Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (William Hinton)

Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village
Author	William Hinton
Publisher	Monthly Review Press
First published	1966
Type	Book
Source	Anna's Archive

Acknowledgments

Without the co-operation of the Communist Party and the People’s Government of Lucheng County and the help of President Fan Wen-Ian of Northern University, the interpreters Ch’i Yun and Hsieh Hung, the Long Bow work team and above all the peasants of Long Bow the material for this book could never have been collected.

Without the hard driving legal virtuosity of Milton H. Friedman and generous financial aid from Carmelita Hinton, Corliss Lamont and hundreds of other friends and well wishers this same material could never have been pried loose from the U. S. Customs and later from Senator Eastland’s Committee on Internal Security.

After I regained possession of my notes, aid from Carmelita Hinton and the Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation of New York made possible the endless hours of sifting, corollating and revising that later drafts of the manuscript required. I am especially indebted to Susan Warren, Far Eastern expert and free lance writer, for protracted consultation and editing and to Nell Salm of the Monthly Review staff for editorial innovations and the detailed, laborious preparation of the final draft. The making of this book has been, at every stage, a collective effort, and this is as it should be.

I also owe thanks to Angus Cameron for encouragement and advice generously given over many years and to Ida Pruitt and Adele and Allyn Rickett for moral support and critical readings of the manuscript. I am especially grateful to my wife, Joanne, for the patience and good humor with which she has forgone job security, a decent home, recreation and vacations while all our surplus energy and funds poured into the making of this book.

Fanshen

Every revolution creates new words. The Chinese Revolution created a whole new vocabulary. A most important word in this vocabulary was fanshen. Literally, it means “to turn the body,” or “to turn over.” To China’s hundreds of millions of landless and land-poor peasants it meant to stand up, to throw off the landlord yoke, to gain land, stock, implements, and houses. But it meant much more than this. It meant to throw off superstition and study science, to abolish “word blindness” and learn to read, to cease considering women as chattels and establish equality between the sexes, to do away with appointed village magistrates and replace them with elected councils. It meant to enter a new world. That is why this book is called Fanshen. It is the story of how the peasants of Long Bow Village built a new world.

Preface

THIS BOOK is based on extensive notes gathered in the village of Long Bow, Lucheng County, Shansi Province, China, during the spring and summer of 1948.* At that time, local land reform, which had already been in progress for two years, was under investigation by a work team dispatched jointly by the People’s Government and the Communist Party Committee of Lucheng County. I was attached to this work team as an observer.

The main focus of the book is on the conditions which the members of the work team found and the actions which they subsequently led the people of the village to take. But since it would be impossible to understand these conditions or these actions without a review of the revolutionary upheaval that led up to them, and since this up heaval in turn could hardly be understood without some knowledge of the traditional society which brought on and was itself transformed by revolution, a large section of the book (Parts I and II) is devoted to a history of the village.

This history was not easily assembled. The past was reviewed for me by a multitude of people whose memories of what had happened differed somewhat and whose stories contained both contradictions and gaps. Where contradictions could not be resolved or gaps filled in through careful checking and cross-checking, I have had to adopt such interpretations and solutions as seemed most consistent with other known facts. If the history that has thus emerged is not accurate in every detail, its main content and spirit nevertheless portray the truth about Long Bow.

What I have tried to do in the book as a whole is to reveal, through the microcosm of Long Bow Village, something of the essence of the great anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolution which transformed China in the first half of the twentieth century and unleashed political and social forces so tremendous that they continue to shake not only China but the world.

The question naturally arises as to whether Long Bow can be considered a microcosm typical enough to reveal the essence of the Chinese Revolution. Was Long Bow’s development universal or unique? The answer can only be that it was something of both.

Throughout rural China the social forces in conflict, the basic problems, the goals and the final outcome of the Revolution were the same. In Long Bow the same classes stood in opposition to each other as stood opposed nationally. United action of all laboring people was as vital to revolutionary victory in Long Bow as it was in the country as a whole. The petty-producer mentality of Long Bow’s peasants did not differ in quality from that which characterized the peasants country-wide, and the tendency toward extremism, which in Long Bow grew to alarming proportions, had to be checked wherever peasants moved to divide the land.

At the same time, certain external circumstances, certain internal characteristics, and the specific course of events which shaped Long Bow were unique. For one thing, the village had a sizeable Catholic minority in a country where only one or two million people out of 600 million were Catholics. For another, it contained many families without ancestral roots or ancestral graves in the region. This meant a weak clan structure in a country where clars have traditionally played a very important role. Furthermore, on the edge of an area that was surrounded but never conquered by the Japanese, Long Bow was one of the few villages which the Japanese invaders occupied and fortified.

As a consequence, Long Bow had a very different history from that of the average North China community lying within the wide net of Japanese encirclement during the years 1937-1945. At the same time, its history was very different from that of the great majority of Chinese villages which had never been cut off by Japanese armies and were wrested from Kuomintang rather than Japanese control by the revolutionary armies after 1949.

As an occupied village, Long Bow did not benefit at all from that long period of united resistance, democratic rule, and moderate reform which laid the groundwork for basic changes throughout the Communist-led Base Areas of North China once the Japanese War was over. Nor did Long Bow benefit from that extended period of internal peace that enabled communities in South, Central, and West China to carry out land reform calmly, step by step, in orderly fashion after the Civil War was over. Freed from Japanese control at a turning point in history, 1945, Long Bow leaped perforce from reactionary bastion to revolutionary storm center in the course of a few days. All the changes that subsequently occurred were not only compressed into a relatively short space of time; they were also warped by the intense pressures of all-out Civil War as wave after wave of Nationalist attacks swept across the highlands of Southeast Shansi. Long Bow was not the only village in China to be transformed under forced draft, but such villages were the exception, not the rule.

In Long Bow the sudden destruction of the power and privileges of the gentry led to rapid social advances, to the release of unprecedented popular energy, to burgeoning enthusiasm, optimism, and popular confidence. It also led to excesses and tragedies. At least a dozen people were beaten to death by angry crowds; some hardworking small holders were wrongly dispossessed; revolutionary leaders at times rode roughshod over their followers. When the land reform team to which I was attached came to the village in 1948, its main job turned out to be righting the wrongs of the immediate past.

Before these wrongs could be righted they had to be exposed. The work team, the village officers, and the majority of the population concentrated for an extended period on what was wrong with past policies and the conduct of individual leaders. They did this, not because the wrongs of the situation outweighed the rights—on the contrary, quite the reverse was true—but because the wrongs constituted a serious obstacle to further progress, an illness that if not cured could become lethal. This book, by reflecting this concentration, gives crimes, mistakes, detours and discouragement more weight than they deserve in any over-all evaluation of Long Bow’s development. It thus tips the scale even further toward the exceptional and away from the typical.

When it comes to telling the story of the Chinese Revolution, however, all of these exceptional factors, far from creating obstacles, present very definite advantages. Because contradictions arose in especially acute form in Long Bow and problems tended to etch themselves in very sharp relief, I felt able to observe the revolutionary process more fully and to understand it more deeply than I would have been able to do under more average circumstances and in more average surroundings. But the reader should keep in mind that not many villages in China followed such a tortuous path to liberation or experienced so much pain on the way.

Everyone in the revolutionary ranks learned from the kind of mistakes made in Long Bow at the height of the Civil War and when, in 1949, land reform workers went out from the Taihang Mountains by the tens of thousands to lead the Revolution in South and West China, they were far wiser men and women than they had been when they challenged the local gentry for control of the future at the end of the Japanese War.

The revolutionary process as it unfolded in China included advances and retreats, swings to the Right and swings to the Left, daily, hourly, minute-by-minute accretions and sudden, qualitative changes of state. Above all, the process went deep. It remade not only the material life of the people, but also their consciousness. It was this latter aspect that constituted the special strength of the Revolution and ensured, insofar as anything could, that the changes which it wrought would be both profound and lasting.

Because I have tried to delineate not only dramatic leaps in the life of the people, but also that slow accumulation of small changes without which no leaps could have occurred, I have written a book of considerable length. Along the way I borrowed from the literary arsenal of the novelist, the journalist, the social scientist, and the historian. What I have produced, finally, seems to me to resemble, in spirit and in content, a documentary film. I call it, then, a documentary of revolution in a Chinese village.

In the last analysis, what made such a documentary possible was the involvement of hundreds of people in its creation. Collectively the people of Long Bow, the members of the work team, and the two interpreters who helped me, delved into the past of the community and revealed it in its dynamic, many-faceted complexity.* Hence, the reader will find here, not one man’s analysis of a small community in transition, but the community’s own self-examination, its own estimate of what happened during the most crucial years of its existence. That examination was characterized by honesty, thoroughness, and depth, because on it would be based not only understanding but action, not only theory but practice—practice that must vitally affect the lives of millions.

The relevance of Long Bow’s history to the present day can hardly be overemphasized. The story revolves around the land question. Without understanding the land question one cannot understand the Revolution in China, and without understanding the Revolution in China one cannot understand today’s world.

But the impact of the land question on world affairs is not a function of China’s specific gravity alone. Who shall own the land? Who shall rule the countryside? These are primary questions in the revolution that is sweeping the whole of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. That revolution, far from dying away, is intensifying. Sooner or later, all those countries where agricultural production is a main source of wealth—and the relation between owners and producers a main source of social conflict—will undergo great transformations. An understanding of the issues involved and the solution already applied by one great nation is therefore important. In countries that stand on the verge of land revolution, people are eager to study such lessons. In countries like our own, whose leaders have the capacity to hasten or delay—though not forever to prevent—such transformations in other lands, people ought to study them.

Because of these facts, I believe that this book is at least as timely today as it would have been had it come out 18 years ago when I first gathered the raw notes for it in Long Bow Village. What happened in China yesterday may well happen in Brazil, Nigeria, or India tomorrow.

Land reform is on the agenda of mankind.

William Hinton

Fleetwood, Pa.

May, 1966

Prologue

China is a vast country. “When night falls in the east, the west is still lit up; when darkness covers the south, the north remains bright.” Hence, one need not worry about whether there is room to move around.

Mao Tse-tung

ALL THROUGH the spring season the earth’s canted axis swings ever closer into line with the sun. Each day more heat is concentrated on the crust of the northern hemisphere until, with the arrival of the summer solstice, the full force of the solar fire is turned on the seas and mountains, the deserts and the plains of the temperate zone. This heat bakes the rocks until they flake, sets forest and tundra steaming, vaporizes the surface of the lakes and oceans. In the vast turbulence of the atmosphere thus created, gigantic mushrooms of hot air push skyward from the heart of continents and suck inland beneath them the cool, rain-laden sea winds that break the spring drought.

So vast is the continent of Asia, so immense the winter-stilled and frozen wastes of Mongolia, Sinkiang, Kazakhstan, and Tibet, so chilled the deserts, of the Gobi and Takla Makan that the solstice has come and gone, the arctic pole has already turned from the sun, and the days have already begun to grow shorter before the accumulated heat of Central Asian sand and rock can reverse the seasons and bring on the monsoon.

This ancient lag, this ever-recurring cosmic overlap of heat and cold, cold and heat, brings a violence to the climate of all North China that is incalculable in its effect. From February to June cold winds blow from Mongolia outward toward the sea, gripping all the land from the Yangtze to the Amur in drought. Then, after weeks of hot and pregnant calm, the skies reverse themselves. Fierce torrential rains sweep in from the Pacific, flash floods carve up the earthen hills of Shansi and Shensi, swell the rivers with mud-clogged water, and inundate the flat plains bordering the sea.

These plains are, in fact, a creation of this cycle. But for the silt flung into the rivers and deposited over the millenniums on the ocean floor, the Yellow Sea would still lap the Taihang Mountains on Shan-si’s border and Shantung’s hills would still be, as they were in ancient times, an island range.

The great coastal plain of China, mother to a tenth part of the human race, is thus herself the child of a monsoon which never ceases to harass the world it has created. The very winds, upon which all rains and hence all life depend, periodically threaten the very existence of that life. Drought and flood, flood and drought, alternating in perpetual procession, yearly call the Chinese people to battle against the waters that sustain them.

The year 1947 was no exception. If anything, the rains that summer came earlier and fell more heavily than usual. Even before the end of June the drought-cracked fields of Hopei and the sun-baked soil of Shansi’s mountain valleys had lost their structure completely and dissolved into mud. Carts bogged to the axles. Mules, their sweating flanks stained red from the earth thrown up by their churning hooves, strained in the harness, lurched forward and fell back panting. Along a million once solid tracks connecting village to village, field to field, in a network that covered the countryside like a filigree of lace, the battle between the carters and the husbandmen spread with ever-increasing intensity. At each mudhole the carters tried to detour onto the more solid, crop-firmed soil of the fields themselves. But the peasants, determined to defend their developing harvests, countered with deep pits dug beside the road to keep the carts in line. As the season wore on these pits grew into a system of interconnected moats and trenches until the countryside took on the appearance of a plain prepared for war. This contest, as old as the wheel itself, never slackened as long as the rains continued to fall. Nor could there be, by nature of the combat, any final victory or defeat but only an infinite series of minor catastrophes—here a cart overturned in a water-filled trap, there a field of green corn mangled in the mud.

And while this persistent battle between man and man intensified, a larger struggle between man and nature unfolded week by week. With each succeeding rain the hollows and the low spots of the land filled up with water. The muddy overflow spilled onto the crops. Small gullies that ten months of the year lay dry and dusty suddenly bulged with flowing water. Whole villages were threatened. Between and around all this the rivers, the Yungting, the Ying, the Chin, the Hutou and the Wei, rose and swelled and rose some more to menace whole counties. Meanwhile to the south, from the gap in the mountains called San Men, the great Yellow River itself, “China’s Sorrow,” lapped at the top of its dykes, and spread fear throughout three provinces.

Throughout the Liberated Areas of the north country the battle of the rivers was joined.* Along threatened dykes vast armies of men, women, and children toiled day and night, carrying earth in wicker baskets, firming it down with rope-flung tamping stones, and fixing in place the rock-laden mats that could halt a breakthrough. At night one could follow the course of the waters by observing the fires set at intervals by flood watchers who huddled in mat shelters to keep out of the weather. They constantly filled and lit their pipes in order to stay awake, and every hour measured the height of the dark waters that glided so silently, so menacingly past their emergency stations.

As with the battle of the fields, there was in this struggle neither ultimate victory nor final defeat, but only an endless series of tactical gains and losses—here a dyke that held, a whole county saved, there a river run riot, a million people left homeless and hungry.

But even this battle, gigantic and far-flung as it was, was dwarfed that year by yet another conflict, a Civil War almost as cosmic in scale as the monsoon itself. From the borders of Siberia to the mouth of the Red River in the South China Sea, armies Red and White marched and counter-marched, encircled and counter-encircled, besieged and broke siege in turn until over vast areas of countryside every nursing child, every worried mother, every grandfather filling his pipe by the village gate, every young man with a hoe on his shoulder and every young woman with a needle in her hand had experienced this war.

Top-level squires and rural bullies fled for safety to Peking, Tientsin, Mukden, Shanghai, and even New York. Second-ranking gentlemen ran to such provincial towns as Taiyuan, Tsinan, Paoting, and Kaifeng. Those of third rank took refuge behind the thick fortress walls of county seats such as Anyang, Yungnien, Kalgan, and Tatung. Lesser fry, lacking the means to get away, threw themselves on the mercy of the newly-empowered Peasants’ Associations and Village Congresses, and lived for the day when the Home Return Corps, organized in the cities by their fleeing brethren, would sally forth to wreak vengeance. These brethren in turn, fully controlling the coastal cities and still able to deploy the manpower of vast areas in South and West China, placed their hopes for victory on supply lines that reached out across the wide Pacific into the streets and workshops of America, where hundreds of thousands toiled to make the weapons with which Chinese might slaughter Chinese.

In this, the Armageddon of Chinese feudalism, the terrible many-layered war of the land revolution, no weapon was overlooked. The very floods of the monsoon became swords in the hands of opposing armies, and silt-swollen rivers were unleashed by both sides in an effort to annihilate the enemy or split his forces asunder.

At Yungnien, a black-walled fortress city halfway between Peking and the Yellow River, a Kuomintang warlord named Yang entrenched himself with flour, wine, and women for a three-year siege. Communist-led militia, driven back when they tried to storm the battlements by frontal assault, raised a dyke around the town and turned the waters of the Wei River upon it. Just before the rising flood burst open the city’s massive gates, bombers, summoned by radio from Peking, blasted the dyke and loosed a torrent that spread havoc through three counties.

Farther north, in Central Hopei, American-equipped troops under General Fu T’so-yi drove south out of Tientsin in the middle of the rainy season and cut the dykes of the Grand Canal just as the crest of the flood rolled down. Five counties west of the canal were inundated, hundreds of people drowned, tens of thousands lost their homes and harvests. By this action General Fu’s armies won a respite of several weeks from partisan attacks in the famed Peking-Tientsin-Paoting triangle, an area the Japanese, in eight long years, had never been able to pacify.

Devastating as these hydraulic thrusts proved to be, they were mere hose-play compared to the return of that fearsome dragon, the Yellow River, to the course from which it had been blasted ten years before in a vain attempt to stop Japan’s headlong drive southward. The re-diversion was carried out in March, 1947, by the Kuomintang Army with the aid of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration technicians, funds, and supplies, and on orders from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek himself.

The river, rushing back into its pre-war bed, cut the Liberated Area of Shantung in half, placed half a mile of water between the Shansi-based revolutionary armies of one-eyed General Liu Po-ch’eng in the West and the Shantung-based revolutionary armies of General Ch’en Yi in the East. The artificial flood disrupted the economy of a whole region. Some 500 villages that had housed 100,000 people for more than a decade were submerged within a few days. The high water that followed the summer rains threatened a plain inhabited by five million. When the peasants, by the hundreds of thousands, gathered to repair the long abandoned dykes, Generalissimo Chiang sent bombers to blast the renovated earthworks and fighter planes to strafe the dyke workers.*

Thus did the war grow in ferocity and ruthlessness. As both sides girded for increasingly decisive battle the possibility of compromise receded swiftly into the background. Each day brought new evidence that 1947 would be a year of decision in China’s modern history.

***********

In 1947 the Chinese Communist Party, confident of the strength of the 100 million people in the guerrilla Base Areas of the North, moved from the defensive to the offensive in the war against the Kuomintang. Its military forces, completely encircled on land and without a single plane in the air, confounded friend and foe alike by suddenly thrusting three complete armies southward into the Nationalist rear. In the Center, General Liu’s men drove all the way from the north bank of the Yellow River to the Tapieh Mountains on the banks of the Yangtze overlooking Nanking. In the East, General Ch’en Yi filed down into North Kiangsu and Anhwei to outflank the strategic railway town of Kaifeng. In the West, General Chen Keng forded the Yellow River and swept to the Hupeh border, thus isolating Loyang. By re-establishing three important guerrilla bases in East, Central, and West China these three armies turned the war inside out, converted encirclement into counter-encirclement and disrupted Chiang’s plan to strangle the Revolution in its war-devastated North China redoubt.

The military offensive of 1947 was accompanied by an equally important political offensive. The heart of this second offensive was the Draft Agrarian Law, formulated in the fall of 1947 and announced to the world on December 28 of that year. With sentences as abrupt as the strokes of a fodder-chopping knife, the new law proclaimed the death of landlordism:

Article I—The agrarian system of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation is abolished. The agrarian system of “land-to-the-tiller” is to be realized.

Article II—Landownership rights of all landlords are abolished.

Article III—Landownership rights of all ancestral shrines, temples, monasteries, schools, institutions, and organizations are abolished.

Article IV—All debts incurred in the countryside prior to the reform of the agrarian system are cancelled.

With these provisions of the law the revolutionaries of China once again threw down the gauntlet to Chiang Kai-shek and his American backers. They now demanded, not some modified relationship between the classes such as had served to unite the nation against Japan, not a settling of accounts with profiteers and collaborators such as had stirred the Liberated Areas after Japan’s surrender, but the abolition of the rural class system itself, complete, unequivocal, universal. From the Amur to Hainan, from Shanghai to Chengtu, the land must be distributed to those who worked it. The manner of the distribution was set forth in Articles VI and VIII:

Article VI—.... All land of landlords in the village, all public land, shall be taken over by the village peasants’ associations, and together with the other village lands, in accordance with the total population of the village, irrespective of male or female, young or old, shall be unifiedly and equally distributed; with regard to the quantity of land, surplus shall be taken to relieve dearth, and with regard to the quality of land, fertile land shall be taken to supplement infertile, so that all the people of the village shall obtain land equally; and it shall be the individual property of each person.

Article VIII—Village peasants’ associations shall take over the landlords’ animals, agricultural implements, houses, grain and other properties, shall further expropriate the surplus animals, agricultural implements, houses, grain and other properties of rich peasants, and these shall be distributed to peasants lacking these properties, and to other poor people, and furthermore an equal portion shall be distributed to the landlords. The property distributed to each person shall be his personal property, thus enabling all village people to obtain proper materials for production and for livelihood.

This new Draft Agrarian Law was destined to play as important a role in China’s Civil War of 1946-1950 as the Emancipation Proclamation played in the American Civil War of 1861-1865. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation confiscated without compensation $3 billion worth of property in slaves; put an end to the possibility of compromise between the industrial North and the slave-holding South in the military contest then raging; made the slave system itself, rather than regional autonomy, the nub of the conflict; cleared the way for the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of emancipated black men into the Union Army; and spread the war into every corner of Confederate territory with devastating effect.

Mao’s Draft Agrarian Law confiscated without compensation $20 billion worth of property in land; put an end to all possible compromise between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang; made country-wide overthrow of the landlords and the compradores, rather than the defense of the Liberated Areas, the main aim of the war; facilitated the capitulation and recruitment of huge blocks of Chiang’s soldiers into the People’s Liberation Army; inspired peasant unrest in the far corners of China; and gave impetus to demonstrations of workers, students, merchants, and professional people in urban centers throughout the Kuomintang rear.

Nor was the impact of the new Draft Law confined, as one might suppose, to territories as yet unconquered by the Revolution. Inside the old Liberated Areas, where land reform in one form or another had begun the day the Japanese surrendered, the Draft Law inaugurated a new stage in the continuing struggle. Its provisions served as a yardstick by which to measure the achievements of three years (1945—1947) of more moderate reforms in an area as large as France and Germany combined. Had the land been equally divided? Had the political power of the gentry been broken? Had the poor peasants and hired laborers taken control of village affairs? If not, why not?

The new Draft Law also served as a yardstick by which to measure the political position of every revolutionary, of every Communist Party member, of every government functionary, every leader of a mass organization, and every individual teacher, peasant, student, peddler, worker, soldier, tradesman, or intellectual who opted for progress and a new, democratic China. On which side do you stand? Do you stand with the poor peasants and hired laborers, the most oppressed and exploited people in the nation, or do you stand with the landlords, the rich peasants, and the feudal exploiters? Do you intend to carry the Revolution through to its end by creating a new system of land tenure or do you intend to stand in the way, to act as a brake, to stop things halfway?

With the promulgation of the new Draft Law, a “thunder and lightning, drum and cymbal” attack was launched on the remnants of traditional exploitation and on the residues of landlord and rich-peasant thinking in the revolutionary ranks throughout the Liberated Areas of North China.

In honor of the campaign, red flags, which had entirely disappeared during the years of the Japanese War, suddenly blossomed over streets, courtyards, and village gates. The Chinese sun on a blue field, symbol of the Anti-Japanese United Front, vanished from the badges that adorned many caps and lapels, and in its place the red star and hammer and sickle emblem reminiscent of the Red Army of the 1930’s reappeared. Down from the compound walls came the six-feet-high slogans of moderation and defense, and up in their place went the flaming words of the offensive: “Equally Divide the Land” and “Drive to Nanking; Capture Chiang Alive!”

The Lunar New Year—traditionally an occasion for week-long feasting, relaxation and Chinese opera—was transformed that winter, into a mass demonstration of support for the Chinese Communist Party, the Draft Agrarian Law, and the leadership of Mao Tse-tung.

***********

In Changchih City, the main urban center of the South Shansi Highlands, local residents and peasants from the surrounding villages turned out by the thousands to celebrate 1948. The city was decorated from one end to the other. In front of every shop a bright red flag, replete with gold hammer and sickle, proudly waved. Across the streets and alleys on all but invisible strings fluttered countless pennants of colored paper. Each bore a slogan supporting the new land law or denouncing Chiang Kai-shek and his bandit gang. From a distance these pennants looked like red and blue confetti dancing in the sun. Along three of the four main streets—north, south, and west—stages-large enough for full-scale theatrical performances were set up on heavy timbers and hung with red silk.

Peasants, pouring through the recently-levelled gates of the walled town, jammed the roadways with their animals and vehicles. From the valleys came mule carts with iron-shod wooden wheels four feet in diameter. From the mountain heights came ridiculous little donkey-drawn vehicles with platforms three feet across and wheels the size of cooking pots. On the wooden framework of these carts, large and small, sat mothers, grandmothers, and children of all ages, dressed in bright silks and many-colored cottons.

Among the attractions which drew them to the town was the yangko dancing. A small parade preceded the performance of each yangko team. In the lead came young men with red banners bearing the name of the club, block committee, or Peasants’ Association which they represented. Behind them came the musicians with their drums, cymbals, gongs, and pipes. Next came the acting group and then a long column of dancers.

When the group arrived at a likely spot—any place where large numbers of people stood around waiting for something to happen—the dancers started to form a big circle doing the yangko rock (three steps forward, one step back) the body swaying in time to the music, the arms swinging gracefully. The girls all carried wide scarves of silk that were tied to their waists with large red bows. They held the two free ends in their hands so that the silk waved and fluttered with each movement of the arms. Like shimmering butterflies they wove figure eights and clover leaves and other intricate patterns and finally formed a circle inside of which the actors assembled to perform the plays and skits which they themselves had written.

The most popular theme of these many plays was land reform. The two points which most of them hammered home were the need to depend on the poor-and-hired peasants and the importance of uniting with the middle peasants. Many groups portrayed a villainous landlord who tried to sabotage all land division, a rich peasant who schemed with him, a middle peasant who worried lest the new land law be used against him, and a village political worker who sold out the poor for favors from the rich. But a hired laborer with the help of a Communist Party member always won the confidence of the people in the end. The landlord and his running dog cowered in disgrace, the poor peasant danced a merry jig with the middle peasant, while the boys and girls of the dancing brigade burst into joyous song and began their yangko all over again.

Other skits had to do with the national and international scene. Chiang Kai-shek came in for much buffeting about, as did the Soongs, the K’ungs and the Ch’ens—China’s three other ruling families. These men were represented in typical fashion—Soong always with a Western-style hat, Ch’en in a black landlord’s gown, Chiang in preposterous military regalia, and K’ung, the banker, always clutching a large briefcase stuffed with money.

Adding to the merriment and confusion of sound were other groups performing stick dances. The participants carried bamboo rods about three feet long that were decorated at each end with bells and tassels. To a very fast beat these sticks were struck against different parts of the body and with each blow the bells jingled. When 20 or 30 people did this in perfect unison, the rhythmic effect stirred the feet of every bystander.

