204 East Wind Rising
American ships brought the Nationalists to the area, but by
the time they arrived, the Communists were astride the main
lines of communications. It became clear that a showdown must
come in Manchuria unless, of course, Chiang Kai-shek elected
to avoid it.
Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer, an exceedingly
competent officer, genuinely trying to help China, reported in
November:
"He [Chiang Kai-shek] will be unable to occupy Manchuria
for many years unless satisfactory agreements are reached with
Russia and the Chinese Communists.
"It appears remote that a satisfactory understanding will be
reached between the Chinese Communists and the National
Government."
Nevertheless, when President Truman sent General George
C. Marshall to China, the instructions read in part: "Specifi
cally, I desire that you endeavor to persuade the Chinese Gov
ernment to call a national conference of representatives of the
major political elements to bring about a unification of China,
and concurrently, to effect a cessation of hostilities, particularly
in North China/" Truman noted that Communist representa
tives were among those holding discussions in Chungking at the
time, and said this should provide Marshall with a "convenient
opportunity."
In other words, although the Pacific War had ended and
military considerations of China's contribution no longer ap
plied, the American policy of "unification" still was to prevail.
Dreary, hopeless discussions continued. Time passed. The
position of the Communists in Manchuria grew stronger daily.
It served their purpose, therefore, to continue the fiction of
honest bargaining. They were gaining precious time.
Mao Tse-tung, however, had a different view:
"To sit on the fence is impossible. A third road does not
exist. We oppose the Chiang Kai-shek reactionary clique . . .
We also oppose the illusion of a third road. Not only in China
The Red Trail 205
but also in the world, without exception, one either leans to the
side of imperialism or to the side of socialism."
Finally, the moment came. In the summer of 1947 Mao was
able to say that the Communists no longer were on the de
fensive in Manchuria. "Our armies have turned to offensive
attacks on a nation-wide scale/' he announced.
By 1949 it was all over.
Could China have been saved? In the wisdom of hindsight,
probably. Amid the misconceptions of the middle 1940*5, no.
Consider the picture:
1. After V-J Day China was in a desperate condition. Phys
ical destruction had been enormous. Inflation was running wild.
Starvation confronted an estimated seven to ten million people.
The people's morale was at the nadir. They were shambling
and dispirited. China, like a man suffering from shock, needed
quick transfusions.
2. To make matters worse, corruption, nepotism, and inef
ficiency were clogging the wheels.
In August 1947 Wedemeyer stood before the State Council
and all the top officials in government and spoke bluntly. He
described draft dodging by the rich, touched on economics and
the military position, and said that the Nationalist armies by
contrast to the Communist forces had incurred in the Chinese
a "feeling of hatred and distrust," owing to their looting and
thievery. Their attitude toward the people, he said, was "that
of conquerors instead of deliverers/' both in China and on For
mosa. He added these prophetic words:
"The Central Government cannot defeat the Chinese Com
munists by the use of force, but can only win the loyal, en
thusiastic and realistic support of the masses of people by im
proving the political and economic situation immediately. The
206 East Wind Rising
effectiveness and timeliness of these improvements will deter
mine, in my opinion, whether or not the Central Government
will stand or fall before the Communist onslaught."
It was reported that one of the ministers wept openly. The
others were outraged.
Was this an American view alone? A Chinese newspaper in
Nanking published an editorial entitled "Lose No Time in Win
ning the People's Confidence." It said:
"At this moment when the nation's fate is flickering, and
when the people are suffering terribly, what hope is there for
them? The special privileged classes still enjoy their privileges
and the people can do nothing to them. Even now nothing can
be done to these public enemies of the people who are able ac
complices of the Communists. Nepotism rides on ... and the
people have no right to say anything. What are we going to do
with national affairs like that?"
The list of evils in this category is long profiteering, specu
lation, manipulations in currency etc. Almost every American
report for the period contains a phrase or more to the effect
that "conditions are deteriorating/*
But, in the bewilderment and dismay over the disaster in
China, Americans have tended to oversimplify, to ascribe the
Communist triumph almost exclusively to these evils. It is not
often noted that even with complete peace the Nationalists
would have had great difficulty remedying conditions quickly.
For one thing, they lacked trained administrators the im
mense corps required to take charge in such a vast territory.
Communications were badly chewed up by the war, and it was
in the Communists* interest to see that they remained so. Where
repairs were made by the government, the Communists speed
ily disrupted them again.
3. A "pox-on-both-your-houses" sentiment welled up all over
China.
Many Chinese felt that anything would be better than the
Nationalists. Many did not want the Communists. They wanted
The Red Trail 2,07
something new, but what? From Manchuria it was reported
that the people would welcome the return of the war lord
Chang Hsueh-liang, deposed by Japan in 1931. After all, under
him and his father there had been relative peace and pros
perity in Manchuria as opposed to the ceaseless fighting in
metropolitan China. Again, however, the Communists capital
ized on the popular desire for peace and security, maintaining
discipline and holding to the tactics they had used during the
Long March. The opposite picture of the Nationalist troops was
described by Wedemeyer "hatred and distrust."
4. American military observers reported Nationalist troops
fighting halfheartedly, when at all.
They had superiority in numbers, approximately a million
and a half to a million, and did not lack equipment. But the
Communists, imbued with an idea, disciplined and organized,
had something to fight for. American observers cited instances
where Nationalist units abandoned positions without a fight or
even joined the Communists.
5. Underlying everything lay the basic difference between
the Americans and Chiang.
In effect, they said to him: "You are fighting an idea, not
merely armed forces. To fight that idea you must correct con
ditions, grant the people civil liberties, institute true democracy,
and broaden the base of government by bringing the Commu
nists into it." As late as 1948 the American ambassador reported
to Washington: "He [Chiang] seems unable to think of Com
munism as an extreme force of social unrest which cannot be
extirpated by the combination of military force and gracious
compassion . . ?
Chiang's retort was that he was fighting an armed rebellion
moreover, one directed from Moscow. If the Communists
were prepared to acknowledge the authority of the central gov
ernment and lay down their arms, he was prepared to make
concessions. Naturally, the Communists would not do so. Why
should they?
208 East Wind Rising
He also could and did reply to the Americans that even in
the eleventh hour they still failed to comprehend the Commu
nists' objective and their tactics. He could hardly be expected
to agree that they were "what we ... call Socialists'* and that
merely because they were Chinese they were "basically friendly"
with the Nationalist Chinese. He did not expect them to take
what Mao Tse-tung called the "third road/' any more than they
did.
6. Finally, almost the last vestige of good will eroded away.
Hollington Tong wrote that the Nationalists considered that
President Truman used American assistance as a club over
them. He says: "Should China reject the American proposals,
the inference in the Truman statement was unmistakable:
China would receive neither military nor economic aid from
the United States.
"Many Chinese thought and said that this looked like a
choice between modes of suicide."
The Nationalists would have been less than human, too, if by
that time they were not a little disenchanted with the United
States. There was Yalta. There was the suspicion that "ap
peasement of the Chinese Communists'* had been American
policy. There was tie constant American pressure, during and
after the war, to have them bring the Communists into the cen
tral government. There was the "unmistakable inference" in
Truman's statement on economic aid.
No, given all tibese conditions economic, military, physical,
and psychological China could not have been saved from the
Communists. History was against it history and the careful
planning and hard work of men who knew what they wanted
and how to get it
*TTie road to Paris and London/* said the old Bolshevik,
"leads through Peking/*
Chapter XVII
THE BLUE TRAIN
THE "BLUE EXPRESS" rolled out o North Station in Shanghai,
rounded a bend, and smoothly gathered speed heading north
ward. A few moments later it came into a large village and
slowed again. Swarms of women and children walked beside
the cars, hands extended, whining for food, for cumslww, for
anything. Fortunately the "Blue Express" no longer carried a
dining car. It is a blighting experience to sit in a diner, con
fronting gleaming linen and plates of food, while outside there
are hungry children watching and begging. What do you do?
Pull down the shade? Ignore them? Either way the food sud
denly turns to cardboard. The train picked up speed again.
They ran until it was moving too fast. No one gave them so
much as a grape.
It was a bright May morning. May 1930. A spring breeze
brushed across the wheat fields and etched delicate, fan-shaped
ripples on the pools in the rice paddies. Peasants with carrying-
poles toiled up the sides of terraced hills bending under the
weight of the water for paddies higher up. In the villages mer
chants already had removed shutters from the shop fronts.
Chunks of raw pork and beef, entrails, and pressed chickens,
glazed and shiny, hung in the open air. Farmers squatted be
side baskets of vegetables brought in before dawn from fields
miles away. A ricksha coolie slept in Ms ricksha, undisturbed
amid the noise and the movement and the bright sunshine in
his face. Two women stood gossiping, one of them nursing a
210 East Wind Rising
child. She handed it to the other woman, who bared her breast^
and they went on talking. Immemorial China.
All too soon the "Blue Express" came into open country. All
too soon Shanghai fell behind. Our time there had ended. The
schedule called for the next move, northward to universities in
Tientsin and Peking. Now the moment had come. Already I
missed Shanghai and longed for the cramped, murky little
newsroom on the Evening Post. They would be on the rewrite
by this time. Carroll Alcott, the city editor, would have found
a funny item and would be refurbishing it, silently chuckling as
he wrote. In the composing room Ivan Mrantz would be exam
ining the pots of molten lead, his face a picture of Slavic gloom.
I opened my notebook, which was filled with page after page of
vignettes on Shanghai:
"A ricksha coolie followed a foreigner into the lobby of the
China United, whining for more money, as they always do. The
man knocked him down. . . . The coolies are often cheated be
cause strangers don't know the difference between Ing' money
and 'small' money. . . . The bitter, acrid smell in the opium
dens in the Walled City is like no other smell. People look
thoughtful but not exactly transported when they are smoking.
... In the storm the other day the water backed up and sew
age gushed out of the drains like fountains. An Englishman
stalled his car in it. He got out and sloshed through the goo.
Today he died of some infection. . . . Alcott showed me how
to drink vodka. You eat a little something between each sip.
... At the Birthday Ball in the Majestic I sat next to the Jap
anese ambassador's wife. She is charming, and I wanted to ask
her to dance but didn't have the nerve. . . . The real foreign
correspondents, like Reginald Sweetland, of the Chicago Daily
News, work hard building up contacts and sources of informa
tion. . . . When ricksha coolies crowd around you, the man
and the ricksha somehow look like a big, dirty bird If you seem
undecided, they think you want a woman and they start yelling;
The Blue Train
1 gotta Korean girl, I gotta a Belgium girl, I gotta nice 'Melican
girl-'"
Some of this had been published with my name on the
stories. "Frankly, it's old stuff/' Al Meyer would say, <c but I'm
going to run it because it will remind the customers of the way
they saw this town when they first came. Nothing is ever old if
you get a fresh slant, pal"
But March merged into April, and the days fled toward that
date in May when we would leave. In the spring of 1930, how
ever, a new coalition of war lords, both in the north and the
south, challenged the authority of the Nationalist government,
Two powerful chiefs in the north, Yen Hsi-shan and Feng Yu-
hsiang, called on Chiang Kai-shek to resign. Some fifty other
generals and local bosses signed a public condemnation of him
and the government. In the south other war lords wheeled out
their forces. Fighting began in Shantung province, between
Tientsin and the capital at Nanking.
A comic-opera flavor often tinged the operations of the war
lords. They took the field, then decided to stop fighting, and
the government forgave them. An item from the Evening Post
says: "Gen. Shih Yu-shen, who recently reaffirmed his alle
giance to the Nationalist Government, is releasing all the roll
ing stock which he previously commandeered. Shih received
$800,000 to transport his troops to take part in the campaign
against the Ironsides (a rebel force) but as he did not go, this
sum will be deducted from the government* s future allowance
to his forces/' And however big and bloody the war zone, life
tended to move through it as usual. In this case, word reached
us that it was possible to travel overland to Peking in spite of
the fighting in Shantung. Trains, although interrupted by a no
man's land between the armies, were still running.
212 East Wind Rising
In its heyday the "Blue Express" was a famous luxury train,
beautifully appointed and celebrated for its food and service.
It owed its existence to the presence of foreigners in China, to
the wealth they created, and to the rich Chinese, who could
afford it. It was a bright strand amid the universal poverty.
The reputation of the "Blue Express," however, was not
based on its speed. It made the seven hundred and fifty-mile
run between Shanghai and Peking in twenty-eight hours and
fifteen minutes, an average of less than thirty miles an hour.
The roadbed, built by European engineers, permitted much
higher speeds, but there were other determining factors, pe
culiar to China. Bandits had learned how to loosen the fish
plates on the tracks, along with other less sophisticated means
of stopping the train. Once, as I mentioned earlier, they
boarded it in wild- West fashion and kidnapped all the passen
gers. Because of the bandits the express became the most bril
liantly lighted train in the world. As it rumbled through the
night, batteries of powerful searchlights swept the track ahead
and the countryside around. Guards rode in the engineer's
cabin and drowsed at both ends of the coaches.
In the compartments, glowing with damask and thick Peking
rugs, rode the whole range of characters on the China coast:
that is to say, war lords and their harem favorites, spies, in
triguers, gangsters, Chinese millionaires., foreign taipans, dip
lomats, card sharps, and the silken ladies who made the trip so
often they could have taken over from the engineer. Thieves
prowled the corridors. Fortunes, and not infrequently careers,
were lost in the bridge and poker games. If a passenger disap
peared along the route, it was prudent to know nothing of the
circumstances.
As time passed, the blight creeping over China touched the
"Blue Express." War lords took locomotives and rolling stock
The Blue Train 213
for their operations. With increasing frequency, civil wars dis
rupted service. Bandits grew bolder. The line fell into disrepute,
and the uncertainties sent more and more passengers to coast
wise ships. On the May morning when we left Shanghai, only
three of the original coaches remained. We had one of them to
ourselves.
Tsui settled into the seat beside me. I closed my Shanghai note
book. "Haven't seen much of you lately," he said. "Learn any
thing in Shanghai?"
"Plenty," I said, "but not the sort of thing we can put in the
day book or the reports. What about you?"
He said they had made short trips to Nanking, Hangchow,
and Soochow. There was a Chinese saying then "Canton for
cooking, Swatow for lace, and Soochow for pretty girls." I asked
about the girls in Soochow. Tsui said it had been a dark, rainy
day with poor visibility.
He described an orphanage on a hilltop above Nanking. Near
the entrance, he said, the automobiles passed between rows of
boy scouts standing at attention. A guard at the gate had pre
sented arms, and two officials in frock coats rushed out of the
buildings. "They were expecting some general," Tsui said. "By
accident, I and my companions arrived first. They were dumb
founded, but they invited us to see the place." He described a
roomful of sad little boys and girls in dull gray uniforms, each
standing beside a steel bed. This in itself depressed him, he
said, but what bothered him even more was to hear that all the
orphans were children of Nationalist army officers killed in the
civil wars. "Only top rankers," he said. "Nothing below a major.
