Visualizing Modern China: Image, History, and Memory, 1750–Present
Page 22
Foreign Reactions to and Uses of Images of Sino-Japanese War Refugees
Soon, accounts of Japanese atrocities reached foreign audiences, and China’s resistance became a major international news story. In the October 4, 1937 issue of Life magazine, an estimated 136 million readers saw the famous picture (Figure 9.5) of a crying Chinese babysitting helplessly amid the ruins of the South Railway Station in Shanghai after a Japanese air raid.12 The pitiable sight of the lone baby had a profound impact on Americans. As Christopher Jespersen points out in his research on the changing American images of China during the 1930s and 1940s, the impression that helpless China was being tormented by evil Japan soon became entrenched in the United States and helped generate an anti-Japanese atmosphere. In a 1937 Gallup poll that asked Americans what events interested them the most during that year, the Ohio floods topped the list, but just below them came the Sino-Japanese War. Americans’ sympathy clearly lay with the Chinese, rising from 43 percent in August 1937 to 74 percent by May 1939. In 1938, more Americans were concerned with the China war than with the German movement into Austria.13
It was out of such concern that Americans translated their sympathy into tangible assistance. A variety of civic organizations became channels supporting relief efforts for Chinese refugees. The American Committee for Chinese War Orphans directed its efforts toward providing shelter, food, and care for the rising population of refugee children; the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China raised money to provide medical treatment to civilian victims and wounded soldiers, and in1941 it was consolidated with the United China Relief (UCR). The UCR released numerous publications for fundraising purposes, and the powerful and moving image of the crying Chinese baby was reprinted in newspapers and magazines and used in newsreel footage across the nation. One of the UCR postcards featured this photo, and the reverse side bore a note of explanation: “This is Ping Mei—a child of China. . . . He is one of 50 million refugees who desperately need food, clothing, shelter, medical aid.” Another anecdote tells well the power of the crying baby image: When Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the First Lady of China, visited the United States five years after the Shanghai bombing in November 1942, waiting for her at the White House was a letter from Cathleen Quinn of East Orange, New Jersey. Enclosed along with the letter was three dollars from Mrs. Quinn and her daughters—with instructions explaining that it was to help “the little guy on the railroad tracks somewhere in China.”14
Figure 9.5 Baby crying at Shanghai railway station, after Japanese bombing; aka the “Bloody Saturday” photograph. On August 28, 1937, the Japanese launched an air attack on the Shanghai south railway station, killing hundreds. This photo, taken by H. S. Wong, a Chinese-American employee of the Hearst Metrotone News, became an iconic image of Japanese wartime atrocities in China. But it has also been the subject of controversy: there is some evidence that the child was posed by Wong, and some argue that the photo incites anger by presenting an exaggerated image of Japanese cruelty. See website for more on this debate. From: National Archives, ID 535557.