The streets overflowed with yangko and stick dancers, each orchestra trying to play louder than the last, each group of dancers striving to step out more vigorously than the one in front of it, each actor attempting to outdo in gesture and voice the others in the cast. Add to this the thousands upon thousands of country people milling about; the peddlers vending hot mutton soup, candy, peanuts, and pears; the hundreds of carts going and coming; the red banners and the colored paper spinning and twirling in the air. It was a scene of immense vigor and public rejoicing such as that ancient county town had rarely if ever witnessed.

And, as if all this were not enough, the three great stages on the three main streets presented a continuous succession of plays, each to an enormous changing crowd. Farther on, at the fairgrounds on the east side of the town, a commercial circus displayed the talents of trained monkeys and trick riders, while, from the platform of an abandoned temple, a traditional opera troupe sang to an audience of thousands.

For two days and nights the festivities continued without letup.

***********

I observed the tumultuous New Year activity in Changchih as a member of the faculty of Northern University, the educational and cultural center of the Shansi-Hopei-Honan-Shantung Border Region. I had come to China one year earlier as a tractor technician with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), and had been sent to the Communist-led area of South Hopei to supervise a project there. When UNRRA closed down all over the world in the fall of 1947, the tractors under my care were put in storage for lack of gasoline, and I accepted an invitation from Northern University to teach English in South Shansi.

The University was a guerrilla institution which moved according to the dictates of war. It was housed at that time in a huge expropriated mission compound at Kao Settlement, a village in the Fifth District of Lucheng County, ten miles north of Changchih. I had no sooner settled down to teach there than half the faculty and students of the institution departed to join the land reform movement, an exodus that occurred a few days after the New Year celebrations. Hundreds of volunteers from the University joined an equal number of local county and subcounty (district) cadres* to make up work teams that were assigned to key villages throughout the region. In groups of 10 or 12 these cadres went out to survey the true condition of the peasant population and carry the land reform through to completion.

The excitement generated by the departure of so many of its students and staff members electrified the whole University. Young men and women in blue ran back and forth tying up belongings, rolling their quilts into tight bundles, fastening shoulder straps to improvised bedrolls, singing snatches of song and talking excitedly to one another. Many who had not been chosen to go stood around with wistful expressions, revealing how much they too would have liked to be on their way to the countryside.

When, at last, all the volunteers were ready, they assembled in the street with their bundles on their backs and a bright red flag flying over them. The President of the University, the famous historian Fan Wen-Ian, lean, slightly stooped, peering with failing eyes through thick glasses, gave them a gentle, scholarly farewell talk. Then, to the accompaniment of rolling drums and clashing cymbals, the adventurous brigade strode off. At the first crossroad it split into two columns, one marching east, the other south. Last farewells were said and handshakes quickly concluded. One student grabbed the staff of the red flag and waved it high in the air. Others put their caps on their walking sticks and whirled them triumphantly overhead.

The swiftly-moving volunteers gradually merged into the landscape, leaving only two streaks of wind-whipped dust hanging over the paths they had taken. In the wide, bright sky, clouds like puffs of cotton sped southward on the wind. The mountains in the distance were white with the year’s last snow. At least it seemed to be the last, for the breath of spring in the air that day made one forget winter. Soon the peasants would be out plowing, and before the time to plant arrived, ten million ragged, landless families would join that vast army of those who already owned their own good earth.

Standing in the road, watching the dust kicked up by the students’ departure gradually settle, I was overcome with longing to join the great adventure. My job at the University was to teach English, but how could the teaching of English compare with the remolding of the world through land reform?

I walked directly from the edge of the village to President Fan’s office on the second floor of the enormous Kao Settlement monastery. The President was in. Quietly, with sympathetic attention, he listened to my plea.

“Here is one of history’s great moments,” I said. “I want to see and take part in it more than I have ever wanted to do anything in my life. Can’t I join one of the teams, at least as an observer, and learn at first hand what the land reform is all about?”

President Fan could not give me an immediate answer. He had to consult with the subregional and county authorities. Three days later he called me in and said that I could go to one of the nearby villages where a land reform work team was already stationed, on condition that I continue to teach a few English classes each week. He assigned a young woman instructor, Ch’i Yun, to accompany me and to act as my interpreter.

The village nearest to Kao Settlement that had been chosen as a base for the work of a land reform team was a community named Long Bow. It lay approximately one mile to the south. I had already walked through it several times, had even had a bowl of hot soup at the village inn there on one occasion, but had heretofore paid very little attention to the place. It was, outwardly at least, no different from a thousand other hamlets that dotted the valleys of South Shansi. As a matter of fact, I was a little disappointed that the land reform which I was to observe was to take place right at the doorstep of the University. It would be more adventurous to walk to some distant place, to work in some isolated valley that I had not yet seen. But I had no alternative. Since both Ch’i Yun and I had to teach, we either had to choose the nearest village or not go at all.

On the morning of March 6, 1948, the two of us finally set off for the first time on the road to Long Bow and began the long process of getting to know its people, their history, their progress, their mistakes and their complex current problems.

Sowing the Wind

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

How will the future reckon with this Man?

How answer his brute question in that hour

When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?

How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—

With those who shaped him to the thing he is—

When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,

After the silence of the centuries?

From Edwin Markham’s

“The Man with the Hoe”

Long Bow Village

Times and seasons, what things are you,

Bringing to my life ceaseless change?

I will lodge forever in this hollow

Where springs and autumns unheeded pass.

Tao Yun

LONG BOW VILLAGE lies in the southeast quarter of Shansi Province on the high plateau country that butts against the back of the Taihang Mountains. It is 400 miles southwest of Peking and 100 miles from the gap in the mountains directly to the south, through which the Yellow River flows out onto the North China plain.

The South Shansi plateau, known as the Shangtang (associated with heaven) because of its elevation, is itself creased with barren mountains, but between the ranges are wide valleys containing considerable areas of fertile soil. In the heart of one of these valleys lies the old county town of Changchih. The road running north from Changchih proceeds on the level for seven miles, through and past numerous mud villages, and then climbs gently over a long hill. Just beyond the hill, where the land levels out again, is the village of Long Bow.*

The land revolution in Long Bow began with the retreat and surrender of the Japanese Army and its Chinese puppet forces in 1945. For how many centuries prior to that year this village had endured in this place almost without change I do not know. Certainly for hundreds of years, any tired traveler who paused to rest at the crest of the hill and looked out over the flat to the north saw substantially the same sight—a complex of adobe walls under a canopy of trees set in the middle of a large expanse of fields. These fields were barren, brown and desolate in winter, while in summer they were green, yellow and clothed with diverse crops.

To look down on this valley in January was to look upon a world of frozen immobility. Through most of each day not even a wisp of smoke could be seen curling up from the squat mud chimneys that poked above the gently sloping roofs marking the settlement; the rich, who kept their fires burning day and night, burned a coal and earth mixture that gave off no smoke, and the poor, who burned roots, straw, and wild dry grasses, lit their fires only at meal time, and then only long enough to boil a few handfuls of millet.

In the depths of winter the temperature often went below zero. Rich and poor alike stayed indoors. Only on the main north-south road could any sign of human activity be seen. This was the route taken by the carters who hauled freight out of the mountains regardless of weather. In the stillness of the cold mountain air the crashing of their iron-shod wheels against the frozen ruts could be heard at a great distance. From the top of the hill it sounded like the rumbling of distant drums or the busy pounding of some tireless carpenter knocking together a hollow barrel.

With the coming of warm weather this all but lifeless scene was transformed. From the first cock-crow in the semi-darkness before dawn until the red sun went down behind the western mountains at night, peasants by the hundreds came and went on the land, plowing, hauling manure, planting, harvesting. There were always so many people in the fields that they could talk to one another as they worked without leaving their own plots.

From the hill this scene took on the likeness of some slow-motion ritual dance of man and nature that completely obscured the painful, backbreaking labor that was in progress. The stage never seemed to be crowded. Yet everywhere the eye rested something was sure to move—here a donkey strained at the plow; there a man, stripped to the waist, raked together corn stubble; nearby a barefoot boy spread night soil, three women on their knees thinned millet, a child, naked as the day he entered this world, played with some sticks in a ditch. Over the traveler’s head the warm, motionless air hummed and whistled as a flight of swallows swooped low. Birds, people, oxen, sheep, children, dogs—it was like one of Breughel’s marvelously crowded paintings—and always in the background, the heavily laden carts moved in both directions, their iron thunder muffled now by the long-thawed resilience of the loess-like soil.

If the traveler, rested at last, walked on down the hill, he found that the village street was but the continuation of the long gully that had brought him from the heights. During the heavy July rains the run-off from all the higher ground to the south rushed down the gully, poured along the village street and emptied into the village pond, a large natural basin conveniently located at the center of the community. In this way the supply of soft water for washing clothes was periodically replenished, and in the shade of the willows by the water’s edge a few women and girls could always be found scrubbing away on the flat rocks that served as washboards.

Both sides of this gully-like main street were lined with mud walls six to eight feet high, broken here and there by covered gateways that led into the courtyards of the people. Beside each gate was the family privy, hopefully placed at the edge of the public road in anticipation of a contribution to the domestic store of fertilizer from any traveler who might be in need of relief.

Running off at right angles from the main road were several smaller lanes, also lined with walls set at intervals with courtyard gates. From these lanes, still smaller alleys ran off in turn to other entrances so that the whole village was rather like a maze, regular in outline, yet haphazardly filled in with lanes, alleys, walls enclosing courtyards, and low mud houses built against these walls.

Over the centuries, in spite of much new construction, the village persisted in presenting a crumbled look. Built of adobe from the earth underfoot, any neglected wall, any unattended roof soon returned, under the hammering of summer rains, to the soil from whence it came. Always there were walls that had collapsed, gates that had fallen down, roofs that had buckled. In places one could wander into courtyards directly from the street through great gaps in the adobe, and people continually found new shortcuts and created new paths along which to move from house to house. Only the rich could afford to keep their walls standing sharp and clean, capped with the lime and straw mixture that alone could withstand a few seasons of weather. Some of the gentry even built with fired brick. Such houses stood through many generations, while the peasants’ huts washed out, were rebuilt, and washed out again and again.

Beside the village pond, whose banks served as a social center as well as a laundry for the women, was an open space large enough to park many carts and still leave the main road free. Day and night there were always carts in this square, for while the most heavily-traveled route skirted the village to the east, many a driver, on reaching Long Bow, was hungry enough, tired enough, or lonely enough to direct his animals into the village street and pull up in the square in search of refreshment, rest, and companionship. All three were offered by the village inn which served hot water to all comers and to the hungry steamed bread, noodles, or unleavened pancakes chopped up in order to be fried or boiled together with whatever vegetables were in season. Owned at different times by various prosperous gentry and run by one or another of their agents or dependents, this inn was nothing more than an adobe hut with a canopy of reed matting built out over the street in front to shelter a table or two. Behind the hut a long shed contained a platform for the carters to sleep on and, at the far end, a set of feed troughs from which their animals could dine on chopped straw and kaoliang stalks.

Beside the inn was a little store that had also changed hands many times. It was a down-at-the-heels adobe structure with a squeaking door and tattered paper on the windows. Out front, sheltered from the sun by a reed mat similar to that which adorned the inn, the storekeeper could usually be found sipping hot water from a cracked teapot as he concentrated on a game of Chinese chess. Inside he sold tobacco, soap, towels, needles, wine, bean oil, salt, sugar, biscuits, a little cloth, and other assorted articles necessary to daily life that could not be made at home. There was no hurry about such sales. Customers, as often as not, joined the storekeeper in a game of chess before going inside to make their purchases.

Soldiers could usually be seen loitering about the store and inn. In earlier times they were the troops of the Imperial Garrison commanded by Manchu officers. In 1911 these were replaced by the conscripts of Yen Hsi-shan, warlord governor of Shansi, who were ousted in turn by the Japanese in 1938. These soldiers, regardless of their allegiance, were quartered on the people, lived a dissolute and corrupt life, and took whatever they wanted for their pleasure, including the wives and daughters of the poor peasants. Their officers, wined and dined by the gentry, pursued the same pleasures in more genteel surroundings and by more subtle means. In this they had the tacit consent of their hosts, who found in the troops a guarantee of their personal safety and the continued smooth collection of land rents.

Just to the north of the store and also on the edge of the square was a solid brick and timber Buddhist temple, whose upturned roof corners might well remind the traveler of the propped-up flap of a Mongolian tent. This temple was built by the Shen clan and was managed through the years by leading gentry of that name. There the people came to burn incense and offer prayers for good fortune, abundant crops, and many children. At several other points in and around the village there were small mud temples or shrines adorned with the clay likenesses of various minor gods—the god of agriculture, the god of fertility, and the god of health. At these temples also the people burned incense, murmured prayers, and left the offerings of steamed bread and sweet cakes that enabled many a poor beggar to survive. In the southern part of the village, a second clan temple sat in the center of a large courtyard. It was surrounded by numerous outbuildings, all of which, along with the temple itself, had long been abandoned to rats, dogs, and mischievous children.

The only other points of interest in Long Bow outside the village homes themselves were the distilleries and hole-in-the-wall craft establishments manned by peasants skilled at different trades. The number of distilleries varied over the years, depending on the prosperity of the landlord families that owned and ran them, but all of them made the same thing—a hard white liquor called paikar that was distilled from fermented sorghum or corn. The craft shops included a blacksmith’s forge, a drug dispensary that carried in stock a few hundred of the many thousand drugs and herbs sold by Chinese apothecaries, a number of carpentry shops that made everything from wooden shovels to cartwheels, and several weaving establishments with looms capable of turning out rough cloth about two feet in width. No matter what these craftsmen did, in the summer they also worked on the land. It took every able-bodied person in the village to plant, hoe, and harvest the crops—every able-bodied person, that is, save the landlords, who, with their inch-long fingernails and ankle-length gowns, never dreamed of soiling their hands with labor of any sort.

The population of the village varied drastically in size. A poor crop year could easily cut the number of residents in half, a part of the poor dying in the huts where they lived and the rest fleeing to other regions in a desperate gamble for survival. By and large, however, the thousand acres of land that encircled the village could support between 200 and 300 families and no sooner did famine on the Shangtang plateau cut down the number of Long Bow people and drive them to other places than famine in other parts of North China drove new people to the plateau to settle in their place.

The erratic nature of the weather was thus responsible for a very heterogeneous population. There are many villages in China where the majority of the inhabitants have the same surname, consider themselves to be of one family and are in fact related by common descent from the original settlers. Not so in Long Bow. The various families living there often bore as many as 40 different surnames. Even though the village itself was called Changchuang or Chang Settlement by its inhabitants, often only a small minority of families bore that name. They were at times outnumbered two to one by the Wangs, and even the Kuos surpassed them in households more than once. Other names common in the village were Shen, Li, and Shih, to mention but a few.

Counting noses among the 200-odd families one could ordinarily tally up about a thousand persons altogether. This meant that on the average there was one acre of land for every man, woman, and child.* The crops from this one acre, in a good year, were ample for the support of a single person, considering the very low standard of living that prevailed. But the poor who rented land or worked out as hired laborers got less than half the crops they tilled, while the rich got the surplus from many acres. That is why some were able to build enormous underground tombs marked for eternity, or so they thought, with stone tortoises bearing obelisks inscribed with the family name, while others when they died were thrown into a hole in the ground with only a reed mat wrapped around them and a few shovelfuls of earth to mark the place.

Graves large and small dotted the land around Long Bow. As if this were not enough obstruction to tillage, the fields were divided into countless narrow strips and plots, each one owned by a different family. Even on the level there were few fields larger than half an acre, while on the hill, where the land was terraced, there were strips only a few yards wide that ran in great S curves around the slopes, and small triangles at the top end of gullies that contained but a few square yards of ground. Land was so valuable in the Shangtang that the peasants found it necessary to build stone walls as high as 15 feet to hold back a few feet of earth and make it level. Where the hills were too steep to terrace, they ploughed anyway and cropped the ground for a year or two until the soil washed away completely. In the mountains to the east of Long Bow Village men plowed hills so steep that an extra person was needed to stand on the slope above and keep tension on a rope tied around the ox lest he slip and roll away.

Although on level ground roads and paths led out through the fields, no hill fields could be reached with a cart, and farm implements had to be light enough for one man to carry. The plows, harrows, seeders, and other equipment used were all light enough to be picked up with one hand and were made entirely of wood except for the point of the plow itself. All of these implements, although in use for centuries, were still only supplementary to the main tool, the hoe, handed down almost unchanged since prehistoric times. The hoe used in Long Bow was a great iron blade weighing several pounds and fastened to the end of a stick as large as a man’s wrist. This tool, which was designed to turn soil and sod, was also used for the delicate work of thinning millet and weeding corn. By hard work a man could hoe one sixth of an acre a day. Since all the peasants aspired to hoe their crops at least three times, a great part of every growing season was spent in hoeing.

The crops grew only on what was put into the soil each year; hence manure was the foundation of the whole economy. The chief source of supply was the family privy, and this became, in a sense, the center of the household. Long Bow privies were built in the form of a deep cistern, topped with timber, or stone, and provided with a single narrow slot at ground level for both deposition and extraction. Here night soil in liquid form accumulated all winter. Legendary in the region were the landlords so stingy that they would not allow their hired men to defecate in the fields but made them walk all the way back to the ancestral home to deposit their precious burden. Other landlords would not hire local people on a long-term basis because local people were wont to use their own privies while a man from outside used that of his employer.

Animal manure, together with any straw, stalks, or other waste matter, was composted in the yard. So highly was it valued that old people and children constantly combed the roads and cart tracks for droppings which they scooped up and carried home in baskets. This need to conserve every kind of waste and return it to the land was responsible for the tidy appearance of the streets and courtyards even though the walls were crumbling and the roofs falling in. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was left lying around. Even the dust of the street was swept up and thrown on the compost heap or into the privy, for village dust was more fertile, by far, than the soil in the fields.

The clothes that people wore and the food that they ate were all products of the village land. Even the gentry, who possessed for festive occasions silks and satins imported from the South, donned for everyday wear the same homespun cottons that served to clothe their servants and their tenants.. Though styles did evolve over the centuries, the basic workday clothing changed little. In summer everyone wore thin jackets and pants of natural cotton bleached white or dyed blue or black with indigo. Long Bow women liked to wear white jackets and black pants, but this was by no means universal.

In cold weather everyone wore clothes padded with cotton. These made people look twice as big as they really were and provided warmth in two ways, first by the insulation of the thick layer of cotton and second by the lice which made themselves at home in the seams. Since the padded clothes could not be washed without taking the lining out—a major operation—it was almost impossible to get rid of lice from day to day. Their constant biting and the interminable scratching that accompanied it generated a fair amount of heat. On any warm day in winter a large number of people could always be found sitting in various sunlit corners with their padded jackets across their knees. There they hunted the lice, picked them out, and crushed them expertly between their thumbnails.

Children under five were exposed from below in all weather because their padded clothes were not sewn together at the crotch. The slit, which ran upward from just above the knees to a point a little below the tip of the backbone, was very convenient when nature called but was drafty in winter. It must be said, however, that the children didn’t seem to mind at all and ran about in the bitterest weather just as if they were all sewn in like their elders.

Shangtang shoes were also made of cotton cloth but, because the soles consisted of many layers sewn through and through with hemp thread, they were as tough as any leather and lasted from four to six months even with hard wear on the mountain roads. Only the women had no need for such heavy shoes. Their feet were bound, the toes bent under, and the bones stunted so that they formed a crushed stump not more than two or three inches in length. Women walked as if on stilts. They could not run at all. Yet widowed women among the poor often had to work in the fields from dawn until dark. Foot binding came to an end almost everywhere in the period between the two world wars but even in 1945 young girls with crippled feet could still be found in the mountain counties of Shansi.

The food eaten in Long Bow was very simple. Since maize was the major crop everyone ate corn dumplings, called keta, in the morning, and corn meal mush, or noodles made of corn at noon. At night they ate millet porridge with a few noodles in it. After the wheat harvest in July everyone ate noodles for several days, but this was considered quite a luxury and only the most fortunate carried the custom on into August. These same families were the only ones who ate three meals a day throughout the year. Most people cut down to two meals, or even one when winter set in. Thus undernourished they moved about as little as possible and tried to conserve their strength until spring.

In addition to the cereal grains people ate salt turnip all year round, cabbage when they had it, and other vegetables such as eggplant, scallions, chives, and wild herbs in season. But these were simply garnishment to the main dish which was always corn, millet, or wheat. The big problem facing the peasants over the years was not to obtain some variety in their diet, but to find anything to eat at all. They often had to piece out their meager harvest of grain with bran, chaff, wild herbs from the hills or even the leaves from the trees or tree bark as the ch’un huang (spring hunger) set in. Each day that one survived was a day to be thankful for and so, throughout the region, in fat years and in lean, the common greeting came to be not “Hello” or “How are you?” but a simple, heartfelt “Have you eaten?”

Can the Sun Rise in the West?

Dirty frogs want to feed on crane,

Poor scum hope for great happenings in vain.

Look at yourself in some ditch water, do!

What great deeds can be done by the likes of you?

Can snow fall in mid-July?

Can the sun rise in the western sky?

Landlord Ts’ui

From the opera

Wang Kuei and Li Hsiang-hsiang

LONG BOW VILLAGE shared in the turbulent history of feudal China.* Over the centuries the Empire was many times invaded and twice conquered from without. From within the body politic was rocked by violent rebellion no less than 18 times. Province-wide and county-wide revolts were too numerous to record. But neither conquest nor rebellion altered the basic contours of society. The invaders were pastoral nomads who grafted themselves onto the apex of the country’s power structure without modifying its base. The rebels were most of them peasants. Even though these peasants several times brought dynasties low they proved historically unable to establish any alternative to the emperor-ruled, landlord-tenant system. After each upheaval life returned once again to the old way.

Even the century of mounting crisis and change that began for China with the British-imposed Opium War of 1840 failed to shatter, though it certainly weakened, the hold of the gentry over China’s good earth and the peasants who tilled it. As late as 1945 many gentry in the interior still could not conceive of basic change as possible. Families might rise and fall, rebel armies advance or retreat, new gods challenge old, machine textiles replace handwoven goods, steam and electricity replace man and mule in distant ports, but in the quiet countryside landlords continued to don long gowns, collect exorbitant rents, pay off the soldiery, manicure their fingernails, and eat white flour made from wheat. Tenants continued to wear dirt-stained trousers, sweat in the fields, render up the major part of what they raised in taxes and rent, and shiver through the winter on coarse millet, chaff, and bran. When anyone mentioned change, the gentry asked confident!;: “Can the sun rise in the west?”

This confidence of the gentry was based on the stability of the land system and the culture it engendered—a system and a culture that had survived and often flourished since before the time of Christ. Under this system, which in one decade abruptly disappeared forever from mainland China, a typical community was made up of a small number of landlords and rich peasants and a large number of hired laborers, poor peasants and middle peasants.* The landlords and rich peasants, who made up less than 10 percent of the rural population, owned from 70 to 80 percent of the land, most of the draft animals and the bulk of the carts and implements. The hired laborers, the poor peasants, and the middle peasants, who made up more than 90 percent of the population, held less than 30 percent of the land, only a few draft animals, and a scattering of implements and carts—a condition which placed them perennially at the mercy of the more well-to-do and condemned them to a life of veritable serfdom.

If one takes the percentages above as a yardstick one finds that the people of Long Bow were more fortunate than the average, for the concentration of land ownership there, in the early 1940’s, was not nearly as high as was general in other parts of China, or even in other parts of the Shangtang region. On the eve of the land revolution the landlords and the rich peasants together made up about seven percent of the population and owned directly 164 acres, or 18 percent of the land. Through religious and clan associations they controlled another 114 acres bringing the total land under their control to 278 acres, or 31 percent. They also owned 18 oxen, mules, and donkeys, or about 33 percent of the draft animals. These were low figures compared to many other Chinese communities.

If the landlords and rich peasants held less than was usual, the middle peasants held much more. They made up 40 percent of the population, held 45 percent of the land and 66 percent of the draft animals. Even so, they were not the largest group in the village. The poor peasants outnumbered all others with 47 percent of the population. They held only 24 percent of the land. Six percent of the people were hired laborers. The two most exploited groups thus made up more than half of the population, owned less than a quarter of the land, and only five percent of the draft animals.

Very interesting and significant was the factor of family size. The landlords and the rich peasants averaged more than five persons per household, the middle peasants fewer than five, the poor peasants between three and three and a half, and the hired laborers about three. There was thus a direct correlation between the size of the family and its basic economic security measured in terms of productive property. Although the birth rate in all established families was approximately the same, those with land, tools, and stock were able to maintain larger families and prosper. Those without land or with very small holdings were often unable even to marry. If they did marry they were unable to hold their families together, lost more children to disease and famine, had to sell children, or even sell wives, and thus had households about half the size.

If the land holdings of the prerevolutionary period were calculated on the basis of the number of families, rather than per capita, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the landlords and rich peasants was more marked. On that basis—a very realistic one for China, where the traditional emphasis has always been on the family rather than on the individual—the landlords and rich peasants, with only five percent of the families, controlled 31 percent of the land; the middle peasants, with less than a third of the families, held 45 percent of the land; and the poor peasants and hired laborers together, with 62 percent of the families, held only 24 percent of the land. Even on this basis the concentration of land ownership in Long Bow was not high; the landlords and rich peasants were relatively poor; and the middle peasant group was unusually large, a factor which was to have considerable influence on the whole future of the community.

One reason for the comparative dispersion of land ownership was the poor quality of the land. Whereas in many parts of China it took only half an acre or less to support one person, in the southern districts of Lucheng County it took about one acre. Irrigation easily could have doubled yields, but without large-scale engineering projects no general irrigation was possible, even on the flat that surrounded the village. In addition, a good part of the land—at least one third—was on the hill and therefore impossible to irrigate. The whole region, located at the very end of Shansi’s fertile central valley only a few miles from high, often rocky mountains, was extremely high and cold and hence a peripheral area agriculturally. In general, in every country in the world the highest concentration of landholding is to be found in the richest, most fertile valleys, and the lowest concentration in the poorest mountain regions where the surplus possible from one man’s labor is least, and hence the rate of exploitation is the lowest. The mountainous regions of Southeastern Shansi were no exception to this rule.

The land held by the landlords and rich peasants, while ample, was not enough in itself to make them the dominant group in the village. It served primarily as a solid foundation for other forms of open and concealed exploitation which taken together raised a handful of families far above the rest of the inhabitants economically and hence politically and socially as well. Usurious interest rates on loans, profits from commercial and industrial ventures, the spoils of public office, and graft or commissions from the management of temple, church, and clan affairs—when added to the revenues from land ownership and land management—gave these families an influence in gross disproportion to their numbers or to the acreage which they held.

Long Bow’s richest family, the seven-member household of the landlord Sheng Ching-ho tapped every one of these income sources. Sheng Ching-ho was a healthy, able-bodied man, but he never engaged in any form of manual labor. He did not have to. His income was many times that of the most prosperous middle-peasant family. He cultivated long fingernails, wore a long gown that made manual work impossible and considered it beneath his dignity even to lift his bag onto his cart when he went on a trip.