Everything in this country seems to be based on privilege, and
to hell with the poor man."
In Nanking they had interviewed several Ministers of State
East Wind Rising
and other men of lower rank. I asked him what he thought of
them. He took a moment to answer. <e l don't know/' he said.
"Some of them seem competent enough. But the answer isn't
easy. There is a ... well, a phony atmosphere around the gov
ernment buildings. You can tell from looking at the men in
those offices that they all come from upper-bracket families, all
from a particular class. It's a clique. They aren't killing them
selves with work. I wonder if they have any feeling for the
country or whether it's just a job."
"Maybe both," I said. "Are you still planning to get a job in
government?"
"No more. The air in Nanking doesn't smell right to me."
"How are the blackbirds?"
He grinned. " 'By, *by, blackbirds. That was just an emotional
binge in Lingnan. The first impact of the country, I suppose.
But I still want to do something." He pointed through the win
dow. "Look there's the Purple Mountain."
The mountain rises on the outskirts of Nanking. Sun Yat-sens
sepulcher looks out from the slope across the Valley of the
Ming Tombs. It is near the tomb of the first Ming emperor. The
Nationalists built it as a symbol of the Revolution, a national
shrine. With its Chinese roof and glazed tile, it was meant to
resemble the old tombs. But they used concrete and made it
larger, more consciously imposing than those of the Mings. In
a curious way it seemed out of place there, out of harmony.
Sunset turned the Yangtze into a river of fire. The plain of
Anwhei blurred in the twilight. A full moon rose, melon-yellow
at first, then burnished silver. The train slowed, barely creep
ing. From time to time we stepped out of the coach and walked
beside it. The air smelled of spring and the Yangtze and the
excrement fertilizing the fields. The coach was dark except for
the moonlight It was not a wagon lit with beds, but the seats
were soft. I fell asleep and dreamed a panicky dream of the
clock in the newsroom. . . .
In the morning the express seemed to be sailing across a sea
The Blue Train 215
of yellow dust. It had entered Shantung during the night, and
now, stretching away on all sides, there was the plain, covered
with dust so fine that even the train's crawling pace stirred
swirling little whirlpools. Yellow, yellow, yellow. In the expanse
of China, in the mountains, the river valleys, the plains, the
deserts, and along the coasts you can find every color and every
shade of color. Yet somehow the retinal image of a yellow coun
try persists. The Yellow River. The Yellow Race. The "Yellow
Peril/' Shantung, yellowest of all, is the very epitome of China.
In this terrain lies a good part of the story of China. Confucius
and Mencius were born in Shantung. The Boxer rebellion be
gan here. It is the region of one of the first foreign concessions,
and the scene of a clash between the United States and Japan
that made Americans conscious of the name "Shantung" in
the igso's. Taishan, the sacred mountain, "The Gateway to
Heaven," looks out across the plain of Shantung. For two thou
sand years, from the time this region was known as the King
dom of Lu, pilgrims have come to climb Taishan.
Actually, they ascend a stairway. Cut in the granite flank of
the mountain and following its contours are 6,717 steps. They
are worn smooth now from the passage of so many pilgrims
walking and crawling. To climb a stairway is much more
muscle-wearing than to walk along a ramp-like mountain path,
however steep. The stone steps hurt your feet and set your
ankles aching. The avenue to The Gateway of Heaven is not
an easy one. It is a place of pain and sacrifice. Even this, how
ever, was not sufficient penance for the pilgrims on Taishan
that day.
Not far from the foot of the stairway, perhaps two hundred
steps above, an old woman sat, apparently admiring the scen
ery below. She faced away from the summit. After a moment
East Wind Rising
she put her hands in back of her, gripping the next step up, and
hoisted herself. She rested a moment and did it again, step after
step, using her hands. The old woman had "lily feet," grotesque
stumps caused by binding in infancy. I assumed that she was
ascending the stairway in this slow, painful manner because
she could not walk. This was not the explanation. A little far
ther we passed a man and woman. They were not walking,
either. They crawled on their hands and knees, stopping every
few steps to pray. All along the stairway other pilgrims (more
women than men) were crawling and lifting. At one point,
where a straight stretch permitted a longer view, I saw a dozen
or more people struggling upward in this manner. They looked
like sluggish gray reptiles creeping over the stones. At this pace
it must have taken them nearly a month to climb the 6,717
steps, and it is painful to imagine the condition of their hands
and knees.
Very devout people, I thought, struggling upward from earth
to heaven, from fleshly sin through suffering to The Kingdom
of the Spirit. St. Paul himself would have smiled on them.
At the summit of Taishan, however, a shock awaited them.
The walls of the Temple of Confucius were crumbling. Dry
rot had eaten into the wooden doors. Ropes and temple cords
were old and ragged. The Temple of the Jade Emperor was in
the same state. Moreover, both buildings needed lashings of
soap and water. Scattered over the mountain top and clinging
to the slope of the mountain opposite Taishan were other mon
asteries and temples. All showed the effects of neglect. The
monks and acolytes, shambling across the stones, wore dirty
robes and smelled of grease and sweat. The expression in their
faces was dull and loutish. No sense of grace or spirituality in
vested The Gateway to Heaven. How do you reconcile their
attitude with the devotion of the pilgrims, who found walking
too easy?
"When all is well and you wish it to stay well," says the
Chinese maxim, "be an ethical Confucian. When in trouble,
The Blue Train 217
seek the Taoists. When you are dying, let the Buddhists be
called in."
The Chinese (fortunately for Mao Tse-tung and his party)
are not a religious people. They have no deep, excluding faith
of their own. The peasants and coolies the great majority of
Chinese are very superstitious. They believe in witches and
demons and have devised many ingenious means of frustrating
or appeasing evil spirits. But they do not believe in the divine
nature of man, in a forgiving God ? or in an ultimate purpose in
life.
The Chinese absorbed foreign religions as they absorbed
foreign invaders. Meanwhile they continued to be essentially
an unreligious people. Very few of my student friends, for ex
ample, were more than nominally Christian, although they
studied in mission schools. Probably there were more "rice
Christians" than true converts. A small scene in Canton on a
Christmas Eve remains indelibly in my memory. Crowds of
Chinese gathered outside the lovely old cathedral, listening to
the music and the birdlike voices of the Chinese choirboys.
As the Mass progressed, men urinated on the cathedral walls,
not as a gesture of disrespect, but just because they happened
to be near.
No, the poor pilgrims, scourging themselves up the stone
stairway of Taishan, represented no great spiritual force. Even
if they could be regarded as "religious" in the Christian or
Buddhist meaning, they represented only a minority of the
Chinese. It is strange that two great Eastern nations, India and
China, each with an ancient civilization, each with majestic
cultural achievements, rubbing elbows, and with so many
points in common, should have diverged so widely in the
matter of faith. Why did India produce a Buddha and develop
a deep religious sense? Why, on the contrary, did no endemic
Chinese religion develop?
The Communists overcame many obstacles in the conquest
of China, but a belief in God and the divine nature of man was
2i8 East Wind Rising
not among them. The story would have heen very different if
Mao Tse-tung and his followers had collided with this stubborn
road block. For this reason the Communist drive in India will
be more difficult. Perhaps Communism will become the re
ligion of China now. If so, I think it certain that there will be
more "rice Communists" than true converts.
A private train with a single coach carried us to the end of
the railroad line. We were the only passengers. In Tsinan-fu,
a city north of Taishan, the station manager hooked the only
available car, a creaking matchbox, to an equally tired locomo
tive. The train, he said, would leave at our pleasure. It would
go as far as Yucheng-hsien, some twenty miles ahead, on the
southern boundary of the combat zone. A bus would take us
across some sixty miles of no man's land to the rebel lines.
From there another train would complete the trip. War or no
war, our tickets said "Shanghai to Peking," and the station
manager was determined to fulfill the contract. He was one of
those individuals rarely met in public service anywhere, a man
dedicated to his duty. To him, obviously, the war was only an
operational detail, an irritating but not critical accident on
the line.
Except for the upcurling Chinese eaves, Yucheng-hsien
could have been Oxbow Gulch in a Western movie. The main
street, unpaved and deep in yellow dust, led through town
to the railway depot. Horse-drawn carts and wagons were
passing between the rows of one-story shops. Dust, fine as tal
cum, covered the whole town, fogged the windows in the
depot, and put pancake makeup on the people. Every cart
moved in a yellow cloud. When the train wheezed into the
station, crowds rushed to the depot in a miniature dust storm.
They gawked, murmuring "Ai-yaw, ai-yaw" at the sight of nine
The Blue Train 219
white men and one Chinese disembarking. The news spread
and others came running. They probably suspected the war
had taken a new turn, drawing in foreigners. Some men tried
to talk to Tsui, but he did not speak the Shantung dialect. He
brushed past them. "I'll find the bus," he shouted. "You guys
bring the luggage." Another man pantomimed aiming a rifle,
grinning happily. We shook our heads and made signs to show
we carried no arms. Up to that point we had seen no Nation
alist field positions and only a few soldiers strolling in Tsinan-
fu. Yet the no man's land extended for sixty miles between the
two armies. In this sector, at least, they appeared to be avoid
ing each other. It looked like a leisurely war.
Beside the depot stood the bus. The right front wheel canted
over at a dangerous angle. There was no door, no windshield,
no bonnet over the hood, no radiator cap, and only one seat,
that for the driver. The motor bore a Ford insignia, but spare
parts from many other models had been grafted on it. The
chassis squawked when we climbed aboard. Before that, how
ever, the driver duly examined the tickets. It is doubtful that
he could read, but we waited, knowing he was gaining "face"
in his home town. Then, gasping and clattering, the bus stag
gered through the crowds and headed into open country on a
faint trace of a road. Within a few miles, steam rose from the
radiator. The driver found water in an irrigation ditch. Next,
sand choked the carburetor. We cleaned the screen for him.
From time to tune patches of deep sand and drifted dust
stalled the bus. We all got out and pushed. Still, mile after
mile fell behind.
The signs of war were invisible rather than visible. As the
bus approached a village, people scurried into the little mud
huts and slammed the doors. Not a single horse or ox was
plowing the fields. Not one pig or chicken explored for food.
And not one woman, except a withered crone or two, showed
herself. If the bus meant soldiers, rebel or Nationalist, the
villagers knew what to expect
East Wind Rising
Toward dusk, on the outskirts of a village, soldiers sprinted
into the road from a clump of trees. A machine-gun position
lay concealed in the trees. In terrain as flat as this they must
have seen the pillar of dust and watched the bus long before
it reached their position. One man, apparently an officer, pulled
a pistol from his holster and signaled the driver to stop. Then
he said something. The driver stepped down, motioning us to
follow him. When the officer saw Tsuf s face, he took a step
toward him and chattered rapidly. Tsui replied in Cantonese,
the only Chinese language he knew. These were Shansi troops,
speaking a local version of Mandarin. The officer and Tsui
might as well have been an Arab and a Choctaw trying to
communicate.
"I think he wants to know who we are and what we are do
ing here," Tsui said, "but I don't know how to tell him."
"Show him your clippings about the time you won the ora
torical contest."
"Draw him a picture."
"Wise guys," said Tsui. "Wait a minute. You just gave me an
idea. Our stationery has Chinese characters showing we are
a student group. He probably can't read, but he won't admit
it. Dig out a letterhead, someone."
The officer studied the paper. The soldiers looked over his
shoulder. One of them said something. The officer glared and
roughly pushed him away. Finally he spoke to the bus driver.
We could precede.
Then we came to the rebels' main positions, defenses in
depth. In a layer cake of three major sectors they had dug
trenches, raised earthworks, mounted machine guns, and sta
tioned some artillery. The equipment looked reasonably new.
I remembered a short dispatch from Manila reporting that a
Czechoslovakian ship, carrying arms consigned to a war lord,
had sailed for Tientsin. Perhaps this was part of the cargo.
Considering the cost of a machine gun, not to mention artillery,
this single sector indicated the wealth of the war lords. How
The Blue Train 2,2,1.
many taxes from how many sweating, half-starved farmers
went into the purchase of one gun and one clip of ammunition?
And here, wearing ragged, motley uniforms and rubber-soled
sneakers, were more peasant boys like those I had seen in
the "hospital" near Canton hungry, disspirited, apprehensive.
"Tired of livin and skeered of dyin.' " The rifle was a meal
ticket.
The war-lord armies gave foreigners a totally mistaken pic
ture of the Chinese as a fighting man. He stopped fighting
when it rained. Sometimes he fired over the head of the enemy
and expected the courtesy to be reciprocated. Rather than at
tack, he preferred, when possible, to frighten the foe with
firecrackers and bloodcurdling yells. He raised great clouds of
dust to simulate superior numbers and discourage attacks
from the other side. The Old China Hand said determined
opposition would send him packing. The Japanese had learned
that bribery worked like magic on a Chinese army. Foreigners
considered the ordinary soldier a reluctant dragon, dangerous
only in overwhelming numbers.
What few people realized was that until the Communists
entered the picture, the Chinese soldier seldom fought for
something he believed in a principle or an overmastering
vision of a better Me. There is a critical difference between a
mercenary, interested in loot and food, and a soldier defending
an ideal. The Chinese infantryman is unbelievably brave, quick
to learn, durable as the Japanese, cunning as a serpent The
"human-wave" tactic, which overwhelms a position through
sheer numbers and regardless of casualties, is possible only be
cause Chinese troops die so recklessly. But the mercenary,
naturally, avoids risk and tries to stay alive. (Even so, in that
civil war of 1930 government figures showed 150,000 rebels
killed and wounded, and put Nationalist casualties at 30,000
killed, 60,000 wounded. )
It was a much different Chinese soldier who faced the Jap
anese in the famous defense of Woosung in 1931 and in the
222 East Wind Rising
"undeclared war" of 1937. 1 remember a Japanese officer saying
after the Battle of Taf erchwang: "They have a good army now.
We must expect some defeats." The Chinese Communist sol
dier, imbued with an ideal, mistaken or not, met the National
ist "extermination campaigns" with a firmness and efficiency
that foreshadowed the development of a new pattern in China.
On those battlefields in the pivotal 1930'$ a formidable new
Power unit was forged.
Chapter XVIII
FAMINE
IN THE DESERT
SCOUHGING ANOTHER PABT of China that year were two more of
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Let me go back a little
way. . . .
Spring 1927. Suiyuan, a province in Inner Mongolia in the
northeast, at the edge of the Gobi Desert.
