Entry 54: thursday, september 18, 1952

 

Two weeks ago I wrote that the Chinese people wanted to do away with the semi-feudal, semi-colonial conditions of their country back in 1940. 

And I inadvertently wrote that "We should bring about reforms. When I reread my column, I thought how careless I had been for the sentence should have read "We should help bring about reforms, ' or "support reforms ." 

That's the most we can do. Then I began thinking that this could not merely have been carelessness. So many of us who have been brought up with the idea of Western superiority think in terms of the West doing this and that for Asians or people of other economically backward areas. And while we should know better or feel that we do, we are, often surprised to discover that we harbor thoughts which we had consciously. 

We cannot bring basic changes in the economy and social conditions in foreign countries. This, the people there will bring about, and we can only support them — and no more. 

By the same token, people or powers from the outside cannot keep changes from, taking place in a country indefinitely, for the very act of resisting such a change for the better would intensify the struggle to bring improvements.

A Chinese Orderly Wouldn't Be Pushed Around

Today in the colonial, semi-colonial and economically less developed areas, we find people with a new consciousness for human decency, self-respect and independence, and they cannot be pushed around I saw this in a glaring example and I was encouraged by it.

Toward the end of March 1946, we prepared to close our U. S. Army Observer Section in Yenan Col. Ivan D. Yeaton, the commanding officer, was holding his last inspection. I had already been separated from the army and was a cultural and information officer of the State Department. I saw the officers making a last-minute check-up of caves, latrines and shower room.

The shower room was still not cleaned so an officer became annoyed. He rushed to a teenage Chinese orderly who was sweeping up leaves on the ground He told the orderly in English to clean up the shower room right away. The orderly said in Chinese he would not. "Yes you will! Now none of that sassy comeback!" the lieutenant scolded in English. He grabbed the unwilling orderly by the back of the collar and tried to pull him to the shower room.

"Don't You Have Discipline Around Here?"

While they were struggling, a Chinese liaison officer came to ask what was the matter. The officer said the orderly would not obey him The orderly said the shower room was not his detail. The orderly who was responsible for cleaning the shower room was still cleaning a latrine. "He says it's not his responsibility," the liaison officer explained. "Well, make him clean it! We got inspection coming up in a few minutes!

Don't you have discipline around here?" the lieutenant shouted. The liaison officer tried to persuade the orderly, who still said "No." He then explained to the lieutenant that the orderly was within his rights. However, he added, in the next criticism meeting this matter would be discussed. "Oh, God'" the lieutenant said, and rushed to clean the shower room himself.

A Generation With New Opportunities

The orderlies were called chiao tai yuan or man who looked after guests. We had never been permitted to call them "boy," as orderlies were called in Nationalist China. These orderlies were sons of poor peasants and many were orphans who had attached themselves to the army in their early teens. 

Bach one of them proudly carried a pencil and a notebook in his pocket. They had study hours, which included current events discussions. They had meetings frequently and I used to see youngsters chairing their evening sessions in orderly manner in their courtyard.

My first chiao tai yuan studied English in spare time. He had a Chinese primary education through the army. When Chin Han, which was his name, left us, he became a clerk at the border region government. A Japanese prisoner once told me: “These peasant children will be good leaders. Until the Eighth Route Army came, they did not have opportunities.” 

They are pure and unspoiled. The first words they learn are, for example, 'New Democracy,' ''land reform,' 'interest reduction,' and so on. They become class-conscious very early. They are the most loyal to Mao Tse-tung's New Democracy. The Communist army is their parent and family."

Youths From Cities Go To the Countryside

I met youths with an entirely different background when I travelled on a UNRRA truck from Peking to Kalgan. At the Great Wall I saw Nationalist guards and gendarmes closely examining all the youths, who were generally clad in rags or faded old clothes and soiled like young farmhands. The guards with bayonets stopped wagons and ordered one or two youngsters rid­ing on them to get clown. They felt the hands of the boys find girls and if their hands were sort, they were taken down the line to headquarters. 

Everyone knew that unlucky ones who were caught ended up m one of Chiang Kai-shek's concentration camps. Middle or high school students in China then came from middle-class or rich families, and since servants looked after them and they did not work, their hands were soft and without calluses. 

