The stall holders who always had the highest reputation for accuracy were the barbers. From seven o’clock onwards they received civil servants and merchants on their way to their offices. From them, as they shaved or trimmed their hair, they received the news these clients had gleaned from their telegraphs and telephones. Each client had a different area of expertise – stock markets prices, political or military information, sexual scandals and gossip – and the barber in turn was able to relay back to their clients the important news they’d gathered from other clients who had different areas of expertise. By nine o’clock the barbers were well enough informed from a lot of different sources to provide a comprehensive news service to their clients. These clients would, of course, be charged a premium price for the barber’s services. And the barbers who charged the highest prices were those who had the reputation for the greatest accuracy.
So Spider Girl, who did not want either a shave or a haircut – being a practical working-class girl living with two other practical working-class girls, they all cut each others’ hair – spent considerable amounts of her shopping time shuffling around one particular barber’s stall (the most expensive), earwigging the conversations.
From this she learnt of a great battle being fought at Taierzhuang. There had been terrible casualties on both sides. This worried Spider Girl terribly.
*
Taierzhuang lay in almost complete ruin, a cemetery of rubble and broken stones and bodies rising above the surrounding plains, circled by a moat. The dead were piled beneath and above and protruding from the rubble. Over the dead walked the immortals, those still alive, shuffling awkwardly, murmuring to each other, awaiting their own particular deaths.
Knowing that the Chinese intended to attack in the morning, just before dawn the Japanese had withdrawn their harassed and exhausted troops in close proximity to the Chinese lines. They’d all retreated to the main line of Japanese troops several hundred yards back, where they would await the Chinese charge and then mount their own counter-charge.
Everyone had run out of food. Soldiers on both sides talked obsessively about imagined feasts, their lips lingering lovingly over evocations of rice and fish and flesh and sweet sauces and sharp chillies and oranges and apples and plums and peaches. Everyone had run out of water. As they talked they nostalgically remembered sitting by the waters of flowing rivers, drinking sweet water from a well, the icy freshness of a mountain stream.
Wei was slightly detached from all this. He stayed on watch. He’d moved so he lay on a slight rise above the trench. Removing his Lee Enfield’s sniper scope from his pocket he viewed the large plains of desolation before him. There was very little movement among the Japanese. They seemed stricken by lethargy, indifference. Then he saw something. Movement behind the ruins of a bombed cinema. A large group of Japanese troops were being marshalled. Drawing themselves up for action. If only he still had his Lee Enfield!
They were being marshalled by a brute of an NCO. Ranting at them. The muscles in the back of his neck bulged out. He screamed at three men in particular. They had not joined the rest of the troops. They stood by themselves, heads hanging, refusing to respond to his taunts as he bawled in their faces. Suddenly he pushed one sprawling in the dust, stomped over to him, leant over the man, shrieked a question at him. The man slowly shook his head. The sergeant drew his revolver and shot him in the face.
The whole company of men who the sergeant has marshalled looked at each other, swayed.
The sergeant stalked over to the other two men who had refused to be marshalled and started bawling in the second man’s face. As he was doing this Wei noted two or three of the marshalled Japanese sneaking away to hide among the seats of the shattered cinema. The sergeant continued to shriek at the man. Two more snuck off. The man shook his head. The sergeant shot him. He turned to the last man, screaming and waving his revolver in his face. The man’s head dropped. He went to join the ranks of the already marshalled.
What was the difference between the Chinese troops waiting stoically, accepting of their deaths, and the Japanese being driven like terrified cattle towards theirs?
The Chinese had deep bonds of community, of fellow feeling, of trust. They were spiritual beings, well used to communing with their ancestors, their gods, continually trafficking back and forth between life and death. For them death was not the end so they had a reason to live.
The Japanese were the products of the theories of insane European and British and American scientists and materialists. Men had no souls. They were animals, machines who had no purpose or value but to operate until they were worn out and then were replaced or destroyed by another. Men were to be driven until they died and then to be replaced by others who were treated likewise.
