by Edgar Snow
The chairman was a youth in his early twenties who wore a faded blue cotton jacket under a brown, open face, and a pair of white trousers above a pair of leathery bare feet. He welcomed me and was very kind. He offered me a room in the village meeting house, and had hot water brought to me, and a bowl of millet. But I declined the dark, evil-smelling room and petitioned for the use of two dismantled doors. Laying these on a couple of benches, I unrolled my blankets and made my bed in the open. It was a gorgeous night, with a clear sky spangled with northern stars, and the waters in a little fall below me murmured of peace and tranquillity. Exhausted from the long walk, I fell asleep immediately.
When I opened my eyes again dawn was just breaking. The chairman was standing over me, shaking my shoulder.
“What is it?”
“You had better leave a little early. There are bandits near here, and you ought to get to An Tsai quickly.”
Bandits? He was not talking about Reds, he meant “White bandits.” I got up without further persuasion. I did not want anything to happen to me so ridiculous as being kidnaped by White bandits in Soviet China.
White bandits were in the Kuomintang’s terminology called min-t’uan, or “people’s corps,” just as Red bandits were in soviet terminology called yu-chi-tui, “roving bands”—Red partisans. In an effort to combat peasant uprisings, the min-t’uan forces had increasingly been organized by the Kuomintang. They functioned as an organic part of the pao-chia system, an ancient method of controlling the peasantry which was now being widely imposed by both the Kuomintang in China and the Japanese in Manchukuo.
Pao-chia literally means “guaranteed armor.” One chia consisted of approximately ten families, with a headman supposedly elected but usually appointed by the local magistrate. One pao was made up of approximately ten chia. The combined pao-chia was held collectively responsible to the district magistrate (hsien chang), a government appointee, for any offense committed by any member of the roughly hundred-family unit,. It was the chia headman’s duty to report any “rebel son” in his group, otherwise he would be punished for any irregularity. By such means the Mongols and Manchus had pacified rural China—and it was not a popular means, especially among the poor.
As a measure for preventing the organization of peasant protest it was almost unbeatable. Since headmen of the pao-chia were nearly always rich farmers, landlords, pawnbrokers, or moneylenders—most zealous of subjects—naturally they were not inclined to “guarantee” any tenant or debtor peasants of a rebellious turn of mind. Yet not to be guaranteed was a serious matter. An unguaranteed man could be thrown in jail on any pretext, as a “suspicious character.”
This meant in effect that the whole peasantry was placed at the mercy of the gentry, who at any time could ruin a man by refusing to guarantee him. Among the functions of the pao-chia, and a very important one, was the collection of taxes for the maintenance of the min-t’uan, or militia. The min-t’uan was selected, organized, and commanded by the landlords and gentry. Its primary duties were to fight communism, to help collect rents and share-crop debts, to collect loans and interest, and to support the local magistrates’ efforts to gather in the taxes.
Hence it happened that, when the Red Army occupied a territory, its first as well as its last enemy was the min-t’uan. For the min-t’uan had no base except in the landlords who paid them, and they lost that base when the Reds came in. Class war in China was best seen in the struggles between min-t’uan and Red partisans, for here very often was a direct armed conflict between landlords and their former tenants and debtors. Min-t’uan mercenaries numbered hundreds of thousands and were most important auxiliaries of the some 2,000,000 nominally anti-Red troops of China.
Now, although there was a truce between the Red Army and the Kuomintang Army on this front, attacks by the min-t’uan on the Red partisan brigades continued intermittently. In Sian, Lochuan, and Yenan I had heard that many landlords who had fled to these cities were now financing or personally leading the White bandits to operate in the soviet border districts. Taking advantage of the absence of the main Red forces, they made retaliatory raids into Red territory, burning and looting villages and killing peasants. Leaders were carried off to the White districts, where generous rewards were given for such Red captives by the landlords and White officers.
Interested primarily in revanche and quick cash returns on their adventures, the min-t’uan were credited with the most destructive work of the Red-White wars. I, at any rate, had no wish to test out the White bandits’ “foreign policy” on myself. Although my belongings were few, I feared that the little cash and clothing I had, together with my cameras, would prove prizes too tempting for them to overlook, if it required only the erasure of a lone foreign devil to possess them.