Middle-class hands, a gendarme told us, are not easy to disguise, although in general appearance a young student might cleverly camouflage himself with old clothing bought or borrowed from a laborer or peasant family.

Students Were Like Foreigners Among Peasants

The city-bred has difficulties in adjusting himself to the countryside Lin Ch'in, my interpreter in Yenan, told me of his experiences after he fled Peking under Japanese occupation. Ha entered Lian Ho University in the guerrilla area and studied with about a thousand students. He said students had to borrow wash basins from peasants. Many peasants knew very little about sanitation, he said, and they spoke a different dialect.

The students were like foreigners among them. The students had the additional hardship of being forced to do everything for themselves, whereas in Peking, servants looked after their needs. Also, food was of an inferior quality in guerrilla areas. "My real test came when I was put in contact with peasants.

My prejudice gradually disappeared. I learned their problems and their habits and later on, I enjoyed living with them," he said. And becoming familiar with their ways, he was in a position to teach them reading and writing and discuss current events with them.

Brothers and Sisters With New Names To Protect Their Family

Lin Ch'in asked me to look up his brothers and sisters who "had been scattered by the war. In Kalgan, the gateway to Inner Mongolia, I met his brother, who was an interpreter for UNRRA and U. S. truce team members. His sister was an adviser of women students at the North China Associated University. Lin's bother and sister in turn asked me to look up their youngest sister if I should travel south along the coast in Kiangsu or Anhwei provinces. A few weeks later I met Lin 's youngest sister in Central China.

When I told her Lin Ch'in had asked me to see her, she said she did not know of a person named Lin Ch'in. Then T. mentioned the names of her sister and brother in Kalgan. "Tell me how they look," Lin Tse-tung smiled. "By your description I can tell whether they are my brothers and sister." "But they look just like you," I insisted. "Then they must have changed their names," she smiled. "Someday we'll all be able to use our real names. Now, we must protect our own families in the cities who will suffer if the Kuomintang find out we are in the Liberated Areas."

"We Work for the People"

She said she had not met her brothers and sisters for nearly 10 years. She was extremely proud of her family. Her father had been a public official of the Manchu dynasty. "But we children are different. We work for the people!" This 23 -year-old political officer emphasized. In the evenings she came by to invite me for short walks in the town of Hwayin. She was now a newspaper reporter. 

During the war she had carried a flat-bed mimeograph machine on her back. She had moved around with guerrilla units and issued news bulletins to soldiers every five days. She said when the Japanese launched mopping-up operations she had to be on the go all the time. When it rained and there was no shelter, she leaned against walls, trees or anything upright and went to sleep with the mimeograph well-covered on her back. If she found rocks, she piled them and stood on them to keep her feet out of the puddles. She told me of how she had gone into Japanese occupied vil­lages to organize resistance forces by conducting "winter schools'" or night schools. "The peasants helped me to escape many times," she said. "I am short so even if the puppets fired at me, I offered a small target " And she laughed.

Effective Organizer In Nga Chuang Village

In the next minute she was telling me of her ambition of wanting to continue her studies so that she could help her "people." Personal advancement seemed a consideration she had dropped by the wayside long ago. Peace, she said, is what the Chinese people yearn for. In a way she reminded me of Chu Yeh, whom I met in Nga Chuang, a village outside Lin-i, Shantung province. 

She had a sweet, childish face and wore black cotton slacks and blouse. All she had in her small, one-room mud hut with a dirt floor was a stool, a makeshift table and a plank-board bed laid over with a thin cotton mattress.

She too, was from the city, from a middle-class home. She was working with the peasants in the field, effectively helping them organize for greater production and teaching them in spare time to read and write and keep accounts. She too, talked of the "people" and spoke of the future with confidence, of a China, prosperous and  independent.

quote...

The hope lies in the people, here and on the Mainland. We have deep faith in them to struggle for progress. It is the duty of those who understand the situation, including those who have been silenced, to awaken the conscience of the whole populace.

We spoke of our common struggles, of the need of preserving and extending constitutional rights. If the people got together and kept special interest elements from dividing them, we would have a better country, a better world.

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