The heart of Ching-ho’s “empire” consisted of 23 acres of fertile land—the largest holding in the village if one excludes the land of the “Carry-On Society” of the Catholic Church.* To work these acres he hired two year-round laborers plus extra hands at harvest time. In livestock, the second most important category of rural wealth, he owned two draft animals, a flock of sheep, and several hogs. He employed two boys full time to look after the sheep. His industrial enterprise was a small distillery where paikar was made from kaoliang grain. The wine cost about 20 cents a catty to make and sold for about 30 cents a catty. * When in full production this distillery turned out over 100 catties a day. In this plant Ching-ho employed two men for about seven months every year. The distiller’s grains left over from the process were fed to fattening hogs.

The income from these enterprises was fairly large and since the family lived very frugally, Sheng Ching-ho had a yearly surplus. Some of this surplus he converted into silver coin which he buried in the back part of his courtyard. Another part he invested in a distillery owned by another landlord, Fan Pu-tzu. The rest he loaned out to peasants in desperate need and, by charging exorbitant interest rates (up to 50 percent a month), often doubled or tripled his principal in one season. Those who were unable to pay lost their land to him. If they had no land, they lost their livestock, their carts, their implements. This loan business was actually run by his wife, a woman with a very sharp business head who kept careful track of every copper coin.

With his wife in command of the loans, Ching-ho himself had plenty of time for such equally lucrative operations as managing the affairs of the Pei Lao Shih or North Temple Society, a charitable organization set up to help support the village school, lend money to members in distress, give insurance-type benefits, and placate the gods. This was a Buddhist religious group to which many peasants contributed money and grain. The society owned about five acres of land which Ching-ho managed. He also ran the group’s annual fair and hired the traveling players who staged the opera without which no fair could be called a success. Since Ching-ho was in charge of all the funds, it was a simple matter for him to deduct a suitable commission. It was also a simple matter for him to arrange the accounts in such a way that the amount written down as the cost of the entertainment was always greatly in excess of the sum actually spent. He pocketed the difference. Once every 40 years the North Temple Society sponsored an especially grand fair. On such occasions much more money was spent and Ching-ho’s share, when this fete finally fell to him, was proportionately greater. He himself confessed that he made more than 500 silver dollars on this one big fair alone.**

As a fertility and good luck offering to the gods, each member of the North Temple Society had to pay annually a certain amount of grain per acre. All this grain went to Ching-ho’s home and eventually found its way to his distillery. No accounting for this wealth was ever made to the people.

Concerning the manager of a similar temple society in South China, the well-known sociologist, Fei Hsiao-tung, has this to say:

He is theoretically selected by common consent; in practice, the position is held in rotation by influential men of the village by their common consent. The invariable practice of ignoring the poor in questions of administration is justified by the statement that their poverty disqualified them, since they could not reimburse the public coffers were they to make mistakes. It is impossible to say how much profit accrues to the treasurer, for, since the only concern of the people is that the traditional functions be performed, there is no system of auditing or making public his accounts.*

By no means a man to place all his eggs in one basket, Ching-ho also headed the K’ung Tzu Tao (Confucian Association) of the whole Fifth District. The Confucians of 30 villages were under his leadership. In Long Bow the overwhelming majority of the people belonged to the Confucian Association. Periodically Ching-ho held a banquet for its members and collected contributions to pay for the food and the entertainment. The contributions were usually greater than the cost of the banquet, and Ching-ho kept the difference. Since the Confucians of the whole district contributed, the income was large.

This Association undertook another service to members from which the income was also considerable. This was spirit talking. For a sum of money or grain one could talk, with the aid of a medium, to a parent long dead. This was called yuan kuang—the distant view. For an equivalent sum one could talk to one who had just died. This was called hui yin—the return impression. Payments for both types of messages were paid to Ching-ho, who managed the whole procedure. The ability to arrange these conversations with the dead gave him awesome power over that wide cross section of the people who believed in this occult practice.

To round out his career Sheng Ching-ho was active in politics. He served for many years as village head under the administration of Shansi’s Governor, Yen Hsi-shan. This office carried with it no salary but it put the incumbent in a position to receive all kinds of emoluments—gifts and invitations to feasts on holidays, favors in return for the arbitration of disputes between families, graft in the collection of taxes and the assembling of materials for public works, commissions on the handling of public funds of all kinds. By far the largest source of Ching-ho’s administrative “take” came from the cut he took of all taxes. If the county magistrate demanded two bushels of grain per family, he demanded five and kept three. He accepted no excuse for failure to pay. People had to deliver their tax grains even if they had to sell their children to do it. In fairness to Ching-ho it must be added that of the three bushels he held back, only a portion went into his own granary. He had to split the taxes many ways with subordinate officials, soldiers, etc.

Since Long Bow was the district seat and a garrison town, in addition to the frequent tax collections, the population had to bear the burden of feeding soldiers and officers who walked in and demanded meals. If anyone offered them coarse food such as millet, they threw it in the privy. They wanted good things to eat. They often went to the village inn, ate their fill and made the people pay, but they never bothered Ching-ho in such petty ways. They depended on him for tax gathering, public administration, and the adjustment of community disputes. It was Ching-ho himself who invited officers to his home, entertained them lavishly, fed them wheat dumplings, and gave them the finest tobacco to smoke. He, of course, paid for all this with public funds.

As village head Sheng Ching-ho was also a member of the Kuomintang Party. Although, out of prudence, he resigned from village office just before the Japanese conquerors arrived, he kept up his Kuomintang membership throughout the occupation and the subsequent surrender in 1945.

The power which Ching-ho wielded by means of these various connections was enormous in terms of village life. He used it to acquire wealth and more wealth. He was especially vigorous in taking over other people’s land and houses. Han-sheng was an old man who owned half an acre of very good land just to the east of the village. In a crisis he once borrowed $13 from Sheng Ching-ho. Three years later the principal plus interest amounted to a very large sum. Though Han-sheng paid off some of it, he couldn’t pay it all. Ching-ho then seized the half acre and the summer harvest that had just been reaped on it. Because he did not want the millet he plowed it under and planted wheat in the fall. Han-sheng was left with nothing.

The middle peasant Shih Szu-har borrowed $125 from the North Temple Society managed by Ching-ho. Two years later, when Szu-har was unable to pay, he lost his land—all six acres, his eleven-section house, his donkey, and his cart.* The whole family, including several very young children, were driven outside to live in the open. Luckily Szu-har had both loyal friends and skill as a carpenter. He found shelter and work and was able to save his family from starvation.

At the time when Ching-ho took possession of Szu-har’s land it had just been planted. The young millet shoots were pushing through the soil and they had been hoed once. Ching-ho put the land up for sale but the price he asked was so high that no one could afford to buy it. Though weeds smothered the young millet, Ching-ho would not allow Szu-har to go on the field and the crop was lost.

A poor peasant named Shen borrowed $4 from Ching-ho in order to buy medicine for his sick wife. As a guarantee for the loan he indentured his son Faliang to Ching-ho for seven years. At the end of seven years, because of illness, deductions for broken tools, and outright cheating on the part of Ching-ho, Fa-liang owed many times the original debt and had to tear down part of his house and sell the roof timbers to win his freedom.

The landless and the land poor were not the only victims of Sheng Ching-ho. A prosperous rich peasant, P’ei Ho-yi, owned 13 acres and a fine house of 20 sections. This house adjoined Ching-ho’s and the landlord wanted very much to add it to his own. In order to do so he first had to bankrupt Ho-yi. He encouraged Ho-yi to smoke opium, and when Ho-yi could no longer afford to buy opium, he loaned him the money with which to keep the supply coming. When Ho-yi’s debt had grown to alarming proportions, Ching-ho decided to form a revolving loan society by means of which, in the course of several years, Ho-yi could pay off his debt. Quite a few peasants were drawn into this scheme. Each contributed three or four silver dollars to a fund which each in turn could use interest free for a year. Ho-yi was made secretary of the society and got the first year’s pot. Since he was floating in an opium trance most of the time, Ho-yi easily lost track of the exact standing of the shares and, when Ching-ho suddenly announced that $50 was missing, he had no way to refute it. Ching-ho came forward with a solution. He took Ho-yi’s house and three acres of his land in return for paying off the other partners. To settle the rest of the debt to Ching-ho, Ho-yi had to sell what remained of his land. Completely bankrupt, he and his family were driven into the street and forced to leave Long Bow.

Next to Sheng Ching-ho the most important landlord in Long Bow Village was the Catholic, Fan Pu-tzu. He owned 14 acres of land, a flock of sheep, several hogs, a distillery—larger than the one run by Ching-ho—and a liquor store in Horse Square, one mile to the north. He employed two full-time laborers, two shepherds, three distillery workers, two clerks, and seasonal help when needed. His household was notorious for the bad treatment meted out to laborers and servants. He paid one youthful worker in the distillery $7 a year, called him off the straw in the cowshed at three o’clock in the morning and set him to grinding grain. At noon, when the whole family took a nap, this boy was not allowed to rest but had to carry water. In the afternoon the family ate an extra meal of noodles, but the laborers got only the two regular meals of coarse millet and corn dumplings.

Among the rich peasants—men who themselves labored on the land but earned more through exploitation than they did by their own labor—Kuo Fu-wang and his brother Ch’ung-wang were the best known. In fact, they were considered to be the meanest employers in the whole village. The brothers owned 22 acres that yielded each year close to eight tons of grain, two draft animals, and all such necessary farm tools and equipment as carts, plows, harrows, and seeders. Part of their land they worked themselves with the help of hired labor. The rest they rented out to tenants.

During the famine years of 1942-1943, Ch’ung-wang had no mercy on his tenants. The Miao brothers had been paying rent to him for many years, but in 1942 they did not harvest enough of a crop to live on. Ch’ung-wang insisted on payment in full. They offered him some of their own land. He refused it. In order to settle up with him they were then forced to borrow grain from others. After paying the rent they had nothing to eat. Both of them died of starvation before spring. P’ei Mang-wen’s mother, another of Ch’ung-wang’s debtors, also died after paying him back $1.50. A third peasant, Ho-p’ang, lost crop, clothes, and household furniture to Ch’ung-wang.

At the height of the famine, with the people dying of starvation on every side, Ch’ung-wang collected all the grain he could and held it for speculative prices in an underground vault that served as the family tomb. He held it so long that much of it rotted.

Kuo Ch’ung-wang also evaded taxes for more than 20 years on three acres of land that were not registered with the county. His official deeds called for three acres less than he actually owned and the evasion of taxes on this land threw an extra burden on the middle peasants who had to bear the brunt of all grain levies. This type of tax evasion was common among those gentry with wealth or influence enough to bribe or otherwise pressure the makers of deeds and the collectors of taxes.* The acres so held were called “black lands.”

The wealth accumulated by Kuo Ch’ung-wang, Fan Pu-tzu, Sheng Ching-ho and the other gentry through usury, land rent, and the exploitation of hired labor could not easily be converted into capital—that is, it could not easily be invested where it would yield a profit and reproduce itself with certainty.

The returns from money-lending were large, but the risks were also great. There was no limit to the number of poor peasants in desperate need of grain and funds, but few could offer anything by way of security. All the possessions of many a family could not realize $5 on the market. Children could be seized in lieu of property, but in a bad crop year teen-aged girls sold for less than a hundredweight of grain, and they had to be fed.

A profit could be turned by making liquor but there was a limit to the amount of grain available for mash and a very restricted market. People were willing enough to drink liquor, but they had nothing with which to pay for it.

There were no savings banks; there was little commerce and less industry. The only thing left to invest in was land. Land was safe, but the returns were small when compared with those from usury because scarcity drove land prices ever upward.* The amount of good land on the market in Long Bow and the surrounding villages was never large while prospective buyers were numerous. Improving the land was out of the question. Irrigation would have doubled yields but the water table was too low for the donkey-powered bucket pumps so common on the plains of Hopei a hundred miles to the east. In order to bring water, a canal several miles long was required—a project that was beyond the power of any one landlord or even of the whole village. For such a project county-wide cooperation and support was necessary, but the bureaucrats of the Yamen (county government) were not interested. So the land remained dry while the waters that drained from the ranges to the East flowed untapped to the North China plain.

Money could have been spent on indigenous fertilizers, better seed, and improved implements, but there was no guarantee of any immediate return. A dry year could make fertilizer useless. Should the yield by chance go up, taxes claimed the increase. Under such conditions no one developed fertilizers, seeds, or implements. The landlord’s surplus grain was converted instead into coinage and buried in the ground.

The loans that were made to the peasants went mainly to cover emergency expenses such as funerals, illnesses, weddings, and the food consumed during the “spring hunger,” rather than for productive improvements such as wells, plows, or stock. Once the money was spent, neither the borrower nor the economy had anything to show for it.

Money spent on land likewise added nothing to the productive forces. It only gave the purchaser the right to demand whatever share of the tenant’s meager crop current social relations allowed. It in no way increased that crop.

Hoarding the remainder of the surplus only deepened and perpetuated the stagnation. A community in desperate need of development could not use the only capital at hand. While a fortune in gold and silver lay in secret caches underground, peasants for whom an ox or a plow might mean prosperity were condemned to starvation; at least half the population sat idle five months of the year because they lacked the resources for handicraft production, for small local industries, even for the mules and carts with which to do transport work once the crops were harvested in the fall. The iron ore in the hill south of Long Bow and the coal in the mountain north of Lucheng were never mined for lack of funds, while thousands of people in the villages between roughed it through the winter like cattle, doing nothing, and eating as little as possible in order to make their grain last until spring.

Unused resources, wasted manpower, declining production—these were the fruits of a system that in the long run could only bring disaster on its victims and beneficiaries alike.

Eating Bitterness

In spring seeds are sown and for each grain planted

Many are harvested; no land is left uncultivated,

Yet still do many peasants die of hunger.

Working with their hoes under the hottest sun,

Their sweat drips down and mingles with the earth.

Who will understand that the food we eat

Has been paid for with such bitter toil?

Li Shen

THE GENTRY of Long Bow—the landlords, the rich peasants, the clan elders, the overseers of temple property and the managers of religious societies—would not have been considered well off in any Western land. Their lives were luxurious only in contrast to the absolute poverty and near starvation of the great mass of the people. They did not live in palaces. They enjoyed none of the conveniences of modern life. In most cases, the only difference between their homes and those of the rest of the population was in the construction materials used. The prosperous built with brick, the poor with adobe. Both materials came from the earth underfoot and the interior plan and conveniences of a brick home differed little from those of a house built of adobe.

What made the lives of the gentry so enviable to the working peasants was the security they enjoyed from hunger and cold. They at least had a roof over their heads. They had warm clothes to wear. They had some silk finery for feast days, wedding celebrations, and funerals. They had quilts to sleep under. They even had fuel for their stoves and for their k’angs.* They had a little variety in their diet. They could eat wheat often and even meat once in a while. The true landlords among them did no manual labor either in the field or in the home. Hired laborers or tenants tilled the fields, servant girls and domestic slaves cooked the meals, sewed, washed and swept up.* The menfolk of these families busied themselves with managerial affairs, money lending, and religious and clan functions. They amused themselves with women, opium smoking, and gambling.

Education was another great advantage which the gentry enjoyed. They often hired special tutors to live in the home and had set up a village school for their progeny. When their young people grew older, they were sent on to middle school (high school) at the county seat, and even to college in Taiyuan or Peking. As college graduates they had a chance to move into the higher bureaucracy, the officer corps of the army, or one of the larger commercial or banking establishments in the provincial capital.

This world of security, relative comfort, influence, position, and leisure was maintained amidst a sea of the most dismal and frightening poverty and hunger—a poverty and hunger which at all times threatened to engulf any family which relaxed its vigilance, took pity on its poor neighbors, failed to extract the last copper of rent and interest, or ceased for an instant the incessant accumulation of grain and money. Those who did not go up went down, and those who went down often went to their deaths or at least to the dissolution and dispersal of their families.

The extremes to which never-ending vigilance had to be carried was demonstrated most clearly when the crops began to ripen. Then every family, whether landlord, middle peasant, or tenant, had to maintain guards in the fields day and night. Toothless old grandmothers and children in split pants hardly big enough to carry a stick stood eternal watch against thieves. To protect these pitiful sentries from the sun at noon and the dew before dawn little shelters of kaoliang stalks or mud bricks mushroomed suddenly on every plot and strip. For weeks at a time almost half the population of every community lodged overnight in the fields, each family keeping an eye on all the rest. Thus both prosperous and poor peasants were forced to expend their often exhausted energies on a guard duty that was sheer waste from the point of view of society, but that meant the difference between life and death to every cropper. Any strip left unwatched was almost sure to be looted by some half-starved family trying to stay alive just a few more days until its own poor crops matured.

To have no crops at all was the worst fate that any peasant could imagine; yet six percent of the population was in exactly such straits. Here is the story told to me by Shen Fa-liang, the boy indentured to Sheng Ching-ho for seven years in order to pay off his father’s $4 debt:

When I first went to work for Sheng Ching-ho I was only 14. All the same I had to do chores around the house. I was too small to carry full buckets, but I had to carry water from the well. I filled the buckets half full and brought them in that way. All the years I worked for Ching-ho I never had a full stomach. I was hungry all the time. Every day he ate solid enough food but he gave me only a little soup with millet in it. You could count the grains that were floating around in the water. Twice I got sick—worn out with work. And I was always cold. I never had food or clothes enough to keep warm. When 1 got sick I couldn’t work. Then the landlord was very angry. He got two men to carry me home so that he wouldn’t have to feed me while I was sick. And he made my father pay for the laborer that took my place. My sickness cost him nothing. My own family had to bear the entire burden.

No matter how hard I worked I couldn’t begin to pay off that debt. By the time I had been there several years we owed him $15 instead of $4. I told him, “It’s no use working for you. No matter what I do the debts get bigger. I want to leave.” But he wouldn’t let me. The contract said seven years, and he held us to it. By that time I had grown up. I could do a man’s work. He finally promised to pay me $10 a year instead of $8. I said I wouldn’t ask for more money and he said he wouldn’t jump the interest on the debt. But even so, it was no use. Whenever I broke anything he made me pay a high price for it. Once there was a long drought. The soil was very hard. He pushed us to finish the hoeing quickly. In my hurry I cracked the handle of the hoe. When he saw it, he was very angry. He knocked several dollars off my year’s wages—enough to buy two new handles—even though that one could still be used. In fact, I did use the hoe for a long time after that. At the end of the year I didn’t get enough wages to buy a pair of pants.

Any small mistake and he blew up. 1 had to carry water through the gate. There was a threshold there and a sharp turn. If I spilled some water on the ground, he cursed me for messing up the courtyard. Once I tore the horse’s collar. He cursed me and my ancestors.. I didn’t dare answer back. I think that was worse than the food and the filthy quarters—not being able to talk back. In those days the landlords’ word was law. They had their way. When it was really hot and they said it was not, we dared not say it was hot; when it really was cold and they said it wasn’t, we dared not say it was cold. Whatever happened we had to listen to them. You could never finish telling of the abuse the landlords gave us.

At the end of each year Ching-ho subtracted all the things he claimed I broke, the time I was sick, and such things. What was left was never enough to pay off the interest on the money, so he kept everything. I got no wage at all. When the seven years were up, I had to tear down two sections of my house, sell the wood and the bricks, and only then was I able to pay Ching-ho off.

Then I went to work for Wang Lai-hsun. I took it for granted that perhaps some other family treated people better but I soon found out that all the crows in the world are black. Lai-hsun’s household was no better. In the famine year I had to sell the rest of my house to live at all. I sold it to Sheng Ching-ho, but the money came too late to save my wife. She was so sick with hunger that she died a few days later. The money did no good at all. I used some of it to bury her. We bought millet with the rest of it. But the millet wasn’t enough to live on, and we had to go out in the hills to dig herbs—wild herbs. Before the year was up all we had left to eat was herbs and weeds and the leaves off the trees.

Even so, the worst days of my life were when I was a child. I often had nothing to eat. In the winter I had no padded clothes to wear. One suit of padded clothes had to last for many years. It was patched over and over again. It wore so thin that it was no better than a summer jacket. How then could I pass the winter? I can’t imagine how we got through. I can’t even remember. When we didn’t have any millet, we drank hot water. If we had any money we bought coal, but most of the time we had none.

What was the happiest day of my life? I haven’t passed any happy days. But if you want to compare, the days since Liberation have been good.

Another story that demonstrates with painful clarity what had to be endured by families of landless peasants is that of Wang Ch’ung-lai’s wife. Wang Ch’ung-lai was the brother by adoption of Wang Lai-hsun, the second-largest landholder in Long Bow. Lai-hsun inherited the Wang family land and wealth but never prospered because he was a hopeless drug addict. In fact, neither he nor his brother, Ch’ung-lai, were true sons of old man Wang. Both were bought as children by the landlord and raised in his home as sons because he had no progeny. When the old man died, his shrewd wife did not fancy dividing the property between two heirs, neither of whom had a legitimate claim. One son was enough to carry out the duties of ancestor worship and produce a new generation. She therefore treated one boy, Lai-hsun, as a son, and the other, Ch’ung-lai, as a servant and hired laborer.

To ensure help in the house the old lady bought Ch’ung-lai a wife. The girl was nine years old at the time, cost the family nine strings of cash, and lived in the home as a servant for six years before she was actually wed to Ch’ung-lai.*

“Being a child wife I was often beaten and cursed by everyone in the family,” she said when telling her life story years later.

At the beginning, since I was only nine, I took care of some sheep and pigs. Every day I went out on the hill to watch the sheep, and when I came back I fed the pigs. At that time Lai-hsun’s first wife was alive and she cooked for the family. The first wife was not so bad, and besides I was out all day. Still, I was beaten by the old lady. It was for no reason except that she thought I didn’t work hard.

I was married at 15. After that it was worse, much worse. That was because Lai-hsun married again and the second wife was most terrible. She never beat me herself; she just complained to the old lady and let her beat me. I was beaten too many times to remember. I was beaten almost every day so it is hard to remember anything special about it.

They ate mien (noodles). I cooked for them but I was not allowed to eat even the leftover noodles. Ch’ung-lai and I ate millet, broth made of screenings, and ground corn.

At that time I thought to myself, “Because I have no parents and these people are so terrible, there is no way out for me.” I often wandered beside the well, but no one wants to jump into the well, so finally I thought it was better to lead a beggar’s life than to kill oneself by one’s own hand, so my hope was to go out and work for others.

One day the mother-in-law broke my arm. The water in the pot was boiling. I asked her what I should cook and how much millet was in the pot. She did not answer. So I asked her again. Then she got angry and beat me. She said I annoyed her and was too stupid. That was the way it usually was. But that time she took up an iron poker and broke my arm with it. My arm hurt so I lay on the k’ang for a fortnight and couldn’t work or even move.

Then Lai-hsun took a knife and threatened us. He said that unless we left he would kill us both. I wanted to go away and find work somewhere else but Ch’ung-lai was afraid. He feared death from hunger, for once we left the family we would never get a thing. But in the end we were driven out anyway; they drove us out barehanded.

Ch’ung-lai went to Taiyuan to pull a rickshaw. He sent back money when he could. I myself cooked for a landlord in Fu-t’sun. Life there was better than at home. Anyway I got enough to eat, and when I asked them what to cook they answered me. Sometimes they even gave me old clothes or rags to wear, and I earned about $1 a month.

After six years we saved enough to buy an acre of land. Then’ came the famine year. Ch’ung-lai had to come home from Taiyuan but he was sick. From the land we got two bags of grain. After paying the tax there was nothing left. Hunger made Ch’ung-lai sicker. By that time I had two children, a boy and a girl. We three went out to beg. Sometimes we had to go very far away and couldn’t get back at night. So often we slept in temples and often we couldn’t find a temple to stay in and had to sleep outdoors. Once I asked the children, “Are you frightened?” They said, “We are not afraid as long as we can find something to eat.”

But because it was a famine year it was very hard to find food. We had to sell the land. We got six bushels of millet and lived a whole year on it. We added whatever we could find to go with it. But it was hard to find anything. There weren’t even any leaves left on the trees.

We went back to Long Bow to beg from Wang Lai-hsun. His whole family still ate well. We knelt down before them and begged for something to eat. We asked pity for the children. “We do not ask things from you. We know there is no hope for us, but we wish you would have some pity on the children for they are your own grandson and granddaughter.”

But they took sticks and beat the children. We stayed there past noon but could not even get a bowl of water from them. So we took the children to other villages and got something. Strangers treated us better than our own relatives.

After the famine year there was a good summer harvest but then we had no land. Ch’ung-lai went to work as a hired laborer, and I cooked out for others as before. We had to leave the children at home alone. Every few days I returned home and gave them a little millet or corn. They themselves went out to beg. At the end of the year I saw that every family had prepared noodles and other good things to eat. I asked the mistress to give me a little corn to take to the children so that they too could pass the New Year. But she only cursed and drove me out.

So I had no job and returned home with a little corn flour that I bought with my wages. When the chidren saw me they wept. We three wept the whole day. My children said to me, “We will beg together and die together rather than live apart.” So we went out to beg again.

After the summer harvest we all went out to glean wheat in the fields. One day I looked up. There was a wolf. He just stood and stared at me. I was frightened. I dared not move. I stared right back at him. My daughter saw the wolf and ran, but the wolf chased her and caught her. I couldn’t move. I only stood there and watched the wolf open his great mouth and bite my daughter. My son cried, “See how big the mouth is and the terrible red tongue!”

At this moment a cart passed on the road. The men in the cart jumped out and began to beat the wolf. Still I stood frozen to the spot. The men drove the wolf away. They called me. My daughter was still alive. When I went up to her, I saw that the wolf had bitten a big piece of flesh from her leg and slashed her cheeks but her eyes were clear and stared at me. I clasped her to my breast and tried to carry her home, but after a little while she died. Still I held her dead body. Then I fainted and the carters put me in the cart with the boy. They left her little body in the field and carried me home. When I recovered consciousness, I was in a stupor. Every day I just sat behind closed doors and said, “The wolf is coming! The wolf is coming!” The neighbors pitied me and sent a little food.

These life stories reflect but a small fraction of the chronic social tragedy that permeated the community and the society at large. The extreme hardship borne by Shen Fa-liang and Wang Ch’ung-lai and his wife did not surpass in degree the sufferings endured by many other poor peasants in Long Bow, in the neighboring villages, and in thousands of similar villages scattered throughout China. The following are only a few incidents culled at random from the life stories of peasants with whom I talked.

• There were three famine years in a row. The whole family went out to beg things to eat. In Chinchang City conditions were very bad. Many mothers threw newborn children into the river. Many children wandered about on the streets and couldn’t find their parents. We had to sell our eldest daughter. She was then already 14. Better to move than to die, we thought. We sold what few things we had. We took our patched quilt on a carrying pole and set out for Changchih with the little boy in the basket on the other end. He cried all the way from hunger. We rested before a gate. Because the boy wept so bitterly a woman came out. We stayed there three days. On the fourth morning the woman said she wanted to buy the boy. We put him on the k’ang. He fell asleep. In the next room we were paid five silver dollars. Then they drove us out. They were afraid when the boy woke up he would cry for his mother. My heart was so bitter. To sell one’s own child was such a painful thing. We wept all day on the road.

• I almost starved to death. One day I lay on the street. A cart came along. The driver yelled at me to move. I was too weak. I didn’t care if he drove over me or not. He finally had to drive around me.

