In Manchuria

by Michael Meyer

  A journalist visiting in the 1970s Burns.

  Public fund-raising, including telethons Carter 2, p. 111.

  In 1903 the British Sinophile Bertram Lenox Simpson Simpson (writing as Putnam Weale), pp. 167–71.

  “We have had two suicides this week” Ibid., pp. 169–70.

  Simpson’s visit left him Ibid., 148.

  “Russian Manchuria is something of a myth” Ibid., p 149.

  In 1903, Bertram Lenox Simpson Ibid., p. 430.

  Echoing the Western world’s prediction London. In a March 19, 1904, letter home, London (stuck in Seoul) complained of not having access to the front: “Have never been so disgusted with anything I have done. Perfect rot I am turning out. It’s not war correspondence at all, and the Japs are not allowing us to see any war.” On April 1, still in Seoul, he wrote: “I’ll never go to a war between Orientals again. The vexation and delay are too great. Here I am, still penned up in Seoul, my 5 horses and interpreters at Chemulpo, my outfit at Ping-Yang, my post at Anjou—and eating my heart out with inactivity. Such inactivity, such irritating inactivity, that I cannot even write letters” (www.jacklondons.net/writings/BookJackLondon/Volume1/chapter24.html). In June he wrote the essay “The Yellow Peril,” predicting the rise of China and Japan.

  In the battle for the Manchurian city of Mukden (present-day Shenyang) Mukden was how Western maps recorded the former seat of Manchu power. The term came from the Manchu word mukembi (arise). The city was renamed Shengjing (Rising Capital) in Chinese and then changed again to Shenyang.

  Naval commanders and sailors mutinied Brooke, pp. 302–10.

  In August 1905, China requested that President Theodore Roosevelt Prior to hosting the negotiations, the United States showed little interest in Manchurian affairs. Unlike along the Yangtze Delta, no American missionaries worked the Northeast. Financiers such as John D. Rockefeller did not build hospitals there, as in Beijing, nor send surveyors to plan railroads, as teams did in Guangzhou (Canton) under the auspices of his American-China Development Company. A small trade in cotton, railroad equipment, and kerosene (via Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil) had begun with the north, but overall, business with China, including Manchuria, then represented a mere 2 percent of all American foreign trade.

  “As you know, I feel that it is an advantage” Morrison, p. 112. This letter, written on July 8, 1901, was to George Ferdinand Becker, a prominent American geologist who had served in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.

  “The bad feature of the situation” Ibid., p. 478. This letter was written to Hay on May 22, 1903. Hay had helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris (ending the Spanish-American War) and authored the Open Door Policy, whereby no foreign power would dominate trade or a treaty port in China.

  “Personal—Be very careful” Ibid., pp. 830–32. This letter, written on June 13, 1904, was to the British diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice, who would act as Roosevelt’s best man at his wedding and serve as ambassador to the United States from 1912 to 1918.

  In September 1904, while on holiday Ibid., p. 917. This letter, written on September 2, 1904, was to Secretary of State John Hay.

  “State of Anarchy Found at Harbin, the New York Time’s front page declared New York Times, April 19, 1908. In Harbin, its correspondent wrote, “a remarkable state of affairs exists. The Russian town is governed and dominated by a private railway company.”

  His vice-consul was a beefy, baby-faced college graduate Fairchild, pp. 86-87.

  One writer imagined Chinese voices whispering Tisdale, p. 139. Her account included “dialogue” with the natives in pidgin English, such as: “Boy! Boy! You no belong proper boy. You have sleepy. Plenty piecie [bandits] kill two gentlemen, night time no have catchee place sleep.” In comparison, Fairchild dedicated himself to learning Chinese.

  “I didn’t wonder the Chinese want their country” Gairchild, p. 111.

  Fairchild had arrived in Manchuria in October of 1906 Ibid., pp. 153 and 136. As with the Belfast missionary nurse stationed in Jilin, it’s wrenching to read this diary of a happy person unaware that he was about to die far from home.

  That winter, however, the front page of the New York Times “Consul Shoots Himself,” New York Times, December 20, 1906. Fairchild was buried in Mukden’s Russian cemetery but was disinterred two months later after the Japanese shuttered it in the 1930s and moved south to the concession of Newchang (Yingkou), where no trace of it can be found today.