Warm weather has come earlier than usual. The farmer be
gins to watch for the first green shoots of wheat to come up in
one corner of the field, and for tendrils that will blossom with
white poppies (for opium) in another. This is all he asks of
the land food, a cash crop of poppy bulbs, and forgetfulness
in the opium. Observing the sky and noting the color of the
desert and the metallic glint of the Sumakhada mountains, the
fanner knows a scorching summer is on the way. It will be
dry. However, there is no cause for anxiety. Heavy summer
rains are still to come.
June passes. No rain. In July great storms usually thunder
from the southeast and splinter against the mountains, drench
ing the land. The whole region, especially in the loop formed
by the Yellow River, becomes a sheet of water. Still no rain in
July. Now the farmer feels anxiety gnawing. He dreams of
water. A merciless sun tortures the land, burning all life. It
blights the green shoots at a stroke. Parched top soil turns to
East Wind Rising
dust and sand. The mountains, gun-metal blue, are like pol
ished reflectors focusing heat rays on the plain below. The
Gobi creeps closer. Even the bull-shouldered river, the Huang
Ho, "China's Sorrow," seems to shrivel, receding from its
banks. The clay bakes to brick hardness.
Autumn. The farmer harvests some kao-liang, a native corn,
hardy enough to live through the drought. The ears are
stunted and the kernels juiceless and tough. A wordless mes
sage flashes between the farmer and his wife. Hunger this
winter. They have known hunger before. There have been
other droughts. But none so fierce as this one. He has no re
serves, no store of wheat, barley, or corn, and no animals.
Some of his neighbors will slaughter an ox or a horse before
the long northern winter ends. The wise farmer will spare his
strongest and swiftest horse, no matter how hungry he gets.
One morning a chilling wind sweeps out of the north
through the snows of the Great Khingan Mountains. Snow
makes a Greek frieze of the Sumakhada peaks. The sun, so
fierce a few months months before, grows pale now behind
cold gray clouds. This is the signal to scour the land for fuel.
In a few days not a stick of wood, a leaf, a wisp of straw re
mains on the ground in any part of Suiyuan or the whole of
Inner Mongolia. The first blizzard rides a howling wind. Be
tween storms and the moaning of the wind, white silence
settles over the land. The farmer and his wife and children
hole in to wait.
They live on paste made from ground kao-liang, a few ker
nels at a time, mixed with water. The corn is soon gone. There
is fire only to heat the gruel and make tea. Hie little pile of
sticks and leaves begins to shrink. Huddled in quilted coats,
strips of straw matting to cover the crops they never harvested,
and every possible rag, they stay in the hut, waiting.
The fanner's wife has found a strip of rotten gunny sack. It
has Iain in dirt and darkness all summer. She wraps it around
her neck to keep warm. The warmth of her body wakens a
Famine in the Desert 225
flea from winter stupor. It burrows through the sacking toward
warm flesh. She does not feel it when the flea bites her. Five or
six days later a small pain begins in her back. She feels hot
and dizzy, so dizzy that the slightest movement is an effort.
The farmer heats some tea. She swallows a cup and instantly
retches. The next day she falls into a coma, and the day after
that she is dead. Typhus.
The farmer drags her body outdoors and covers it with
snow. In the spring, when the iron-hard ground thaws, he will
dig a proper grave. Spring never comes for the farmer or his
children. The fleas bite them, too. . . .
Famine and Pestilence gallop through Suiyuan, through
Jehol, through Shensi, Shansi, and Kansu.
A third Horseman joins them.
Long winter shadows stretch freezing fingers across the
desert and the plain. All is silent. The little village looks dead
and deserted. Then suddenly in the distance comes the swish
ing thud of horses running across hard-packed snow. Faint at
first, the sound grows until it is a beating thunder. If the vil
lagers hear it in time, they summon their last small ounce of
energy and throw themselves against the doors. The hoofbeats
are close by now. Shots crackle and spit, and there is shrieking.
It is all over in a few minutes. Doors are beaten down. Where
there is resistance, a knife or a clubbed rifle silences it. The
horsemen ride off, carrying whatever they found to eat or sell.
Some of the marauders are farmers who had the foresight to
spare their strongest horses. Gaunt, hunger-maddened wolves,
they have joined bandit gangs to prey on people as poor as
themselves. Dog eat dog.
This was the winter of 1927-8.
Drought still clutched the land in 1929. It held on into 1930.
Through three consecutive years the harvests failed. It is these
fierce weather cycles, endlessly recurring over thousands of
years, that have burned a hole in that corner of China. They
created the Gobi and Ordos deserts and stripped the moun-
East Wind Rising
tains, leaving savage spires of naked rock. Rains may fail in
any year, but the Great Drought lasted three harvests.
With famine came pestilence. Typhus is a perennial prob
lem in that part of the world. The lice lurk in rags and straw,
waiting for a "host." They carry the deadly bacteria, and it
enters the blood stream when they bite. A healthy man can
throw off the disease with a little luck and care. (How well I
know! ) But even a tough peasant is doomed if it strikes him
when he is already half dead from starvation.
So, piles of corpses stacked up like frozen logs outside every
town and village. Living skeletons stared with dazed, unseeing
eyes. Some were so emaciated that their ribs stuck out like a
washboard. Children walked around with stomachs bloated
from eating bark, weeds, apricot pits, and clay. How many
died? In Suiyuan they estimated two million. In the whole re
gion it may have been six million. Who can say?
You may ask: "Why was so great a catastrophe unknown to
the rest of the world? Surely food and medical supplies could
have been rushed in." Yes, they could have been, but weren't,
for reasons you will see.
We came to this scene in the summer of 1930,
On a July morning shortly before noon the screen door flung
open and the major burst into the room. Outside, the tempera
ture was well over a hundred. Blinding sunlight poured into
the compound, and puffs of hot, dry air came through the
screen door. I was lying in the wooden bunk in shorts, alter
nately reading and fanning myself with a copy of the Peking &
Tientsin Times.
"I don't see much road building going on today,'* said the
major.
"It's Sunday, Major," I said. "I thought"
Famine in the Desert 2,2,7
"Famine doesn't know about Sunday," he snapped. The door
slammed as he went outside.
Major O. J. Todd was an engineer, formerly o the U.S.
marine corps. He was short and wiry, with a wintry face, thin
ning hair, and gray eyes that bored a hole through you. There
was a parade-ground snap in his voice, even when he spoke
Chinese, and obedience became a reflex. He drove himself and
everyone around him like a man possessed. He was on his feet
early and late, skipped meals, and often forgot to put on hat
or helmet when he went out into the fierce Mongolian sun.
He looked tough and he was, physically and in every way.
We called him "Todd Almighty" and loved him. He was a
dedicated man.
Todd was dedicated to an irrigation ditch. He had come to
Suiyuan to dig a canal that would carry water from the Yellow
River to the Black River. In the triangular area thus formed,
a system of subsidiary ditches and laterals would irrigate some
three hundred and fifty thousand acres in the heart of the
region most susceptible to drought. The China International
Famine Relief Commission, an organization financed largely
with American money, had authorized the project. Todd had
taken command in 1929 during the worst days of the famine.
He lived only for his ditch. He went racing around the
countryside, a human sandstorm in an old Dodge pickup truck,
spurring on the coolie foremen, talking with the engineers,
supervising grain payments, recruiting labor, auditing the
books, riding the rock-carrying barges, occasionally taking a
shovel himself, raging over every delay and setback. He was a
one-man construction gang. I never could decide what drove
him so hard pity for the stricken millions, or his marine
training.
We had barely unpacked in Peking when we met Todd at a
reception in the university. He had been describing conditions
in the disaster area. Something about the man the controlled
energy, perhaps had been so contagious that we asked if we
228 East Wind Rising
could go to Suiyuan. Bluntly he had replied that he would ex
pect hard work and there would be no wages. Then, doubtless
gauging the lure, he had said: "It's a little dangerous up there."
Two days later George Gambell, a student of foreign trade,
and I boarded the train with Todd. The others were to follow.
The train passed through the Great Wall of China at the city
of Shanhaikwan, "The Gate between Mountain and Sea." Todd
recalled the battles fought there during the Boxer rebellion
and the time when Manchu bannermen surged through the
Great Wall to establish the last dynasty in China. Next came
Kalgan, a Mongol city. This name also means "gateway."
Outer Mongolia is a pure Mongol nation (and Russia and
China have some unsettled accounts with each other there),
but through the years the Chinese came to dominate Inner
Mongolia.
Dark-faced, stubby little men with flat noses and watchful
brown eyes were riding ponies through the streets of Kalgan.
A Mongol never walks if he can ride. A man came out of a
shop carrying a package, unhitched the shaggy little pony,
mounted, and rode across the street to another shop. A moment
later he rode four doors to a third shop. They wore round
blue hats, long robes of the same color, and high-heeled boots.
These were the descendants of Genghis Khan and the Golden
Horde, fierce horsemen who swept out of central Asia, stormed
through China, burning and killing, and engulfed the ancient
Kingdom of Korea. Near modern Pusan, at the southern tip,
they assembled a fleet and sailed out to add Japan to the
Khan's domain. Fortune spared the Japanese. Kami Kaze,
"Heavenly Wind," scattered the Mongol armada as another
storm centuries later scattered the Spanish armada. Another
point in the parallel between Japan and Britain.
From Kalgan the train turned southward in Suiyuan, pant
ing through the hot night. Todd talked and talked about his
big ditch. I took notes and later wrote a report on the project,
Famine in the Desert 229
sitting in a hut beside the Yellow River. Here is a fragment:
"The Suiyuan Canal and its subsidiaries constitute a large-
scale plan to irrigate 2,000,000 man (350,000 acres) of plain.
The main canal is being cut from the Yellow River to the Black
River, a distance of 40 miles through the heart of the heat-
absorbing danger area. It will run at a 45-degree angle with re
lation to the Yellow River, forming a triangle. Thirteen sub
sidiary ditches, spaced at intervals of three miles, and fourteen
laterals will carry water to every corner of the plain. At the
fourteenth lateral, which is a part of the Black River, the water
will have dropped approximately 30 feet from the point where
it left the Yellow River. The cost will run to about $1,000,000,
silver, most of it for labor. It is all pick-and-shovel work by an
average force of 4,000 coolies. There are no steam-shovels or
earth-moving machinery."
Late the following afternoon the train came to the end of
the line at a town called Seratsi. Even before it stopped, two
Chinese swung aboard and quickly found the major. Their
eyes were rolling and they spewed out words, talking at the
same time. Todd listened impassively. He broke in to say
something, apparently a question. It brought another long out
burst. The train stopped. Todd turned to us and said quietly:
"Bad news. They killed the pai-tou last night/' A pai-tou was
a foreman or labor contractor. For a lump sum he hired labor
crews in the villages. ^
A truck took us through Seratsi to a large walled compound
on the edge of open country. A guard with a rifle stood at the
gate. Sandbags covered the walls and the watch towers set on
each corner. Todd strode through a courtyard, flung his bag
beside a door without stopping, and went to another enclosure,
flanked with stables.
In a niche cut in the mud wall lay the body of the pat-tow.
He had been shot in the face several times. Only a black mask
remained. One of the two Chinese who had boarded the train
230 East Wind Rising
suddenly flung himself against the wall and burst into frantic,
tortured sobbing. His fingers scratched and dug convulsively.
The murdered man, Todd said, was his brother. Todd's face
was bleak as he knelt down beside the sobbing man. He put
his arm around him and spoke softly and gently led him away.
"Four men came into the house last night," he said. "Nobody
recognized them. Anyway, that's what they say. They had
blackened their faces for a disguise. The pai-tou was asleep.
He never knew what hit him."
"What was it about?"
"Labor dispute probably," he said. "They're happening more
often now. It shows things are getting better. Last year they'd
work for anything, Now we're beginning to have trouble."
Rifle shots crackled somewhere nearby. We sat up in the
bunks, listening. Gray dawn light glowed in the window. A
door slammed. We ran out into the courtyard. A Chinese was
grinding the starter on the truck, and Todd, who had never
learned to drive, sat beside him gabbling rapid Chinese and
rocking with impatience. We jumped in just as the motor
turned over and the truck raced tihrough the gate in a swirl of
dust.
In a minute or two the railway tracks came into view. Two
freight cars stood on the siding. A confused knot of black fig
ures swarmed around the cars. Some were running away. As
the truck skidded to a stop, others fled down the embankment.
Still others crouched beneath the cars. There were women and
children among them. The train that brought us to Seratsi the
night before carried two cars loaded with sacks of grain. The
floor boards were hardly more than slats with wide spaces be
tween. Thrusting knives, broken glass, and the jagged edges
of tin cans through the spaces, the people had ripped open the
Famine in the Desert 231
sacking. They held baskets and big straw hats to catch the
grain pouring out.
Tod.d, roaring like a bull, caught an old woman around the
shoulders and flung her bodily down the embankment. She
rose to her knees, scraped a handful of grain from the ground,
and fled. In a wink the major threw another woman and a man
away from the car. They offered no resistance except to cling
to the baskets and hats filled with grain. It was all over in a
brief moment. Breathing hard, Todd ordered the men to set
buckets under the rivulets of grain streaming down from the
two cars. Then he turned furiously on two men with rifles. It
was not necessary to understand Chinese to recognize a Ho
meric chewing-out in the manner of the marine corps. "They
either went to sleep or they're in cahoots with the people in
town,'* growled the major. "My fault for not putting on an
extra man last night. That business about the pai-tou made it
slip my mind. Well, let's get going . . ."
Back at the compound the cook said: "How you likee eggs?
Fly, boil, mixslup?" The major and George ordered fried eggs.
"Mixslup" turned out to be scrambled. Todd swallowed ham,
eggs, toast, and three cups of coffee in what seemed like a
single co-ordinated motion. Then, having ascertained that I
could drive the truck, he rose and said: "Let's get going."
"Let's go. Let's go." A hundred times a day he murmured it,
often talking to himself.
From Seratsi the road led across twenty-one miles of flat
plain to the Yellow River and the point where the mouth of
the canal would open. It was little more than a track, cut by the
carts and trucks, running straight except to veer around sand
dunes and enter the villages dotting the route. Here and there
it passed stunted trees, listless and drooping, as though hunger
had blighted them, too. In the clear morning light the jagged
mountains looked deceptively close. The sun was barely over
the horizon, but already the rays stung the back of my neck,
and the Dodge began to smell of hot grease. It was harsh and
232 East Wind Rising
forbidding country, yet with a savage beauty. The major
breathed in deeply. "Great country/' he said. "Can't you go
any faster?"
The road curved into a miserable little village. It smelled
of death, as they all did. Todd found the local pai-tou. They
walked over to a mound of grain bags covered with straw
matting. The major counted them and scribbled some figures
in a notebook. While they were talking, a man plodded toward
them, pushing a wheelbarrow. He moved painfully. When he
reached the grain, two other men lifted a bag from the pile
and set it in the wheelbarrow. Each lifted one handle and
trundled the wheelbarrow across the yard to a hut. The first
man, meanwhile, slumped against the bags. His arms fell
limply in his lap and his head hung down. All three were
famine victims just beginning to work a few hours every day.