• During the famine we ate leaves and the remnants from vinegar making. We were so weak and hungry we couldn’t walk. I went out to the hills to get leaves and there the people were fighting each other over the leaves on the trees. My little sister starved to death. My brother’s wife couldn’t bear the hunger and ran away and never came back. My cousin was forced to become a landlord’s concubine.

• I and the children worked for others thinning millet. We got only half a quart of grain. For each meal we cooked only a fistful with some weeds in it. The children’s stomachs were swollen and every bone in their bodies stuck through their skin. After a while the little boy couldn’t get up. He just lay on the k’ang sick with dysentery and many, many worms, a whole basin full of worms crawled out from his behind. Even after he was dead the worms kept coming out. The little girl had no milk from me, for I had nothing to eat myself, so, of course, she died.

People could not speak of the past without weeping. Nor could one listen to their stories dry-eyed. Yet, as the details piled up, horror on horror, one’s senses became dulled. The barbarity, the cruelty, the terror of the old life was so overwhelming that in time it ceased to shock. One began to take for granted that worms crawled from dying children, that women and children were bought and sold like cattle, that people were beaten to death, they they fought each other for the leaves on the trees. The impossible took on the aura of the commonplace.

The most terrible thing about the conditions of life in Long Bow in those days was not any single aspect of the all but universal misery; it was that there was no hope of change. The fearful tragedy played and replayed itself without end. Insofar as things did change, they changed for the worse as the crisis of China’s social system deepened. For the majority of the peasants who, like Shen Fa-liang and Ch’ung-lai’s wife, were caught in the downward drift, conditions became more and more intolerable as time went on.*

Some of the decline can be attributed to the economic dislocations and social disorders generic to periods of dynastic decay. More important was the unprecedented intervention from abroad which began around 1840. One immediate consequence of intervention was a whole series of wars which sapped the country’s reserves. These wars, defensive in nature as the Western powers invaded, became fratricidal as these same powers backed one warlord against another for spheres of influence, or their favorite of the moment against popular resistance. The trading and investment concessions accruing to the victors enabled foreigners to transfer substantial quantities of real wealth from the “underdeveloped East” to the advanced industrial West and Japan.

This bleeding away of sorely needed capital was aggravated by the simultaneous destruction of capital formation in important handicraft industries. Large-scale importation of cheap, machine-made goods undermined one sector of the economy after the other. This was especially true of the textile trades. Millions of weavers, unable to compete with the power-driven looms of Lancaster, Tokyo, and later Shanghai, lost their main means of livelihood and were thrown into the swelling stream of those bidding for the scarce and already depleted land.

The rising tide of landless and destitute people enabled landowners to stiffen the terms of tenancy, to raise rents and jack up interest rates. It enabled grain dealers to force harvest time prices lower and winter and spring prices higher. It enabled merchants to widen the gap between farm produce and industrial products. Not only the laborers and tenants but also the land-owning middle peasants felt the squeeze more and more. To maintain bare subsistence they had to increase working hours, get up earlier, finish later, and work harder on the job. Even then they could not make ends meet. They had to go ever more frequently to the money-lender and, once saddled with debt, found it impossible to break free. It was an exceptional family in Long Bow that did not owe the equivalent of several years’ earnings.

People said, “The debts of the poor begin at birth. When a boy is a month old the family wishes to celebrate; but they have to borrow money in order to make dumplings and so, before the child can sit up, he is already in debt to the landlord. As he grows the interest mounts until the burden is too great to bear.”

Weighed down by high interest rates, harassed by heavy taxes, caught in the snares of a rigged market, many landowning peasants went bankrupt, sold out their holdings strip by strip, and ended up with the yoke of rent around their necks, or left for the city hoping to find some work in industry or transport that would keep them alive. Others became soldiers in the armies of the warlords or joined local bandit gangs.

“There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him,” wrote R. H. Tawney in 1932.* The Fifth District of Lucheng County was such a district and Long Bow such a place.

Three Pillars of Heaven

A man is poor,

Ever thinner, ever blacker,

Goes to borrow fifty coins,

Is asked a hundred in return,

Turns to go,

Knows he’s taken for a thief;

A man is rich,

Ever fatter, ever whiter,

Goes to borrow fifty pieces,

Has a hundred pressed upon him,

Turns to go,

Is urged to stay and drink.

Shantung Chant

DROWNING MEN are prone to violence.

With so many of Long Bow’s peasants on the verge of ruin, how did a handful of landlord and rich peasant families maintain their system of exploitation? How did they enforce the payment of rent and interest through years of famine and war? How did they protect their hoarded wealth from looting and seizure by their tenants and hired laborers who, after all, needed only to join together to bring the whole system down?

To answer this question one would have to examine the whole superstructure of China—political, military, religious, and cultural—and beyond that, the policies of the imperialist powers who propped that superstructure up with loans and arms, even while they attacked with modern industry and commerce the economic foundation upon which it rested.

There is no space here for such an exhaustive study. I can only try to describe in brief how a small group of gentry dominated Long Bow Village itself. The reader must keep in mind that at all times much greater power than could possibly be mustered locally hovered in the background in the shape of county, provincial, and national officials and the armed forces under their control. Helpless as they proved to be in defending the country against external attack, they were usually adequate to the task of crushing internal revolt and could always be called upon to protect the interests of those few families who stood to gain from the preservation of the old agrarian system.

That a few families ran the affairs of Long Bow Village was well known to the whole population. In the 1920’s, the village even achieved a certain notoriety because of the “Eight Squires” who cooperated with a group of foreign priests in an effort to make converts to Catholicism. These eight were Yang, Li, Wang, Kao, Sheng, Liu, and the two Fans. By the early 1940’s Kao and Liu were no longer influential, having been replaced by Shih, Ch’eng, and Kuo, but there were still eight or ten powerful families and they still dominated the village. By consulting together, by acting in unison when that counted most, and by the backing they gave to whomever they chose to openly manage affairs, this group maintained a virtual monopoly of power. This is not to imply that they were all equally active, that they acted without friction and jealousy among themselves, or that they ruled without allies among other strata of the population. Four families took the lead. These were Sheng, Fan, Shih, and Kuo. They had the backing of the other families of means and brought certain middle peasants and even poor peasants into the ruling circle to carry out routine tasks and to share, to some extent, in the spoils. As for the rest of the population, they occupied the position of the mighty stone tortoises who stood in front of the grave mounds of the gentry, bearing forever on their backs the stone obelisks which the wealthy loved to erect for their dead. The policy of the gentry toward them was to deceive, intimidate, divide and rule.

The rule exercised by this group of gentry rested on several pillars, not the least of which was tradition. Several thousand years of Confucian teachings had established a climate of opinion in which no one, or at best only a few persons in the whole village, questioned the system as such. Rich and poor alike looked on land ownership as the most important form of property, the foundation of family life, and the basis for the proper observance of ancestral rites, as well as the security of future generations. The more land the better. Everyone wanted to own land, bought additional land when he could, and if he succeeded in buying more than he could work, saw nothing wrong in renting it out. Success in this scramble for land was regarded as a reward for virtuous living and right thinking.

Viewed in this frame of reference the expropriation of a large part of the wealth of Long Bow by a few families—which was in essence a form of armed plunder—presented itself as a demonstration of moral law. And if this was too hard for the land-poor to swallow (the virtue of the gentry was often most conspicuous by its absence), they could always blame the fates. The rich were rich, so their tenants were taught to reason, because they were born under a lucky star; and the poor were poor because the heavens were out of joint when they emerged from the womb. This could be determined by an examination of the eight characters.* An even more potent variation on this theme was belief in geomancy, or the magical influence of burial grounds. The rich prospered, it was said, because their fathers were buried in auspicious places in relation to flanking hills, flowing water, and the prevailing winds. The poor were poor because their fathers were buried in the wrong places. Since the rich, with the help of professional geomancers could often pick their spot while the poor had to be content with whatever sorry ditch they were thrown into, this fate had an inevitability that was hard to beat.

The squires of Long Bow did not leave the propagation of such attitudes to chance. They actively supported all the various ways and means by which “right thinking” could be impressed upon the people. A village school for that small minority able to attend emphasized the study of The Four Books and The Five Classics of Confucius; operas at New Year’s drove home the theme of the contrasting rewards of virtue and vice; a Confucian Association promoted ancestor worship and provided mediums who could converse with the spirits of the dead; a temple society kept Buddhism, with its passive acceptance of fate, alive. In later years the Catholic Church, with its centuries of experience in the defense of European feudalism and feudal remnants, became a most stalwart bulwark against social change.

At the same time Sheng Ching-ho and his peers in Long Bow were not so naive as to believe that the cultivation of “right thinking” alone was sufficient guarantee of their position and property. Sanctions more concrete than the teachings of the sages were needed to maintain the collection of rents and the settlement of debts in Long Bow. A more practical pillar on which the rule of the gentry rested was thus the village government with its power to tax, arrest, flog, fine, and ultimately to execute.

The structure of this government was not complicated. At its apex stood the village head or ts’un chang. He was assisted by several staff members: a village secretary who kept accounts, handled correspondence, and issued licenses and documents; a public affairs officer who allocated labor service;* and a village constable who made arrests, administered punishments, and kept the local lockup. None of these positions carried any regular salary, but they placed a man in a position to make a silver dollar by one means or another.

In Long Bow, with its population of close to 1,000, intermediate levels of organization were also deemed necessary. There were three or four lu chang or neighborhood leaders and twenty odd chia chang or heads of ten family groups.

As a guarantee that the orders of these officials would be carried out, the village maintained a Peace Preservation Corps boasting several dozen rifles shouldered on a part-time basis by chronically underemployed young men who, for a little millet, a few personal favors, perhaps a fix of heroin, and a chance to bully, loot, and rape could be depended on to do the will of the gentry.

From the village head to the ten family leaders all of the officials were locally chosen, but they were by no means chosen by universal suffrage. As a matter of fact, insofar as I could determine, no general election had ever been held at any time for any position in the whole history of the village. The office of village head was simply assumed by one or another of the gentry after consultation with the rest, or was parcelled out, after similar consultation, to some person of lesser means who had earned their esteem. The same method was used in filling the rest of the posts. Once the personnel had been selected they were usually confirmed in office by the district head or the county magistrate who cared not one kaoliang stalk as to their fitness for the work, so long as the local gentry were satisfied with them.

To qualify as a village official one had to be fluent, unscrupulous, ingratiating when dealing with those of superior station and threatening when dealing with poorer and weaker persons. Above all one had to be willing to submit to the whims of the gentry and not feel humiliated when ordered to carry out some business for them.

The peasants had their own less than flattering title for such people. They called them kou t’ui-tzu, which means “leg of the dog.”

It can be readily understood that such an administration did not serve people impartially. As far as the higher authorities were concerned, the main purpose of the village government was the collection of taxes, the supply of manpower for public works, and the conscription of soldiers. As long as the extremely heavy quotas in these three spheres were met, no one cared how they were distributed. The gentry saw to it that their own obligations were as light as possible. They avoided taxes whenever they could and made up the difference with extra levies on the rest of the population; they sent middle and poor peasants to move earth, build roads, and repair the fortress-like walls of important villages and towns, while they themselves stayed at home; they conscripted their tenants and laborers for the army, while their own sons went to school.

These evasions of public duty were all dividends that came with control over the village administration. More important in the long run was the leverage over the peasants which the power to distribute the quotas at lower levels gave to those in control. There were many ways in which an obstinate peasant could be taught to bow his head. He could be ordered to haul grain for some warlord in the middle of the planting season. His only son could be tied up and dragged off to the army. His deeds could be doctored to cheat him of land. Taxes could be piled on taxes until he went under. The Peace Preservation Corps could “accidentally” march through his crops. He could be entered in the special register reserved for criminals and thieves. He could be discriminated against in the arbitration of disputes.

There were always bitter quarrels among the peasants over the use of privies, the ownership of trees, the exact boundaries of fields, the possession of women, and many other matters. A peasant who was out of favor with the authorities could easily get the worst of any settlement. A minor case, picked at random from the life of Long Bow Village, will serve to show how this worked.

One day a fairly prosperous middle peasant and cloth peddler, Li Pao-yu, found out that his neighbor Hsiao-tseng often slept with his wife while he himself was away buying cloth. Since he was older and much less solidly put together than Hsiao-tseng, Pao-yu complained to the village office. An investigation proved the truth of the complaint. The village head thereupon ordered both the wife and her lover flogged. After the flogging the two were hung by the arms from the gable of the village office for eight hours. Then the village head fined them both several silver dollars. Since his wife had no money of her own, Pao-yu had to pay the fine. Even though Hsiao-tseng continued to consort with the woman, poor Pao-yu never complained again. He didn’t want to part with more silver dollars.

To the extent that Pao-yu’s wife was actually to blame, a certain rough justice was meted out in this case, but Pao-yu certainly felt that he had been cheated and so, almost invariably, did other peasants who went with complaints to the village office. Without influence one might as well appeal to a mud wall. And so, when disputes arose among the poor, they were usually settled by force. The strong won the day and the weak “ate bitterness.” Just so long as the quarrel did not affect the revenue of the gentry, no one in authority cared how unjust the settlement was.

If one peasant could be discriminated against, another could be favored. As a reward for loyal service and good behavior a man could be given light labor service at convenient times. Lucrative contracts for the supply of materials (such as kaoliang stalks for flood control) could be thrown his way. His sons could be passed over as conscripts and left to help with the field work at home or recommended for good positions at the county seat. He could be assured of a sympathetic hearing in case he had a dispute with anyone else.

But even such a system of favors and penalties did not guarantee permanent control of village life. There was always the danger that the patient tortoise might upset the obelisk altogether. Physical force, naked and unadorned, was therefore the third important pedestal on which the power of the gentry in Long Bow rested. Violence was chronic at all levels of human relationship. Husbands beat their wives, mothers-in-law beat their daughters-in-law, peasants beat their children, landlords beat their tenants, and the Peace Preservation Corps beat anyone who got in the way. The only living creatures that could hope to avoid beatings, it seemed, were adult male gentry and draft animals—the donkeys, mules, horses, oxen, and cows that were the basis of Long Bow’s agriculture.*

Violence reached its zenith in relations between landlord and tenant, creditor and debtor. The gentry literally held the power of life and death over the peasants and personally carried out whatever punitive measures they deemed necessary when their interests were damaged or threatened. If they caught a thief, he was dealt with on the spot. One famine year a Long Bow peasant child, only six years old, stole some leaves from a tree belonging to his father’s employer. The landlord caught the boy, beat him black and blue with a stout stick, and docked his father $12. This amounted to the father’s earnings for the entire year. He had to borrow money from a relative to get through the winter and was still paying off the debt a decade later.

In the village of Sand Bank, not far to the west of Long Bow, a poor peasant named Hou took a few ears of ripe corn from the field of a rich relative named Hou Yu-fu. Hou Yu-fu caught the culprit, dragged him into an open yard in the village, had him strung to a tree, and personally flogged him until he lost consciousness. Not long afterwards this man died of internal injuries.

Similar direct action was taken when rent fell in arrears or interest went unpaid. Then the landlord went in person to the home of his tenant and demanded the grain due him. If it was not forthcoming, he drove the peasant off the land or out of the house. If the peasant resisted, the landlord or one of his retainers beat him.

Should a peasant attempt to defend himself, affairs could easily take a very ugly turn. One Taihang peasant struck back at a landlord who raped his wife. He was hung by the hair of his head and beaten until his scalp separated from his skull. He fell to the ground and bled to death.

Only if the landlord found it impossible to cope with a peasant did he go to the village government for help. Then the constable, who carried a revolver, and a few stalwarts from the Peace Preservation Corps armed with rifles, soon straightened out the matter. Should the local forces prove inadequate the rifles of the whole district could easily be concentrated on one village and if this was not enough, the county magistrate had at his disposal a standing force of several score armed men in permanent garrison.

Little wonder that the peasants seldom resisted the demands of the gentry. They knew only too well what would happen to them if they struck back. In their own experience and in the history of the region there was no lack of precedents.

In most cases involving disputes with peasants, direct action by the gentry, backed up when necessary by the armed forces of the village government, was enough to preserve law and order. But this was not so when the gentry themselves fell out. Since the village head was only their servant, or at best their peer, the most he could do was mediate. He could not impose a solution. When mediation failed there was no recourse but to enter a lawsuit at the county court or Yamen. There cases were fought out with a full regalia of lawyers, briefs, counter-briefs, witnesses, and liberal handouts to all and sundry. Public morality being what it was, the family with the most resources, the best connections, and the least scruples usually won. The loser was often punished with a public flogging and, in addition, was required to throw a banquet for the entertainment of all involved, at which time the public apologies were offered that wound up the case.

So ruinous were court cases that most families avoided them like the plague. If they were unable to settle matters out of court, their quarrels could harden into feuds in the course of which each family in the dispute tried to damage the persons and property of the other. To repay an insult or avenge an injury, gangs were organized, beatings administered, crops fired, wells plugged, carts and implements broken, trees cut down, women and children kidnapped, and men murdered.

The impassive mud walls of Long Bow thus harbored a never-ending “war of all against all” which absorbed a great part of the energy of the people and tended to conceal that basic conflict, the struggle between the gentry and the peasants over the fruits of the land, which would eventually overwhelm everything else.

It was this background of corruption, favoritism, influence peddling, and violence that drove many a young peasant into the gangster-type secret societies such as the “Red Rifles” that were endemic in the region. It was this same background that made it possible for certain powerful gentry to organize their own private armed forces, oppress and rob people at will, loot and rape and murder without fear of reprisal, and, when successful, build themselves up into local warlords with power over whole districts, whole counties, and even provinces. Between raids and debaucheries their rifles were always available for the suppression of revolt and many an adventurer built a career and fortune looting and killing under the guise of hunting rebels and, in later years, Communists. Yang Hu-sheng, for many years the warlord of neighboring Shensi Province, and one of the men who kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek in Sian in 1936, started out as a soldier-bandit in command of a small armed detachment.

The gentry who operated gangs on a village or district level were known as opa or “local despots.” In the 1940’s Long Bow had its own local despot, Fan Tung-hsi (son of Fan Pu-tzu), but since his exploits more properly belong to the period of the Japanese War they will be dealt with in a later chapter.

When agrarian revolt flared in isolated parts of China after the suppression of the Great Revolution in 1927, neither the legitimate gangs of the village politicians nor the illegitimate gangs of the local despots were enough to suppress them. Then Chiang Kai-shek introduced additional forms of control into every village reached by his power—the pao-chia system of mutual responsibility, and the Kuomintang Party organization.

The pao-chia system was a variant of the traditional lu (neighborhood) and chia (10-family group) system already described. The ten families of the chia and the hundred families of the pao (the lu was an intermediate level) were held collectively responsible for the activities of each and every one of their members. Key individuals were expected to report their neighbors’ every move, and everyone was punished when any member of the group was suspected of involvement in revolutionary activity. Mass executions were carried out under the slogan: “Better to kill one hundred innocent people than to allow one Communist to escape.”

Shansi was one of the provinces where a reign of terror was instituted along these lines in the 1930’s. Many peasants were seized and killed in Lucheng County and young men dared not leave home to look for work for fear of being picked up as agitators. Taking a defiant attitude or wearing a red scarf was enough to cause suspicion.

Since family and class loyalties tended to be far stronger than any loyalty to national or local government it is doubtful if the pao-chia system was very effective in rooting out subversion. A much better instrument for this purpose was the Kuomintang Party, which recruited as members young gentry such as Fan Tung-hsi and built with their aid a counter-revolutionary political force able to gather intelligence, expose suspects, and co-ordinate activities over a wide area. Around this hard core of diehard gentry were gathered teachers, students, officials, and persons of normal ambition in public life. For such people as these a Kuomintang membership card was obligatory.

In Long Bow most of the leading gentry and their “dog’s legs” were Kuomintang members. They agitated in favor of that peculiar blend of nationalism, fascism and Confucianism immortalized by Chiang Kai-shek in his book, China’s Destiny, maintained strict thought control over all village life, and mobilized the landlord class for a showdown with the rising peasant revolution.

The ruthless way in which the slightest defiance on the part of tenants and laborers was suppressed over the years created in the peasants a deep, almost instinctive, reluctance to mount an attack against the power of the gentry. Revolt after revolt had been crushed during 20 centuries of gentry rule. Those who raised their heads to lead them had either been bought off or had had their heads severed. Their followers had been cut to pieces, burned, flayed, or buried alive. Gentry in the Taihang proudly showed foreign visitors leather articles made from human skin. Such events and such mementos were a part of the cultural heritage of every peasant in China. Traditions of ruthless suppression were handed down in song and legend, and memorialized in the operas which were so popular everywhere.

It is no wonder, then, that only the most severe provocation could overcome the peasants’ great reluctance to act, and set them in motion. But once in motion they tended to extremes of cruelty and violence. If they struck, they struck to kill, for common sense and millenniums of painful experience told them that if they did not, their enemies would inevitably return another day to kill them.

The extreme and often misdirected violence of peasant uprisings in China was an indication of certain basic weaknesses in the peasants as a political force, weaknesses which were cultivated anew in each generation by the very nature of the fragmented, small-holding, peddlers’ economy in which they were all reared.

The first of these weaknesses was an all-pervading individualism engendered by the endless, personal struggle to acquire a little land and to beat out the other fellow in the market place. Peasants individually driven to bankruptcy viewed economic disaster not as a social but as a personal matter, to be solved in isolation by whatever means came to hand. This essentially divisive and selfish approach made co-operation between peasants on any level other than the family extremely difficult, greatly increased the leverage of the gentry’s divide-and-rule tactics, and made inevitable the corruption of a certain percentage of peasant leaders who, when they found a way out themselves, abandoned their brothers.

A second crucial weakness was the lack of vision that arose directly out of small-scale production with its rudimentary division of labor and indirectly out of the cultural isolation which this type of economy, with its limited market, imposed on the community. Of the great waves of political, cultural, and scientific thought that broke on China’s shores in the early twentieth century scarcely a ripple reached such inland villages as Long Bow. The peasants heard little provincial, less national, and almost no world news. Less than one person in ten could read. Completely absorbed in crop production, family life, and the desperate battle for daily survival, they were true victims of the “idiocy of village life.”

As victims of village idiocy the peasants had little opportunity to learn of large-scale production and the potential abundance that it offered mankind. Their idea of the good society was one in which everyone had a plot of land, a roof overhead, clothes to wear, and wheat dumplings to eat. The equalitarianism they dreamed of was noble, but it was also Utopian—there being no conceivable way in which every family could enjoy a prosperous life on a long-term basis as long as production was atomized by small private holdings and cursed with primitive technique. Even if all the means of production could be equally divided, what was to prevent the old process of differentiation which had originally produced landlord and tenant from producing them all over again?

Only a new set of social and productive relations could break through the vicious circle, release China’s productive power, and open the road to a prosperous future. But of new sets of social relations, of other modes of production, the peasants knew nothing, could imagine nothing, and hence had no beacons to guide them in any search for liberation. They were in the position of a man trying to survey the sky while imprisoned at the bottom of a well.

The despair of men standing up to their necks in water coupled with the ignorance engendered by a “well-bottom” view of social relations led inevitably to impetuosity in action—a third great weakness of the peasants. Because they so desperately wanted a way out they deluded themselves about the difficulties involved. They thought in terms of short, drastic action to divide existing wealth rather than the “hundred-year great task” of releasing and creating new productive forces through a fundamental transformation of society. Therefore, when they did act, they were not prepared for two or three years, not to mention decades, of bitter struggle and were easily discouraged when revolt did not quickly bring any improvement in their situation. Armed uprisings almost always ended in a self-defeating, Robin-Hood-type banditry because the peasants did not see the need for, or were unwilling to undertake, the long hard mobilization of the whole laboring population that alone could transform society and bring about their liberation. A temporary, partial victory could elate these roving insurgents, but a minor defeat could plunge them into black despair, and even cause them to abandon the campaign altogether.

Mao Tse-tung, long before he became chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, catalogued the weaknesses exhibited by peasants as revolutionary soldiers. Among them were:

(1) The purely military viewpoint—a tendency to regard fighting as the only task of the army; avoidance of such political tasks as educating and organizing the mass of the people, arming them, and helping them to establish their own political power. Without this political work the whole fight lost its meaning and the revolutionary his reason for existence.

(2) Extreme democracy—aversion to discipline, each commander and each soldier going his own way in a carefree manner.

(3) Absolute equalitarianism—a demand that everyone be treated alike regardless of circumstances; opposition to extra rations for wounded soldiers, horses for officers who had to travel, lighter loads for older persons and the sick, etc.

(4) Subjectivism—holding opinions and voicing criticisms without a realistic examination of the facts and without regard for political principle; basing opinions on random talk and wishful thinking; focusing criticism on minor issues, petty defects, and personal quirks. All of these could only lead to mutual suspicion and unprincipled quarrelling between people.

(5) Individualism—vindictiveness, cliquism, the mercenary viewpoint; holding oneself responsible to individual leaders rather than to the revolution as a whole; hedonism—an urgent desire for personal comfort and pleasure, a longing to leave the hard life of struggle and find some softer spot.

(6) The idea of roving insurgents—military opportunism, avoidance of hard political organizing in favor of “hiring men and buying horses”; living off the land like any ordinary bandit.

(7) Adventurism—acting blindly regardless of conditions and the state of mind of one’s forces; slack discipline on the one hand but corporal punishment and the execution of deserters on the other; attempting to enforce rather than to inspire loyalty to the cause.*

The gentry of Long Bow were well aware of these weaknesses of the peasants. They played on them to prevent any challenge to their rule before the Revolution began and counted on them to disrupt the Revolution once it got under way.

The Teaching of the Lord of Heaven

What would you say if I sent bonzes and lamas to preach in your country?

Emperor Ch’ien Lung

IN 1916 the outward calm of Long Bow Village was disrupted by unprecedented activity. Long lines of carts hauled grey bricks from kilns in many parts of the county and unloaded them in the village square. Local contractors hired masons from as far away as Wuan and Hantan, at the edge of the Hopei plain, to lay the brick. Slowly, in the very center of the community, a large Gothic-style church arose—the first architectural innovation in a thousand years. A tall, square tower that thrust above every other structure in the neighborhood topped the church and served as a landmark that could be seen for miles around. This tower would have made Long Bow unique had it not been for the fact that even taller, more ostentatious towers were constructed in other nearby villages at about the same time—at Kao Settlement, Horse Square, and South Temple, to name but a few.

These churches were built under the direction of Catholic missionaries from Europe who established a firm base in Lucheng County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and converted a significant minority of the peasants to their faith. No analysis of the dominant forces in Long Bow in the decades preceding the Revolution would be complete, therefore, without a description of the Tien Chu Chiao or “Lord of Heaven Teaching” brought by these fathers. Though the Church did nothing to modify the land system or the landlord-tenant relationship based on it—on the contrary, it reinforced them by its teachings, and by becoming a landholder in its own right—it did serve as the opening wedge for Western influence. By disrupting and dividing the community, demanding special privileges for its converts, engendering cliques and counter-cliques, imposing humiliations on civil and religious leaders alike, it won for itself the bitter hatred of the majority outside the Church. Its influence, even after it disappeared as an organized force, was deep and lasting.