Images of the “50 million” Chinese refugees were circulated more widely in the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, this time for domestic mobilization of the war effort. Shortly after the United States entered World War II, Frank Capra, the Hollywood director, accepted the task of preparing a series of orientation films for American troops. The seven core films subsequently produced under the collective title Why We Fight highlighted the theme that two worlds were locked in mortal combat, the free world and the slave, “civilization against barbarism,” “good against evil,” the Allied “way of life” as opposed to the Axis “way of death.” One film in the series was devoted exclusively to the war in Asia. Titled The Battle of China, this was an epic paean to the resistance of the Chinese people against Japan’s aggression, made in part with cooperation and footage supplied by the GMD (see Introduction, Figure 1.7). Building upon American sympathy for the Chinese and anti-Japanese sentiments, the Capra touch was displayed in striking scenes of Chinese dignity and heroism amid an orgy of Japanese destruction and atrocity. Such a contrast was heightened by the film’s commentary, in which Japan’s rhetoric of “co-existence and co-prosperity” was recited while the screen showed the devastation of China’s cities and the mutilated corpses of its men, women, and children.15
The Battle of China devoted nearly five minutes of newsreel footage to the heroic march of Chinese refugees from the coast to the interior (Figure 9.6, see website). American audiences witnessed the dismantling of modern industries, the pulling of junks and boats on which parts of machinery were loaded and then guided by human hands along the narrow passes of the Yangtze River’s Three Gorges, the retreat of modern educational institutions, and the evacuation of millions of refugees either packed on top of trains or fleeing by foot. It was, as the film’s narrator declared, “the greatest mass migration ever recorded.”16 Indeed, among Capra’s explicit attempts to win sympathy by building parallels between Chinese and U.S. history, he frames this westward migration in terms deeply resonant with U.S. narratives of Manifest Destiny: “moving westward on a trek that stretched through 2,000 miles of roadless wilderness. . . Westward to freedom.”17 Just like their American counterparts, the Chinese of The Battle of China were carrying the torch of freedom for a better postwar world. During the course of WWII, the Why We Fight films were shown as required viewing for millions of American soldiers in addition to public theaters across America and overseas, where they were distributed with soundtracks in French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
Debating Social Welfare
In China, images of the refugees were being used as well, at times to bolster Nationalist mobilization, but also for quite different ends. Historically, disaster relief in China had been handled primarily by the private sector. Local elites were expected to contribute resources for the public good at private expense. Historian Timothy Brook documented a famine relief incident in a small county along the southeast coast of China in 1751 as follows:
The magistrate deputed gentry to go to the wealthy people and encourage them to make donations. Li Changyu and his friend Tu Ketang rushed about encouraging people to forward grain and were successful in amassing the required amount. The magistrate suggested setting up a central soup kitchen, but Li Changyu pointed out the dangers of doing so. . . . [He argued that] the better method would be to draw up ward registers and distribute grain directly to the people [in their home areas]. . . . The magistrate agreed to his plan and thousands of lives were saved.18
This event highlights certain fundamental patterns of social relief at the local level in late imperial Chinese society. First, local elites were the primary benefactors. The types of aid provided by elites included collecting and distributing gruel to the hungry; caring for the weak, aged, widows, and orphans; providing medical care; housing the homeless; and, if the displaced were immigrants, dispersing refugees to hometowns. Second, in terms of the relationship between the state and local society, the magistrate as the representative of state authority was constrained by limited resources and understaffing. He had to ask for help from local elites and rely heavily upon their cooperation. Thus, elites such as Li and Tu played a leadership role throughout the relief effort. Finally, note that central government intervention barely existed in this case of famine relief. While Beijing did from time to time allocate resources for the management of big disasters, such aid was assigned mainly in the form of special relief funds and delivered in an ad hoc manner without an established role for the central government or coordinated relief plans.
The Taiping Rebellion of the mid-nineteenth century, the largest peasant rebellion in Chinese history, brought more opportunities for local elites to expand their activism. After a decade-long endeavor to suppress the revolt, the government had exhausted its resources and had to depend upon local elites for reconstruction projects. The consequence of this was a trend toward even greater elite ascendancy and a further decline of state con
trol over local society. Urban areas in particular witnessed the rising power of civic society. Migrant merchants and workers founded a variety of guilds and native-place associations, organizing celebrations in addition to providing the forms of relief described above. If a family could not afford a coffin, the guilds would provide burial expenses for the deceased. Figure 9.7 is an illustration from the Dianshizhai Pictorial, a popular magazine published in Shanghai in the 1880s and 1890s. The sketch depicts an obviously destitute household with few belongings. Three men stand by a plank bed, on which a recently deceased man is covered with a padded quilt. According to the commentary at the top of the sketch, the elderly man standing closest to the bed is a representative from a Shanghai trade guild who provided the family with 17,000 copper cash for funeral expenses.19 Pictorials like this reminded the magazine’s elite and educated readers that such activities for the public good were central to maintaining their place in society.