They were barely strong enough to push a wheelbarrow. As
food came into Suiyuan the year before, the first step had been
to get coolies back on their feet. Obviously nothing could be
done until some strength flowed into them again. Then the
contractors assigned them to light work pushing a wheel
barrow and odd chores. Gradually they put them on heavier
work. At a given stage of recovery, depending on the judg
ment of the contractors, they took shovels and went to the
canal to dig. The more they could do, the more grain they
earned. It sounds heartless, a reversal of logic. Surely a weak
man should receive more than a strong one. There was a rea
son, however. As the starvation point passed, the farmers be
gan drifting away from the labor gangs on the canal. They
simulated weakness, received their grain rations, and tilled
their own fields.
Todd stopped at three more villages. The procedure was the
same in each a discussion with the pai-tou, an examination
of the grain and counting of the bags, an eagle-eyed look at
the people, not only the men, but the women and children as
well. Then a strange sight appeared ahead on the road, a
Famine in the Desert 233
vision so startling I thought it must be a mirage. A walled city
rose from the desert. Crenellated towers were spaced at regular
intervals along the walls. Behind them a slim Gothic spire
shimmered in the sunlight. "Paotow," said the major. <C A nice
fellow lives here. Belgian priest. He built those walls."
Paotow was bigger than the other villages. It looked a little
more prosperous and therefore was a regular target for the
bandits. Todd said the priest erected the walls many years be
fore. He modeled them after the only form of fortification he
knew the castles and battlements of medieval Europe. He
had blended Norman forms with Chinese features. So, there
in the heart of Mongolia stood a medieval European town. The
stone tower, completely Gothic, rose above a long, one-storied
Chinese building. Gothic arches framed the windows and
formed the entrance. This was the church a handsome, sym
metrical spire dominating the town. In the low Chinese build
ing the priest lived in a cell and took his meals in a refectory,
which I came to know well. From the battlements the Paotow
people could fight off frontal attacks. But in the age-old ma
neuver against walled cities the bandits hid a man or two in
side the town during the day and expected them to open the
gates after dark. "They get in cahoots with somebody in town,"
said the major. "You can't trust anybody any more/'
Not far from Paotow we came to a section of the main canal.
The floor at this point was twelve meters wide, and the banks
sloped backward, making the surface width considerably
greater. It ran straight as an arrow toward the river, farther
than I could see. Hundreds of coolies were digging, filling
shun dze, wicker baskets, with dirt and toiling up ramps cut
in the banks to carry it away. They took two baskets at a time,
using carrying-poles. While Todd talked with a foreman, I
walked down the ramp to the floor of the canal. A coolie had
just filled both baskets. I put my shoulder under the carrying-
pole, lifted them, and took one step. That was all. The weight
seemed to be crushing my collarbone. I staggered and set the
234 E^ Wind Rising
baskets down. The coolies guffawed. Millions of tons of earth
had been cut, lifted away, and carried to dumping points by
human muscle. China may lack machinery. But an all-powerful
government able to concentrate unlimited human labor on a
given project doesn't need bulldozers. People are cheaper.
Tattered rags covered some of the coolies. Others wore only
a G-string. Still others, oblivious of the women passing the
scene, were stark naked. Here there were no signs of starva
tion any more, no emaciated faces or protruding ribs. These
men had been among the first to receive food from the Inter
national Famine Relief Commission. Little by little they had
grown strong enough to walk, start light work, and come at
last to this crushing labor.
Not all were working, however. Squatting in a field not far
from the lip of the canal a circle of men sat talking. Each held
a brass pipe with a long, slim shaft and a tiny bowl at the end.
They were smoking opium. They had already forgotten the
famine. If they understood the purpose of the canal to guard
against the next drought they no longer cared. Todd spotted
them and strode toward the circle, snarling. They quickly put
away the pipes and picked up their carrying-poles.
When we had got into the truck again, he asked why the
coolies had laughed.
"Just wanted to see how much the baskets weighed/* I said.
"I sure found out. That's why they laughed."
"Don't ever let 'em get away with that/' he said seriously.
"If one of 'em ever laughs at you again, knock him down/' He
meant it, too. Later on, Oliver Haskell, a mild-mannered stu
dent of sociology, had a dispute with a gang foreman. The
men dropped their shovels and walked off the job. "You know
what to do/' Todd said as he rushed up. He found the pai-tou
and knocked him down himself.
"Here's die picture," he said to me that first day. "We pay
the contractors, and they get the men from the villages to do
the digging. They can have either money or grain for wages.
Famine in the Desert 235
A year ago most of them wanted grain. Things are better now
and they're not so hungry. Still, there is a lot of grain going out
in payments. We've advanced the wages to the contractors,
and some of them are trying to welsh out. I know what's hap
pening, of course. The coolies want to go back into their own
fields before they work out the advances we've made. They're
not going to get away with it."
My job, he said, would be to meet the train that came twice
a week from Peking to the terminus at Seratsi. Sometimes it
would bring two carloads of grain, sometimes one. I was to
load the bags on the truck and distribute the grain throughout
the villages between Seratsi and the river, a specified number
of bags to the pai-tou in each place, and get a receipt.
"Now that won't keep you busy all the time," said the major.
"When you're not distributing grain, you will take a couple of
men and build roads."
"I never built a road, Major," I said. "Not sure I know how."
"You know how to fill up holes and take out ruts, don't you?
It's plain shoveling. Can't make any time when the road's in
this shape."
All afternoon he kept urging me to drive faster. On a straight
stretch I put the accelerator down to the floor boards. The
light truck leaped. It whipped into a curve. The right front
wheel hit a patch of loose sand and the truck went out of
control. It flipped over on its side and flung the major and me
into the ditch in a shower of dust and sand. I expected him to
explode in a blast that would rattle the windows from here to
Peking. He staggered to his feet and stood for a moment,
wiping his eyes and slapping dust out of his clothing. "I
thought you said you knew how to drive," he said mildly.
Some coolies righted the truck and pushed it back on the road.
"Let's go," said the major. "We're losing time."
At last the river, the mighty Huang Ho, came into view. A
camp stood beside it, a cluster of huts and the usual mound of
grain bags under yellow straw matting. Coolies were digging
236 East Wind Rising
in the canal near the point where its mouth would be opened
to the river. A barge loaded with granite boulders rode at
anchor above the place where they were erecting a weir, a
submerged dike in the river bed, just high enough to back up
the water, raising the level to help push it into the cand
mouth. The chunks of rock were so big that it took four and
five coolies to tumble them into the water. Still other work
men were fitting stones into the cement facings on the banks
of the river. In common with many such giants, the Yellow
River often jumps out of its channel. The low banks of clay
and crumbling sand cannot hold it in flood times. It escapes
and goes roaring through villages and cities, tumbling houses
downstream like ping-pong balls, drowning thousands of
people. "China's Sorrow." If it were to veer away from Todd's
canal, the whole grid work of ditches and laterals would be
come a dry waffle.
The engineers" office and sleeping quarters were in a flimsy
wooden shack with sandbags stacked around the walls and
half covering the windows. Two engineers, an American
named Deane and a Swede named Olaf sson, came outside as
the truck rolled up in front. They all shook hands.
"Have a good trip, Major?"
"Fair," said Todd. "Got some college boys who claim they
want to work. See that they do. You'll have most of 'em here."
Inside he quickly checked their figures on the volume of
water in the river, the saturation of silt, the average employ
ment, and some charts I did not understand.
"It's going too slow," he said. "We'll have to push 'em
harder."
"More and more of them are quitting/' said Deane. "They
won't stay on the job. The pai-tous say they want to plant
opium poppies."
"Sure," snapped the major. "It's the poppy season and they're
not as hungry as they were. But the pai-tous have got their
payments and they'll work out the contracts if I have to kill
Famine in the Desert 237
a few. By the way, somebody killed the pai-tou at Seratsi the
other night."
"We heard about it," said Deane. "One of the engineers,
that kid named Tai you got in Tientsin, is windy. He wants to
talk to you. I think he's going to quit. Said he saw some tu fei
[bandits] across the river the other day. You ought to be carry
ing a gun."
Todd snorted. He lifted a cartridge belt and a pistol from a
peg in the office and handed them to me. "Don't let anybody
take this away from you, sonny/' he said. "Guns are valuable,
and remember, those grain sacks are money."
When we turned out the lanterns that night, Olafsson set a
loaded rifle against the wall beside each bunk.
Twice a week coolies shouldered grain from the freight cars
on the railroad siding in Seratsi and stacked the bags in the
pickup truck. While I drove a load to the compound, Tai Yu~
lin stayed behind to keep an eye on the men. Poor Tai; no
matter how he tried, some grain always vanished. A bag
would be found slit. Tai said he couldn't be everywhere at
once. A sack would break, spewing grain. Tai said he stood
over the coolies while they scooped it from the ground, yet
somehow the bag would be half empty when they finished.
"It is all my fault/' he would whimper, wringing his hands. "I
cannot understand how they stole it, but it is all my fault. I
shall frankly admit it to Major Todd."
Of course, he never did.
Tai was the engineer from Tientsin who wanted to quit after
the murder of the pai-tou. It had taken the major only a scowl
and a whiplash remark to make him change his mind. He had
gulped, blinked behind his large, hom-rimmed spectacles, and
said nothing. He was not a graduate engineer. He had had
238 East Wind Rising
some training, but it was his father's connections with a Kuo-
mintang official that got him his position with the Famine Re
lief Commission. Evidently he had expected a genteel assign
ment in Peking rather than in the drought area. Still, he said,
he had come to Suiyuan to save lives, to help the poor, "to do
rather than talk about doing," as he put it. China swarmed
with people like Tai, principally students and intellectuals,
who burned with the desire "to do/' Verbally, at least, a mis
sionary-like zeal fired them with high purpose. Some, like my
friend Martin Fong at Lingnan, were sincere and no doubt
worked effectively when the time came. But Tai Yu-lin (he
had not taken a foreign first name) represented the much
larger group who quickly lost flying speed in the hard realities
of "doing something/' Tai said he had a delicate stomach. The
northern diet, with wheat instead of rice as the staple, did not
agree with him. The sun and heat in Mongolia hurt his eyes,
A day jolting over the roads in the pickup truck, he said, gave
him such pains in his back that he could not sleep. He was
deathly afraid of typhus. At sundown each night we made
everybody strip the cook, the kitchen help, the yard coolies,
and ourselves. Buckets of kerosene stood by. Everyone looked
for the fleas and lice that carry typhus. The coolies examined
each others* backs. If they found a louse, they touched it with
a kerosene-soaked cloth. It shriveled instantly. Tai said the
body odor of the coolies made him sick, but he liked having
his own back examined through a magnifying glass.
The major assigned him to ride with me in delivering grain
to the villages. It was like serving a milk route so many bags
here, so many there. Tai talked to the pai-tous, translating.
Most of them had fallen behind on the work. Each, remember,
had contracted to cut a given section of the canal or laterals
for a specified sum. More and more there were reports of men
leaving the digging in order to plant their poppies. "He says
the work will have to stop until next year/* Tai said after one
such interview. *1 replied, and very sternly, mind you, that he
Famine in the Desert 239
must fulfill his agreement with Major Todd. I said also that he
should make the village people understand that the irrigation
system will protect them in another drought. It is for their own
good. Oh, I gave him a good piece of my mind, never fear."
(IT! bet you did, I thought.)
"Todd Almighty will wring his neck/' I said.
"Yes, Major Todd is very firm. Perhaps too firm at times. It
is wrong to strike the men. I have heard them talking. They
say foreigners treat them like cattle because they are Chinese.
Pardon me. I hope I have not offended you, but that is what
they say."
"Sometimes they're right," I said. "I don't like to see a for
eigner kick and slap a ricksha boy, either. My boss on the
newspaper in Shanghai calls those people 'shit heroes,' and
there are too many of them. On the other hand, Todd is hell
bent to finish this job. The men are driving him crazy."
The day came when I hit a coolie myself and knocked him
down. It was a searing experience, and perhaps every man
should have it once to teach him forbearance. On the days
when we were not trucking grain to the villages, Todd told
me to take two men and mend the road. One day, an extremely
hot day even for that country, I was trying to dig out the
shoulder of a dune to straighten a curve. Every few yards of
sand and dirt removed caused more sand to tumble down from
the side, so that after an hour or so of digging, the road was in
a worse condition than when we had started. One of the two
men was fat, round-faced, with jet black hair. He kept talking
constantly. From time to time both laughed. Finally, when one
big slide swept off the dune into the road, the fat one said
something and they both leaned on their shovels, helpless with
mirth. An instant later, feeling the pain in my knuckles, I was
sick with self-loathing. Another "shit hero" striking a coolie.
On the days when we delivered grain, I tried to time it so
that the truck would arrive in Paotow at noon. Father LaFond,
a Belgian priest, always asked us to stay for lunch. He was a
240 East Wind Rising
fascinating man. Robes tend to make a man look tall, but even
in his long brown cassock Father LaFond was still short. His
beard matched his eyes, deep brown, hypnotic eyes filled with
wisdom and gentleness. A quiet smile never left his face or his
eyes. He spoke in a low, quiet voice. If he had any inner con
flicts, they never showed. He looked like a man at peace with
himself and the world, quietly sure he could call on the Lord
whenever necessary. In the tradition of his predecessors,
Father LaFond was well grounded in the practical sciences.
During the seventeenth century Jesuits at the imperial court
instructed officials, and often the Emperor himself, in geom
etry, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and military ordi
nance. Their positions gave them security in China at a time
when foreigners generally were barred from the country.
Father LaFond had designed the beautiful stone spire and
supervised the building of his church, his living quarters, and
the city's walls. He laughed when I said that from a distance
Paotow looked like a medieval city in Normandy. "Not Nor
mandy," he said. "Bruges. I was a young man then, still re
membering Bruges/' When I met him, he had been in China
thirty-four years, most of them in the northwest. He said that
during this long span he had returned to Europe for an opera
tion and a long convalescence. Europe tasted like weak wine
by comparison with China, he said. "I was impatient to come
back to my work here. Of course, in the ideal we are supposed
to arrange matters so that we ourselves become superfluous.
To work ourselves out of a job, as you say in America. How
ever, I pray nothing will take me from here again/'
And I pray that he went to his reward before the Com
munists took China and the torturing began.