The first missionaries arrived in the Taihang Mountains in the decade after 1840, following the defeat of China in the First Opium War. They were Italian Franciscans. In the latter part of the nineteenth century these Italians were reinforced by French and Dutch priests of the same order. From all that I could learn in Long Bow, it was the Dutch who concentrated in the Shangtang region and built the mission in Changchih to which the church in Long Bow was a satellite.

The Franciscan fathers, once they gained admission to the region, went vigorously to work; they bought land, built buildings, brought in Catholic converts from other areas, and set up small Christian communities. Through the Chinese Christians as intermediaries, rather than through preaching or evangelism, they hoped to reach out to the local people and eventually establish entire Catholic villages and even Catholic counties.

With each defeat suffered by the Ch’ing Dynasty at the hands of the Western powers, greater and greater concessions were granted to the Catholic missionaries, all of whom, regardless of nationality, were under French protection. The French government lost no opportunity to win special privileges and powers for foreign priests, which enabled them to influence the population around them more effectively and to gain converts.

The treaties forced on the Chinese government by the Second Opium War (1856-1860)

placed not only missionaries, but Chinese Christians under the aegis of foreign powers. This gave to the converts a certain assurance of protection and stimulated the numerical growth of the church. The provision had, however, implications and results which were, to say the least, unfortunate. It tended to remove Chinese Christians from the jurisdiction of their government and make of Christian communities imperia in imperio, widely scattered enclaves under the defense of aliens.*

Missionaries usurped the powers of civil officials over their converts; and it was not surprising to find that

Catholic missionaries interfered from time to time in lawsuits in which Christians were one of the parties. Sometimes a mere gesture from a missionary—a visit or his card—was enough to obtain a decision in favor of a convert, for the official did not wish to become embroiled with foreigners who, through their consuls and ministers, could make trouble for him with his superiors. It is not strange, then, that individuals and families and even entire clans and villages professed conversion in the hope of obtaining support against an adversary.**

Nor was it so strange that by the end of the nineteenth century “the confusion between the Christian religion and European politics had become inextricable. The missionaries profit from Europe’s armed might and suffer from the hatred it arouses.”*

In 1899, under French pressure, an imperial rescript was issued which granted to Catholic bishops—all of whom were foreigners—equal rank with regional viceroys and provincial governors, and to foreign priests equal rank with provincial treasurers, provincial judges, and county magistrates. This only confirmed and made official a practice which had been growing since 1860. Bishops had long flaunted official buttons, caused cannons to be fired when they arrived in town, had an umbrella (a Chinese sign of rank) carried ahead of them, and issued proclamations in forms similar to those used by officials.**

Such factors as these, at a time when the great powers were quite openly preparing to divide up China, led the peasant rebels of 1900—the Boxers—into anti-foreign and anti-missionary action.

Shansi Province, under Governor Yu Hsien, was one of the storm centers of this revolt. In the Shangtang area Catholic churches were sacked, Catholic priests and their Christian converts killed, and Catholic property seized.

Due in part to the treachery of the Empress Dowager, who pretended to back the movement while at the same time encouraging foreign intervention to crush it, and in part to the spontaneous, poorly organized nature of the Boxers themselves, the rebellion failed.† A joint expedition of eight powers marched to Peking, sacked the city, and forced on the government a treaty which demanded, among other things, the execution of various leaders of the rebellion, 450 million silver dollars in indemnities and the death penalty for any Chinese who joined an anti-foreign society in the future.

Overnight the situation in the Shangtang was reversed. From almost complete rout, the Catholic missions came back stronger than ever. Over two million dollars of the indemnity money was turned over to the Franciscans in Changchih and they began to build churches, settle Catholic believers, and win converts on an increasingly large scale.

In the two decades that followed the Boxer Rebellion, 57 churches were built in Lucheng County alone—along with rectories, nunneries, seminaries, and orphanages. Enormous compounds of brick and stone rose from the ground. With this “renaissance” the church threatened to become the dominant community organization in the region. For many years people dared not openly oppose what the church initiated, carried on their Buddhist rites in secret, and lived in fear of exposure to the priests.

It was during this period that the huge church in Long Bow was built. Even before the structure itself was completed, a concerted drive for new membership was launched by the Dutch fathers. This drive, as it was described to me by villagers who remembered it, took many forms.

First, the Church brought in Catholic families from villages where larger Christian communities existed. Some of these families were recruited locally, and some came from as far away as the Hopei plain. These immigrants were settled on land belonging to the Church or its auxiliary organizations, or on land of local gentry who had been converted. Thus the nucleus of Catholics in Long Bow was greatly enlarged. Second, the Church used charity to attract new members. Reliable Catholics who had stood by the Church during the rebellion received four ounces of silver per person from the Boxer indemnity funds. Similar favors in the form of money and grain were handed out, especially in poor crop years, to those who would agree to enter the Church and study its doctrines. In this way many poor people in desperate need were drawn into the fold.

A third great source of recruits was the orphanage that was housed in an extensive complex of buildings adjoining the Church. Because the peasants lived from year to year on the verge of starvation and in bad years often died themselves, it was impossible for them to raise all their children. Boys, when they grew up, stayed home to help support their parents. Therefore every effort was made to save them. But girls, after 12 years of feeding, could only be sold for a few bags of grain, or given in marriage for the equivalent of a few dollars. Therefore in times of distress girl children were sometimes abandoned or even killed at birth. The orphanage in Long Bow was built specifically to care for such abandoned children. From picking up babies in the streets and fields, the custom developed of accepting babies directly from their parents, or even of paying modest sums for girl children in order to encourage their mothers to part with them. Once they become the property of the orphanage, the infants were farmed out to wet nurses, in some cases their own mothers, until old enough to eat millet. They were then reclaimed by the Church to be raised as Catholics.

At a very early age these girls were put to work cleaning, cooking, and sewing. Certain products of their labor were sold on the market to provide a source of income for the orphanage and the Church.

Having paid their way by long hours of toil—the older girls often worked up to 12 or even 14 hours a day—the young women were betrothed in their early teens to local peddlers, traders, peasants, or soldiers in return for a substantial remuneration. This not only helped the Church financially, but also insured new converts and a younger generation brought up as Catholics. For in order to obtain a wife from the orphanage the husband had to promise to become a Catholic, and any children resulting from the union were automatically pledged to the faith. Since the orphanage was the main source of unpromised brides, and since its prices were about one-third lower than the average in the region, many poor peasants who wanted to get married had little alternative but to buy a Catholic wife.

If the operation of the orphanage created ill will and distrust, the economic activities of the Church sharply aggravated this feeling. The institution through which the financial affairs of the Church in Long Bow were handled was called the Chin Hsing Hui, or “Carry-On Society.” This was ostensibly a charitable organization set up after the 1911 revolution to help fellow Christians in distress. The Catholic peasants were taught that by contributing to it they would earn merit in the eyes of God and get to heaven faster after death. When members of the group died all the Catholics in the village prayed for their souls. Those who did not join got no such support in the after-life. Many poor peasants contributed a coin or half a coin to this venture. In the beginning the total capital was about three ch’uan (altogether about one-third of a silver dollar). By loaning this money out at high interest rates amounting to 30 percent a month, the Society made money, bought land, and acquired land through default on loans. By the late 1930’s the Society owned 30 acres of land, collected rent from 25 tenant families, and extracted interest from another 32. It was the largest single landholder in the village.

Loans from the Society were given out with a written contract that was standard for the whole region and included many oppressive clauses not ordinarily stipulated by landlord-usurers. Article Six of this contract forced any debtor who was in default to pay the travel fees of the collectors who came to demand the money. The fee demanded was ten cents for every ten li (three miles) traveled, plus room and board if the trip involved an overnight journey. (Lest anyone wonder why there should be travel fees for collecting Long Bow loans, it should be explained that this was for loans made from the central office at the Cathedral in Changchih.) The seventh article called for an additional five percent per month interest on all defaulted debts, and this interest was compounded.

Of the 32 families in Long Bow who owed money to the Society in its last years, three were forced to sell all the land they had in order to clear their debts. Another three sold their houses. The Society occupied by force the land of another three. Other families sold sons, daughters, and draft animals to pay off their debts.

Since the Society, as a religious institution, paid no taxes on the land it owned, the tenants had to pay all levies demanded by the various government bodies in addition to the heavy rents. Rents to the Society varied over the years, but ran as high as a bushel of wheat for each mou—something like 50 percent of the crop. Catholics could rent land more cheaply than non-Catholics. They paid one eighth of a bushel less per mou per year. Tremendous pressure was exerted on all tenants and borrowers to become members of the Church.

For the wealthy landlords and rich peasants of the village the Society served as a sort of bank. They could put funds into it and draw 15 percent a month in interest. The advantage of this was that they could get their money out at any time instead of only after the harvest or at the approach of the new year as was the case when loans were made to individual peasants. Sheng Ching-ho, Fan Pu-tzu, and the other leading landlords all had sums invested in the Carry-On Society. It thus had the backing of the landlord group as a whole. The peasants, for their part, had a different name for it. They called it the “Peel and Pare Society.” (“Peel and pare” is the literal translation of the word “exploit” in Chinese.)

Charity was the professed aim of the Society and charity it always practiced. For one thing, it gave ten bags of grain each year for the support of the church orphanage. This was by no means enough to keep the orphanage going, but as we have seen, it had other sources of income.

Various Catholic laymen managed the affairs of this profitable charitable society over the years. In the decade prior to 1945 the manager was a man named Wang Kuei-ching. He began life as a poor laborer, but from the day he took over the affairs of the Carry-On Society, with the backing of the leading gentry, he prospered mightily. The foreign fathers dealt with no outsider directly. Whenever they had any business to do they called in Wang Kuei-ching. All they knew about the village and the community they learned through him. Thus, Wang became a power to be reckoned with and a man to be feared. He himself tilled the best land owned by the Society. It was rumored that he got 50 percent of all interest on loans. Whether this was true or not he most certainly got a commission on all transactions that passed through his hands, and this included not only the business of the Carry-On Society but all the financial affairs of the Church as well. He was the business manager for the whole institution, holding the key to the safe and letting the contracts for new construction. It was common knowledge that he kept eight percent of the wages of those who built the church buildings. But this was not enough for him. When the construction was over, he managed to carry home such valuable items as the steel cable used on the hoist.

Society Chairman Wang made use of his key position in the Church to extend his influence both inside the hierarchy and in the realm of politics. His eldest son, Wang En-pao, was early recruited into the Kuomintang Party and in the 1940’s became its district secretary. A second son became a Catholic priest. A daughter became a nun.

In handling the financial affairs of the Society and the Church, Wang Kuei-ching was ruthless. Hu Hsueh-chen, a poor peasant woman, was allowed to borrow a hundredweight of grain from the Society in the spring, for which she had to pay 1.2 hundredweight in the fall. It was a dry year and her whole crop amounted to less than she borrowed. Society Chairman Wang seized everything that she had grown, including the poor beans she had planted between the rows of corn, and left her without any food at all. She had to go into the streets to beg soon after the harvest.

During the famine year this same woman went to Chairman Wang’s door and asked for something to eat. “I am poorer than you,” he said as he picked bits of his last meal from between his teeth with an ivory toothpick. “You had better get out of here.” With that, he kicked her from his entry and closed the gate in her face.

Wang was as hard on his poor relatives as he was on everyone else who had too little to invest in his Society. A cousin named Hsiu Feng worked for many years in his household as a maid servant. He cheated her of her wages and gave her very little to eat. During the famine year she was forced to sell her own children and look for work as a wet nurse in another village. But Society Chairman Wang told everyone that he fed and cared for her over the years out of the kindness of his heart.

Wang knew all the traditional methods for cheating the peasants and was noted far and wide for the practice of them. When he loaned out millet it was full of dirt and chaff, but when, after the harvest, he came to collect the rent or interest due he asked for pure, clean millet. He winnowed and rewinnowed it until only the big, full kernels were left. The millet he loaned out he measured with a small bushel measure, but the millet he took in he measured with a large measure.

When Wang loaned out money he first subtracted a month’s interest so that if one borrowed 30 dollars one actually received 20 dollars, but paid interest, after the first month, on 30. Emergency loans were more expensive. Wang charged as high as 10 percent per day compounded. He never loaned money to landless persons. He invariably demanded land as security, and when, because of the high interest rates, the poor borrower defaulted, the land changed hands as surely as autumn gave way to winter.

The Carry-On Society was not above using the special legal power and privilege possessed by the mission to add to its holdings. For decades half an acre of irrigated land adjacent to the Church had been tilled as public property and the proceeds used for education, charity, and other community needs. In 1925 the Society tried to buy this land for the Church and turn it into a vegetable garden. The people of the village refused to sell. Then Fan Ching-ch’eng, a landlord and leader of the Catholic minority, began a campaign of slander against the non-Catholic majority. He persuaded a young co-religionist named Chang Kuo-chi to claim the land as his inheritance. One night Chang’s father was found cutting a tree on the land. A crowd gathered to stop him. The Catholics turned out in force to protect him and a pitched battle ensued. Into the fray stepped Fan Ching-ch’eng as mediator. His solution, presented a few days later, was to sell the land to the Church.

This so angered the people that 900 of them walked all the way to the Yamen at Lucheng to protest and petition for the return of the land to the village. Under pressure from the mission and fearful of repercussions should the foreigners be angered, the county magistrate ordered soldiers to drive the petitioners away. Deserted by their own government they had nowhere to turn. The Church took the land without payment. As far as the mission was concerned, the incident was closed, but the people did not forget so easily.

Nor did peasants like Wang Ch’eng-yu forget the long years of abuse they suffered at the hands of the Church and its Carry-On Society. The story this land-poor peasant told me was certainly very one-sided, but I report it here as he remembered it. His memory was bitter.

Before the turn of the century Wang Ch’eng-yu’s father rented land in Horse Square, one mile north of Long Bow. He was a Buddhist in a village that boasted a large Catholic mission and a Catholic majority. He may well have taken part in the attack on the Church that marked the Boxer uprising. In any case, when the Rebellion was crushed, he fled to avoid persecution at the hands of vengeful Catholics. Hunger finally drove him back to Horse Square. The priest ordered him arrested. He was strung up and beaten. He decided to move to Long Bow where the Church was not so powerful. But the priest in Long Bow called him in and said, “Wherever you go you must be a Christian, for if you do not join the Church you will be taken for a Boxer and you will suffer for it.” In the end, without food, land, or house, he accepted relief from the Church and was listed thereafter on its roster of members. The relief during this period consisted of one silver dollar a month—a fair sum in those days.

This peasant had four sons. His brother had four daughters. He swapped with his brother—a son for a daughter. Both he and his wife became very fond of the baby girl but found it difficult to support four children. The church orphanage then stepped in with an offer of aid. The parents turned the girl over to the orphanage. The orphanage, in turn, left the little girl with her mother to be nursed, fed, and care for, and paid a small subsidy for her support. There was one condition that had to be met—the arrangement was valid only as long as the girl’s parents faithfully followed the teachings of the Church.

Summer that year came in hot and dry. People brought large offerings to the Church and the priest said many masses to bring rain, but no rain fell. Then Wang Ch’eng-yu’s father sought out the Buddhists. He wore a green willow branch on his cap and took part in the Buddhist rites that were supposed to bring rain. When the priest of the Church found out about this he cut off all relief from the family and took the girl back to the orphanage. Her mother wept bitterly and pleaded with the priest, but he said they had broken the agreement and could no longer be trusted with the girl. The mother believed that her daughter was mistreated in the orphanage, grieved a great deal over her loss, and died soon afterwards. Her sons were convinced that she died of grief.

When Wang Ch’eng-yu grew up, he managed to save a little money. With it he bought some land. This land was mortgaged to the Carry-On Society as security for a $35 loan that enabled him to marry. Crops were bad that year. In order to pay the $15 of interest on the loan, he had to sell his wife’s wedding ornaments, all her clothes, and the winter’s supply of grain. Hardship and grief finally drove his wife insane. The priest said many masses for her, but it did no good. All the neighbors said she was haunted by the spirit of a monkey. When Ch’eng-yu finally managed to save up a little money again, he gave it to the Buddhist group in return for rites which were supposed to drive the monkey spirit out of his wife. The rites were no more effective than the masses. The priest heard about the attempt and sent Society Chairman Wang to punish Ch’eng-yu for his breach of faith. “You have betrayed Christianity,” said Chairman Wang. “By calling on the Buddhists you betray God himself.”

Wang Ch’eng-yu was dragged into the churchyard and beaten. He thought, “My wife has been driven mad and now I am beaten by the Church. I don’t want to live any longer.” But since he didn’t want to commit suicide either, he lived on to pay many a tithe to the Church.

Although the kind of fear and persecution which Ch’eng-yu suffered gradually simmered down as the memory of the Boxer Rebellion faded, the Church became so powerful that Buddhist leaders like Sheng Ching-ho, men who in their own right lorded it over the rest of the village, found it expedient to curry favor with it. This landlord and political boss cultivated good relations with the Catholic fathers, dined with them often, invested money in the Carry-On Society, and co-operated in many projects initiated by the Church.

All the power of the Church and all its efforts to convert Long Bow to Catholicism failed in the end. The Catholics remained a minority group, never numbering more than a quarter of the population. In 1940, after a hundred years of missionary work in the region and approximately 40 years in the village, there were altogether 64 Catholic families out of a total of 257. This was slightly more than a fifth of all the households.

It should not be concluded that these 64 families were all Catholics against their will, or that they remained in the Church simply out of expediency, because of pressure, favors, the right to rent church land, or to buy a wife from the orphanage. Regardless of how they originally entered the Christian fold, many became sincere believers and passed on to their children as devout a faith as any existing in the world. By its impressive ritual, by its forceful doctrine, by dispensing a certain amount of charity, by raising a loyal younger generation in its own orphanage, and by emphasizing its precarious minority position, the Church built up in its converts a cohesion, a unity of interest and purpose that deeply affected many of its members. It also set them apart from the rest of the community and thereby won them the scorn and often the hatred of the majority of their countrymen. Because Catholic privilege was built and maintained under the protection of foreign gunboats, because Catholic construction was paid for out of funds extracted from all the people by armed aggression, because Catholic converts were exempt from collections to support local religious rites and age-old customs, Catholicism had been known as “the agents’ religion” for a long time. During the course of the next decade the Church in the Shangtang further consolidated this reputation and set the stage for its own demise.

Important as the Catholic Church became in its heyday, it was never more than one facet in that complex of social relations and natural conditions which fashioned the reality of the times for Long Bow. By the second quarter of the twentieth century these relations and conditions had reduced Southern Shansi to a nadir of rapacious exploitation, structural decay, chronic violence, and recurring famine which has few parallels in history; they had also rendered the region and the country of which it was a part all but incapable of effective defense against aggression from without, a circumstance that was duly noted by the warlords of Japan.

Invasion

And now lies burnt

Our eastern capital.

No use saying two

Can defend the pass against one hundred,

For everywhere there is wavering.

As for our northern defenses,

Built in the time of ancient kings,

Who dares ask if they have been maintained?

Tu Fu

SUDDENLY all the dogs in Long Bow began to bark.

The fierce cacophony startled the young mother Hu Hsueh-chen. She sat in the dilapidated shed where her husband had abandoned her and wondered where she could go that day to beg enough food for herself and her two children.

“Why do the dogs make such a row?” Hsueh-chen called out to her neighbor, Ch’ou-har’s wife.

Through the doorless aperture that was the only entrance to her home, the answer came clearly back.

“The Japanese devils have come!”

Hsueh-chen ran to the courtyard gate to see if the alley was still free. If so, she would call her children and flee to the open fields until nightfall.

She was too late.

The Japanese column had already turned the corner. No sooner did she step into the street than a soldier looked up, broke ranks and started after her. Hsueh-chen fled inside her own hovel and ducked to the left. The soldier ran past her into the room. He knocked down her six-year-old son, stepped squarely on the little boy’s hunger-swollen stomach, then plunged on into the back room hoping to catch his mother. Hu Hsueh-chen did not wait for him to come out. She ran to the next house and hid.

When the soldier, cursing his luck, left the courtyard, neighbors found Hsueh-chen’s boy lying unconscious on the floor. He regained his senses, but on the next day fell ill with fever. Four days later he died. On his deathbed he cried out over and over again: “Mother, the devils are coming, the devils are coming!”

***********

The all-out drive that brought the Japanese Army into the hamlet of Long Bow in the summer of 1938 began in July 1937 at Lukuo-chiao, just outside Peking. There a detachment of Chinese soldiers had the temerity to resist some Japanese on “maneuver” who demanded the right to search a village for a missing compatriot. This violation of the peace of “Greater East Asia” provided the pretext which Hirohito’s legions had been waiting for. When Chiang Kai-shek refused to accept Japan’s conditions for settlement of the dispute, the Japanese army confidently resumed the conquest of all China which it had begun in the Northeast in 1932.

Discounting the possibility of massive popular resistance, the Japanese generals determined on classic blitzkrieg tactics. With the overwhelming forces already gathered in East Hopei, where they had earlier wrung from Chiang the right to station troops, they quickly smashed the poorly-armed and too often traitorously-led armies that stood in their way and drove south and west down the main trunk railroads into the heart of the country.* For a year all went well. They occupied most of the Chinese cities well known in the West—Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtao, Shanghai, Nanking, Hankow, and Canton—and, with the exception of the Hankow-Canton line, most of the railroads and highways that connected these cities.

Japanese strategists took it for granted that control of the cities, the railways, the whole modern communications network, would bring them control of the countryside thus enmeshed and surrounded. This was a serious error. While their mechanized armies pushed on triumphantly into Central China, a resistance movement grew up behind them. This resistance soon confined the conqueror’s effective control to the cities and the narrow railroad corridors between them. Before any further conquests could be made, before any real plums could be plucked from the conquest of the North, Japan had to wipe out the guerrilla fighters in her rear. Large numbers of combat troops had therefore to be recalled from far-flung battlefronts to “pacify” rural areas already “conquered.” Thus began a fierce and prolonged military struggle—the famous stalemate stage of China’s “Protracted War” (1939-1944).

In this fierce contest, the Taihang Mountains inevitably became a most savagely contested region, for the Taihang Mountains dominate the North China plain, which in turn provides the main base, marshalling ground, and granary for any drive southward. As long as the Japanese were unable to clear the mountains, their hold was never secure in the lowlands, and all their efforts in other parts of the country, even in other parts of the world, were greatly hampered. Chinese armed groups from bases in the mountains went down into the flat country, crossed the Peking-Hankow railway and set up new bases in the swamps and lakes of Hochien and the roadless cotton lands of South Hopei. When hard pressed, the regular forces withdrew behind the Taihang’s formidable ranges while the plains people carried on their resistance underground.*

It became a matter of life and death, therefore, for the Japanese to clear the mountains. The first major effort to do this consisted of a drive to cut the Taihang range in half. After taking Taiyuan, Warlord Governor Yen Hsi-shan’s provincial capital in 1938, a part of the Japanese Army pushed through the mountains to Changchih and then drove eastward through Lucheng and Licheng toward Hantan on the plain. But even though a second column simultaneously marched westward into the mountains from Hantan by way of Wuan, the two forces were never able to link up. A guerrilla offensive destroyed one motorized column in a deep mountain gorge. Ambushes and man-made landslides slowed down the other column. Snipers took a continuous toll both of the marching troops and of the garrisons they left behind. In the end the drive bogged down. The remnants of both columns withdrew—in the East to Wuan, in the West to Lucheng. The latter small walled city thus became the last garrison point on the western flank of the Taihang Mountains to be held by the invaders.

Even though the Japanese Army garrisoned Lucheng and with the help of a series of blockhouses, controlled the highway leading out to the county town of Changchih, they did not control more than a fraction of Lucheng county’s rural villages. A guerrilla government operated throughout the highlands. Guerrilla troops and their supporting militia moved at will through occupied territory, and even into occupied villages at night. In order to protect the Changchih-Lucheng highway, flanking villages such as Long Bow had to be occupied and fortified. Long Bow itself thus became the last permanently garrisoned outpost on the road to Yellow Mill, a mining town at the base of the mountains. Outside the village one stepped into no-man’s land, and only a few miles away Chinese-controlled guerrilla territory began. Long Bow was thus established as a fortified point on one side of a narrow finger of occupied territory thrust across the flat from Changchih toward the higher ranges of the Taihang.

Having failed in their efforts to cut the mountain bases in half, the Japanese used their occupied salient as a jumping-off point for punitive raids against the regions they were unable to conquer. Three times they launched major “Kill All, Burn All, Loot All’ campaigns. Throughout whole counties dwellings were razed or burned, livestock slaughtered, implements smashed, wells plugged, and people driven back and forth across the hills and plains like hunted herds. Tens of thousands were killed outright; hundreds of thousands starved. Only those who had buried their grain in advance and who hid in secluded mountain gorges or caves until the enemy left survived. When on top of this man-made carnage, drought and flood unleashed the silent killer famine, the suffering became indescribable. Even the Japanese found it hard to live. They increased their pressure on the occupied villages, wrung the last peck of grain from already starving peasants, slaughtered the draft cattle for meat, and dismantled houses for the fuel in the timbers of the roofs and doorways. In desperate need of garrison forces and fortifications, they press-ganged the able-bodied into puppet units and labor gangs. If the guerrilla areas suffered the flames of hell, the occupied areas suffered the tortures of purgatory.

In these times of terrible trial, every person and every human institution was put on the rack, and the quality of the metal from which they were made was ruthlessly tested. Under this stress two main political trends developed: resistance and collaboration.

Collaborators

Even the dung beetles are arrayed

With beautiful wings of gauze.

So think I in sadness when 1 see

Our officials decked out in such splendor.

With our country in imminent danger

Where shall we find refuge?

The Book of Odes

WHEN THE Japanese army drove into the rural districts of the hinterland, the most conspicuous men in every community were, of course, the leading gentry who headed the village administrations and ran the economic, social, and religious institutions. The Japanese took it for granted that these people would not resist, and for the most part they were not disappointed. After all, the leading gentry had the most property to lose in any annihilation campaign. They dared not mobilize and arm the peasantry for fear that these armies would someday turn against them. When the chips were down, when they were forced to choose between collaboration and, resistance, they often found that they had more in common with the invaders than they had with their own tenants. At least the Japanese officers shared their own respect for private property, the sanctity of land rents, and the importance of orthodox religious worship.*

The resulting collaboration, to be sure, was not always straightforward and direct. The people of the Taihang region had a saying about the occupation politics of landlords—Hang t’ou hsiao, chung chien ch’u or “thin at the ends and wide in the middle.”

As the Japanese moved in, the gentry retired from public life, not knowing how long the enemy would stay and therefore not wanting to identify too closely with them. During the middle period they collaborated actively and openly, believing that the Japanese would be around for a long time, if not forever. At the end, with Russia’s armies driving Hitler back to Berlin, with America winning victories in the Pacific, and the popular forces in the mountains growing stronger day by day, they retired behind the scenes again, aware that a change was in the making. As soon as the Japanese surrendered, they came out of “retirement,” reorganized village affairs, and applied the name “Anti-Japanese Village Government” to their administrations in an effort to cash in on the fruits of victory.