After hastily swallowing some hot tea and wheat cakes, I set off with another guide and muleteer contributed by the chairman. For an hour we followed the bed of the stream, occasionally passing small cave villages, where heavy-furred dogs growled menacingly at me and child sentinels came out to demand our road pass. Then we reached a lovely pool of still water set in a natural basin hollowed from great rocks, and there I saw my first Red warrior.
He was alone except for a white pony which stood grazing beside the stream, wearing a vivid silky-blue saddle-blanket with a yellow star on it. The young man had been bathing; at our approach he jumped up quickly, pulling on a sky-blue coat and a turban of white toweling on which was fixed a red star. A Mauser hung at his hip, with a red tassel dangling bravely from its wooden combination holster-stock. With his hand on his gun he waited for us to come up to him, and demanded our business from the guide.
“I have come to interview Mao Tse-tung,” I said. “I understand he is at An Tsai. How much farther have we to go?”
“Chairman Mao?” he inquired slowly. “No, he is not at An Tsai.” Then he peered behind us and asked if I were alone. When he convinced himself that I was, his reserve dropped from him, he smiled as if at some secret amusement, and said, “I am going to An Tsai. IΓll just go along with you to the district government.”
He walked his pony beside me and I volunteered more details about myself, and ventured some inquiries about him. I learned that he was in the political defense bureau, and was on patrol duty along this frontier. And the horse? It was a “gift” from Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang. He told me that the Reds had captured over 1,000 horses from Chang’s troops in recent battles in north Shensi. I learned further that he was called Yao, that he was twenty-two years old, and that he had been a Red for six years.
In a couple of hours we had reached An Tsai, which lay opposite the Fu Ho, a subtributary of the Yellow River. A big town on the map, An Tsai turned out to be little but the pretty shell of its wall. The streets were completely deserted and everything stood in crumbling ruins.
“The town was completely destroyed over a decade ago by a great flood,” Yao explained. “The whole city went swimming.”
An Tsai’s inhabitants had not rebuilt the city, but lived now in the face of a great stone cliff, honeycombed with yao-fang, a little beyond the walls. Upon arrival we discovered, however, that the Red Army detachment stationed there had been dispatched to chase bandits, while members of the district soviet had gone to Pai Chia P’ing, a nearby hamlet, to render a report to a provincial commissioner. Yao volunteered to escort me to Pai Chia P’ing—“Hundred Family Peace”—which we reached at dusk.
I had already been in soviet territory a day and a half, yet I had seen no signs of wartime distress, had met but one Red soldier, and a populace that universally seemed to be pursuing its agrarian tasks in complete composure. Yet I was not to be misled by appearances. I remembered how, during the Sino-Japanese War at Shanghai in 1932, Chinese peasants had gone on tilling their fields in the very midst of battle, with apparent unconcern. So that when, just as we rounded a corner to enter “Hundred Family Peace,” and I heard blood-curdling yells directly above me, I was not entirely unprepared.
; Looking toward the sound of the fierce battle cries, I saw, standing on a ledge above the road, in front of a row of barracklike houses, a dozen peasants brandishing spears, pikes and a few rifles in the most uncompromising of attitudes. It seemed that the question of my fate as blockade runner—whether I was to be given the firing squad as an imperialist, or to be welcomed as an honest inquirer—was about to be settled without further delay.
I must have turned a comical face toward Yao, for he burst into laughter. “Pu p’a” he chuckled. “Don’t be afraid. They are only some partisans—practicing. There is a Red partisan school here. Don’t be alarmed!”
Later on I learned that the curriculum for partisans included this rehearsal of ancient Chinese war cries, just as in the days of feudal tourneys described in one of Mao Tse-tung’s favorite books, the Shut Hu Chuan.* And having experienced a certain frigidity of spine as an unwitting subject of the technique, I could testify that it was still very effective in intimidating an enemy.