You were strongly tempted to impose on his time, to linger
in the cool, dimly lighted refectory, asking questions. You
could not be long in China without forming some opinions
about the missionaries. You could not wholly agree, either,
with the foreign businessmen and Chinese students, the ma-
Famine in the Desert 2,41
jority of whom sneered at missionaries and their work. Father
LaFond was an inexorable realist. He said Chinese national
ism probably would make the missionaries' position more diffi
cult. He faced the fact that the Chinese tended to identify all
Christian converts with the foreigners. Tactfully he veered
away from the question of whether the Christian churches
should support the Chinese in their drive to revise the "un
equal treaties/' Nor did he ever discuss the Protestants and
their works in China. The comparisons of Catholics and Prot
estants, the differences of approach, of philosophy, methods,
schools, landowning, numbers of converts, numbers of back
sliders, numbers of Chinese clergymen comparisons often
flavored with little sarcasms and heavy-handed ironies never
rose to Father LaFond's lips. He seldom talked about convert
ing the Chinese, but he waxed enthusiastic in describing ways
of helping them. He made it all seem simple and crystal clear.
You love, therefore you help.
Not long after we left Paotow, on a return trip to Seratsi
the motor in the truck gagged and stopped. I examined the
carburetor and the spark plugs and ascertained that the gas
line was not plugged. Whatever the trouble, it was beyond me.
There was a village nearby. "Skip over and get some horses,"
I told Tai. "We need to be towed home." The wind had started
to rise. By the time he came back, leading two Mongolian
ponies, pillars of dust twisted across the plain. Gusts of hot
wind sent the sand flying. It stung like buckshot. The side of
my face began to feel raw. "This is terrible," said Tai. "It may
last a long time and the dust makes me ill." He covered his
mouth with a handkerchief. During certain seasons the wind
blows for days in Mongolia. The low moaning goes on and on.
Tempers fray. You become nervy, depressed, unable to eat,
beset with a nameless anxiety. To step out of doors into the
abrasive sand and dust is an ordeal. Foreigners especially
dread the coming of the winds.
That day, however, we had reason to be grateful for it.
East Wind Rising
As the ponies plodded around a dune, straining against the
wind, Tai suddenly gasped: "Tu-fei!" He pointed. A mile or
so ahead and to the right of us were eight or nine men. They
wore round Mongol hats and long rough coats. They were
walking the ponies, moving at an angle that would soon bring
them to the road. Tai stared with wide, mesmerized eyes. He
tried to speak, but the words rattled in his throat
"How do you know they're bandits?"
"The guns," he gasped. "See the guns?" Each of the horse
men carried a rifle slung across his back. I had to admit that
harmless farmers would hardly be riding to the fields carrying
rifles.
Tai jumped out of the truck and ran, crouching, around the
shoulder of the sand dune. "I hope they did not see us," he
said, panting. "Oh, I hope so."
"Probably didn't with all this dust. Anyway, if they rob us,
they won't get much. They're welcome to the goddamn truck/'
"Your gun," he said. "They will kill you to get it."
In detective stories it says that the feel of a gun, the weight
and the hard metal, gives a feeling of assurance. It may be.
But the more I thought of it, the less I liked having the pistol.
Tai was right. I wrapped it in a bandanna and buried it with
the cartridge belt in loose sand.
Then I crawled to the top of the dune to watch the horse
men. In a stage whisper Tai asked what they were doing. They
had tethered the horses in a clump of trees and were squatting
on the ground. Tai moaned. "They are waiting for the wind to
stop/* he said. "They may wait all night. Oh, what shall we
do?"
Terhaps we should go on. Pay no attention to them. They
might not bother us."
Terror froze his face. "No, no. They probably would let you
go, but they would hold me for ransom. Let us leave the truck
and run away from here. There are better places to hide."
An hour passed. The men stayed under the trees. Then the
Famine in the Desert 243
wind began to die down. The dust thinned and the air cleared.
Low on the horizon the sun was a bright orange. One by one
the horsemen got up. Still walking the ponies, they crossed the
road. A few minutes later they were out of sight behind the
dunes.
"They've gone, Tai," I said. "We can"
He was gone, too. Later the major said Tai had been seen
in Peking. "Good riddance," he snorted.
When I undressed that night I felt something move in the pit
of my arm and a slight itching. Ordinarily it would have sent
me rushing for a kerosene-soaked cloth. But the stinging in my
cheek from the sand made me overlook it. I put more cold
water on my face and fell into the bunk. A week later I
wakened during the night. The room seemed unusually hot.
Then a chill shook me, and I pulled the sheet up to my chin,
shivering. My head ached. There was a hot iron behind my
eyeballs. Little else in the next two weeks is clear, except some
images, real and unreal. One of the images is of a large,
square, almost bovine face bending over the bunk, and a pair
of incredibly dirty hands. It is linked with the memory of
some bitter liquid. This was Dr. Gao. The "Dr." was probably
literary license. As for his pharmacopoeia, it seems improbable
that any chemist ever stocked it. For all I knew or cared, it
was a brew of spider webs and powdered serpent skulls. The
other image is of George Gambell sitting beside the bunk,
and hearing a voice that must have been mine asking: "Is it
typhus?" I slipped into unconsciousness without hearing his
answer.
The delirium began. I saw the house in Shanghai where
those ten murders had taken place. The corpses merged into
the Communist meeting. Lola Liang's head lay on die floor
244 East Wind Rising
and she was saying something. Then I was in the Pearl River,
gasping for breath, tasting bitter water, and frantic because
the river crawls with germs. I tried to swim, but something
held my arms like a heavy weight, and it turned out to be an
ocean-going junk with Dr. Gao's eyes in the prow.
At last a morning came when the table where George and I
played casino, the two chairs, and the other objects in the
room stood still, clearly in focus. I felt paralyzed, but, no, my
fingers wiggled when I tried to move them. There was a great
weariness and yet a warm blur of peace. I fell asleep. When
my eyes opened again, it was night and I felt hungry. Strength
slowly returned. Dr. Gao brought a bowl of chicken broth, and
I tried to hold the spoon, but dropped it. His hands were still
incredibly dirty, but deft and gentle as he held the spoon.
A grin split his broad, cowlike face. "Okay, now," he said.
The major flung open the door. He talked a moment with
Dr. Gao, then turned to me. "You're out of the woods," he said,
"but you won't have much strength for a while. Sending you
back to Peking. Appreciate your help and " He glanced at his
wrist watch. "Holy smoke, look at the time! So long, and good
luck."
A busy man, the major.
In Peking I added a long section to the report on Suiyuan men-
tioned earlier. Here are passages from it:
"Hundreds of farmers have quit the canal to seed their own
poppy and grain fields. The work has stopped in many places.
Having been fed, they either refuse to work or apply the
screws in a hundred ways to squeeze more money from the
Commission. Wages have been doubled and re-doubled and
bonuses are offered. It has little effect on the farmers. Next
year, between harvests, they may return but not this year.
Famine in the Desert 2,45
"As a typical example of the disillusioning actions, when
a crew reached the water-table, they all quit. They believe
working in a few inches of water makes them sick. The dig
ging stopped until special pumps could be brought from Tien
tsin.
"Murders take place in spite of assurances of protection from
local authorities. Not a hand is lifted to find and arrest the
murderers, who are not always bandits but sometimes the
farmers . . . Some of the pai-tous say they are being threat
ened for higher wages ... In villages where the Commission
has offices, funds needed for the canal are being used to pay
special guards.
"The books at Seratsi are a tangle of bad debts, broken con
tracts, graft, 'squeeze' and plain thievery. . . ."
In a special way the Suiyuan story is illuminating.
We have seen some of the government officials, national and
local, before this, along with the war lords and the Chinese
merchants in Shanghai. We know what to expect of them. Dur
ing the worst stages of the famine no government authorities
rushed in with effective action. On the contrary, war lords and
minor military satraps refused to spare any railroad cars to
carry supplies to Suiyuan. Moreover, merchants and specula
tors held back stores of wheat and grain as long as the prices
kept rising. These gentlemen teach us nothing new.
Then the International Famine Commission came into the
picture, bringing assistance in several forms. A foretaste of the
American experience on the Ledo Road and other supply
routes to China during the Pacific War quickly developed.
The aforementioned graft and "squeeze" rode in on the freight
cars. For example, a section of the report in my Peking notes
added: ". . . the mysterious loss of an average of 3^2 catties
[about four pounds] of grain per sack along the route/*
Finally, the Chinese farmer himself, the peasant, joined in
the peculation wherever he could. When he no longer needed
the assistance, the grain and the employment that enabled him
246 East Wind Rising
to buy food, lie dropped his shovel. He was oblivious to com
mitments, untroubled by any sense of duty or responsibility.
As an ignorant man, condemned to a precarious existence,
fiercely intent on survival for his family and himself, he may
be forgiven. Still, it was another aspect of China at another
moment in history.
The dog-eat-dog aspect.
Chapter XIX
THE
GLORY OF THE AGES
MANY THOUSANDS of years ago in a distant part of China a
nobleman prepared to go to Peking. At the last moment his
wife asked him to make a small purchase for her a comb.
She specified a wide, crescent-shaped comb. Knowing her hus
band's weaknesses, as all wives do, she said tactfully: "You
have so many important matters, it may be that you will
forget the comb. To remember, you need only do this: look in
the eastern sky at the new moon."
Sure enough her husband forgot. "However," he said to a
merchant in The Street of the Happy Phoenix, "I do recall that
my wife told me the moon would remind me. It is curious, but
that is what she said." Together the two men stepped outside
the shop and looked at the sky.
Directly above the Tien-an Men a full moon was rising.
Instantly the shopkeeper said: "But of course! Your honored
lady asked that you bring her this new thing a mirror."
"How clever you are," said the nobleman.
"And how fortunate you are," said the shopkeeper. "You
could search all of Peking and not find a mirror. It so happens
that I have one."
In that distant time, as the shopkeeper said in all truth,
mirrors were a new thing. Few people had ever seen one. And
248 East Wind Rising
so, when the nobleman's wife first looked in the mirror, she
uttered a cry of surprise and grief. The poor woman burst into
tears. "My husband has a mistress in the city," she said to her
mother. "I have found her portrait. She is younger and prettier
than I am."
"Let me see the portrait/' said her mother. At a single glance
she laughed scornfully. "Jealousy has made you blind. Why,
this woman is even older and uglier than I am."
Now, with this Chinese story as a preface to remind us that
feelings color vision and that we all look at the same object
through different prisms, let us see Peking.
I begin with a flat, unqualified assertion: Peking is the glory
of the world.
It is one gigantic object of art, pure beauty and grace, dis
tilled over the centuries from the genius of architects, painters,
decorators, landscapers, city planners, and gifted artisans. No
other city in the world is so nobly conceived, so majestic.
Peking is beyond comparison.
This is an extravagant view, and by no means does everyone
share it. To one pair of eyes the double-roofed temples and
the great gates, which are really buildings, appear overmas-
sive. The brilliant colors seem garish to some. Depressed by
the April windstorms that harry Peking, people came away
with a visual memory of a drab, dust-coated city. One day
a couple sank into chairs beside me on the veranda of the
Hotel des Wagons Lits, and the man said: "Well, weVe looked
at all the palaces and temples in the joint, and you can have
'em." His wife said: "Too much clashing colors for my taste."
And there was the party of tourists at the Ming Tombs, and
the man who called out: "Come on, boys, let's give ? em the
old Chicago yell. The whole place is dead/'
The descriptions of Peking written by Englishmen and Hol
landers who saw it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
are brief and matter of fact. To be sure, they had their minds
fixed on trade, and the splendor of the city may have trans-
The Glory of the Ages 249
lated itself into visions of the enormous fortunes to be made
in China. The fact that the emperors thought the white men
came bearing tribute, as did the Indians, Mongols, Tonkinese,
and Tibetans, probably colored their view, too. They were
kept waiting beside the five marble bridges over the River of
Golden Water, in the first courtyard of the Forbidden City,
until a bell summoned them to the presence of the Son of
Heaven. More often than not he sent them home empty-
handed and with a picture quite different from the one left by
the indefatigable Venetian, Marco Polo. The later emperors
had ceased to emulate Kublai Khan. The Khan's great par
tisan, Ser Marco Polo, says that in his day there were twenty-
five thousand courtesans in Peking and he reports:
"When -ambassadors arrive ... it is customary to maintain
them at His Majesty's expense, and in order that they may be
treated in the most honorable manner, the captain-general is
ordered to furnish nightly to each individual of the embassy
one of these courtesans, who is likewise to be changed every
night, for which service, as it is considered in the light of a
tribute they owe the Sovereign, they do not receive any re
muneration/'
To me Peking is a white city, a paradise of alabaster. This
is a subjective impression, a sensibility, not entirely a literal
fact. True, the Ivory Bridge is white, and so are the expanses
of marble courtyards and conduits, the Bottle Pagoda, and
many other structures. Someone else, however, might well see
it as a blue-green city because of the Jade Pagoda, the flashing
glazed tile roofs of those colors, and the lovely parks where
little lakes reflect the trees, doubling the image of green. To
still another person the yellow-orange tiles on other palace
roofs and the yellow dust spilling down the sides of the Tartar
Wall might make Peking a yellow city.
However, the majority image is of a red city. (I am speaking
of color, not politics. ) The Chinese architect loved flaming red
pillars, deep crimson columns and porticoes with gold inlay
250 East Wind Rising
to accentuate the red, and lie put red lacquer on gates and
doors. The walls of the Tien-an Men, "Gate of Heavenly
Peace," are blood red. Thousands of red flags flutter in the
streets. And, of course, in the political symbolism all of China
now is Red. Since the dawn of time, red has been the symbol
of prosperity in China. It will be interesting to see whether
the people will still think so after a few more years of Com
munism.
In a word, Peking flames with color red, blue, green, yel
low, and white so much color that you tend to choose uncon
sciously the one dominant shade in the whole montage. To
me it is white.
Structurally Peking is a pattern of squares. It is impossible
to resist the simile of a nest of Chinese jewel boxes, one inside
another with still smaller ones inside the major squares. The
heart of it is the Forbidden City, "The Great Inner Enclosure."
Here the Emperor and his ladies lived. It is surrounded by the
Imperial City, which was nearly as sacrosanct. Princes, nobles,
and the high officers of government lived here with their fam
ilies. The Northern or "Tartar" City encloses the Imperial City,
and the Southern or "Chinese" City is locked into the complex
by the outermost walls. Boxes within boxes. The almost inex
orable symmetry was no accident. Here again is the admiring
Marco Polo:
"The whole plan of the city was laid out by line and the
streets in general are consequently so straight that when a
person ascends the wall over the gates and looks right forward,
he can see the gate opposite to him on the other side of the
city. All the allotments of ground upon which the habitations
were constructed are square and exactly on a line with each
other, each allotment being sufficiently spacious for handsome
buildings with corresponding courts and gardens.
"In this manner, the whole interior of the city is disposed
in squares so as to resemble a chess board, and planned out
with a degree of precision and beauty impossible to describe."