  Coincidentally, another American shooting—this one by the consul general to Harbin—made the front page of the New York Times on May 12, 1914, under the headline “Consul Warner a Suicide.”

  Manchuria lost an admirer Fairchild, p. 100.

  The following year in Harbin, a Korean nationalist “Prince Ito Assassinated,” New York Times, October 26, 1909. Ito wanted Korea to remain a Japanese protectorate and not be officially annexed.

  “I didn’t do this as an individual” Perlez.

  Street battles broke out between Bolsheviks and White Russians Chiasson, p. 46.

  An American traveler reported throngs of exiles Franck, pp. 93.

  “There is no way of computing” Ibid., p. 101.

  The warlord Zhang Zuolin took hold of the Northeast Zhang was more than just a thug. Under Zhang’s “Colonization for Development Plan,” Manchuria’s population and arable land doubled, as a new policy aimed at migrant laborers enticed them to stay with an offer of a house that they could own after five years of tenancy, relief from taxes during that period, and fields to sow. A Japanese traveler riding the train through Jilin at this time wrote that “with roughly 30,000 Koreans having moved to northern Manchuria alone and working the paddy lands, the yield of rice will surely rise and may come to occupy an important position in the agricultural produce of Manchuria” (Yosano, p. 58). Prior to these migrants’ arrival, the small amount of rice grown in the Northeast was on dry land.

  Shops signs written in Cyrillic were ordered changed Carter 1, p. 146.

  Over Leninists’ protests Chiasson, p. 127 (showing a photo of the shrine from Dr. Olga Bakich).

  The city’s official holidays now included Ibid., p. 114. An uneasy peace existed between the new Soviet caretakers of the Chinese Eastern Railway until 1920, when the Chinese Republican government announced the assumption of all police and court duties, the revocation of Russian extraterritoriality, and true coadministration of the Chinese Eastern Railway with Russia in the north and Japan in the south. Fluttering over Harbin station was a flag featuring a hammer and sickle added to the red stripe of the five-color Chinese Republic banner.

  He bought favor by treating the bandits’ syphilis Howard, p. 156. The doctor’s name was Harvey J. Howard. He had been Puyi’s ophthalmologist in Beijing.

  A dramatic performance of an English music hall play Ibid., pp. 209–11.

  The post-match stat sheet counted injuries Chiasson, pp. 198–99. Brawls after basketball games still occur in China: in 2011, a game between Georgetown University and a Chinese professional team ended in a chair-throwing melee.

  In 1924, Chinese farmers attacked a Russian dairy farm, chasing away its tenants, tearing down its modern equipment, and planting their own traditional crops while squatting on the land. Other farmers staged rent strikes.

  Russians living in Chinese-controlled Harbin “Harbin’s ‘Squeeze’ Highly Developed,” New York Times, October 23, 1927.

  Harbin deserved its nickname as “Paris of the Far East” “Visitors to Harbin Find Expenses High,” New York Times, October 28, 1928.

  White Russians—stateless without valid passports “Harbin’s ‘Squeeze’ Highly Developed,” New York Times, October 23, 1927.

  A British man beaten by police Ibid.

  Harper’s magazine wrote that Harbin was Gilbreath.

  A Japanese colonel had planned the assassination The Japanese military itself did not know of the assassination plot in advance, so were not mobilized to use the event as a pretext for grabbing more control of Manchuri
a, in the name of security. Now, with the patriot Zhang Xueliang in charge, Japan would wait three years for its next chance.

  What had the elder Zhang done to make Japan want to dispose of its erstwhile ally? In 1920, Zhang Zuolin had attempted to overthrow the Chinese Republican government, attacking Beijing before falling back outside the Great Wall and strengthening his hold on Manchuria. In 1926 he succeeded in capturing Beijing, declaring himself grand marshal of the republic. China’s Nationalist (KMT) army, led by Chiang Kai-shek on his Northern Expedition to eradicate regional warlords, pushed Zhang out in 1928, the year the Chinese capital was relocated south, to the Yangtze River city of Nanjing. Zhang’s Beijing foray angered Japan, which preferred their reliable partner to maintain the status quo in Manchuria, guaranteeing their share of the railroad. Even worse, from the Japanese perspective, was that Zhang had been routed by the Nationalists, allies of the Soviet Union. Both forces wanted Japan out of Manchuria.