I had just sat down and begun an interview with a soviet functionary to whom Yao had introduced me in Pai Chia P’ing, when a young commander, wearing a Sam Browne belt, stumbled up on a sweating horse and plunged to the ground. He looked curiously at me. And it was from him that I heard the full details of my own adventure.
The new arrival was named Pien, and he was commandant of the An Tsai Red Guard. He announced that he had just returned from an encounter with a force of about a hundred min-t’uan. A little peasant boy—a “Young Vanguard”—had run several miles and arrived almost exhausted at An Tsai, to warn them that min-t’uan had invaded the district. And that their leader was a really white bandit!—a foreign devil—myself!
“I at once took a mounted detachment over a mountain short cut, and in an hour we sighted the bandits,” Pien recounted. “They were following you”—he pointed at me—“only about two li behind. But we surrounded them, attacked in a valley, and captured some, including two of their leaders, and several horses. The rest escaped toward the frontier.” As he concluded his brief report, some of his command filed into the courtyard, leading several of the captured mounts.
I began to wonder if he really thought I was leading the min-t’uan. Had I escaped from Whites—who, had they seized me in no man’s land, undoubtedly would have called me a Red—only to be captured by the Reds and accused of being a White?
But presently a slender young officer appeared, ornamented with a black beard unusually heavy for a Chinese. He came up and addressed me in a soft, cultured voice. “Hello,” he said, “are you looking for somebody?”
He had spoken in English!
And in a moment I learned that he was the notorious Chou En-lai.
2
The Insurrectionist 1
After I had talked for a few minutes with Chou En-lai and explained who I was, he arranged for me to spend the night in Pai Chia P’ing, and asked me to come next morning to his headquarters in a nearby village.
I sat down to dinner with a section of the communications department, which was stationed here, and met a dozen young men who were billeted in Pai Chia P’ing. Some of them were teachers in the partisan school, one was a radio operator, and some were officers of the Red Army. Our meal consisted of boiled chicken, unleavened whole-wheat bread, cabbage, millet, and potatoes, of which I ate heartily. But, as usual, there was nothing to drink but hot water and I could not touch it. I was parched with thirst.
The food was served—delivered is the word—by two nonchalant young lads wearing uniforms several sizes too large for them, and peaked Red caps with long bills that kept flapping down over their eyes. They looked at me sourly at first, but after a few minutes I managed to provoke a friendly grin from one of them. Emboldened by this success, I called to him as he went past.
“Wei [hey]!,” I called, “bring us some cold water.”
The youth simply ignored me. In a few minutes I tried the other one, with no better result.
Then I saw that Li K’e-nung,* head of the communications section, was laughing at me behind his thick-lensed goggles. He plucked my sleeve. “You can call him “little devil,” he advised, “or you can call him ‘comrade’ [t’ung-chih]—but you cannot call him wei! In here everybody is a comrade. These lads are Young Vanguards, and they are here because they are revolutionaries and volunteer to help us. They are not servants. They are future Red warriors.”
Just then the cold (boiled) water did arrive.
“Thank you,” I said apologetically, “—comrade!”
The Young Vanguard looked at me boldly. “Never mind that,” he said, “you don’t thank a comrade for a thing like that!”
I had never before seen so much personal dignity in any Chinese youngsters. This first encounter was only the beginning of a series of surprises that the Young Vanguards were to give me, for as I penetrated deeper into the soviet districts I was to discover in these red-cheeked “little Red devils”—cheerful, gay, energetic, and loyal—the living spirit of an astonishing crusade of youth.
It was one of those Sons of Lenin, in fact, who escorted me in the morning to Chou En-lai’s headquarters. That turned out to be a bombproof hut (half cave) surrounded by many others exactly like it, in which farmers dwelt undismayed by the fact that they were in a battle area, and that in their midst was the Red commander of the Eastern Front.* The quartering of a few troops in the vicinity did not seem to have disturbed the rustic serenity. Before the quarters of Chou En-lai, for whose head Chiang Kai-shek had offered $80,000, there was one sentry.
Inside I saw that the room was clean, but furnished in the barest fashion. A mosquito net hanging over the clay k’ang was the only luxury observable. A couple of iron dispatch boxes stood at the foot of it, and a little wooden table served as desk. Chou was bending over it reading radiograms when the sentry announced my arrival.