The Glory of the Ages 251
Poor Ser Marco! Even now, seven centuries later, you can
still feel his bewilderment as, staggered by such splendor, he
struggles to find words to describe Peking. It is a crushing task.
Again and again painters, poets, and writers have been over
whelmed by the profusion of palaces, temples, tombs, pagodas,
graceful bridges, carved lions and dragons, and the miraculous
combinations of mass and airiness. It is not only the number
of buildings that is impressive, but the exquisite artisanship
visible in the harmonious forms and colors. "Impossible to
describe." Let us hope that the Lady Golden Bells ? of whom
Donn Byrne wrote, really lived, or at least that another as
beautiful stood by to lighten the labors of Messer Marco Polo.
Yes, it is impossible to describe Peking; still, the attempt to
picture the city should be made. For Peiping, to use the city's
present name, is again the seat of frightening power in the
world. You will see it appear more and more in the news
papers. Hugh Willetts, in his truly remarkable book Chinese
Art (published by Braziller in 1958), adds: "As William Emp-
son has remarked in conversation, the Forbidden City was a
biological device for ruling the world. And, however ineffec
tually it may have regulated its own internal affairs, there
can be little doubt of its capacity to reduce outsiders to a state
of supplicatory awe/* One of these days, I believe, Americans
will again be standing inside the Forbidden City. In the mean
time the effort must be to evoke an image, however imperfect,
to go with that dateline in the news "Peiping."
A special interest attaches to the two major parts of Peking
the Northern City and the Southern City. Kublai Khan
built the Northern City, Tai-du, in 1270. The other already
existed. Then, says Marco Polo, the Khan's astrologers forecast
a rebellion among the Chinese, and he reports: "All of those
inhabitants who were natives of Cathay were compelled to
evacuate the ancient city and take up their abode in the new/'
Some four centuries later the process seems to have been re
versed. The Manchu emperors gave over most of the Northern
252 East Wind Rising
City to their troops for residence. Once again the Chinese be
gan moving, now back to the "Chinese" City.
Perhaps this turbulence endless cycles of war, pillage,
death, destruction and rebuilding, wave after wave of foreign
conquerors may account for the words meaning "peace/'
"tranquillity," and "harmony" that recur so often in the place
names. Listen to them: The Gate of Unity within Harmony;
The Palace of Earthly Tranquillity; The Gate of Heavenly
Peace; The Tower of Truth; The Pavilion of Sweet Sounds;
The Gate of Prosperous Harmony; The Gate of Several Har
monies; The Gate of Peace in Old Age. Music to soothe the
savage breast?
Or it may be the other way around. Before the Communists
came, there really was a sense of peace and harmony in the
air of Peking. Perhaps the mellifluous titles reflect it. Anyway,
the atmosphere there was quite unlike that of any other city
I ever knew in China. The broad avenues, the parks, and the
view from the hills all contributed to a feeling of tranquillity,
as though you were in tune with the universe. The sense of
quiet happiness contrasted greatly with the frantic gaiety of
Shanghai and the moiling quality of cities like Canton and
Hankow.
Apart from the physical beauty, the very essence of Chinese
art, other factors would account for the feeling of serenity (in
spite of the noise and dust) in Peking. It was the center of
culture and learning. It was the Athens and Rome of China,
and indeed of the whole Orient. Magnificent schools blossomed
there, not the least of which were two American institutions
Yenching University, with its lovely campus and buildings,
and the medical college established by the Rockefellers.
Never having been a Treaty Port, a Western preserve, the
relationships between Chinese and foreigners seemed easier in
Peking. The superior-inferior pattern was less pronounced.
(This is an uncomfortable relationship, no matter which end
of the stick circumstance thrusts into your hand. ) The north-
The Glory of the Ages 253
ern Chinese is specially attractive. He tends to be tall, easy
going, given to quiet laughter. The ever recurring "erh" and
"sher" sounds make his speech softer. He is quite different in
manner and appearance from the fiery, darker-skinned Can
tonese, and the stocky, thick-set Szechuen people. He is not
"sulky as a Lolo," one of the wild mountain tribes, or as ex
citable as the Hakka. He makes a wonderful companion. He
and Peking deserved each other.
Today in the antlike Communist society, with its regimented
drive, that special quality of the great city can scarcely be ex
pected to survive. The population probably has doubled to
around three million. New buildings government offices, hos
pitals, and factories in the grim, blocky Communist design
rise beside architectural treasures. Toadstools beside a jewel
box.
Still, Peking has lived through many catastrophes. Perhaps
the instinct for beauty that created it will preserve it through
this one.
The student in the next room began playing his favorite record,
"L f Aprs-midi (fun faune." Another student, coming down the
corridor from the shower room, was singing a classical Chinese
song and easily reaching the soprano notes. Both melodies, the
one French and the other Chinese, worlds apart in time and
space, blended as though written for each other. Nothing ever
jangles in Peking, I thought.
A humid breeze rustled the trees on the university campus
and puffed through the dormitory window. It flipped up the
sheet of paper in my typewriter. Page forty-eight. "Report
from Suiyuan." Many more pages of that story remained to
be written. In my description of the disaster and the efforts to
meet it, a picture of the Chinese peasant was emerging. It
254 ~E*ast Wind Rising
was not a pretty picture, not the idealized one drawn by the
students and missionaries. In Suiyuan the peasants preyed on
each other exactly as other classes of Chinese preyed on them.
They malingered, stole, and murdered, taking wherever pos
sible, giving as little as possible. Karl Marx did not know the
Chinese peasants firsthand. However, everything he wrote
about this class applied, doubled in spades in China. Marx
said that the peasant's first loyalty is to his land. He said that
the peasant will join a revolution, or any communal effort,
so long as it coincides with self-interest. Then, he warned,
the peasant will desert. If Marx had been driving the old
Dodge truck in Suiyuan in 1930, he could not have been more
accurate. Today the Communists probably have given the peas
ants more food and clothing than they have had for a long
time, but the great communes and all the other marks of iron
control indicate that Communism has not changed the funda
mental nature of the Chinese peasant. Tant mieux!
In any case, a "people-are-no-damn-good" thread ran through
my "Report from Suiyuan/' Writing it was a catharsis. The
beauty of Peking was like a tonic after Suiyuan. I looked at
my watch. Time for the bus to the city. Page forty-eight would
have to wait.
Outside, a bright sun brought out the colors of the university
buildings and set diamonds shimmering in the lake. Yenching
University was an American mission school, a gem of architec
ture and landscaping. The buildings surrounded a lake which
was bordered by banks of uneven white stone and dotted with
islands, bits of green in the water. An American architect,
Henry Murphy, combined Chinese and Western forms in the
buildings. The walls were white. Flaming red pillars supported
Chinese roofs and porticoes, upswept at the eaves. On a penin
sula jutting into the lake stood a miniature of the bigger build
ings, a lovely little shrine with red walls trimmed in white and
the same curling eaves. A circular restihouse on one of the
The Glory of the Ages 255
islands echoed the Temple of Heaven, except that it had only
one roof instead of three. Just as Peking is a geometrical en
tity, from the Ming and Manchu tombs in the Western Hills,
fifteen miles away, to the innermost chamber of the Forbidden
City, so the plan of the university, the shapes of the buildings
and their relation to the grounds, formed a harmonious whole.
In every way Yenching was worthy of Peking.
On the way to the city, after passing through a few miles of
open country, the bus came to a bridge and stopped. A herd
of geese choked the bridge from parapet to parapet, regally
indifferent to the cries of a boy herder and the advice of the
bus driver. To the Chinese two geese symbolize marital bliss;
it seems more substantial, somehow, than the Western symbol,
two doves. A bamboo frond is the Chinese counterpart of our
symbol of peace, the olive branch. Instead of saying "Let's bury
the hatchet," they say "May the bamboo wave." The omnipres
ent bamboo. It is the coolie's carrying-pole. It provides a con
struction foreman with scaffolding strong enough to hold any
number of men. Hollowed out, it can be converted into a pipe
Eor carrying water. The carpenter shreds it into matting, and
the cabinetmaker builds bamboo furniture without nails. Bam
boo filaments serve the Chinese artist in the brush with which
he paints or writes. By no means least important, the shoots
are delicious when eaten separately or when used in flavoring
a thousand-and-one dishes. What would the Oriental do with
out bamboo?
The bus nudged the last indignant goose off the bridge,
turned left, and passed through a village. Now the glow of tile
roofs, blue, green, and yellow glaze, shimmered in the sky
above Peking. The topmost stories of pagodas came into view,
shining through the trees. The bus passed a small stone bridge.
Its architect, more concerned with beauty than comfort, built
the arch so high that it formed a perfect circle with its reflec
tion in the water. Silvery bells pealed in the streams of rick-
256 East Wind Rising
shas. This, too, was typical of Peking. In other Chinese cities
a ricksha runner warned pedestrians out of his path with a
harsh shout "Wa-a-a, waa." The Peking ricksha carried bells,
which were attached to the plunger beneath the passenger's
foot A high note would be sounded first, immediately followed
by a lower note. If you first touch C and then G-sharp on the
piano, you will hear something like the bell music that sounded
in the streets of Peking day and night. The music echoed the
city's rhythms. Some cities have an aura, a personality as dis
tinct as a human personality. You can feel San Francisco long
before you pass the city limits. Mukden at first sight gave me
a feeling of dread; I had the same feeling about the Red Fort
in New Delhi. Singapore is a" tennis player in white shorts.
Moscow has steel teeth. Rome is a crystal chandelier with
tinkling prisms. Hanoi and New Orleans are half-brothers. A
physical connection between the ruins of Angkor, in Indochina,
and those of Palenque, in southern Mexico, seems highly im
probable; yet the two ghost cities speak the same language.
In appearance Bali and Peking could be on separate planets,
but^the spirit of each, the serenity; and lightheartedness, was
astonishingly alike. To the Balinese, creation of an object, not
its value or use, is an end in itself. A Chinese saying expresses
somewhat the same feeling and adds a snapper: "We in
vented the compass, but prefer to stay in Peking. We invented
paper, but do not publish newspapers. We discovered gunpow
der, but made no firearms/ 7 And for the benefit of Americans
they often would add: "We built the first ocean-going junks,
but did not use them to discover America."
Peking was one of those cities where you walked for the
sake of walking, without any compulsion to reach any objective
or do anything when you arrived. The pure pleasure of ob
serving the dappled pattern of sunlight and shade on a marble
wall was enough. Or you could stroll around the Thieves'
Market, which was stocked for the most part with articles
The Glory of the Ages 257
actually stolen, and pick up a tennis racket cheap, a Han bronze
guaranteed to be a genuine antique, or a packet of porno
graphic pictures. There was a circus in Morrison Street, adver
tised by a huge sign in English: "Colossal! Amazing! Spectacu
lar! Each act is better than the next!"
In the markets, as in other Chinese cities, shops stocked with
the same merchandise rubbed elbows in the same street. Jew
elry Street.. Box Street. Gold Street. Silver Street. At one time
the Chinese held gold and silver to b$ of equal value. The
white man's fascination with gold amused them and was taken
as another evidence of his uncultured tastes. But the price
of gold went up.
Bronze Street. To cast a perfect bell, the Chinese once said,
there must be a mating of the male and female principles.
The Ying and the Yang. All life springs from the mating of the
male sun and the female earth. The Chinese symbolize it in
a round disc with intermingling patterns of dark and light.
In the dim past, they say, to insure a perfect tone in the bell,
the artisan and his wife threw themselves into the molten
metal at exactly the right moment. Later, it seems, a wise iMt^
(you will note it was a man) discovered that inasmuch as tifie
furnace itself embodied the male principle, there was no need
for the artisan to immolate himself. His wife alone would do.
Jade Street. Why do we call an unchaste woman a "jade"
and use "jaded" as a synonym for surfeit or weariness? No
philologist would agree, I am sure, but it is interesting to con
sider the question in the light of the story of jade in China.
More than three thousand years ago the Chinese ascribed
magic powers to it. They used it in sacrificial rites. They carved
stylized representations of the male and female principles in
jade. Mysticism surrounded the strange stone, which was green
or candle-grease gray. Then the Chinese endowed it with all
the virtues longevity, purity of soul, truth, and sincerity (sin
cerity because it does not conceal its flaws and in fact gains
258 East Wind Rising
in beauty by revealing them). Then, perhaps around 100 B.C.,
jade began to lose this high estate. It was still the most pre
cious of stones, but it came into use for ornamentation, worn
by emperors and princes. Some five hundred years later a dam
seemed to break. Jade articles in profusion came from the
jewelers' shops figurines, bowls, even hairpins. The Chinese
still admired the beauty of the stone, and an emperor wrote in
praise of it on a jade tablet. But the rarity and mystical quali
ties had gone. Like a "jade," jade retained its looks but lost
its virtue, and perhaps the Chinese grew "jaded" from seeing
it in so many forms.
In Ivory Street I entered a shop to resume an old argument
and visit a singsong girl. A singsong girl was the Chinese
equivalent of the geisha* fri Japan an entertainer, more or less.
The shopkeeper smiled and indicated by a nod that she was
waiting in the usual place. She was about six inches tall and
beautifully formed. Every minute detail of the carving was
perfect the folds of her robe, the flowing grace of her long
sleeves, her plaited hair, and her arched, roguish eyebrows.
She even had fingernails and dainty little feet, if you took the
liberty of turning her upside down. A faint smile curled the
corners of her mouth, although, depending on the light, her
moods changed. The merchant knew he had me hooked. He
could wait, the old bandit. His first price had been staggering.
It went down a notch or two when I said; "Look, Tm not a
tourist. I am a poor student at Yenching." Having been assured
by the Old China Hands that merchants never gave the best
price until a customer started to leave, I had turned toward
the door. Nothing happened. He stood in the dim corner of
the shop, smiling as he gently set the singsong girl on her low,
teakwood base. He knew I would be back.
She was smiling now. Her face felt cool and silky. I put her
on the black base again and moved away, trying to think of
some new argument. Meanwhile, a man and woman had come
The Glory of the Ages 259
into the shop. They were Americans. They sounded like tour
ists, but had some experience of ivory and carving. The woman
kept asking about prices. "Seventy dolla'," said the shopkeeper.
"This one a hunna' dolla'. Many people like this elephant.
Eighty fi' dolla'." After a moment the woman said: "Everything
is frightfully expensive. You are higher than the stores in
America." The shopkeeper smiled, a bland, ingratiating smile.
"All plices in Peking dolla'," he said. "Peking dolla' not so big
'Melican dolla'. Only half." The old highwayman! He knew
exactly when to time this announcement and the effect it always
achieved. Now, divided by two in quick mental calculations,
nothing in the shop would seem expensive.