  “Russian Mobs Fight Chinese in Harbin” New York Times, January 5, 1932.

  The police charged; the mob took up positions Yosano, p. 96.

  The café’s name, Sufeiya Hu Hong pulled a book from its shelves titled The Oriental Paris. The volume of photographs captured Harbin’s most prominent existing colonial structures, from smaller cathedrals to the restored synagogue and the former American consulate. It was the best guidebook for wandering around town, and I wondered what made a person chronicle Harbin’s colonial fossils long before they became tourist bait.

  I came and watched them tear it down,” Song Hongyan, a middle-aged photographer, said of her childhood home. “That moved me to start documenting the history that remained.” We stood on a narrow lane running through the Daowai district, or Harbin’s “Chinatown” during its colonial era, where most non-Europeans lived. The brick buildings adjoined one another, creating a contiguous street wall punctured by carriage entrances that led into courtyards. Wooden balustrades traced the rotting staircases up to the second floor and a balcony lined with apartment doorways. Migrant workers now occupied the tenements, which look uninhabitable. “Isn’t it ironic,” Miss Song said, “how often the poorest people live in the formerly richest houses.”

  The neighborhood, China’s largest remaining swath of colonial-era housing, was being remade into a development named Chinese Baroque. Its brochure showed a map of China, marking historic districts reconditioned into open-air shopping malls in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Nanjing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Changsha. The photos depicted European-style buildings whose gray-brick façades held signs for Starbucks and Häagen-Dazs. “Every city has its unforgettable memories,” the salesgirl told me, handing us an investment guide. “Chinese Baroque combines that traditional culture while creating a new future.”

  He enjoyed walking and talking with Song Hongyan, and was shocked when Hu Hong later called to tell me she had committed suicide by jumping from her apartment window.

  Chapter 9: Tunnels in Time, Sidings to Space

  The father of Chinese archaeology Unnoted was that the sobriquet previously had been bestowed on his contemporary at Harvard, Li Ji, until he fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the Communist victory. Chinese museum plaques didn’t have room for parenthetical asides.

  The original of Liang’s journal sat seven thousand miles away I am grateful for the assistance of Janet Steins, associate librarian for collections at Tozzer Library at Harvard, in helping me access the document. She answered my prayers to Saint Librarian.

  Although I had not heard of Liang Siyong, I had written about the Beijing motorcycle accident that left his architect brother with a lifelong limp. The older brother was driving the bike that got sideswiped by an official car outside their courtyard home on Nanchang Jie; Liang Siyong, riding in the sidecar, was comparatively unscathed. The brothers appeared to remain close: in this journal, Liang Siyong notes that he accompanied “Cheng and Phyllis [his wife, the architect Lin Huiyin]” to the Young Marshal Zhang Xueliang’s ball in Mukden.

  Shopping for supplies in Harbin Liang, p. 6.

  Of the warlord, Liang wrote Ibid., pp. 23–24.

  A gang on horseback chased Liang Ibid., p.30.

  And it was cold Ibid., p. 109.

  “I found a great and significant parallel” Ibid., p.116.

  Out in remote Manchuria Ibid., p 13.

  The next day he uncovered Ibid., p. 9.

  After a day “wading through more than 6000 paces” Ibid., pp. 9 and 14.

  Whatever may be said of this Ibid., p. 14.

  Half of the world’s 6,800 languages Lague and Yu. Both cite Professor Zhao Anping, director of the Manchu Language and Culture Research Center at Heilongjiang University in Harbin.

  The only other preserve of Manchu speakers is in China’s far west, on its border with Kazakhstan, where thirty thousand descendants of soldiers sent to guard the then Russian border speak the mutually intelligible Xibe language. For more, see Johnson. The story’s link includes a Manchu phrase book with audio: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/MANCHU-LANGUAGE.html

  But an estimated 20 percent of the ten million archived Et Tu, Manchu? One Hundred Years on, Only a Few Native Speakers Remain.” Economist, October 8, 2011. The writer quoted Wu Yuanfeng, a government archivist, who said that “only about 30 scholars in China are truly expert in the language.”

  Shaded by trees and set back from a busy downtown street Harbin is unique among Chinese metropolises for the explanatory plaques on its colonial-era architecture. The Sister Cities Museum’s building has a nearby twin: the former American consulate at 289 Dongdazhi Street, now home to a Harbin Bank branch. The showcasing of its past is a recent, tourist-attracting phenomenon. For more, see Carter.