The gentry of Long Bow were no exception to this rule. When the Japanese troops were still beyond the hill, Sheng Ching-ho relinquished public control of the village office. The Catholic landlords, Fan Pu-tzu, Shih La-ming, and Wang Lai-hsun, then set up a new administration using as a front man one Chou Mei-sheng, a capable and clever middle peasant who was willing to play their game and turn a tidy penny in the process. Chou Mei-sheng was appointed secretary to the village government and became notorious as the chief of staff of the whole puppet regime, a position which he held for seven long years. Mei-sheng, in turn, picked a poor peasant, Shang Shih-t’ou, as village head and staffed his office with two more poor peasants—Kuo Fu-kuei as head of the police, and his brother Kuo Te-yu as head of public affairs. All these positions continued to pay off handsomely with graft and loot. The gentry were openly represented in this set-up only by Wang Lai-hsun, who served as a street captain for four years, and Kuo Ch’ung-wang, the rich peasant who worked closely with Chou Mei-sheng in the village office. No serious decisions were taken, however, without consultation between the members of the ruling clique as before.

In Long Bow Village the duties of this government were the same as those of any previous administration—to collect taxes, organize labor service, conscript soldiers, and maintain “law and order.” The chief difference was that this time the demands were heavier and the enforcement more brutal. Now when the village officials went to collect grain, Japanese or puppet soldiers went with them. Entering each courtyard in turn they threw bags on the ground and demanded that the peasants fill them up. If they brought along two bags, the family had to fill two; if they brought three bags, the family had to fill three. The collections were not based on how much land or how big a crop the family had harvested, but on how much grain the enemy wanted to collect. Anyone who had no grain had to run away before the collection began or face serious punishment.

Labor service, made many times heavier by the demands of war, became a burden no less onerous than taxes. Whenever there was work to be done—a road to be built, a fortification to be constructed, supplies to be transported—the word went out to the village office and the peasants were ordered to report for service no matter what urgent task they themselves were engaged in. The only ones who never went were the gentry and the village officialdom.

In 1943 a fort was built by conscript labor at the north end of Long Bow on the edge of no-man’s land. Every able-bodied male in the village had to go and dig. One poor peasant, Wu-k’uei, was just at that time putting a new roof on his own hut. He did not want to stop while he had no roof overhead, so he hired a young boy to go in his place. For this he was arrested, beaten until an arm and a leg were broken, and left lying in the newly dug moat that surrounded the fort. A group of his neighbors had to beg for permission to carry him home.

The fortification was so large that Long Bow Village labor was not enough to complete it. People were ordered there from other villages as well, some from two, three, or even ten miles away. They had to get up before dawn in order to get there on time. They had to feed themselves. Anyone who worked slowly or made mistakes was beaten and thrown in the moat. Since the water was not deep, they did not risk drowning, but it was nevertheless a cruel punishment because the weather was cold. Victims had to climb out and go on working in a wind that froze their clothes and brought pneumonia and death to many.

The labor service demanded by the Japanese was not always so close to home that the conscripts could walk back and forth each day. When the enemy decided to build a railroad from Taiyuan to Changchih, young men were rounded up from many counties. From hundreds of villages each family had to send one person. Landlords, however, sent their hired laborers instead of their own sons. This was the first time any of these wage workers had ever been considered a part of the family.

The conscripts, quartered in huts behind barbed wire, were marched to the building site under guard, and made to work 14 or 16 hours a day. Every detail of their lives was regulated, even the length of time for passing water. The men soon learned to wet as large an area as possible, whenever they had to urinate, for a small spot on the ground was regarded as proof of malingering and could lead to a beating. If anyone slowed up the pace while at work, he was tortured in ways invented on the spot by the guards. One of these was to make two men stand face to face and strike each other. Anyone who didn’t strike out with all his strength was promptly beaten by the guards.

Chinese guerrillas sometimes came near. Whenever the guards heard shots, they swept the whole countryside with machine gun fire. In their panic they killed more than one of the laborers who happened to get in the way. “In the evening when we returned to our huts we laughed and congratulated ourselves that we still lived,” said one survivor as he told me of those days. “But every morning as we went to work before dawn we trembled for what might happen that day.”

The wholesale terror of the labor gangs, calculated as it was to strike fear into the heart of every peasant, sowed hatred of the conqueror far and wide. The offhand brutalities—such as the wanton killing of Hu Hsueh-chen’s little son—and the incidental havoc wrought by the occupation burned this hatred even deeper.

One such incidental cruelty accompanied the expropriation of the land on which the fort at Long Bow was built. It was confiscated from an old man named Wen Tui-chin, called Lao (old) Tui-Chin by everyone in the village. He had inherited part of his meager holdings from his father. Another part, on which stood a house of 12 sections, he had bought only two years earlier with the savings of a lifetime of labor in Sheng Ching-ho’s distillery. In the enclosure around the house he had planted 30 trees.

One day in July 1942, Shang Shih-t’ou, the puppet village head, called Old Tui-chin in and told him his house had to be removed to make way for the fort. He gave him a week to tear down the structure or to sell it to someone who would. Before Tui-chin had time to do anything about the house, the labor gangs were ordered to begin work on the moat. He had to offer the structure to whoever would buy it at whatever price he was willing to pay. At that point—was it quite by coincidence?—three members of the puppet administration and the landlord Sheng Ching-ho suddenly stepped in, offered him 50 silver dollars per section, and tore down the house. But after they had hauled away the bricks and the timbers they paid him only half the price. They took his fruit trees for nothing. Old Tui-chin did not dare complain.

The site of the fort included his half-acre of crop land. On it he had planted millet that was already ripe for harvesting. He never had a chance to reap it. Puppet soldiers came in the evening, staked out the lines of the fort, and trampled his ripe grain into the mud. He begged them to wait until morning so that he could rescue his coming winter’s food, but they asked him, “Can you guarantee our safety tonight?” Afraid of the Eighth Route Army, they wasted no time digging in. Old Tui-chin received not one coin of compensation for all the land and the grain that he lost. He had to flee to his nephew’s home in South Temple to avoid starvation.

The village administration of Long Bow was more than usually effective as a recruiting office for the puppet armed forces. This was because several Long Bow men with long-standing ties to the dominant faction were among the commanders of the local puppet forces. Shih Jen-pao, a son of the landlord Shih La-ming, was an officer of the Fourth Column of the puppet garrison of Lucheng County. Shen Chi-mei, a middle peasant and erstwhile henchman of the “dog’s leg” Chou Mei-sheng, commanded the puppet security police of the Fifth District. Ch’ing T’ien-hsing, also of Long Bow, assisted him. Between them they were able to impress about 50 young men into the puppet forces as rank-and-file soldiers and policemen. These forces were used not only to garrison Long Bow itself, but also to hold down several nearby communities.

The above-named puppet leaders did not enter the service of the enemy in the first days of the occupation. On the contrary, when the Japanese entered Shansi, they were officers of a Nationalist army detachment commanded by Fan Pu-tzu’s son, Fan Tung-hsi. Fan Tung-hsi and Shih Jen-pao were brothers-in-law by parental arrangement. They were also schoolmates. Together they graduated from middle school in Taiyuan, won a reputation as intellectuals, and, what was more lucrative, commissions in the provincial armed forces under the over-all command of Governor Yen Hsi-shan. Since every ambitious officer who wanted to advance his career had to build around himself a loyal group of supporters, they naturally recruited Long Bow men as assistants.

When Yen’s old-style provincial armies crumbled before the Japanese advance in 1937, many units remained more or less intact and retreated into the hinterland. The unit officered by Fan Tung-hsi and Shih Jen-pao found its way back to Lucheng County and made the Fifth District its main base.

As long as Yen himself kept fighting they carried on a resistance of sorts, but when Yen shifted his policy to one of limited collaboration with the Japanese in return for aid in fighting the guerrillas who were carrying through social reforms and successfully organizing and arming the people for all-out war, his erstwhile officers had to make a choice. They either joined the guerrillas and accepted their program, or they worked out a modus vivendi with the Japanese. Fan Tung-hsi chose the latter course. Being no match for the Japanese Army that moved into the valley behind him, he avoided battle, was allowed to hold certain hilly areas unmolested, and set himself up there as a petty tyrant. His unit gradually disintegrated into a band of armed marauders—living off the land, robbing, looting, killing, and raping in the best tradition of Chinese militarism.

When Fan Tung-hsi’s troops needed grain, they descended on the villages in the valley and made collections in the name of the central government. In the famine year of 1942, when the puppet administration had already squeezed out all the grain that could be found in Long Bow and many people were already near death from hunger, Shih Jen-pao and Shen Chi-mei led over a hundred men into the village. Under cover of darkness they went from house to house, searched every courtyard and seized much grain that had until then been successfully hidden. They made off that night with many cartloads of corn and millet. Almost a third of the people later died of starvation.

When not looting villages, Fan Tung-hsi’s men preyed on commerce. They considered merchants on the highway fair game. One day they attacked 13 freight-laden carts traveling the road from Lucheng to Changchih. They threw the carters into a mountain gully, killed them with stones, and made off with their goods and mules.

They also had their way with local women, courting all who took their fancy. Those whom they could not win over with gifts and favors they forced into submission with threats and beatings. If their men resisted they dispatched them without mercy. In mid-winter Fan Tung-hsi raped a young woman in Li Village Gulch, a settlement three miles south of Long Bow. The girl’s fiance enlisted in the Japanese military police in order to get arms for revenge, but before he could carry out his plan he was ambushed in Long Bow, thrown into a dry well, and buried with rocks.

In Tung-hsi’s command was a man named Mao Tan who secretly courted the leader’s own favorite of the moment. Tung-hsi shot him in the back for his temerity.

Shih Jen-pao was equally ruthless. He seduced the wife of one village leader and later tracked the man himself into the mountains and killed him. He fired at, but missed, another man whose wife he had raped. He beat his own sister-in-law so brutally that everyone said he was responsible for her death.

Fan Tung-hsi, Shih Jen-pao, and their henchman Shen Chi-mei were particularly ruthless in dealing with their political enemies, the underground resistance forces that had progressive leanings. Many times they attacked small groups of guerrilla fighters when the latter were under the most severe pressure from the Japanese and least able to fight back. When they sacked a village for loot, their excuse always was that the place had been infiltrated by Communists.

By such acts as these the Long Bow trio won a well-deserved reputation as “local despots.” Had the Sino-Japanese War been a conflict of the traditional type, Fan Tung-hsi might well have become a powerful warlord in his own right, but in this war new social forces, forged in the fires of national resistance, made a traditional warlord career difficult, if not impossible. Fan Tung-hsi himself was killed by a detachment of guerrilla troops that included Long Bow men. Soon thereafter the group he had commanded took the final step to complete betrayal by going over, lock, stock, and barrel to the Japanese. With this move they sealed their fate.

When the ex-soldiers turned bandit went over to the enemy, they were reorganized as part of the Fourth Column of the Lucheng County Garrison, with Shih Jen-pao as commander. Simultaneously, Shen Chi-mei was appointed head of the district security police. He specialized thereafter in hunting down resistance leaders; responsible for the death of many people, he grew to be one of the most hated men in the valley.

The defection at Lucheng was by no means an isolated incident. In the later years of the Anti-Japanese War, years that were characterized by a stalemate on the regular battlefronts, the surrender to the Japanese of whole units intact with their arms was arranged over and over again by high ranking Nationalist officers. “The number of Kuomintang commanders above the rank of major general who put their troops under Japanese command was 12 in 1941, 15 in 1942, and 42 in the peak year, 1943. By early 1944 more than 60 percent of the puppet armies, then numbering about 425,000, was composed of former Kuomintang elements.”* In the Taihang Mountains General P’ang Ping-hsun, Commander of the 24th Group Army, went over with all his troops in May 1943, and was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Shansi-Hopei, Honan-Shantung Communist Extermination Army as well as of the 24th Group Army of Peace and National Salvation.

These shocking defections, which increased as world-wide victory over fascism approached, were part of a planned “Trojan Horse” strategy conceived by Chiang Kai-shek’s high command as the only means by which the Kuomintang could regain control of North China and the Yangtze Valley from the resistance forces when the war ended. Certain that victory would eventually be won by the hard fighting and sacrifices of the Allied Forces, particularly the Americans, Chiang and his clique turned their attention to the question of postwar control of China. With the approval of their own high command, unit after unit of the Nationalist Army went over to the enemy and took up garrison duty at strategic points where they would be in a position to take over control of all the occupied areas once the Japanese were finally brought to their knees by forces outside China. This was euphemistically called “national salvation by a curved path.”

As far as Chiang’s strategists were concerned, the Fourth Column was but a small pawn in this devil’s chess match, but in Lucheng County the men of the Fourth Column made up a formidable force. With their knowledge of the terrain and their intimate ties with the local people, especially the gentry who ran the occupied villages, they made the occupation many times more oppressive and ruthless than it might otherwise have been.

The whole collaboration apparatus in Lucheng County and in Long Bow—the commanders of the Kuomintang irregulars-turned-puppet, the gentry who stood behind the puppet village government, and the middle and poor peasants who staffed it and did the dirty work—was made up of Catholics. From the time that the Japanese arrived until they were finally routed in August 1945, Long Bow Village had a solidly Catholic administration under the dictatorship of the Japanese.

This make-up of the village administration and the puppet forces was not unusual. There seemed to be a definite correlation between collaboration and Catholicism throughout the Taihang and in the Catholic strongholds of Central Hopei. This, after all, was only the continuation of a situation long prepared by the methods through which these Catholic missions spread their influence and established their position in the first place. From the very beginning, as we have seen, Catholicism had advanced in China under the protection of foreign powers. During the Japanese War the tone for collaboration was set by the highest Church authorities, the hierarchy of the Cathedral in Changchih, the largest town in the area, and the hierarchy in Hsingtai, the largest city on the plain at the foot of the mountains.

To cite but one example: A leading priest, Father Kuo Lo-ts’ai, on his return trip from America in 1938, stopped off in Japan and obtained a letter of introduction to the Japanese ambassador in China from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This letter carried instructions to all whom it might concern to give special care and attention to the bearer. It was apparently effective for, upon his arrival in China, Father Kuo received a universal travel permit from the Japanese military headquarters and was permitted to move freely all over North China. After the Japanese surrender, more than 100 travel blanks of the kind issued only to top Japanese military personnel and civilian administrators were found in his effects together with many snapshots of his venerable personage standing with leading Japanese officials and the chief puppet of the Hsingtai area, one Kao Te-ling.

One reason for the shift to a Catholic administration in small centers such as Long Bow was the universal belief that the invaders would respect the sanctity of the Church, if not from fear of God, then at least from respect for the foreign powers that stood behind that Christian institution. A measure of safety was thus seen in Church membership and in good relations with the local priest and his entourage. Events confirmed this presumption. As they moved into the interior the Japanese troops did not, as a rule, enter churches. Therefore, on the eve of the arrival of the Japanese soldiers in Long Bow, most of the wealthy of the village and many of the poor took their valuable possessions to the Church for safekeeping. Many of them asked for personal protection as well. The local priest, quick to sense the full potential of the situation, coined the slogan, “protection for those who are members; no protection for those who are not.” To save themselves and their property, quite a few families joined the Church within a few days. Even so, the protection afforded the poor was minimal. Landlords and rich peasants and their families occupied all the available shelter, and most of the poor who crowded into the open courtyard, whether they were Catholic or not, were finally turned back into the street.

Those who remained did not get protection for nothing. While landlords and officials found the facilities of the Church open to them as a matter of course, it was understood that as a token of gratitude the poor would give 20 percent of all the property they brought with them to God.

After Pearl Harbor, the Dutch fathers of the mission all left, or were removed from the occupied regions. Then Father Sun, the Chinese priest who took over in their place, tried once more to swing the whole village into the Catholic fold. One day all the gentry of the village were invited to a Western-style banquet in the rectory. At the end of the feast the father called on his guests to help make every peasant a Church member. He argued that since the Church had given sanctuary when the Japanese came, they should show their gratitude and faith in God by joining it themselves and recruiting others. Members of the Carry-On Society then went from house to house, smashed all the ancestral tablets and clay idols that they found, threw their remains into the deep outdoor toilets, and hung up pictures of the Virgin Mary. In one day every house in the village took on the trappings of Catholicism. Those who protested were scolded and told, “If the Japanese return in force you will not be allowed into the Church, and if you are killed that is your fault. We shall not care and we shall not come to your rescue.” Many of the pictures were later torn down without dire consequences, but the people never forgot this attempt at religious coercion.

Seeds of Change

Taihang mountains, high, oh high!

One hundred times ten thousand men

Take up the cry.

Young men of the soil

Fear not shell or knife.

Each shot we fire

Takes an enemy life.

Song of the Taihang Militia

SHANG SHIH-T’OU, the figurehead of the puppet administration, did not sleep easily at night. In spite of the hundred-strong Japanese garrison so close at hand, in spite of the expanded Peace Preservation Corps pledged to support his regime, in spite of the efficient police work of his henchman Kuo Fu-kuei, he was afraid of the people. Someone in the village—he had no idea who—was in touch with the resistance forces in the mountains. Every so often Shang Shih-t’ou found a stone lying in his courtyard with a letter wrapped around it. The letter described everything he had done in the previous few weeks, warned of swift and terrible retribution unless he changed his ways, and advised him to go to a designated spot for a conference with a certain Commander Liu to discuss ways of helping his country and atoning for his treason.

Shang Shih-t’ou never went to the suggested rendezvous. He had no intention of risking his lucrative career as village head by contact with hairbrained patriots who were probably atheistic Communists. To be on the safe side, however, he never slept at home at night, nor did he ever sleep in the same place twice in a row. Should guerrilla fighters raid the village looking for him, they would have a hard time finding him. This plan worked well enough until his wife became suspicious. She refused to believe that he never came home at night because he was afraid of assassination. An aunt of hers had told her that Shang spent his nights gambling, drinking, and carousing. The aunt mentioned at least three mistresses that Shih-t’ou had been known to sleep with and hinted that there were several more in other villages. This information so infuriated Shih-t’ou’s wife that she went to the village office and denounced him in public. She also denounced him to her pastor, Father Sun. She told everyone she met on the street that her husband never came home because he spent his nights with “broken shoes” (prostitutes).

There was, of course, some truth to these rumors. In order to silence his wife, Shang Shih-t’ou was forced to stay at home several nights in a row. On his own k’ang he slept hardly at all. He started at each sound. He rose and looked around several times each night. Each time he found nothing. The village lay absolutely still under the stars. Everyone, including the Japanese soldiers and their sentries, was asleep. On the third night, worn out with fear and taut nerves, he finally fell asleep in spite of himself.

He woke as he was dragged from his wife’s side by several strong hands. When he tried to scream, a piece of cotton was jammed into his mouth. He fell to the floor, felt a gun barrel in his back, and dared not move while his assailants bound him tight. He heard a stifled scream as they also bound and gagged his wife. Then he was half dragged, half carried through the courtyard to the street. Someone ordered him to kneel down. He knelt. A single shot rang out in the stillness, followed by the muffled sound of cloth-shod feet running up the street. The footsteps gradually receded. But Shang Shih-t’ou did not hear them fade out. He was already dead.

The execution of Shang Shih-t’ou paralyzed the puppet regime for several weeks. All the leading officials knew that such a bold raid could never have been carried out without an underground organization in the village itself. Even in broad daylight they hardly dared step outside Japanese headquarters for many days thereafter. The arrogant Japanese feigned unshaken confidence, but belied it by doubling the men on guard duty and carrying out extra security checks at night.

The peasants, on the other hand, could hardly conceal their delight. Had it not been for the fact that the least sign of jubilation could bring arrests, beatings, perhaps even executions, they would have demonstrated in the streets. The landlords and their running dogs had shamed the whole village by taking the road of collaboration for whatever security, comfort, or profit this despicable path had to offer. Here now was dramatic proof that there were patriots in Long Bow who chose instead the path of resistance in spite of all the dangers and hardships that guerrilla war and underground activity made inevitable. The execution of Shang Shih-t’ou redeemed the village not only in the eyes of its own inhabitants, but before the whole county, and with this act the process of revolutionary transformation in Long Bow began.

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It is one of the great ironies of history that the warlords of Japan, who insisted ad nauseam that they were “intervening” in China only to build prosperity in “Greater East Asia” and save the Chinese people from a fate worse than death—Communism—greatly hastened by that very intervention the triumph of the Communist-led Revolution.

The Japanese conquerors cleared the ground for revolution in many ways—by the extreme brutality of their tactics, which left not only the peasants but many gentry as well no choice but to fight; by driving the higher levels of the Kuomintang bureaucracy and army out of North China; by enticing the lower levels of this same bureaucracy and army into collaboration in the occupied zones, thereby compromising them permanently in the eyes of the people; and by leaving in the wake of their conquering armies extensive areas of countryside which they were unable to garrison. Into the political and military vacuum thus created, the Communist Party and the armed forces under its direction were able to move.* Within a very short period of time, they mobilized tens of millions of hard-pressed peasants for resistance, and that resistance, by reaching out to all strata of society, laid the groundwork for the social revolution to come.

Within a few days after the Japanese began their attack at Lukuochiao in 1937, detachments of seasoned troops from the Communist-led Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (known as the Eighth Route Army from the time of the United Front Agreement with Chiang Kai-shek in 1937) left Yenan in North Shansi, crossed the Yellow River, and took up positions in both the Taihang and the Wutai ranges of Eastern Shansi. These detachments, small as they were, did not cluster in one place but split into numerous armed working groups that filtered through the advancing enemy lines and spread out into the valleys, the plains, and the villages of every region to organize, train, and direct the great influx of peasant recruits that soon came seeking weapons and instructions. Each working group thus surrounded itself with detachments of peasant militia who lived at home, tilled their fields during the daytime and the summer season, and fought during the night and the off season. From among the best fighters and leaders of the militia, recruits were drawn to replace those killed and wounded and to expand the growing regular forces.

The mushroom-like growth of the Eighth Route Army and its supporting militia was paralleled by the growth of the Chinese Communist Party which counted among its members most of the Army commanders and recruited steadily among the most active of the rank-and-file soldiers. But the Communist Party did not confine itself to military mobilization alone. When the veterans of the ten-year Civil War crossed the Yellow River, hundreds of civilian organizers came with them to do political work. Under the protection of the Eighth Route Army they too fanned out into the rural villages and organized the Peasants’ Associations, the Women’s Associations, the consumer co-operatives and the village councils that became the mass civilian base for a miltary effort that could not succeed without the support of the overwhelming majority of the population. The best, the most active leaders of these groups were recruited into the Communist Party to form local branches made up, in the main, of working peasants. Into the Party also were drawn many students, intellectuals, and professionals from the cities who crossed the battle lines by the thousands to join the resistance.

Wherever the Eighth Route Army and the Communist Party found a foothold the disintegration resulting from defeat, panic, and the flight of the old officialdom was stopped. Out of chaos order was gradually restored. Wherever possible the remnant armed forces of the Kuomintang were regrouped and brought under unified leadership. Most important of all, as a result of these measures the Japanese were driven from or denied access to the area unless they came in great strength, in which case the resistance forces temporarily retreated, only to flow back again when the Japanese wave receded.

From the first small pockets these resistance bases reached out to encompass whole counties. These counties in turn were linked into chains and systems to form extensive Liberated Areas, or Border Regions.

In the Liberated Areas new anti-Japanese resistance governments were set up by a coalition of parties and social forces that included patriotic Kuomintang elements and many outstanding individuals who belonged to no party. These governments were staffed by people from all walks of life, including landlords. Democratic elections were held to choose representative assemblies at the district, the county, and the regional level; and these assemblies, in turn, chose executive officers to carry out their will. Even though the Communist Party was the main organizer and leader of this movement, it limited its own members to one third of all elective and appointive posts.*

The leaders of the Liberated Areas governments, Communist and non-Communist alike, set as their task the full mobilization of the Chinese people’s potential for resistance against Japan. This potential could only be realized if the peasants were given an alternative to the exploitation and oppression of the past. Without real improvement in the conditions of tenure, rates of interest, distribution of taxes, and the right to bear arms, and without a voice in the making of policy, the peasants could not be mobilized to fight effectively. Nevertheless, to advocate at that time a thorough revolution in social relations, the expropriation of the landlords, and a new system of land tenure would have led to disaster. For such a revolution could only mean civil war, could only drive the landlords wholesale into the arms of the Japanese and split the nation at a time when unity alone could save it. The Communist Party therefore abandoned the “Land to the Tiller” program which had prevailed in its old South China bases and joined with other parties and groups in a program of reforms designed to win the support of all factions and classes. The heart of this program was the “Double Reduction”—reduction of rents and reduction of interest rates.

The landlords were asked to reduce rents by at least 25 percent and to scale down interest rates on loans from 30 percent or even up to 100 percent a year to not more than 10 percent. These requests were based on a law passed by the Kuomintang government in 1933. The peasants, who by virtue of the arms in their possession, could have stopped payment of rent altogether and repudiated their debts, were asked to pay these reduced rents and interest charges and to produce as much as possible in support of the war. According to the principle, “He who can give labor should give labor and he who can give money should give money,” a system of differential taxes was introduced exempting those with the lowest income from any taxes at all and scaling the rates upward for each income level to reach a maximum of 30 percent for the large landowners. These policies were effective in arousing the enthusiasm of the peasants and were accepted by the majority of the gentry in the interest of national salvation.

On the basis of such policies the Communist Party, the Eighth Route Army, and the Liberated Areas expanded year by year. By 1942, they became such a threat to Japanese control that the enemy concentrated most of its expeditionary force in an attempt to wipe out the North China bases. The annihilation drives of that year and the following year reduced the Liberated Areas and destroyed part of the Eighth Route Army, but not all of it. Japan was unable to keep up the pressure, and as soon as it was relaxed the process of growth began again. By 1945 the Taihang Region, which surrounded Long Bow Village, was but half of a larger entity known as the Shansi-Hopei-Honan Liberated Area, and this in turn was but one of eight Liberated Areas in North China. To these must be added the 11 smaller areas in Central and South China created by the New Fourth Army and the South China Anti-Japanese Brigade, making a grand total of 19 Liberated Areas containing approximately 100 million people, defended by a regular army of one million troops, a militia of more than two million, and a self-defense corps of ten million.*

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The morale, the fighting experience, and the organizing ability which the Eighth Route Army and the Communist Party brought to Lucheng County in 1937 met an immediate response. Within a few days after the first detachments reached the area dozens of recruits showed up. At least two of them were from Long Bow Village—19-year-old Shih Ts’ai-yuan, son of a prosperous middle peasant, and 18-year-old Chao Yin-kuei, a landless hired laborer.** In the short period that remained before the Japanese Army arrived, Communist political organizers joined local leaders of the “Dare to Die Corps” (a progressive resistance movement sponsored, during United Front days, by Yen Hsi-shan) in setting up an Anti-Japanese county government.

By the time the Japanese troops marched into the county seat, the walled town of Lucheng, units of the Eighth Route Army were already well established in the highlands and the new government had already mobilized a large number of villages for resistance. When the enemy moved in, the leading personnel of the administration simply moved out into the countryside, set up offices in whatever village proved safest at the moment, and kept on working.

[image]

A district leader was appointed for each of the five districts of the county. Like the county government, the district offices were mobile and were popularly said to reside in the district leaders’ dispatch cases as they walked from village to village.