Then an awful thing happened. The man saw my singsong
girl. He lifted her from the niche in the corner and held her
in his profane hands. "Look at this," he called to his wife. "Isn't
she a beauty?" The woman cautiously said the carving was
rather nice. The merchant glanced at me, relishing the panic.
"Call 'um singsong," he said. "Plenty good piece ivelly." They
brought her into the light near the door. "I like her," said the
man. "How much?" The old assassin glanced at me again,
malice glittering in his eyes. He paused and shook his head.
"She sold," he said. " 'Melican gennaman just have buy."
In Ivory Street I hailed a ricksha and told the boy to go to
the Tartar Gate, carefully pronouncing its Chinese name. "Ta
ta-gay," he said. "I know." Along the way, even when the street
ahead was clear of pedestrians and bicycles, I kept treading on
the plunger and ringing the ricksha bells from the sheer joy
of being alive on a blue-and-gold autumn afternoon in the
most beautiful city in the world and carrying the singsong girl
wrapped in silk.
Then the Tartar Gate massive as a fortress, light as a cloud
castle. How had they achieved that marriage of mass and
grace? The miracle surpasses even the sheer lace carved from
marble on the monuments in the Western Hills. The twelve-
260 East Wind Rising
story pagoda in the Monastery of Celestial Peace and the Hall
of Annual Prayers in the Temple of Heaven are poems, The
Tartar Gate is an epic.
And now, to complete the picture and make it perfect, a
camel train approached the Gate. It came trailing clouds of
dust and sound a chain of tawny beasts, out of the past into
the indubitable present. Red tassels and trappings swung from
the harness of the lead camel, red for prosperity and good luck
along the trail. Behind it came thirty more. They walked stiff-
legged, heads held high, the very picture of disdain for man
and all his works. Each carried a load of boxes and bales of
rugs or cloth roped to the sides. Food and bullets rode in some
of those boxes. Sun-blackened drivers walked beside the cam
els, urging them on with short, sharp cries. From Peking they
would head northwest, aiming at the heart of central Asia, one
thousand miles to Mongolia, half again as far to Urumchi in
Singkiang, still farther to Tashkent in Turkestan, across deserts
and mountains. Along the route they would encounter hospi
tality in the traditional greeting "Take rest and hot water with
us." And possibly they would meet with bandits, depending
on the size of the caravan and its relations with the wild
tribesmen in the wilderness. Rifles swayed in the baggage,
near the hand of each driver. The caravan was an impossibly
romantic sight
One by one the camels passed through the Gate and were
gone, wraiths from the past returning to Samarkand and the
court of Timur the Lame. As the last camel vanished, a bull-
throated gong tolled in Peking. The deep tone rolled majesti
cally across the city and echoed against the wall of the Tartar
Gate.
The Glory of the Ages 261
Peking is closed now to much of the world, a Forbidden City
in the darkest sense. Of all the Communist crimes, this one is
unforgivable. For Peking does not belong to them alone; it
belongs to all men. Peking is a shining monument to the no
blest instincts in the human soul. One day soon the gates will
open again and you will stand before the glory of the ages.
Chapter XX
COCKPIT
OF THE ORIENT
is probably nowhere in the world an actual parallel
to this situation" Lytton Commission Report on Manchuria,
193*'
In the northeast, in a region shaped like a crude arrowhead,
the dynamics of history were furiously at work in the 1930'$,
fusing some of the elements of the Pacific War and preparing
the pattern of Southeast Asia as you see it today. The crucible
was Manchuria.
It resembles the American Middle West, Flat plains, re
lieved here and there by low hills, stretch for about a thousand
miles on the longest east-west and north-south axes. The
Khingan Mountains rise in the west like the Rockies. The
Chenshan, "Thousand Hills," pile up in the south near the bor
der of Korea. It is good farming country, capable of supporting
countless millions of people. There is coal and iron in the
ground. Ships can enter the warm-water ports throughout the
year. Many men statesmen, soldiers, and empire builders
have coveted Manchuria.
Between the two world wars it was the point where the
interests and ambitions of three nations intersected. Russia sat
entrenched in the north. Japan had a sphere in the south. The
Chinese asserted that Manchuria was an integral part of China,
Cockpit of the Orient 263
basing the claim on population and a very debatable interpre
tation of history.
All three had to reckon with the war lord Chang Tso-lin, the
"Old Marshal," and later with his son, Chang Hsueh-liang.
These men physically controlled Manchuria during that criti
cal period. Maintaining power with a private army estimated
at seven hundred and fifty thousand men, they performed all
the functions of an independent government. The "Old Mar
shal" leaned toward Japan in his dealings and made a try at
seizing power over all China during the War Lord Era. His
son, the "Young Marshal," hated Japan, but otherwise was
largely unpredictable in his politicking. Over the years, Man
churia had become a cockpit of schemes, intrigue, and con
tending Powers.
Hovering around the edge was still a fourth force the
United States. At one time American financiers framed plans
for railroads and development, but never carried them out.
Nevertheless, American statesmen came into the fray from
time to time, particularly Secretary Stimson. In 1929 he at
tempted to intervene when Russia sent troops to Manchuria
to chastize the "Young Marshal." Two years later he tried to
prevent Japan from taking the country. On both occasions he
called on other governments to join against the aggressors. To
politicians accustomed to formulating policies on solid con
siderations of trade or economic interests, Stimson's grave con
cern was baffling. Since the United States had no concrete
interest in Manchuria, they put his actions down to unwar
ranted meddling. The only result was aggravation.
On an autumn morning in 1930, having left Peking, we came
to Manchuria and an astonishing reception.
Had we been members of the Senate Foreign Relations
264 East Wind Rising
Committee, the Chinese, Japanese, and Russians could hardly
have spent more time and attention on us. The Chinese kept
us for a full day, the Russians for two days, and the Japanese,
whisking us around south Manchuria in their efficient trains,
for nearly a full week. The daybook records interviews with
the Chinese president of the Chinese Eastern railway, the Jap
anese manager of the South Manchurian railway, executives
of the Soviet railway, a provincial governor, a former gov
ernor of Siberia, educators, scientists, engineers, and public-
relations men from the three governments. It was overwhelm
ing. I suppose they felt that any Americans, even an obscure
group of students, were worth the time and effort. The purpose
behind their reception appeared in the phrase, repeated again
and again: "When you get back to America, tell them . , ."
The Russians, as always, were charming and plausible. They
made an extremely good case. "The Soviet government has no
political interest whatever in Manchuria. When the arrange
ments are complete, we will turn over all our interests to
China. . . . That has been stated as the official intention of
the Soviet Union. . . The days of Tsarist imperialism are
ended. . . . The peaceful policies of your government and ours
are identical. . . . When you return to America, tell everybody
that we wish to be friends and would be glad if diplomatic
relations were restored."
We were charmed.
The Japanese talked little; they exhibited. They led us to
the edge of a gulch, a great black gash in the ground so wide
and deep that the trucks below looked like toys. This was the
Fushun coal mine, the largest open-cut colliery in the world.
Then they showed us the shale plants ... the Anshan steel
works ... a locomotive swinging overhead, carried by a
traveling crane in a railway plant ("We make the complete
train here, everything from the bolts and washers to the all-
steel passenger cars") . . . laboratories analyzing earth and
seeds to increase the acre yield of farm products . . . freight-
Cockpit of the Orient 265
ers and tankers lining the docks at Dairen. The atmosphere
in south Manchuria crackled with Japanese energy.
They let the enormous stake speak for itself.
Then, with thinly hidden emotion, they showed another
form of their heavy investment in the country. They took us to
the site of the siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War.
In a museum, on a scale model taller than a man, they outlined
the maneuvers in the capture of the Russian fortifications.
Later, standing on the summit of "203 Metre Hill/' one of the
main bastions in the system, the Japanese public-relations of
ficer said quietly: "Japan lost ninety-two thousand men in this
battle alone."
The Russians had arrived first in the nineteenth century.
Then, after the war with China in 1895, Japan attempted to get
a foot in the door. Three European governments frustrated the
move. The great Chinese statesmen Li Hung-chang obtained
a secret treaty guaranteeing help from Russia in case of an
other Japanese attack. Li, like his successors to this day, had
no illusions about his new Russian allies. Prophetically, he
wrote in his diary: "If Russia did not desire to control us in
all our home affairs, what a powerful alliance would be pos
sible between us."
In short order, as Russian historians note, "Manchuria was
well on the way to becoming a Russian province." Railroads,
the heart and sinew of this development, spread rapidly across
the plains. The Russians built Harbin, a new district in Muk
den, the ancient capital of the Manchus, and they transformed
an indolent Chinese town into a great port city, Dalny, more
commonly known by the Japanese name "Dairen."
When John Hay promulgated the Open Door doctrine, the
Japanese thought they saw an opportunity to check the Rus
sians. They asked if the doctrine applied to Manchuria. Would
the United States join any other government to uphold it by
force? Hay replied emphatically: "No." So often American
statesmen asserted a principle in international affairs, but
2,66 East Wind Rising
would not, and usually could not, add: "And the United States
will fight for this principle if necessary/'
Thereupon, Japan entered an alliance with Britain ( the Brit
ish were glad to have Russia diverted in the Far East) and
prepared to open the door to Manchuria in their own way.
They did so in the Russo-Japanese War.
At this point Chang Tso-lin, a fascinating little man, came
on stage. He ran Manchuria for more than ten years and with
a little luck might have become master of all China.
Chang was an illiterate peasant. He worked as a laborer on
a Russian railroad, but became a bandit when he was about
twenty-one. When the war began between Russia and Japan,
Chang, by then the leader of his gang, joined forces with the
Japanese. His forces grew considerably, doubtless with Jap
anese arms and money. Afterward he professed loyalty to the
Chinese government but kept his "army" intact. After the
Revolution he was appointed governor of Feng-tien, his native
province. Five years later he became the boss of all Manchuria.
In 1921 he declared his fief independent.
He was barely more than five feet tall, physically delicate,
the antithesis of the hard-drinking, hard-riding, wenching mem
bers of the war lords' club. He held his audiences in a darkened
room, his small figure lost in a huge thronelike chair flanked
by two tigers. Some of the biggest tigers in the world breed
in the Khingan Mountains. In the dimness a stranger could not
be sure whether these were alive or carven images. It happens
that they were stone tigers. Nevertheless, they had a certain
unnerving effect on people who came to negotiate with the
"Old Marshal."
Chang maintained comparative peace and quiet in Man
churia during his years of power. The soldiers were paid regu
larly. Taxes were geared to a farmer's ability to pay and still
live. Chang permitted a certain amount of currency manipu
lation, because in China this was considered a semilegitimate
operation. "But," said one of his advisors, "if it got out of
Cockpit of the Orient 267
hand, the 'Old Marshal' would call in the money people and
tell them to slow up or heads would roll. He cut off a few
heads to show he meant business."
As a result, Manchuria escaped much of the bloodshed and
chaos that plagued China proper in the period between the
fall of the Manchus and the rise of the Nationalists. Every
train that came through the Great Wall into Manchuria was
loaded with Chinese peasants, riding on top of the cars, hang
ing perilously from the sides. The flood approached a million
a year, Chinese seeking peace and a measure of security.
The Japanese dealt with Chang for concessions, and their
arrangement with him, by no means perfect, was at least satis
factory. They told me the deals often fell through after a time.
Chang would send word that he had "miscalculated" his share
of the take and wanted a new agreement. They said he also
angled for an American "loan" of $50,000,000, promising to
keep Manchuria independent and guaranteeing to make Amer
ican interests predominant in the country. He coveted the
Chinese Eastern railway and harried the Russians wherever
he could. So, on the whole, he was a useful figure to Japan.
Nevertheless, a Japanese bomb blew him to bits on his pri
vate train.
The case was typical of Japan's difficulties with her military
men. A group of army officers hatched a plot in which the
assassination of Chang was to have precipitated an all-out
attack on his army, followed by the seizure of all Manchuria.
The General Staff in Tokyo had no knowledge of it. Higher
authorities succeeded in countermanding the general advance
after the "Old Marshal's" death.
Had this happened in the U.S. army, there would have been
an investigation. The officers involved would have been court-
martialed. The commander on the scene probably would have
been fired. No such thing happened in Japan then, nor was
the government able to control the army later, for this reason:
The Japanese constitution at that time specified that the
268 East Wind Rising
Minister of War and the Minister of the Navy must be a gen
eral and an admiral on active service. It gave the army and
navy the power to block a premier designate from forming a
Cabinet. For example, the Emperor designates Mr. X, well-
known political figure, as premier. Mr. X, forming his Cabinet,
requests Admiral Y and General Z to serve as ministers of the
armed forces. But the army and navy do not approve of Mr.
XTs known policies. The word goes out, and no admiral or gen
eral will consent to serve in his government. Mr. X has no
choice but to request the Emperor to excuse him.
Thus, in the middle 1930*8, as the armed forces and super-
nationalists determined to take action in China, there were
two "Japans." One was represented by the civilians and the
harassed and unhappy diplomats, the other by the military.
Willy-nilly, to reach the highest office, a politician had to be
in good standing with the armed forces. The quirk in the con
stitution was a bludgeon, and the military used it to push
through the policy they wanted.
"The Secretary feels that something should be done" the un
published diaries of William R. Castle.
The "Old Marshal's" son and successor, Chang Hsueh-liang,
precipitated the miniature "Manchurian Incident" in the sum
mer of 1929. Russian troops moved into the country and could
have taken it two years before Japan made her fateful move.
The events that led up to it were these:
The "Young Marshal" accused the Russians of using their
offices in the Chinese Eastern railway and their consulates to
spread Communist propaganda. He raided a number of Soviet
offices, seizing documents. The Soviets retorted that this was
merely a pretext for him to take over the railroad. Russian
troops invaded Manchuria and smartly spanked Chang's forces.
Cockpit of the Orient 269
In December he signed a new agreement, restoring the Soviet
position in his domains.
The incident foreshadowed far more serious events yet to
come. It brought the first effort to organize what is known to
day as collective action to preserve peace. The United States
took the lead in this through the actions of Henry L. Stimson,
Secretary of State.
When the fighting began in Manchuria, Stimson reminded
Russia and China that they had signed the Kellogg-Briand
Pact, a treaty renouncing war. None of the other signatory na
tures showed any great concern. After all, it could be argued
that Manchuria was not an integral part of China, and also, as
a New York newspaper said, the controversy was "none of our
business." Stimson, however, insisted that a treaty was the
highest form of contract and must be respected. Again and
again, in spite of the hard realities of American public opinion,
of the reluctance of other governments to act, and of the com
plexities in the Far East, he would insist that treaties must be
honored. It may have been unrealistic, but Stimson's devotion
to the law impelled him to try to use the Kellogg-Briand Pact
as an instrument for keeping the peace.