But human beings cannot be treated as objects. A machine. A function. It is unsustainable. They have no reason to live.
Wei returned to his lines and reported what he had witnessed to his officer. His comrades were chatting among themselves.
The man from Shandong who’d stuck his bald god out in the field to get a suntan was looking on the bright side.
‘Thank the gods we’ll soon be fighting. It’s the only way I can forget my hunger.’
The others chuckled.
A man from Sichuan told a dirty joke. Everyone roared with laughter. Death and sex are so closely intertwined.
Some prayed for the survival of their families – those who had them. A rough altar had been constructed from the rubble and joss sticks were burnt and requests made to gods and ancestors. Others just reflected quietly or gave rueful grins to their comrades.
The man from north Shaanxi who’d told the story about the lanterns took a shit.
‘I want to die relaxed.’
Pet dogs wandered around or got into fights with each other. One man had found a blackbird in a cage and was encouraging it to sing.
Their ranks were strengthened all the time. The Chinese were withdrawing all possible troops from the western half of the city to face the Japanese, who themselves had been withdrawn from the rest of the city to fight and drive the Chinese in the south-east back into the waters of the Grand Canal. Everyone who could be drawn up had been drawn up.
General Rensuke Isogai was not giving up. No sharp disembowelling sword for his stomach!
Wei went to the altar and asked for the recognition and forgiveness of his ancestors. He thanked his god Tudeh for all the fertility and life he gave him on his farm. For his rocks and stones which had protected him here on the battlefield of Taierzhuang. He remembered his parents, his father’s long stories, his wife with her fierce defence of his family, Eldest Son’s slow smile, Cherry Blossom twirling her parasol, Second Son with his sharp eyes and intelligence, Baby Girl Wei with her happiness (which he murdered), Baby Boy Wei’s staring eyes, and the child who was born and died on the march. Above all he thought of his beloved eldest daughter Spider Girl. He prayed for her well-being and survival.
Bayonets were fixed. Men exchanged last cigarettes, offered each other encouragement, wished each other good fortune. The man with the caged blackbird set it free. The whistles sounded. Officers shouted. Men shouted. They clambered out of their trench and started to lumber out across the rubbled plains of Taierzhuang. Artillery and mortar shells landed. They disappeared into a pandemonium of noise and smoke. Shells, explosions, detonations. They seemed to float through it.
‘Hit it hard,’ they started to chant. ‘Hit it hard!’ they chanted louder. ‘Hit it haaaarrrrdddd!!!’ they all roared.
They emerged into daylight. Out of the smoke. They had a long way to charge.
Desultory fire was coming in. A bit disorganized. The older man from Shanxi, the Grand Marshall of his festival, toppled backwards with a bullet through his head. A merciful death. His brain, keeper of all the intricacies and sanctities of those rituals and dances, whiffled into nothingness.
The machine guns opened up. Their bullets came at the men like crowded hailstones. Swept into them.
Swish! Swish! Swish! People dropping, somersaulting, arms flailing, legs jerking. Wei looked around. Men just faded away on either side of him. The man from the far north of China, from Heilongjiang Province, he who had once smoked cigarettes and drunk wine with the gods, was sliced in two. The discontent from Anhui Province who never liked festivals fell when his left kneecap exploded. The Zhejiang bastard who he’d exchanged insults with caught a mortar in his chest and exploded. From somewhere in the midst of this surreal landscape Marlene Dietrich wearily lilted her way through ‘Lili Marleen’.
Right in front of Wei suddenly appeared a terrified hare. He almost trampled it. Eyes bulging, it raced off, tracing wild geometries across the battlefield. An abandoned horse stood entirely subdued, limbs trembling, trying to stand upright. From nowhere the feral children who yesterday helped Wei’s platoon now arose and joined the charge with banshee wails.
A shell exploded the horse and two kids.