Long Bow Village lay in the fifth and southernmost district, the most heavily garrisoned part of the county. There the enemy garrisons were a serious obstacle to organization, but while their rule was supreme during the daylight hours, the foreign soldiers and their puppets withdrew to their headquarters after dark, afraid of snipers and sudden ambush. It was then possible for other forces to come and go. By organizing at night the people of the Fifth District, like those of the other four, were able to build up a resistance government, and maintain a district leader, a secret Communist Party Committee, and a militia.

In certain occupied villages such as Little Gully, only three miles from Long Bow, the puppet village chairman was in touch with the resistance movement, worked under the direction of the Fifth District leader, and did what he could to support the war against Japan. He served the puppet government in name only. Through such men contacts were made with courageous peasants in other occupied villages, thus establishing and maintaining an underground network under the very noses of the Japanese.

Long Bow Village, with its seven-sided blockhouse, its garrison of 100 men and its Catholic-staffed puppet administration was the most dangerous spot of all in which to work; yet Long Bow too developed an active core of underground workers. The first of these was Chang T’ien-ming, the poor nephew of the village head of Little Gully. Though 20 years old and eligible, he was still a bachelor and lived alone.* His father, a Peking blacksmith, was dead. His mother had left home in a famine year and settled with her other son, a carpenter, in Hungtung, 40 miles to the west. Left behind in Long Bow, T’ien-ming cultivated the lone family acre, hired out to his landlord neighbors for seasonal work and did a little carpentry on the side. With nothing to keep him at home after sunset he often visited his uncle in Little Gully and there met the district leader, learned about the anti-Japanese work that was being done, and volunteered to do some himself.

At about the same time, another Long Bow peasant, the hired laborer Shen So-tzu, got in touch with the district leader through a relative who headed the resistance government of Ku-yi, an unoccupied village five miles to the north. Shen So-tzu, in turn, enlisted the help of his close friend Kung Lai-pao, a youth as destitute and as eager to strike a blow for liberation as he was.

A fourth man was contacted by still another means. This was Shih Fu-yuan, younger brother of Ts’ai-yuan who had enlisted in the Eighth Route Army when its first brigade appeared. As a regular soldier Ts’ai-yuan roamed far afield with his unit but he always returned to his Lucheng base, and when he had a chance, came home to visit his father, his mother, his two brothers, and their wives and children—altogether a family of ten. They shared a courtyard that boasted 25 sections of housing, farmed eight acres of land, and were considered to be one of the most prosperous laboring families in the village. Since they had no connection with the dominant clique, their prosperity made them the victim of every looting soldier and every hungry official. The taxes they paid were endless in number and suffocating in amount. The whole family hated the old regime and doubly hated the puppet apparatus that succeeded it. Before he returned to his unit Ts’ai-yuan told Fu-yuan how to reach him in the mountains in case of need. Several times Fu-yuan made the trip, and it was while visiting his brother at Eighth Route divisional headquarters that Fu-yuan met the district leader. A few talks with the latter were enough to convince him that he should work actively against the Japanese. Put in touch with Shen So-tzu, he soon joined the other three who were already at work.

At first the underground group performed modest tasks, running errands for the District Office, delivering messages and helping transport supplies; but in 1942, the year of the great famine and the most terrible mopping-up campaigns, the Fifth District leader decided to strengthen the work in Long Bow by organizing a regular underground administration. The group met and chose Shen So-tzu as village head, Kung Lai-pao as vice-leader, Fu-yuan as public affairs director, and T’ien-ming as director of public security, i.e., police and counter-intelligence. This group of young men, all of them under 25, worked in the strictest secrecy. They told no one that a resistance government had actually been organized. Only their most trusted friends and relatives were mobilized to carry out the various tasks which they set themselves or which the district set for them. Nevertheless they did too much not to attract attention, were eventually betrayed, and did not all survive the war. What inspired them to take such risks? Why did they remain in the village where they could be seized and killed at any moment when they might with equal honor have joined the regulars in the mountains and fought with guns in hand? There at least a man had a chance to fight and run and live to fight another day.

I never discovered the answer to this question. The survivors of the Long Bow underground who afterwards told me of its exploits seemed to regard it as the most normal thing in the world for them to have done. People were needed for the work in the occupied villages. They lived there and did the work. If things got too hot they could always leave for the hills—if they could get away. If they needed help they could always call on the Eighth Route Army—if there was time.

There is no doubt that the enthusiasm of a resistance movement nation-wide in scope inspired them to acts which they would not otherwise have undertaken. That they passionately believed in the liberation of China and in the new society which they saw coming was proven by their deeds. But they were reticent about such things and much preferred action to talking of it afterward.

A most important aspect of their work was the collection of food and clothes for the Eighth Route Army. Once, after weeks of careful preparation, they collected 60 hundredweight of grain from sympathetic families and carted it all away in one night. They followed this up with repeated collections of clothing and shoes—articles made especially for the front by women of the village who sat sewing in the open street day after day. The strutting sentries in the pay of the Japanese never knew that the shoes put together within reach of their hands were destined for the feet of their enemies.

An equally important task was the collection of intelligence. This was T’ien-ming’s specialty. He kept close watch on all the activities of the enemy troops and the puppet government. Every few days he met with an Eighth Route liaison man either at his uncle’s home in Little Gully or on Great Ridge Mountain south of Long Bow Village. There he had a small plot of land that he could visit without suspicion. When he had something to report he made a little pile of stones, and one day later at an agreed time the army man always appeared.

T’ien-ming passed on to him whatever he or the others learned about troop movements, the numbers in the fort, how many horses they had, how much grain, whether they could be easily taken, who came to Long Bow from other places, what they did there, who were the important collaborators, and whether they could be won over.

He took back with him to the village news of the resistance in other places, reports of victories on far-flung battlefronts and of the extension of Liberated Areas to new regions, and news of the outside world where, according to the puppet press, all trends pointed toward victory for the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” He also delivered the letters which the puppet village head, Shang Shih-t’ou, found lying in his courtyard. It was the hope of the Fifth District leader that Shang Shih-t’ou could be persuaded to co-operate with the Anti-Japanese government just as T’ien-ming’s uncle was doing in Little Gully. But the letters, as we have seen, elicited no response.

When the Fifth District leader found that Shang Shih-t’ou could not be weaned from his treasonous course, he reported the matter to the county government. The Long Bow puppet leader was tried in absentia and sentenced to death. A detachment of Eighth Route soldiers was assigned to carry out the sentence. Several times they entered the village at night, but were unable to find where the condemned man slept.

T’ien-ming then thought of a way to bring him home, at least for a while. He personally got in touch with Shang Shih-t’ou’s wife’s aunt and encouraged her to spread the rumor about Shih-t’ou’s nocturnal doings that led to his capture.

A tip from T’ien-ming also brought to an end the career of the marauding Kuomintang commander, Fan Tung-hsi. Not wishing to foment civil war, the Eighth Route commanders had left Fan Tung-hsi’s forces more or less to themselves. They hoped eventually to persuade them to join the liberation struggle. But as time went on and Tung-hsi’s crimes increased, the peasants of many communities demanded that something be done. One evening Tung-hsi brought ten men into Long Bow for a night of carousal. Word was quickly passed to the hills. The Eighth Route Army sent a squad on the double. In the early hours of the morning they surrounded the house where the men were staying. When Fan Tung-hsi refused to surrender, they fired the whole courtyard. Fan Tung-hsi and his ten colleagues burned to death. It was shortly after this that the rest of the detachment, under Shih Jen-pao, surrendered to the Japanese and were incorporated into the puppet Fourth Column.

In between collections of grain and clothing, the gathering of intelligence, the frequent trips to the hills, and the backbreaking work of making a living from Long Bow’s hard soil, the young men of the underground took what time they could to study politics. The county leaders regarded them as the nucleus for the future transformation of the village and hoped to develop in them a revolutionary consciousness. In the Liberation Areas beyond the reach of the enemy this was done by daily study in every armed unit, every government office, and every mass organization. Regular schools were also set up where outstanding fighters and workers were sent to learn political theory. For underground workers such organized instruction was much more difficult. The best they could do was talk with the district leader whenever there was an opportunity and learn from him about the protracted war they were fighting, the united front of all classes that made it possible, and the New Democracy which Mao Tse-tung predicted once victory was won. The district leader also gave them the writings of Mao Tse-tung on these subjects. None of them was able to read well but they worked through them as best they could. In this way they made their first acquaintance with such basic concepts as classes, the importance of labor as the source of wealth, stages in the development of society, and the necessity of land reform as the key to China’s future.

The development of the peasants’ political consciousness did not proceed very far. The war intervened. In 1943 the village leader of Ku-yi, their main contact, was killed. So was the underground leader of the Fifth District. Such a strict blockade was set up north of Long Bow that it was all but impossible to get through to the Liberated Areas. For awhile the Long Bow underground lost touch with the county and district government altogether. To make matters worse, So-tzu and Lai-pao had no food to carry them through the winter and had to leave to look for work in Taiyuan. They took with them a few dollars that had been collected for the support of the resistance front. This left a bad impression with those villagers who had contributed it. When the two men returned in the spring they refunded the money, re-established contact with the district government and set to work once again, but this time underground activity was more dangerous than ever and the people were more afraid to act.

The enemy had not been idle. Kuo Te-yu, former head of public affairs, had replaced Shang Shih-t’ou as village head. He made exposure of the underground his main task. Afraid, like his predecessor, to sleep at home, he made a practice of lodging in the homes of those whom he suspected of resistance activity. He and his brother, Kuo Fu-kuei, the new head of the police, spent many a night on Fu-yuan’s k’ang hoping to surprise and kill the Eighth Router Ts’ai-yuan, should he arrive from the hills for a visit. During the day they hauled one peasant after another into the village office for questioning and did not hesitate to beat half to death those who were slow in answering. Thus they spread a net to take advantage of any break that could lead them to their quarry. The Eighth Route Army, decimated by the “Three All” campaigns of the two previous years, was too hard pressed to intervene.

Under such conditions the slightest slip could lead to disaster. A cousin’s illicit love affair in another village almost cost T’ien-ming his life. This cousin, who lived in Little Gully, got involved in an affair with a girl from Li Village Gulch, the first village to the south of Long Bow. He was wont to climb over her compound wall and stay all night, much to the distress of her family who spread a rumor that he was a member of the Eighth Route Army. They had no idea that this was really so, but said it for revenge.

Their revenge was not long in coming and must surely have satisfied the most macabre sense of injury. The troops in the fort in Long Bow, having heard the rumor, conducted a search for the young man and found him in T’ien-ming’s home. Both he and T’ien-ming were arrested, taken to the fort, and tortured when they refused to talk. The next morning T’ien-ming’s cousin was beheaded with a fodder-chopping knife. T’ien-ming would have suffered the same fate but for the fact that the soldiers had no real information about him. All the men in the village insisted that he was nothing but a hardworking peasant who meant no harm to anyone. They put their thumb-prints to a document guaranteeing his behavior. This, plus a sum of money realized through the sale of T’ien-ming’s half-interest in a donkey, secured his release. Without the donkey it was difficult to see how he could survive the next crop season, but at least he walked the streets alive.

“Shen So-tzu and Kung Lai-pao were not so lucky. A drug addict named Tseng Tung-hsi, who made a practice of smoking heroin with the commander of the puppet troops, somehow learned the details of the underground village government. He passed the information on. So-tzu, Lai-pao, and Fu-yuan were immediately arrested. Eighteen days of torture and near starvation failed to break them down. So-tzu was shot, Lai-pao cut to pieces with a samurai sword, and Fu-yuan finally released.

Fu-yuan was released because the puppet forces were afraid his brother Ts’ai-yuan would bring the Eighth Route Army back for revenge and because his family was in a position to pay a handsome ransom. The puppet commander Wen Ch’i-yung demanded and got $7,000 in puppet currency (probably worth about $70 in U. S. currency at that time), a large quantity of heroin, a guarantee of Fu-yuan’s good behavior from the whole village and a promise from Fu-yuan that he would entice his brother into a village ambush within six months.

This condition almost drove Fu-yaun to suicide. “The demand that I betray my brother frightened me,” he said years later. “I was determined to do no such thing. Every time I heard the puppet soldiers’ boots pounding the wooden bridge as they crossed the moat, I thought they were coming for me. I ran to the well and sat beside it. I was determined that they should never take me alive again. Whenever our dog barked at night, people thought my brother had come. I killed the dog.

“When I got a little better and was able to walk I tried to leave for the mountains but the rest of the family would not let me go. Their thumb-prints were on the guarantee. They said that if I disappeared they would all be killed and the whole village punished. Finally I went to stay with some poor relatives in another village.”

These tragic events occurred only a few weeks before the war ended. The two leaders of the Long Bow underground, too poor to buy their way out, died rather than betray their comrades. They thus saved the lives of half a dozen young men whom they had had time to organize and educate. On this half dozen devolved the task of Long Bow’s reconstruction.

The Whirlwind

If the sharp sword be not in your hand,

How can you hope your friends will remain many?

The Liberator

Emperor Wu Ti

THE EMPEROR of Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 10, 1945.

Long Bow Village was liberated by the Eighth Route Army and the People’s Militia of Lucheng County on August 14, 1945, after three days of fighting.

Why, if the war was over on August 10th, should there have been a bitter battle for Long Bow that lasted until the 14th? Research into this question throws considerable light on subsequent events in China.

The local resistance forces had to fight their way into Long Bow Village because, within a few hours after the Japanese surrender, Chang Kai-shek issued two orders which brought his “Trojan Horse” strategy to its infamous fruition. The first commanded the Eighth Route Army to stop where it was and to take no action against the Japanese or puppet troops which it confronted. The second directed the puppet troops, over 400,000 of whom garrisoned the North, to maintain “law and order,” resist any advance on the part of the Eighth Route Army, and hold all occupied territory pending the arrival of representatives from Chungking. Within a very short time, leading puppet politicians and generals were appointed officials of the Nationalist administration and officers of the Nationalist Army. The Japanese were ordered to surrender to them and to them alone. General MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, gave full American backing to this move by issuing a general order making Chiang Kai-shek’s forces sole agent for receiving the surrender of the Japanese forces in China proper.*

By this extraordinary maneuver, Chiang attempted, without firing a shot, to re-establish traditional gentry power throughout those vast areas of China where for eight long years of war the Communist-led Eighth Route Army, New Fourth Army, South China Anti-Japanese Brigade, with the aid of the People’s Militia had held at bay 69 percent of the Japanese forces in China and 95 percent of the puppet troops.*

From the military point of view this was an audacious strategy. When viewed in terms of troop numbers, fire power, and the strategic location of forces, it looked like a sure formula for victory. At a minimum Chiang expected the puppet forces to hold their own until, by massive airlift and naval ferry, the Americans helped him shoehorn into the North the newly equipped and trained divisions which he had been holding in reserve in the hinterland. Then with his most modern armies in position, Chiang expected to liquidate the Liberated Areas in a matter of months.

Politically the maneuver was disastrous. The destiny of nations is rarely determined by manpower or fire power alone. Chiang and his American advisers reckoned, as usual, without the people of China. What to them seemed a brilliant coup appeared to the vast majority of the Chinese people a ghastly betrayal of everything for which they had fought and suffered. This was particularly true in the Liberated Areas where the population had borne the full fury of the Japanese assault and hated the puppet troops with a hatred more bitter than that which they nursed against the Japanese themseleves. When Commander-in-Chief Chu Teh ordered the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army to take the offensive and force the surrender of the troops that faced them, millions of militia men and tens of millions of ordinary people gave them the most enthusiastic support. Within a few days several hundred thousand square miles of territory with a population of over 50 million people were liberated.**

Finding himself unable to stem the popular tide by the use of puppet troops turned patriot by decree, Chiang made a further desperate move. He ordered the Japanese Army back into battle. On August 23, 1945, Ho Ying-ch’in, Commander-in-Chief of the Nationalist Armies, directed Yasugi Okamura, Commander-in-Chief of Japan’s forces in China, to defend the positions they already held and to recover the territories recently lost to the Liberated Areas.*

Simultaneously, the American military, by no means confident of Chiang’s strength, and fearful lest neither his “Trojan Horse” puppets nor the demoralized Japanese could hold out against the Communist-led offensive, dumped 50,000 marines into the port of Tientsin and deployed them rapidly north and west along the main trunk railroads. The marines paid special attention to the line to Mukden.

Fanning out along the railroads, ostensibly to help take over from the Japanese, American forces became involved in skirmishes with Eighth Route guerrillas whose survival depended on smashing the tracks. More than once American marines and ex-puppet Kuomintang forces conducted joint operations against the “red bandits” who were “disrupting communications.”** No more damaging coalition of forces could possibly have been assembled in a planned and conscious effort to dissipate the “reservoir of goodwill” which American wartime policy had built up in China. The attack on the Liberated Areas brought China to the brink of all-out civil war, and made the United States an aggressor in the eyes of millions of Chinese.

Such were the events taking place on a national and world scale which made a battle for Long Bow Village necessary. The village was not surrendered to the popular forces that surrounded it. It had to be taken.

Even though the Japanese contingent of the garrison had been withdrawn sometime in July, the forces in the Long Bow blockhouse were still formidable. One hundred men of the puppet Fourth Column, well equipped with modern Japanese weapons, were entrenched there. Additional manpower was provided by several dozen new recruits who made up the Ai Hsiang Tuan or “Love the Village Corps,” a creation of the Shansi provincial Kuomintang working through the puppet administration. The “Love the Village Corps” was a last-minute attempt to give collaborators and “running dogs” the status of “patriots” and provide some framework in occupied territory for the return of the Kuomintang to power. The Long Bow youths who joined this corps were young men who had collaborated in one way or another with the Japanese during the years of the occupation. They were the street captains, Self-Defense Corps rank and file, and minor village officials who had been conscripted or appointed, often against their will, to posts in the apparatus of oppression. Fearing revenge at the hands of the victorious Eighth Route Army, they asked for protection in the fort and many took an active part in its defense.

But all the remnant puppet forces and the last-minute irregulars organized by the Kuomintang were no match for the Eighth Route Army and its supporting militia. The seasoned anti-Japanese troops surrounded all the strong points that flanked the Changchih-Lucheng highway simultaneously and still had several hundred regulars to spare for the biggest blockhouse of them all, at Long Bow. They did not immediately storm its stake-lined moats and mud walls but moved quietly into position, probed the defenses, and exchanged scattered shots in order to play on the nerves of the defenders while their own “Trojan Horse” tactic had time to bear fruit. The Trojan Horse in this case was T’ien-ming. He had joined the “Love the Village Corps” and gone inside the fort to feel out sentiment, count the defenders, and estimate their weapons and ammunition. After three days on the inside, T’ien-ming came out with a report that food supplies were almost gone and morale close to zero. By that time the militiamen from all over the county had been brought up. The fields were alive with armed men. They clogged every strip of corn and tall kaoliang that served as cover in the open countryside and overflowed into the cotton and potato patches. Peasants in the village estimated their number at well over a thousand. When, in the dead of night, the bugle sounded the call to attack, militiamen and regulars swarmed over the walls from all sides. The battle was soon over. The Fourth Column surrendered unconditionally.

Like a string of Chinese firecrackers exploding on New Year’s Day, the attacks followed one another down the valley. Dozens of occupied villages were liberated within a few hours. Leaving the militia to mop up the rear, the main attack units then moved southward to surround the walled city of Changchih where the Japanese troops still held out in force.

Sunrise in the West The Year of Expropriation

There were two “Reigns of Terror” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor terror, the momentary terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold insult, cruelty, and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with slow death by fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by the brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by the older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

Mark Twain

Which Road?

If you Americans, sated with bread and sleep, want to curse people and back Chiang Kai-shek, that’s your business and I won’t interfere. What we have now is millet plus rifles, what you have is bread plus cannon. If you like to back Chiang Kai-shek, back him as long as you want. But remember one thing. To whom does China belong? China definitely does not belong to Chiang Kai-shek; China belongs to the Chinese people. The day will surely come when you will find it impossible to back him any longer.

Mao Tse-tung, 1945

IN LONG BOW, the eight-year-long Anti-Japanese War had come to a sudden end. With the surrender of the Fourth Column not only the Japanese occupation but centuries of landlord rule were also terminated. The end of an era carried in its wake the end of a millennium. It happened so quickly that neither the new forces nor the old were able to grasp the profound significance of the change. It was to take at least three years before the shift wrought in the course of one night of battle could be consolidated by popular action, before a new pattern of life based on the equal ownership of the land could be created.

In China as a whole, a much longer period would be needed before the forces left in command of China’s destiny by the destruction of Japan’s overriding threat established a new balance. In August 1945, a resistance so prolonged that it had become a way of life suddenly gave way to reconstruction. But what kind of China would the Chinese people reconstruct? Would it be the China of the past, stagnant, all but helpless, its great potential strangled by the weight of domestic reaction and foreign intervention and investment, or would it be a new, vigorous, revolutionary China, a China fundamentally remade, a China that stood on her own feet?

Mao Tse-tung compared the victory won by the people of the Liberated Areas to the liberation of a peach tree heavy with fruit. Who should be allowed to pick the fruit? Those who had tended and watered the tree with their sweat and their blood, or those who had sat far away with folded arms?

Mao’s answer was clear. Only those who had tended the tree had the right to pick the fruit.

Chiang’s answer was also clear. The logic of his “Trojan Horse” surrender strategy left no room for doubt. He who from distant Chungking had preached and practiced victory through a curved road intended to pick the fruit himself. With some three million troops, with hundreds of thousands of puppet soldiers, with the Japanese Army itself under his command, with the support of a huge American military establishment, with a “great rear” encompassing some 300 million people ravaged very little by war at his disposal, and with the ultimate sanction of the bomb behind him, he felt strong enough to conquer the Liberated Areas and restore their traditional rulers.

What about the people, the 100 million who lived in the Anti-Japanese Bases in the plains and mountains of North, Northeast, and Central China, the myriad progressives who lived in the “great rear,” all the people who had learned to look to the Communist Party for leadership? They wanted peace, they demanded peace, they were willing to make concessions for peace, but in the long run the question of peace or war was not entirely in their hands. Chiang, with American backing, meant to enforce his own peace terms. Did they have the strength to defend themselves? Did they dare? This was the crucial question that faced the Communists and all other revolutionary leaders at that fateful moment.

Many people, including many Communists in responsible positions, were afraid. They did not see how the war-ravaged guerrilla areas of the North could survive the kind of attack that Chiang Kai-shek was mounting. It had taken the resources of much of the world to defeat Japan. Could a fraction of the Chinese people hope to defeat a Kuomintang backed by the resources of the United States? And if they did indeed have some initial success, would the Americans not use the dread bomb which had ravaged Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than lose influence over a continent? These leaders could hardly help reflecting on various forms of compromise, could hardly refrain from cautioning against actions which they thought might provoke a showdown.

Among the compromisers were many people of landlord or middle-class origin. They had come to the support of the Communist Party during the period of the National United Front. They were not prepared for the sharp break in this front that followed Japan’s surrender. Without close ties or deep sympathy with the common people, they lacked faith in the ability and determination of workers and peassants to fight on and win.

Other equally sincere people of similar background were confused by the political climate. Talk of a negotiated settlement, talk of a coalition government, Marshall’s peace mission, promises of a national assembly, all these generated illusions. People were so tired of war, so exhausted by eight years of horror, so desirous of a peaceful settlement that they could not believe anyone could contemplate the invasion of the Liberated Areas and demand the surrender of the heroic Anti-Japanese Bases as the price for peace. As the guns, tanks, planes, and ammunition left over from the war in the Pacific poured in to arm Chiang’s many-millioned legions, they looked the other way, placed their hopes entirely on negotiations, and refused to face the prospect of open armed conflict.

In this situation Mao Tse-tung and the other leaders of the Chinese Communist Central Committee found it necessary to carry out a dual policy. On the one hand they made serious efforts to bring about a peaceful settlement. To this end they agreed to reduce the size of the Eighth Route Army and ordered abandoned eight Liberated Areas in South and Central China. On the other hand, they prepared the 100 million people under their administrative control for the attack on the Liberated Areas of North China which they expected Chiang Kai-shek to mount. A most critical part of this preparation consisted in refuting the capitulationist ideas outlined above. Mao undertook this task in good time. Patiently but firmly he insisted that the people of the Liberated Areas could defend themselves, and that the people of all China possessed sufficient strength to bring about fundamental changes in the country as a whole. The strength of Chiang and his Western backers, Mao said, was more apparent than real. Money they had, resources they had, arms they had, but the hearts of the people they could never win. In the long run people, not weapons, would be decisive. “The people,” said Mao, “will destroy the bomb; the bomb will not destroy the people.”

This strategic concept was summed up in the phrase, “Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers.” This was Mao’s paraphrase, in August 1946, of Lenin’s famous dictum that imperialism is a colossus with feet of clay. Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers, said Mao, in the sense that they can be defeated by an aroused people. At the same time they are real tigers in the sense that they are capable of inflicting serious damage, terrible wounds. Therefore, said Mao, the Chinese people should slight the enemy strategically, but take full cognizance of him tactically. On the one hand they should dare to defend themselves, dare to struggle, dare to win. On the other hand, they should take the struggle seriously—i.e., devote full attention to each campaign and to each battle, seek out all possible allies and mobilize as much support from the people of the whole world as possible. Not to struggle was to surrender to Right opportunism. Not to take the struggle seriously, to ignore allies, to go it alone meant to surrender to Left sectarianism. First and foremost, however, was the decision to struggle, to dare to fight, to dare to win. Unless this basic decision was made, defeat was certain.

In Long Bow those who were for transforming the village gave full support to the Communist Party, to the Eighth Route Army, to the People’s Militia that had liberated them, and to the program which these forces brought to the village. Those who were undecided, those who were afraid worried about the possibility of a “change of sky.” They feared that the Communist Party, the Eighth Route Army, and the People’s Militia would not be strong enough to hold what they had taken, that a counter-offensive from the nationalist areas, backed by the enormous strength of the United States might well succeed in bringing back the old sky, the old way of life, the old oppression. To go all out, to fight and struggle, or to hang back, to wait and see, to hold a finger in the wind—this was the big question that the people of the village, like the people of the Liberated Areas as a whole, debated in the days that followed the surrender of the Fourth Column.

For the young activists who had fought in the underground the answer had never been in doubt. They were for struggle.

Beat the Dog’s Leg

All actions labelled as “going too far” had a revolutionary significance. To put it bluntly, it was necessary to bring about a brief reign of terror in every rural area; otherwise one could never suppress the activities of the counter-revolutionaries in the countryside or overthrow the authority of the gentry. To right a wrong it is necessary to exceed the proper limits, and wrong cannot be righted without the proper limits being exceeded.

Mao Tse-tung, 1927

THE VICTORY celebrations that followed the surrender of the Fourth Column lasted several days and nights. They had hardly subsided when the peasants of Long Bow in their huts and hovels, on their clay brick k’angs, and in their packed earth courtyards, on streets and in alleys made muddy by the monsoon rains, and even in the crop-laden fields far beyond the last adobe walls that marked the settlement, heard a strange sound that many at first mistook for the hoarse braying of a donkey. It came, so it seemed, from the heavens. Looking upward all eyes were drawn to the highest point around them, the square tower of the Catholic Church. There they saw, not some skyborne donkey, but the figure of a young man silhouetted against outer space and holding to his face a megaphone which he directed first toward one quarter of the earth and then toward another, shouting all the while at the top of his voice:

“There will be a meeting—a meeting today—in the square after the noon meal—an anti-traitor meeting—everybody out, everybody out—there will be a meeting—today—.”