Thus, on July 23 Edward R. Castle, then Assistant Secretary
of State and later Undersecretary, wrote in his diary:
"The Secretary has been appealing to China and to Russia,
through France, basing his action on the Kellogg Pact. One
reason for this was to prevent a declaration of war on the day
the Pact is to be declared effective tomorrow. It may have a
definitely good effect if the world can be made to believe that,
through respect for the Pact, war was averted. This will not be
true but that does not matter if the world believes it true. It
will make the Pact a real thing and something to be called
forth in the future."
Castle added to that day's entry a realistic appraisal reflect
ing the spirit of the times in the United States:
"The only thing that worries me at all is that other nations
270 East Wind Rising
may get the idea that we, as a depository of the Pact, must act
every time there is a threat of war."
The American people were not prepared to have their gov
ernment play the role of international policeman. To talk was
one thing, to act was something else again.
Four months later Russian troops began moving into Man
churia, and there was sporadic fighting. Castle wrote in his
diary:
"The main question is what, if anything, to do about the
Russian advance in Manchuria. It is making the Kellogg Pact
look like 30 cents . . . The Secretary feels that something
should be done."
Stimson asked Britain, France, Italy, and Japan to join in a
joint appeal to China and Russia to stop fighting. Japan de
clined. Joint notes from the other four governments were sent
on December 2.
China replied that she had not violated the Kellogg Pact.
(The Nationalist government did not rush to assist the "Young
Marshal" and was perhaps not unhappy to see him chastized. )
Moscow blandly replied that Stimson was "misinformed" about
Russian troops having crossed the border. Direct negotiations
were taking place, they said. Then, with obvious relish, they
professed "amazement that the government of the United
States, which by its own will has no official relations with the
Soviet, deems it possible to apply to it with advice and coun
sel."
Three weeks later a new agreement was signed and the in
cident closed.
Stimson, though obviously rebuffed, professed to believe his
prompt action had averted trouble. He said "public opinion of
the world is a live factor which can be promptly mobilized and
which has become a factor of prime importance in the solution
of problems and controversies which may arise between na
tions."
Actually, the Russians did not withdraw out of respect for
Cockpit of the Orient 271
the Pact or for world opinion. They withdrew only after the
"Young Marshal's" signature went on the dotted line of a new
agreement.
Castle's diary records a conversation with Undersecretary of
State Joseph Cotton on December 7:
"Cotton and I agreed in thinking that the Secretary's de
marche to China and Russia in behalf of the Kellogg Pact was
unfortunate, at least in its timing . . . The general impression
outside and in the press is that the Secretary made a flop and
his expressions of satisfaction that the results have been good
are not taken with any particular seriousness."
Some newspapers applauded; others did not.
The New York Times said: "Here was a little war that might
grow into a large one starting in Manchuria . . . any serious
threat to peace will bring into place some such machinery as
Mr. Stimson improvised on this occasion."
The New York Herald Tribune said: "It appeared to be none
of our business . . . The only possible way of acting effectively
would be the use of arms. Obviously nothing could be more
fantastic than an effort to exercise our will over two such vast
areas."
Time said: "The U.S. press rallied surprisingly . * . against
Secretary Stimson as a Meddlesome Mattie."
The Hearst newspapers said: "In the first real test, the Kel
logg 'Peace' pact proves a peace disturber."
The 1929 "Manchurian Incident" was a prelude to the
more serious one of 1931. As the decade ended, war returned
to the world. Public opinion might deplore, but could not stop,
the fighting. It is open to question whether Stimson, again in
sisting that treaties be honored without trying to determine
why they were broken, did more harm than good.
Chapter XXI
THE NOBLEST ROMAN
"FOR WORLD PEACE . . . ,* writes Spengler in The Decline of
the West, "involves the private renunciation of war on the part
of the immense majority, but along with this it involves the un-
avowed readiness to submit to being the booty of others who do
not renounce it"
In the autumn of 1931 the Japanese army set out to seize
Manchuria and speedily did so. The somewhat anomalous rela
tion of Manchuria to China proper, and Japan's huge economic
and strategic stakes there, already have been described. On
several counts, therefore, some experienced American and Brit
ish analysts took the position that there was considerable justi
fication for the Japanese action, or at least that the case was not
all black and white.
The Manchurian Incident laid some direct questions, big
questions, in the lap of the warless world:
Had the nations in fact renounced war as an instrument of
policy? Did the treaties, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Nine-
Power Treaty, Locarno, have any true substance or validity? If
challenged, were nations prepared to act together to imple
ment these documents? What, in short, could be done if one
government, for any reason, violated the treaties?
The world would face these questions again and again until
the final explosion at the end of the decade.
The Noblest Roman 273
Secretary of State Stimson wrote in his diaries: "I am afraid we
have got to take a firm ground and an aggressive stand toward
Japan/'
Henry L. Stimson came into public life as United States At
torney for the southern district of New York. He approached
the problems posed by the Manchurian Incident like a prose
cuting attorney. The Law, in the form of treaties signed by Ja
pan, had been violated. The malefactor must be brought to
book. It was as simple as that, on paper. Unlike the southern
district of New York, however, the world possessed no police
men to apprehend lawbreakers, no power to enforce decisions,
and little disposition to do either. There lay the complication.
What could be done?
Stimson began by exhortation. He again sought to arouse
world opinion, as he had done in the little "Manchurian Inci
dent" of 1929. In the conviction that Japan feared the military
power of the United States, he wrote a series of tough notes to
Tokyo. Then his thoughts turned toward economic sanctions,
boycotts, and embargoes, recognizing the danger that they
might lead to war with Japan. He appealed to other govern
ments. He pulled the United States into a closer relationship
with the League of Nations. Finally, he could only propound
a doctrine, the policy of not recognizing political changes
achieved by force. He went on speaking of punitive "measures
short of war."
Although Stimson referred to the Open Door, considerations
of American interests in Manchuria were not the primary mo
tivations in his thinking. (The Japanese and the rest of the
world would have understood his concern very much better if
it had been based on some tangible interest.) The total Ameri
can trade with Manchuria, imports and exports, amounted to
274 East Wind Rising
only about thirty-three million dollars a year according to con
sular figures. Americans had no large investments in the coun
try. No American military bases stood on Manchurian soil. The
physical safety of the United States could not be directly
affected by anything that happened in Manchuria. In a word,
the welfare of the average American was not involved in any
way by the Japanese action. In fact, as more than one American
businessman and financier had reported to Washington, the
Japanese had brought peace and stability to the part of Man
churia they already controlled. It could be assumed that the
whole of Manchuria would be better off in Japanese hands.
Stimson, however, was not looking at the practicalities. He saw
this as a test case of what he called "the higher motives and
higher policies."
Moreover, he seems to have seen it as his own special, per
sonal problem, almost a personal affront, as though he were the
custodian of world peace. The italics are mine in these passages
of his diary:
"My problem is to let the Japanese know we are watching
them.'* "I told him he must remember that I faced the fact that
these actions by the general officers might affect the safety of
the world." "After their promises to me ... I feel like kicking
the whole thing over and publishing the whole record. It makes
me feel that I cannot trust the sons-of-guns now." "L instructed
my ambassador in Tokyo . , ." "I cautioned the Japanese am
bassador that although I was making every effort to save Ja
pans face . . . they must settle it mighty quick."
This is especially curious in light of the calmness of other
governments and the attitudes of other Cabinet members and
technicians in the Foreign Service. Britain said it saw no reason
to act, although, considering her military installations in China
and the possible effect on the huge British stake in China
proper, a strong line might have seemed justifiable. The sym
pathies of some officers of the Foreign Service inclined more to
ward Japan than toward the Chinese. In a Cabinet meeting,
The Noblest Roman 275
Stimson reported, Secretary of War Hurley expressed the feel
ing that "we were making a mistake to get into it at all/'
Henry L. Stimson was a strong man with strong convictions.
In his memoirs Herbert Hoover said: "I was soon to realize that
my able Secretary was at times more of a warrior than a diplo
mat."
The Secretary of State looked like a Roman senator. His face
was wedge-shaped, tapering from a powerful forehead to a
square chin. Two vertical wrinkles were etched between his
deep-set eyes. His nose was prominent. His mouth and jaw
signaled firmness. He wore a small mustache. White hair
fringed his large, round head. When he smiled, which was not
very often, his wide grin reminded people of Theodore Roose
velt. Mostly his expression was grave, even troubled.
His ancestors were New Englanders clergymen, soldiers,
and businessmen. His mother died when he was nine and his
grandparents reared him. At Phillips Academy in Massachusetts
he learned discipline, hard work, and scorn for creature com
forts. Reporting on facilities there he said: "Winter Me there
was neither soft nor enervating." His classmates at Yale and at
Harvard Law School called him "Stimmy," and some of them
ragged him for being so meticulous in all things. Since he took
himself seriously, others took him seriously. He was not entirely
humorless, but in his voluminous writings the light touches are
as rare and widely separated as oases in the Sahara. He had a
volcanic temper, which, for the most part, he kept on leash.
His great friend, and perhaps unconsciously his model, was
Theodore Roosevelt. He smiled like "T.R." and sometimes af
fected his hearty manner. He often quoted the famous line
"Speak softly and carry a big stick." (By some curiously in
verted reasoning, Stimson convinced himself that his notes to
East Wind Rising
Japan conformed to the Roosevelt maxim.) The title of the bi
ography he helped write, On Active Service in Peace and War,
has the whiff of El Caney and the Rough Riders. Like Roose
velt, he believed in the strenuous life. He rode to hounds,
played golf, tennis, and squash, enjoyed deep-sea fishing and
climbing mountains. He wrote with relish of hardships in the
Rockies and of a long, arduous vacation in the mountains of
northern Luzon in the Philippines. "Ethical principles tend to
become simpler by the impact of the wilderness and by contact
with the men who live in it," he wrote. "More problems are di
vested of the confusions and complications which civilization
throws around them.'*
His outward appearance, solid Vermont granite without any
intrusions or striations, belied his nervous system. In the middle
of the conflict over the Manchurian Incident his friend, Dwight
Morrow, died. Stimson wrote in his diary: "I really have been
hardly able to pull myself together since. It is a staggering
blow. I was in no condition to think of one [a statement for the
newspapers] for myself." Sometimes, looking down on cities
from the cockpit of an old single-engine airplane, he would phi
losophize about the works of man. When he was under stress,
insomnia often attacked him. On one occasion "some heavy
reading on China" kept him from sleeping. On another, when
he was particularly angry with the Japanese, he wrote: "This
churned me up so much during the evening that I found it
rather difficult to get to sleep." Vice versa, when he had a "good
night" he gratefully recorded it in his diary.
Regardless of whether he had a good night or a sleepless one,
he often started work at six in the morning.
When he was twenty-five he married a tall, dark-haired Con
necticut woman, Mabel Wellington White, descendant of a
family that goes back to the Revolution. No children were born
to them. Affectionate references to "M.W.S." appear often in
the thousands of pages of Stimson's diaries. . . . They spend
a quiet evening alone in their home outside Washington. They
The Noblest Roman 277
have a quiet week end at "Highhold," their estate on Long
Island. They take a long walk through the woods in the after
noon. She reads to him after dinner. When he is exasperated
with men and events, he lets off steam at home. "M.W.S." out
lines the plot of a play she intends to write. In conformity with
Washington protocol they often attend official dinners. . . .
Stimson's nephew, John Rogers, of New York, recalls an occa
sion when they canceled a visit to the Japanese embassy after
having accepted the invitation. It was during the period when
Stimson was writing his notes to Tokyo. He felt that one of the
steps taken by the army broke promises made to him shortly
before. Rogers said his aunt described Stimson's anger and
added: ". . . and therefore we did not dine with the Japanese
ambassador."
Stimson became United States Attorney when he was thirty-
nine. Four years later he was defeated as the Republican candi
date for Governor of New York. ("Victory would almost surely
have opened to him a strong possibility of great advancement,"
says his biography., "even toward the White House.") At the
age of forty-four he became Secretary of War, at sixty Gover
nor General of the Philippines, at sixty-one Secretary of State,
and at seventy-two again Secretary of War.
Two qualities in his character jut out like crags. One is the
lawyer's insistence that nations as well as individuals abide by
the legalities. Concerning his actions before the United States
entered the First World War, his biography says: "In 1915, it
was not war-making, but illegal war-making that he attacked."
During the Manchurian Incident he wrote in his diary that
Hoover called the treaties "scraps of paper." Stimson replied:
"We have nothing but scraps of paper. They (the Japanese)
are parties to these treaties and the whole world looks on to see
whether the treaties are good for anything or not, and if we lie
down and treat them like scraps of paper . . . the peace move
ment will receive a blow that it will not recover from for a long
tirne.
278 East Wind Rising
The other quality was a conscious combativeness. "When I
had to deal a blow/' he said, "I believed in striking hard." He
recorded a conversation with Elihu Root, his predecessor as
Secretary of State, contrasting his methods with Herbert
Hoover's. ". . . the President, being a Quaker and an engineer,
did not understand the psychology o combat the way Mr. Root
and I did." He illustrates his psychology of combat by citing a
great law suit in which he said he kept his opponents under un
relenting pressure so that they had no time to recover. "I finally
forced a settlement . . . and a surrender on all points/' His bi
ographer described Stimson as "an advocate and a fighter/' and
says: "Stimson preferred to choose his main objective and
then charge ahead without worrying, confident that aggressive
leadership would win followers."
These tactics appear in a somewhat different light in the
diaries of the Undersecretary of State, William R. Castle:
"The Secretary is feeling very belligerent and nobody can
blame him for his fury against the Japanese, but he must be re
strained from saying things which we have got to follow up, no
matter where they lead. He is tired just now and his mind does
not work well."
Stimson applied his "combat psychology/' his "unrelenting
pressure/' and his "charge ahead without worrying" against Ja
pan. But, unlike his experience in the law courts, they neither
won followers among other governments nor forced "a sur
render on aU points."
A Japanese diplomat once said to Ambassador Joseph C. Grew:
"It's easy to be an idealist when you're not in trouble."
The Japanese operations in Manchuria began September 18,
1931. At first Stimson took a calm view. He rightly judged that
the army had taken the bit, unsanctioned by the Japanese
The Noblest Roman 279
Prime Minister, Baron Kijuro Shidehara, and in defiance of his
peace policy. An excerpt from Castle's diary notes says: "The
Secretary was looking at the whole thing very sanely and was
not planning to take any such precipitate action as that which
perhaps unfortunately he took two years ago when there was
danger of a blow-up between China and Russia."
Very soon, however, Stimson's attitude changed. Manchuria
became a personal issue.
"Sept. 22. My problem is to let the Japanese know that we
are watching them and at the same time to do it in a way that
will help Shidehara, who is on the right side, and not play into
the hands of any nationalist agitators on the other."
Like a headmaster with a recalcitrant schoolboy, he lectured
the representative of a 