  In these post–Evil Empire days One of SCI’s current directives is the “Iraq and American Reconciliation Project,” which pairs Denver with Baghdad, Dallas with Kirkuk, Philadelphia with Mosul, and other Iraqi cities with Fresno, Tucson, and Gainesville.

  The port was already bringing culture back home But even long-term relationships can sour. In 2012, Nanjing suspended its thirty-four-year-old relationship with Nagoya after that city’s mayor expressed doubts that Japanese soldiers massacred civilians in Nanjing in 1937. In fact, they killed between 250,000 and 300,000 people. A Nanjing government spokesman said the mayor’s remarks distorted historical facts and “seriously hurt the feelings of the Nanjing people.” A spokesperson with Nagoya’s city hall said that Kawamura’s words “represent just his own opinions.” The city government also said it would abide by the stance adopted by the Japanese government, which is that “Japan’s slaughter and plunder against civilians in Nanjing is undeniable.”

  The campus was part of a pump-priming project Barboza 1.

  The government monitored faith in anything but the Communist Party In fact, China’s interest in the heavens wasn’t new. Matt Forney at Time magazine found a fourth-century text named Collected Legacies that described a “moon boat” floating above China every twelve years, while a famous ancient astronomer once saw a “hovering pearl of light” over a Chinese lake.

  Chapter 11: The Ballad of Auntie Yi

  He used the word dao The character for planted rice—dao—dates to the Zhou dynasty, formed in 1046 B.C, which, not coincidentally, was the same dynasty that pioneered hydraulic engineering and irrigation. The short-grain type of rice that San Jiu planted had been grown since those Neolithic times. (Geng, the Chinese term for the variety known as japonica, dates to the first century A.D. See Bray 2.)

  Ancient Chinese records called the practice During the Song dynasty, agriculture was for the first time explained in handbooks—such as Chen Fu’s On Farming, published in 1149—and circulated throughout the country. The book walked a reader through financing, plowing, topography, crop selection, the preparation of seedbeds, fertilizer, and weeding, citing the advice of the Book of Songs, circa 1000 B.C.: “Root out the weeds. Where the weeds decay, there the grains will grow luxuriantly . . . In this manner
you will live up to the system exemplified by the ancients.” It concludes with a section on concentration, noting: “If something is thought out carefully, it will succeed; if not, it will fail; this is a universal truth. It is very rare that a person works and yet gains nothing. On the other hand, there is never any harm in trying too hard.” It’s sound advice for a writer, too.

  An eighth-century poet wrote a verse The poem is “Water Fills the Paddy Fields of Circuit Official Chang Wangpu” by Du Fu. Cited in Needham, p. 510.

  There was no equivalent to Little House on the Prairie There was, however, a text that echoed Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle: pirated copies of a banned muckraking report from the central Chinese province of Anhui titled Nongmin Diaocha—Peasant Survey—sold briskly on its publication in 2004, before taxes were abolished. The translated English version is titled Will the Boat Sink the Water? The province had been the setting of The Good Earth. See Chen Guidi.

  Their tenant farmers appeared only to pay rent and present annual offerings A rare positive portrayal of farmers in literature comes in a short scene where Dream of the Red Chamber’s main character, the teenaged Jia Baoyu, is told to amuse himself outside. He leads his pages to explore, coming upon a rack of tools:

  He had never seen farm implements before and was thoroughly intrigued by the spades, picks, hoes and ploughs, although quite ignorant of their names and uses. When a page who knew informed him he nodded and remarked with a sigh: “Now I understand the words of the old poet: ‘Who knows that each grain of rice we eat / Is the fruit of intensive toil?’”

  It reads like a sweatier Walden It was a fleeting chimera: Crèvecoeur had the 371 acres left to him by his father, and the land brought personal tragedy when his wife was killed and the farm destroyed by Indians while he was away. He ended up back in city life, appointed as the French consul for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, then became trapped in Paris during the French Revolution of 1789 and—as Pearl Buck would two centuries later in China—had his visa to return to the United States denied by ambassador James Monroe. He died in France, on his father’s land. The lone memorial to him in the U.S. that I know of is the small Vermont town of St. Johnsbury, whose name was suggested by Ethan Allen.