The battle cry came again – ‘Hit it hard. Hit it hard! Hit it haaaaaaarrrrrddddddd!!!’ This time it was ragged, ragged as the thinning ranks of the men, but it heartened those still alive.
Just keep going, thought Wei. All around me men are falling, but ignore them. If you aren’t hit just keep going. But he was noticing things. The machine gun fire was not so regular. And on either side of him, in the distance, ahead of him, he glimpsed khaki uniforms – Japanese, not Chinese – starting to peel away, rise from their trenches and firing positions, scuttle, scurry, legging it for safety. As if there were safety on this battlefield? He looked about him. Just three of them left – the man from Shandong who’d enjoyed his festivals so much, one kid and the man from north Shaanxi who was terrified of losing his soul amid the lanterns. Wei looked further back – very few men trudging on, heads bent into the bullets, no signs of any officers to give orders or commands. All dead. Keep going. A large swish of bullets came in and the happy man from Shandong fell backwards, his knees and lower legs jiggering with frenzy as his soul escaped his body. The kid fell. A thunderclap – perhaps a mortar – and the Lantern Man who’d taken a shit to relax disintegrated and relaxed completely.
Ahead of him Wei saw men, Japanese men, their backs to him, fleeing. He noticed them to each side of him too. Well, if they were fleeing from him and he was the last person left alive on his side, he’d just have to keep charging to keep them fleeing.
‘Hit them hard. Hit them hard! Hit them…’
A blow like a sledgehammer hit his chest.
Wei, a man who could scythe an acre of grass in a day, who could most delicately brush smut from a tiny child’s eye, who could most competently organize all the complexities and diplomacies of his village festival, a good man, a modest man, a man of great generosity to his family and others – why should this man fall when other men – men without conscience, men utterly void of fear of the gods, men that would leave not a scrap for others huggering up fortune after fortune – greedy gulls, cormorants, cut-throats and thieves; yea, men that would devour all men and women and children for power and domination and profit – why should such devils have life and riches while the meek and innocent of this world have no life at all?
Wei fell to the ground as his sickle had once swept the golden corn to the ground. His eyes dissolved into a million blue stars…
He lay, face down. Through immense pain he climbed back into consciousness. He thought. His family had died because of his errors. He now hoped he had partially repaid his debts to them. And, by his actions, he hoped, with his last remaining strength, that he had given his beloved Spider Girl a chance of life.
With that he ceased thinking.
There are times in history when only the bravest will find the courage to stand alone against the most powerful in their attempts to erase our existence from our planet. We are all living through one of those times and we are witnessing a battle of two worlds. On one side is the world of imperialist oppression, violence, perpetual war, to benefit the predators of our world – on the other are those who wish to see the supremacy of international law and perpetual peace with benefits for all mankind.
Those who have taken the ultimate stand against these forces of subjugation are the Syrian Arab Army and their allies who have stood firm and proud against overwhelming military force and a terrifying apparatus of war. The Syrian Arab Army does not only fight for Syria and its people, it fights for all of us – in Palestine, in the UK, the EU, South America, Yemen, everywhere… Syria is not only the cradle of civilization, it is the cradle of resistance around which are circling those who would destroy it and those who would defend it. We stand with those who defend it.
21st Century Wire8
20
In Jincheng, music of silk and flutes mixes together all day,
Half goes to the river breeze, half goes to the clouds.
Music such as this should only go to heaven above,
In this human world, how many times can it be heard?
Du Fu
On the morning of 8 April 1937, the first swallows of the year were seen in the skies over Wuhan, flying high above the city, skittering madly across the blue waters of the Yangtze. Whether they’d arrived overnight or in the first light of dawn only the swallows themselves knew, but their joyous twittering exuberance warmed and spread happiness and hope in the hearts of all the city’s citizens.
