I believe I will never see again the dramatic and impressive spectacle of thousands of people on the march the like of which I saw in North China during the months following Japanese capitulation in 1945
This was no parade Long lines of men women and children with confident smiles laughter and song started out on foot day after day from Yenan, traveling the dusty road that led to the Yellow Raver and heading for points from 500 to 1,500 miles away in Manchuria over rugged mountainous terrain. (From Hawaii to California is about 1,400 miles)
The sick and old rode animals When it rained, caravans bogged down all the way from Yenan to the Yellow River Wet loess is dangerously slippery and traveling up and down steep ridges is humanly impossible in rainy weather Impatience was written on the faces of those who waited to start out.
One day when I dropped by to see Sanzo Nosaka who headed the Japanese POW re-education arid anti-Japanese militarist psychological warfare program I saw his secretary pounding dried cooked beef into powdery form. The secretary told me he was assigned to a newly liberated area hundreds of miles away. With long lines of marchers passing through the same communities day after day he said that the Yenan officials had asked everyone to carry as many rations as they could. The travellers were not to clean out wayside village stores by buying everything they had for sale, but to consider the day to day needs of local people.
The Secretary Said: "I'll Bet On the Tortoise"
The secretary criticized American transportation by air, sea and land of Chiang Kai-shek's Chungking forces from South to North China and Manchuria. He said Yenan should accept Japanese surrender in North China and Manchuria, for her regular and guerrilla forces had fought in these areas. But even with American assistance, Chiang's officials and soldiers can't win the race to take over Japanese-occupied territory, he said.
"Your people are walking there," I said "The Kuomintang troops are flying and going by sea."
"Let s make a bet," he said, "since the Kuomintang is traveling with American assistance This is just like the classic tortoise and the hare race. I'll bet on the tortoise and you take the hare."
Chiang's Officials Were Busy Lining Pockets
I lost and I don't recall our deciding on any material thing for prize after he told me to take the hare I believe no American in China would have picked the "tortoise." The hate, in this instance, did not nap after getting off planes and ships. Top Chungking officials, as in one case I know from personal experience, asked for a swanky residence and a car as soon as they arrived in an area, like Peking. Eight confiscated Japanese trucks in a medium-sized Central China town disappeared in a few days after Chiang's officials arrived Black market thrived.
And Chiang's soldiers had to fight the local people in North China, just as the Dutch, with British help tried to get back into Indonesia Chiang's soldiers also looted and further estranged; the people.
Coordinated with the long 1500 trek to Manchuria from inland China, Yenan's troops and civilians on the coast moved northward also. The new Fourth Army abandoned the taking of Nanking and Shanghai, evidently because U S armed forces made it known that they were going to move into those cities. One Yenan official said his people did not want to clash with the Americans.
The Folk Dance With Social Message
When Yenan's troops and civilian officials raced northward from Chekiang province crossing the Hangchow Bay and skirting U S and Kuomintang-held Shanghai many American officials and GIs out of curiosity, went to see them Students from Shanghai rushed out to join them.
Months later in Shantung province I met a young college student who had joined a contingent. She told me that on the first day her unit covered 81 li. (27 miles) She said the pace was the same every day. Then every night dramatic corps of the army including adolescents, put on skits in villages. Yang ko, the folk dance of Northwest China which had spread the length and breadth of Yenan territory, made a big hit with the peasants in newly liberated villages. Peasants learned the simple three steps and danced to the songs with a message for peace democracy, land reform lower taxes, clean government and abundant production.
"This was something new to them," she explained as the peasants had previously danced to the songs of and for the landlords. "I don't think we have had anything like this in China I could feel the songs and dances moving and stirring the peasants. They awaken the peasants who will some day be their own masters."
And late into the night I listened to this youth from a middle-class home who had been served by servants all her life and who was being introduced to the Chinese countryside. She said the Chinese people now had hopes of a strong new China where foreigners would stop pushing them around in their own city streets I knew she was speaking the thoughts of many.