“I have a report that you are a reliable journalist, friendly to the Chinese people, and that you can be trusted to tell the truth,” said Chou. “This is all we want to know. It does not matter to us that you are not a Communist. We will welcome any journalist who comes to see the soviet districts. It is not we, but the Kuomintang, who prevent it. You can write about anything you see and you will be given every help to investigate the soviet districts.”
Evidently the “report” about me had come from the Communists’ secret headquarters in Sian. The Reds had radio communication with all important cities of China, including Shanghai, Hankow, Nanking, and Tientsin. Despite frequent seizures of Red radio sets in the White cities, the Kuomintang had never succeeded in severing urban-rural Red communications for very long. According to Chou, the Kuomintang had never cracked the Red Army’s codes since they first established a radio department, with equipment captured from the White troops.
Chou’s radio station, a portable wireless set powered by a manually operated generator, was erected only a short distance from his headquarters. Through it he was in touch with all important points in the soviet areas, and with every front. He even had direct communication with Commander-in-Chief Chu Teh, whose forces were then stationed hundreds of miles to the southwest, on the Szechuan-Tibetan border. There was a radio school in Pao An, temporary soviet capital in the Northwest, where about ninety students were being trained as radio engineers. They picked up the daily broadcasts from Nanking, Shanghai, and Tokyo, and furnished news to the press of Soviet China.
Chou squatted before his little desk and put aside his radiograms—mostly reports (he said) from units stationed at various points along the Yellow River, opposite Shansi province, the Reds’ Eastern Front. He began working out a suggested itinerary for me. When he finished he handed me a paper containing items covering a trip of ninety-two days.
“This is my recommendation,” he said, “but whether you follow it is your own business. I think you will find it an interesting journey.”
But ninety-two days! And almost half of them to be spent on foot or horseback. What was there to be seen? Were the Red districts so e
xtensive as that? As it turned out, I was to spend much longer than he had suggested, and in the end to leave with reluctance because I had seen so little.
Chou promised me the use of a horse to carry me to Pao An, three days distant, and arranged for me to leave the following morning, when I could accompany part of the communications corps that was returning to the provisional capital. I learned that Mao Tse-tung and other soviet functionaries were there now, and Chou agreed to send a radio message to them telling of my arrival.
As we talked I had been studying Chou with deep interest; like many Red leaders, he was as much a legend as a man. Slender and of medium height, with a slight wiry frame, he was boyish in appearance despite his long black beard, and had large, warm, deep-set eyes. A certain magnetism about him seemed to derive from a combination of personal charm and assurance of command. His English was somewhat hesitant and difficult. He told me he had not used it for five years. The account below is based on notes of our conversation at that time.
Chou was born in 1899 in Huai-an, Kiangsu, in what he called a “bankrupt mandarin family.” His mother was a native of Shaohsing, Chekiang province. Chou was given (at the age of four months) to the family of his father’s younger brother. The brother was about to die without issue when Chou’s father, to assure him of male posterity (on the family tablets), presented him with En-lai to rear as his own son. “My aunt became my real mother when I was a baby,” said Chou. “I did not leave her for even one day until I was ten years old—when she and my natural mother both died.”
Chou’s paternal grandfather was a scholar who served as a magistrate in Huai-an county, North Kiangsu, during the Manchu Dynasty. It was there that Chou spent his childhood, while his father, Chou Yun-liang, who had passed the imperial examinations, vainly waited for a magistry; he died while Chou was still an infant. His foster mother (whom Chou called “mother”) was highly literate, and that was not general then among officials’ wives. Still more uncommon, she liked fiction and “forbidden”* stories of past rebellions, to which she introduced Chou as a child. His early education was in a family school under a private tutor who taught classical literature and philosophy, to prepare one for official life. After his “two mothers” died Chou was sent to live with another aunt and uncle—his father’s older brother, who was also an official—in Fengtien (Mukden, Shenyang) Manchuria. He began to read illegal books and papers written or inspired by such reformists as Liang Ch’i-ch’ao.