Figure 9.7 Image from Dianshizhai Pictorial, an illustrated supplement to Shanghai’s leading newspaper, Shenbao. Dianshizhai used methods of lithographic printing that coupled rapid reproduction with great sharpness of detail, qualities that imparted a sense of immediacy and clarity and lending the paper’s representations an aura of realism. From: Dianshizhai Pictorial, series 4, vol. 4. Shanghai: Shenbao guan, 1895.
The tradition of voluntarism under the nominal supervision of the government continued into the Republican era (1911–1949). As soon as the Japanese attacked Shanghai, Pan Gongzhan, head of the Social Bureau of the Shanghai Municipal government, called on leaders of Shanghai society for cooperation. They combined their forces roughly into two agencies, the International Relief Committee and the Union of All Shanghai Voluntary Agencies (the Union). The latter became the largest relief entity in Shanghai at the time, incorporating charities, professional unions, and native-place associations. Students, housewives, and the many newly unemployed workers volunteered to offer their services. The Union organized them into eleven divisions for such functions as fundraising, sheltering, rescue militias, education, food supply, medical care, shipping refugees home, and burial services, to name but a few.20
The Japanese invasion and the refugee crisis changed the private nature of social welfare in China. Social elites realized that wartime relief was more than a cause of charity. First of all, philanthropy alone could not suffice to pay the bills of relief. In Shanghai for example, at the start of the war residents donated their time, labor, and money to run makeshift hospitals, rescue militias, orphanages, and numerous war-related operations, but local charitable resources soon began to run dry under the sheer enormity of the relief demands. One month into the war, the Union had spent CN¥160,000 out of its CN¥170,000 reserve fund.21 Facing a shortage of money, some social activists suggested introducing new taxes—for example, increasing the tax on private property. Yet such measures would of course demand further state involvement in the realm of social services.22 The depleting of civic resources continued into the1940s, with no return in sight. And here is where the war’s impact was most enduring: the war finally destroyed the myth of voluntarism. Zhao Puchu, a top Buddhist leader who served on the executive board of the Union, acknowledged that at the beginning of the Union’s activities, the funds came mainly from social and private donations. After half a year, however, it started to depend upon remittances from the Chongqing government.23 The role of the state emerged as indispensable and visible to all.
The refugee crisis generated by the Japanese invasion pushed the relief system beyond its traditional practices. For example, the strategy of repatriating refugees to their ancestral hometowns was now deemed a poor solution, for though the pressure on cities might be relieved, those dispatched home could hardly make a living. “What can they do after returning home?” asked the newspaper Shenbao. “[Becoming] beggars, bandits, or traitors, these are likely their only alternatives. At present, for national survival, a simple strategy of repatriation is absolutely wrong.”24 Critics argued that it would be far better to evacuate refugees to the interior so that they could participate in the war effort. But accomplishing this agenda would demand a level of central planning and a unified organization for nationwide relief that did not yet exist.25 Zhang Zhongshi, a writer and general editor for Shanghai’s famous Life Bookstore, elaborated the need for the state to take on the role of overall management. He proposed that the state guarantee refugee access to transport by forming a system of unified control: military requisition of vehicles, trains, and ships would be limited in order to save some for use to evacuate civilians.26 Zhang also pointed out that those traveling by foot suffered severe monetary losses since many hotels and shipping companies engaged in price gouging in order to earn higher profits. He proposed that the state assert regulations to curb such wartime inflation and to set up rest hostels at key transit points to accommodate refugees.27
In short, the relocation of the refugees required much deeper state involvement, for only the state could have broad enough powers to fulfill these plans.28 In newspapers and magazines, a visible and vocal critique of the absence of state investment in relief efforts attributed the failure of relief to the failure of the GMD government. Without an efficient state providing direction and coordination, the relief work organized by civic organizations was little more than perfunctory. The GMD needed to establish a national system of relief.29 The refugee crisis thus redefined the boundary between state and civil society by entrusting greater responsibilities for social welfare to the wartime state. The relief of mass refugees demanded the further involvement of the wartime state and centralization in the overall management of natural and human resources. It was under such public expectation that the GMD government set up a national infrastructure for refugee relief.