Spider Girl hurried, as fast as she could, back from the markets of the Bund to Hu and Agnes’s apartment. She had some vital news. News she had overheard at the barber’s stall. She was excited, she was very emotional, and she was terrified.
‘There’s been this incredible battle,’ she announced to the breakfast table. ‘Between the Chinese and the Japanese. And the Chinese have won. The Chinese have smashed the Japanese.’
Agnes looked at her sceptically.
‘Where was this “great victory”?’
‘A place called Taierzhuang.’
‘Never heard of it. Where did you hear this news?’
‘On the Bund. It’s all over the marketplaces. People are rejoicing.’
Agnes’s scepticism continued.
‘I think, if there’d been a great Chinese victory, I’d have heard about it over the news wires, or from government sources.’
‘It is. It’s true. We have won.’ She paused. ‘And thousands and thousands of people have been killed on both sides.’
With that she burst into tears.
Hu moved over to comfort her. The Drab just stared. Agnes went over to the stove to make some tea for Spider Girl.
Just at this moment a runner burst in with a message for Agnes. She looked at it. Then she looked at Spider Girl.
Then she read out the message.
‘From the official spokesman of the Peoples’ United Republican Government of China, the Honourable Hollington Tong. “Dearest correspondents of China and of the Free World, you are humbly invited to attend a special news conference at 11 a.m. this morning, where I will make a highly important and auspicious announcement. Please attend.”’
Agnes looked up at Spider Girl. She picked up the tea she had prepared and took it over to her. She touched her on the shoulder.
‘Drink this. It will soothe you. You are a very clever girl, Spider Girl. A very clever and brave girl. Sometime I will talk to you about your news gathering sources. I wish mine were as good.’
She moved away and start to prepare to leave for the news conference. She had to get there quickly. The pre-conference gossip among the correspondents would be almost as juicy as the news itself.
She left the apartment with Hu still comforting Spider Girl.
*
When I hear the news it is inevitably Lao Xiang who tells me it.
I am still asleep in bed, having spent most of the night wrestling with Seven Chinese Virgins Sink a Japanese Torpedo Boat, when he bursts in.
‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck. And fuck again.’
‘What?’ I say, blearily fighting for consciousness.
‘The news,’ he says, ‘the fucking news!’
‘What fucking news?’
‘We’ve only gone and fucking fucked them.’
‘Who’s gone and fucked what?’ I ask. ‘And can we please stop all this fucking fucking.’
‘We’ve fucked them. The fucking Chinese have gone and fucked the fucking Japanese!’
Finally, through a blizzard of ‘fucks’, I am at last able to discern that the Chinese have managed to defeat the Japanese. In a major and devastating fashion. THE FUCKING CHINESE HAVE FUCKED THE FUCKING JAPANESE MAJORLY!!! Yes, really!’
I fall back onto the bed. Then get up again. And start to try and pull all my clothes on simultaneously while dancing round the bed with Lao Xiang and shouting obscenities out of the window. The ten thousand blossoms on the red persimmon tree outside my window riotously toss their claret-coloured heads in joyous dance. Reminds me greatly of the celebrations that used to take place on the Chicken Run terrace at West Ham after they’d scored a goal!
As soon as I’ve managed to organize my clothing into some semblance of order I give Lao Xiang a great comradely hug and rush down to the docks. There’s only one place to be for the celebrations today – the Bund!
*
The large room for Hollington Tong’s morning news conference was abuzz with Western and Chinese correspondents. Agnes moved from group to group, trying to glean any details about what the announcement was likely to be. Nobody had a clue. Agnes ventured to suggest that perhaps there might have been a great Chinese victory. Everyone immediately pooh-poohed it. They pooh-poohed it so much that the received wisdom of the room quickly became that there had been a great Chinese defeat, and some even opined that Hollington Tong was about to announce China’s craven surrender.
On one thing only could everyone in the room unanimously agree. That the free coffee offered by the Chinese Ministry of Information tasted like old socks.
Wuhan Page 48