Building a National Relief Network
On April 23, 1938, the GMD government formed the Development and Relief Commission (DRC), and from spring 1938 to the start of the 1940s, the DRC gradually grew into in a gigantic welfare complex. It not only absorbed old voluntary organizations but also replaced them as the primary benefactor of refugees, with the former playing a still indispensable but reduced supporting role.
Though the governing board of the DRC presented little difference from earlier relief agencies (a combination of politicians and social elites from all walks of life), changes in actual administration and staffing were major. The staff was no longer made up of volunteers but was a corps of full-time, salaried social policy bureaucrats. Many of these professionals came from other government departments that, due to wartime relocation, were dispersing and disbanding, creating a phalanx of seasoned administrators who were themselves desperate for aid. Xie Qi, for example, was a member of the Department of Civil Affairs in the Nanjing government who, along with seventeen other colleagues, was stranded without transport after the department disbanded in November 1937. Running out of personal savings, the petition of Xie and his colleagues for monetary assistance was initially rejected.30 As more and more similar petitions reached wartime capital Chongqing in December, the GMD government realized it faced a serious challenge in figuring out new arrangements for its former functionaries.31 On December 15, 1937, the Executive Yuan drafted a plan to form a wartime service corps for the purpose of relief and relocation. According to the plan, the DRC would take charge of civilian evacuation, coordinate their transportation, and mobilize the masses. All the former government functionaries currently unemployed were eligible to apply for positions administering the new services.32 On April 23, 1938, along with the DRC, the Wartime Services Corps came into existence.33 The motion stirred up an immediate response from the former government staff. In five months, the corps had recruited 1,218 operatives (to fill out a designated quota of 1,500 openings) and dispatched 445 of them to new assignments.34 Later, the Executive Yuan authorized the Services Corps and its relief stations to recruit any additional assistants they needed directly from local relief societies.35
The DRC divided war-affected regio
ns into eight relief zones and mapped out a transit network through these zones, linking coastal China section by section to free China. Masses of refugees counted upon the network for directions, daily necessities, and monetary subsidies. Thirty-four general stations were set up in provincial capitals or commercial and communications centers,36 between which were a series of relief stations linked every 30 kilometers by sub-stations. Between sub-stations, rest hostels were scattered in small towns or villages along usual travel routes, roughly every 15 kilometers.37 Even during the peak of retreat in 1938 and 1939, the DRC maintained control of twenty-six of the thirty-four general stations. Over the next two years, as the Japanese extended their incursion deep into central China, the DRC withdrew and limited its work mostly to the western part of China, losing many stations in the east, but adding another eighty-two stations and hostels to the network for the resettlement of evacuees.38 By the time of Pearl Harbor, the DRC managed thirty-eight general stations, and 1,059 sub-stations and rest hostels.39
Tong Wangzhi was a merchant from Changshu County in Jiangsu Province who, along with about twenty friends, left his hometown for the western interior in late 1937. In spring 1938, in a small county named Wuwei on the bank of the Yangzi River, they encountered the DRC and its agents for the first time. In Tong’s recollection, when they reached the gate of the Wuwei County, they found a DRC agent waiting behind a table at the entrance. He directed Tong and his company to take lodging in a local hotel. Tong and his friends filled out a form with a list of their names. The owner of the hotel sealed his signature on the list and reported to the local DRC station. The travelers enjoyed two meals and a night of sleep for free. The next morning, the DRC agent came to the hotel to check on Tong, dispensing half a yuan to each as a travel stipend. Of this amount, thirty cents came from the state budget and thus required their signature on a DRC receipt; with regard to the remainder, the agent told them that since it derived from the contribution of local notables, the DRC needed no receipt. While Tong and his friends received travel stipends, an old woman who stayed in the same hotel asked this DRC agent for a relief subsidy. The lady sadly told the DRC agent that she had lost track of her husband in the exodus. Hearing of her difficulties, the agent offered her a substantial stipend to pay for two days of meals, travel, and housing. Tong felt surprised: “It is really amazing that the DRC could be so generous.”40