Whichever way the young man turned his body, the people directly in front of him heard the words distinctly, while those to the right and the left and the rear heard only an unintelligible roaring, but since, before he finished, he boxed the compass with his megaphone, the people in each quarter of the village were alerted in turn.

A meeting! Not since the quarrel with the Church over the ownership of the vegetable garden 20 years before had there been a public meeting in Long Bow. The call, coming just before noon, aroused the whole population and set the village buzzing like a hornet’s nest that has been struck. It had always been a mealtime custom for both men and women to take their bowls of steaming millet or corn dumplings outdoors, there to gather in congenial groups for random talk and gossip. On this day the groups eating in the larger courtyards and in the streets were double or triple their normal size as every person able to walk and carry a bowl gathered outside to talk over the news. Old women leaning on sticks and canes hobbled out on their bound feet. Young mothers, holding their babies to their breasts with one hand and wielding chopsticks with the other, balanced their bowls on their knees and strained to hear what the neighbors had to say. Barefoot, half-naked boys and girls ran from group to group and alley to alley helping spread the rumors that flew in a matter of minutes from one end of the village to the other. Only the notorious traitors and their families made themselves conspicuous by their absence; but even they, consumed with curiosity and fear, sent relatives and friends to circulate among the people in order to pick up what incidental intelligence they could.

What puppet leader would be accused first? Would he be shot? How much property did he own? Who would get it? Had there been a victory at Changchih? Were the Japanese coming back under Yen Hsi-shan’s command? Did the Eighth Route Army seize conscripts? These and a hundred other questions were on every tongue.

Long before the usual noon siesta had run its course the people began to gather in the square. Animated small knots grew and merged until the whole open area beside the village pond was filled with ragged, soiled, work-worn humanity. The predominant color of the gathering was dark blue merging into black for this was the hue of the cheap, machine-made cloth from which wives and mothers had cut the majority of their clothes. This dark background was leavened however with dashes of white or dirty gray for this was the color of the hand towels which both men and women wore on their heads. It was also the head-to-foot color displayed by those few peasants who could afford neither dye nor machine-made cloth. They wore bleached homespun. To this somber black and gray a brilliant flash of color was added here and there by the bright red tunic of an unmarried girl, or the dragon cap in blue, green, or yellow of some precious boy child held tightly in his mother’s arms.

The men of the village naturally gathered toward the front of the crowd. They faced the inn. Before it a slight rise in the ground made a convenient platform for those who would lead the meeting. The women, reticent and shy, hung back in clusters of their own. Milling about in front of the men and shoving each other right up the slope to the door of the inn itself were scores of children, laughing, shouting, and pushing, each intent on finding a place in the very front row so that he or she would miss nothing. The men talked quietly among themselves and smoked; laboriously they took small pinches of shredded tobacco from the leather pouches that hung at their waists, pressed them into the pea-sized brass bowls of their long-stemmed pipes, and struck flint against steel to get a spark with which to light up. A pipe, once lit up, was passed from hand to hand so that from each effort four or five peasants had at least a taste of smoke before the tobacco burned itself out and the process had to be repeated.

While the men smoked and talked, many of the women busied themselves with work brought from home. The children had to have clothes to wear even if the sky should fall, and the days were too short to allow a single moment to go to waste. Some of them spun the small blocks of wood that twisted hemp into thread. Others used the thread already made to sew together the many layers of cloth that made up the soles of the shoes worn in the Taihang Mountains.

Tempted by the prospect of sales to such a large gathering, a few peddlers had even appeared, as if out of nowhere. They made their way among the people hawking dried thorn dates, roasted peanuts, and fresh-baked, unleavened cakes.

Mingled throughout the crowd but conspicuous only on its fringes were the militiamen, organized only a day or two earlier. A few had rifles. The rest carried red-tassled spears. Regardless of the weapon, each stood proud, erect, watchful. All were conscious of the sidelong glances of the young women, both married and unmarried, who, because they were rarely allowed to leave home at all, now looked about wide-eyed and curious.

The mood of the gathering was expectant, yet skeptical. The peasants were full of hatred for traitors, yet afraid of the revenge traitors might inflict. They were ready to believe in the Eighth Route Army and in the Liberated Areas’ Government, but doubtful that either would act in the end. And if action were taken, who could foresee what the final result would be? After all, everyone knew that the puppet running dogs had powerful connections. Had not the priest himself wined and dined the Japanese? Had not Sheng Ching-ho, the richest man in Long Bow, backed up “Chief-of-Staff” Chou Mei-sheng?

All talk stopped abruptly as a man, hands bound behind his back, body twisted slightly, head lowered, walked slowly into the square from the south. He was urged on from behind by a heavy-set militiaman who carried his rifle as if it were a hoe. The bound man was Kuo Te-yu, who had replaced the executed Shang Shih-t’ou as puppet village head, a position he had held until three days before.

“So they’re going to begin with the turtle’s egg village head,” said an old peasant at the edge of the crowd.

“It’s the village head, rape his mother!” said another.

This word spread through the gathering.

Behind Te-yu and his awkward guard came several young peasants. They immediately took charge of the meeting. To the astonishment of all, one of these peasants was Chang T’ien-ming. Another was the underground district leader, Kuo Huang-kou or Yellow Dog Kuo (about whose exploits many had heard, but a man whom few had actually seen). A young cadre of local peasant origin still in his early twenties, Huang-kou had taken the steps that made this meeting possible. On that night in August 1945 when the Fourth Column surrendered, neither Yellow Dog Kuo nor anyone else in Long Bow had any conception of the scale of the revolutionary changes to come. One thing was clear, however; if the political and military vacuum left by the surrender of the garrison and the collapse of the puppet village government was not quickly filled by the resistance forces, the gentry would fill it themselves by reshuffling their old political machine and varnishing it with a resounding new title such as “Anti-Japanese Patriotic Government.” Such maneuvers had already taken place in other areas. Determined that no such thing should happen in Long Bow, the young district leader moved to set up a new administration while the battle for the village still raged. Since the whole puppet organization, including the important civilian leaders, had fled to the fort for protection, the village itself was already free. Setting up his headquarters in the abandoned village office, Yellow Dog Kuo called together all those who had been active in the struggle against the Japanese and, in addition, a few poor peasants untainted by collaboration—the most oppressed, the most lao shih young leaders that he could find.* About a dozen men, all of them in their early twenties, met that evening. As the Eighth Route Army and the massed militia began their final assault on the fort, these 12 established a new “People’s Government.”

District leader Kuo asked T’ien-ming to assume the post of village chairman. T’ien-ming (who had just returned from his dangerous mission inside the fort) felt himself too handicapped by illiteracy for such a big job. He declined and asked to be allowed to continue the work he had done in the underground, that of public security officer. Kuo himself temporarily assumed the post of village chairman. Kuei-ts’ai, a life-long hired laborer who had arrived in Long Bow 20 years before suspended from his father’s carrying pole, became vice-chairman. Chang San-ch’ing, a young man who had worked as a clerk in a drug shop in occupied Taiyuan and knew how to write and to figure on an abacus, became secretary for the group. Chang Chiang-tzu, a very brave and steadfast peasant, was appointed captain of the militia and head of military affairs. Shih Fu-yuan, who, next to T’ien-ming, had the longest underground record of them all, missed that first meeting. He was still staying with relatives in the faraway village where he had gone to avoid having to betray his brother, Ts’ai-yuan, to the puppet forces.

By the time the puppet garrison walked out of the fort as captives, the new People’s Government had already taken full control of the village. The young men asked nobody’s permission. They were not elected or appointed. They took power on the assumption that the underground work of their key leaders had earned them the right to administer the liberated village. A large majority of the people held them in high regard. With an armed force of militiamen hastily organized and the moral support of most of the peasants, no one was in a position to challenge their de facto rule. Recognition by the Fifth District Office and consequently by the People’s Government of Lucheng County, now in its eighth year, made this rule de jure as well.

Under Yellow Dog Kuo’s guidance, the group proceeded at once to tackle two great tasks: the mobilization of the whole community in support of the drive on Changchih and a settling of accounts with the personnel of the puppet administration. To accomplish the first task, grain was collected, loaded in carts, and dispatched to the front. A large group of men followed, armed with shovels and hoes. They went to do whatever labor the army found necessary. Even the militia were no sooner organized than a group was sent south to join in the battle. Most of them had no firearms; some had never even handled a rifle. But numbers were needed so they marched off with spirit enough to make up, at least in part, for the deficiencies of their equipment and training.

As for the puppet administration, none of the leading collaborators had run very far. Some of them were captured in the fort as they fought alongside the Fourth Column; others were picked up on the road to Changchih as they tried to escape and were escorted back to the village by the Fifth District militiamen. As soon as they found guarantors who pledged that they would not leave the village, they were set free to await trial.

The People’s Government of Lucheng County, now permanently housed in the Yamen at the county seat, launched its first postwar campaign with two slogans—“Down with Traitors, Down with Kuomintang Agents, Down with Local Despots” and “Liquidate the Bloody Eight Years’ Debt.” These slogans were directed at the puppet officials, but since, in many cases, the actual officials were but fronts for the real rulers who operated behind the scenes, they also raised a third slogan—“Beat Down the Dog’s Legs to Find his Head; Beat Down the Little Fellows to Find the Leaders.”

At Yellow Dog Kuo’s suggestion, T’ien-ming called all the active young cadres and militiamen of Long Bow together and announced to them the policy of the county government, which was to confront all enemy collaborators and their backers at public meetings, expose their crimes, and turn them over to the county authorities for punishment. He proposed that they start with Kuo Te-yu, the puppet village head. Having moved the group to anger with a description of Te-yu’s crimes, T’ien-ming reviewed the painful life led by the poor peasants during the occupation and recalled how hard they had all worked, and how as soon as they harvested a little grain the puppet officials, backed by army bayonets, took what they wanted, turned over huge quantities to the Japanese devils, forced the peasants to haul it away, and flogged those who refused.

The young men agreed to conduct a public meeting of the whole population the very next day.

And so it was that Kuo Te-yu, running dog of the landlords, informer, torturer, grafter, and enemy stooge, found himself standing before a crowd of several hundred stolid peasants whom he had betrayed. His face was ashen, his tunic shabby and soiled. A stranger might well have taken him for a thief caught stealing melons, hardly for a village tyrant.

As the silent crowd contracted toward the spot where the accused man stood, T’ien-ming stepped forward.

“Comrades, countrymen,” he began. Immediately his short, handsome figure became the center of attention. Was this dark, assured young man with the quick, piercing eyes the same T’ien-ming they had seen running barefoot and ragged in the streets only a few bitter years ago? Was this the reticent laborer they had all stood guarantor for? Who would have thought a few days earlier that he could speak before a crowd? Yet now his words came naturally, passionately: “This is our chance. Remember how we were oppressed. The traitors seized our property. They beat us and kicked us. Now the whole world is ours. The government and the Eighth Route Army stand behind us. Let us speak out the bitter memories of the past. Let us see that the blood debt is repaid.”

He paused for a moment. The peasants were listening to every word but gave no sign as to how they felt.

“In the past we were despised. Who did not feel it every day? Only now can we hold our heads up and speak like men. Look, the village is ours.” He swept his arm in a wide arc that took in the crowd clad in dark cloth all patched and faded, the crumbling compound walls that bounded the square, the pond green with slime, the sagging doors on the weathered brick church, the partly caved-in roof of the Buddhist temple, the rutted street leading out to the fields, and the fields themselves with their crops trampled in the rainy season mud as a result of the battle—a vista of neglect, collapse, and decay universal enough to discourage even the stoutest heart, the most optimistic spirit. “What is there to be afraid of? When we beat down the traitors, we can stand up. We can divide the fruits of their corruption and start a new life.”

He spoke plainly. His language and his accent were well understood by the people among whom he had been raised, but no one moved and no one spoke.

“Come now, who has evidence against this man?”

Again there was silence.

Kuei-ts’ai, the new vice-chairman of the village, found it intolerable. He jumped up, struck Kuo Te-yu on the jaw with the flat of his hand. “Tell the meeting how much you stole,” he demanded.

The blow jarred the ragged crowd. It was as if an electric spark had tensed every muscle. Not in living memory had any peasant ever struck an official. A gasp, involuntary and barely audible, came from the people and above it a clear sharp “Ah” from an old man’s throat.

Te-yu, in a spasm of fear, could utter only a few incoherent sentences. This so angered Kuei-ts’ai that he struck him again.

“One bag of tax grain …” Only those who were standing very close could hear Te-yu’s hoarse whisper.

“One bag! You took only one bag?” shouted Kuei-ts’ai.

“But it was not my fault. There were seven pecks …”

“Now you deny it. Not even one bag. It was not my fault …” Kuei-ts’ai strode back and forth in front of Te-yu and mimicked his words.

Kuei-ts’ai, like T’ien-ming, was short and husky, but he could not be called handsome. He had a heavy brow, and a high-bridged nose that made his eyes appear extraordinarily deep-set. Now his whole face was contorted with anger like the head of a war god on a New Year’s poster.

“Don’t lie to us,” he shouted, shaking his fist in the cringing man’s face. The cry was taken up by the rest of the militiamen who had moved in behind Te-yu: “Don’t lie to us.”

This frightened the village head still more. Words gagged in his throat. Further blows only made him cringe. He bowed his head low before the meeting but revealed nothing of the graft he had wallowed in.

The people in the square waited fascinated, as if watching a play. They did not realize that in order for the plot to unfold they themselves had to mount the stage and speak out what was on their minds. No one moved to carry forward what Kuei-ts’ai had begun.

T’ien-ming was upset. Without the participation of hundreds the record could never be set straight. He called a hasty conference of his fellow village officers. They decided to put off the meeting until the next day. In the interim they hoped to mobilize at least a dozen people who would speak out and lead the way.

When T’ien-ming announced the postponement a murmur went through the crowd, but it was difficult to say whether it was a murmur of approval or a murmur of disappointment. Kuo Te-yu was led away to the village lockup, a crowd of small boys following closely on his heels. Slowly the people in the square dispersed until only a small knot of cadres and militiamen remained in front of the inn. There they vigorously discussed the failure of the people to step forward, until their children came to call them home for supper.

That evening T’ien-ming and Kuei-ts’ai called together small groups of poor peasants from various parts of the village and sought to learn what it was that was really holding them back. They soon found that the root of the trouble was fear. The landlords and the Kuomintang Party organization of the district, headed by Wang En-pao, son of the Carry-On Society’s chairman, Wang Kuei-ching, already had a fairly clear idea of what was coming and had taken vigorous steps to forestall and divert the attack. They spread rumors to the effect that Yen Hsi-shan, with the help of the Japanese Army, would soon be back. That this was no idle boast had been made clear by Yen’s acts. The old warlord had no sooner re-entered his old capital, Taiyuan, than he ordered General Roshiro Sumita, Commander of all the Japanese forces in Shansi, to re-occupy his imposing wartime headquarters and mastermind the campaign for the recovery of the Liberated Areas. General Sumita threw 40,000 men into the battle. Lest anyone have the nerve to act in the face of this offensive, the gentry also let it be known that lists were being drawn up of active revolutionaries who were to be dispatched by firing squads when Yen’s troops returned. Along with these threats went a campaign to discredit the resistance movement; rumors were spread that women were nationalized in the Liberated Areas, ancestral graves violated, and all peasants forced to eat ta kuo fan or “food out of one big pot.” The other side of this coin was the claim that collaboration had really been resistance, that by bending temporarily to Japan’s will the puppets had worked for national salvation along a curved path. Was not the final surrender of the Japanese proof of this?

All this activity was not without effect. Many peasants who might have been eager to strike a blow against collaborators hesitated. They were afraid to act. They had little confidence that the Eighth Route Army, soldiers without boots, without helmets, and without heavy weapons could hold the region. Fighting was still heavy around Changchih, only ten miles away. Who could tell? Perhaps the “sky would change again” and the old regime would return with fire and sword. Was it not better to lie low and see how things turned out? The old reluctance to move against the power of the gentry, the fear of ultimate defeat and terrible reprisal that had been seared into the consciousness of so many generations lay like a cloud over their minds and hearts.

The mere collapse of the fort and the arrest of the puppet leaders were clearly not enough to bring the peasants of Long Bow into action. The mobilization of the population could spread only slowly and in concentric circles like the waves on the surface of a pond when a stone is thrown in. The stone in this case was the small group of chi chi fen-tse or “activists,” as the cadres of the new administration and the core of its militia were called.

That evening they talked plain facts to the selected people in the small groups that they had called together. They discussed “change of sky.” Could the Kuomintang troops or the Japanese ever come back? “Even if they do,” T’ien-ming said, “we younger men can go off to the higher mountains with the Eighth Route Army, so why be afraid? If we don’t move now, the chance will be lost.” He reviewed again the evil record of the traitor clique, the death of So-tzu and Lai-pao, and the beatings suffered by himself, Fu-yuan, and countless others, the seized grain, the forced labor.

Emboldened by T’ien-ming’s words, other peasants began to speak out. They recalled what Te-yu had done to them personally. Several vowed to speak up and accuse him in the morning. After the meetings broke up, the passage of time worked its own leaven. In many a hovel and tumble-down house talk continued well past midnight. Some people were so excited they did not sleep at all. As the village cocks began to crow they found themselves still discussing whether or not to act, and if so, how.

On the following day the meeting was livelier by far. It began with a sharp argument as to who would make the first accusation and T’ien-ming found it difficult to keep order. Before Te-yu had a chance to reply to any questions a crowd of young men, among whom were several militiamen, surged forward ready to beat him.

At this crucial moment the district leader, Yellow Dog Kuo, strode between the young men and their victim. He blocked the assault with his own body and then explained to the crowd that the puppet leader was but a “dog’s leg”—a poor peasant who had been used. To kill him would gain them nothing. It was the manipulators behind him who had to be exposed.

“Let him tell what he knows,” Kuo urged. “Let him expose the others.”

Once again T’ien-ming demanded that the prisoner talk.

This time Te-yu finally found his tongue and spoke out so that the whole gathering could hear him, but he rambled so much in his explanation, and went into such detail making clear the extenuating circumstances of his every act that no coherent account of money and grain emerged. Furthermore his own statements and the memory of his accusers conflicted. The cadres decided to charge him with ten hundredweight of grain for good measure and set his case aside for the time being. They searched his home for the grain that same afternoon and swapped it in Lucheng for four rifles for the militia.

With this inconclusive action the local struggle was called off for a few days while the more important and notorious puppet leaders of the district were brought before large representative meetings. Shih Jen-pao, of the Fourth Column, had unfortunately escaped, but Wen Ch’i-yung, commander of the puppet garrison in Long Bow fort, Shen Chi-mei, head of the Fifth District police, and Ch’ing T’ien-hsing, his assistant, were brought face to face with 190 peasants from all over the district—more than ten from each village—who came together in Long Bow’s square as delegates from their respective communities. These were the people who had suffered the most from puppet depredations, whose homes had been looted, whose sons and husbands had been killed, whose wives and daughters had been seduced or raped.

Hundreds of accusations were made that day against the leading traitors and all those who worked with them. A Long Bow woman told how her son, Chin-mao, had been killed. When she came to the part where the police threw him, gagged and bound, into a well, she broke down weeping and could not go on. Many in the crowd wept with her. Shen Ch’uan-te, also of Long Bow, charged the puppet regime with the death of his brother. “My brother was killed by the Eighth Route soldiers,” he said, “but they killed him because he was carrying a message for the traitors. The traitors forced him to carry it. Why didn’t they carry their own messages? They are the real killers.”

Yellow Dog Kuo finally asked, “What is the origin of these murders? Who stood back of these puppets? How was it possible for their puny troops to have such power? Who served as their eyes and ears? Who informed on the peasants and exposed them to attack?”

Many then spoke out and said it was Shen Chi-mei and the landlords who backed him that lay at the root of the disaster that had befallen them. Before the meeting ended, Commander Wen and Police Officer Shen were condemned to death. They were taken to an empty field at the edge of the village and there, in sight of the fort they had done so much to build and to defend, they were shot. While the dead Shen Chi-mei lay still warm on the ground where he fell, a Long Bow militiaman, Yu-hsing, stripped a sweater off his corpse. Someone else took off his shoes. They left the body to his relatives to bury as they would.

Ch’ing T’ien-hsing, the third prisoner, was not sentenced that day. He was handed over to the County Court at Lucheng for investigation. He escaped from the lockup in the middle of the night but the militiamen from Long Bow who had taken him to Lucheng the day before, hunted him down, caught him in Horse Square, and killed him on the spot.

During the next few days the militia led thousands of people in a search for all the property that the soldiers of the Fourth Column had stolen. The loot had been placed in various village homes for safekeeping. Many families volunteered information that led to its discovery. Several hundred suits of clothes, several thousand feet of cloth, and many other valuable household articles were recovered and returned to their rightful owners. A large cache of this looted property was found in Landlord Wang Lai-hsun’s home. The land, tools, stock, and household effects of the executed men were confiscated.

Find the Leaders

How was the question of Toryism dealt with by the Revolutionary fathers? Up to the time of Lexington, the main resort of the patriots was persuasion and exhortation, liberally spiced with extra-legal pressures ranging from boycott to physical assault. After Lexington, persuasion gave way to compulsion, which took five main forms. These were: (1) deprivation of all civil and some social rights; (2) confiscation of property; (3) exile; (4) confinement; (5) execution.

Herbert Aptheker

THE DEATH of the two most notorious puppet leaders of the Fifth District dispersed some of the fear that still hung over the village. Victories on the battlefront dissipated it further. The Eighth Route Army took Changchih early in September and drove the front back another 30 miles. The offensive launched by Yen Hsi-shan toward Hsiangyuan, Tungliu, and Lucheng later in the month was also smashed. With an army made up of some 38,000 Japanese, former puppet and regular Nationalist troops, Yen tried to subdue the Shang-tang plateau and seize the autumn harvest. But in October this whole force was surrounded, and 35,000 of the invaders were killed, wounded, or captured. The rest ran away.

Peasants who went to help the army with shovels and mattocks saw with their own eyes how shoeless fighters struck fear into the hearts of heavily armed troops who had nothing to fight for. The militiamen who joined the battle with spears even brought back some rifles as their share of the spoils.

In this triumphant atmosphere peasants who had attended the district-wide meeting in Long Bow and had seen the traitors shot went back to their villages in every part of the territory and sparked a fierce campaign against collaborators. Important leaders who had gone into hiding were found, arrested, and tried. Several men, as much hated by the people as Shen Chi-mei, were shot. In Liu Village a list of Kuomintang Party members was unearthed. This led to the arrest of many collaborators hiding out in parts of the district never occupied by the enemy. They had secretly gathered information tha enabled the puppet troops to ambush and kill resistance leaders and fighters.

As this mass anti-traitor campaign got under way the Fifth District leader, Yellow Dog Kuo, was transferred by the county government to the First District. An experienced organizer named Liang was sent to Long Bow to take his place. Liang had no desire to be both Fifth District Leader and village head of Long Bow as Kuo had been, so he looked around for someone to fill this latter post. By that time Shih Fu-yuan was back in the village and already deeply involved in the campaign against the puppets who had caused him such suffering. The new district leader picked Fu-yuan as head of Long Bow Village.

Under Fu-yuan’s leadership the village office brought Kuo Te-yu, Kuo Fu-kuei, Li T’ung-jen and many other active collaborators before new village-wide meetings. Each time more people stepped forward to accuse than had dared to do so before. When the damages brought out by these accusations were totalled, all the property owned by the collaborators was not enough to repay their victims. It was not a question of graft alone. The collaborators had seized outright many valuable things and had avoided terms of labor service that added up to many months of labor. This last item was figured as grain now owed to those who had been forced to go in their stead.

From “dog’s legs” such as Te-yu the movement spread out in both directions attacking, on the one hand, those who had only been street or block leaders, and on the other, those who had been the real pillars of the puppet regime, men such as Chou Mei-sheng, secretary and key organizer of the village administration throughout the occupation, and Father Sun, the priest of the Church, whose liaison with both the Japanese and the group of Catholic landlords who were the real power behind the puppet office, was notorious.

A special meeting was called to confront Chief-of-Staff Chou with his crimes. Particularly bitter were the complaints about salt. Throughout the occupation salt could not be bought or sold freely. It was handled as a government monopoly and was supposed to be rationed on a per capita basis. Chou Mei-sheng got the salt ration from the county office and then passed it out, not according to need, but according to political expediency. Relatives and friends got an extra share. Those who quarrelled with him got less or none. By controlling the salt, a necessity of life, he wielded tremendous power and rewarded or punished people according to his whim.

Chou Mei-sheng was also responsible for many tax abuses and for discrimination in the allocation of labor service. He dispensed forced labor as freely as he withheld salt, and to the same end—to punish his enemies and reward his friends. Those who resisted were beaten. Of those who went off to work, some never returned.

When the cadres figured out how much he had grafted it came to over 100 large bags of grain. To settle this debt to the people he had to give up all his land and houses, all his grain and property. They left him but one room to live in and grain enough to last only until winter.

In the course of this struggle no one came to Chou Mei-sheng’s defense. As soon as the new cadres led the village against him, the landlords who had backed him disowned him without hesitation. To clear their own skirts they pretended that they had had nothing to do with him. But Father Sun was not so easily isolated. As the one remaining priest of the Church he was the leader of more than 200 people in the village. Most of them believed strongly in his teachings even if they disapproved of his pro-Japanese views and activities. Some backed both his politics and his religion. With their support Father Sun felt secure enough to openly denounce the Eighth Route Army, the liberation of the village from puppet and consequently from Kuomintang control, and the “Anti-Traitor Movement” itself.

When the Eighth Route Army soldiers entered the village and moved on down the valley he told everyone he met that misfortune had fallen upon the Church and the faithful. His sermons predicted a “change of sky.” “The Eighth Route Army is nothing but a bandit rabble,” he declared. “The Eighth Route soldiers do not believe in God. They oppose Catholicism, they tear down temples, they smash Buddhas. They don’t even wear shoes. How can they long remain? Surely the troops of the Central Government will soon return.”

When the village government punished collaborators by the confiscation of their land and property and distributed this wealth among the landless and the land poor he scathingly denounced the practice in his sermon. He said, “Man was created by God, food is given by God, everything in the world happens by God’s will. We must obey God’s orders. God determined that the poor should be poor. They should not aspire to be rich. Only those who can endure pain and suffering in this life can hope to enter heaven after death. The more patient you are, the more suffering you bear, the sooner you will enter heaven and see God.”

When Shen Chi-mei, the traitor, was executed, Father Sun went out of his way to say mass for the salvation of his soul and soon thereafter announced that this man’s spirit had entered heaven from purgatory.

These acts and statements invited retaliation. T’ien-ming, who was responsible for public security, ordered Father Sun arrested. All the cadres of the village office then began to mobilize the people against him. They went among the Catholics and found several who were already disillusioned with the religion and were eager to attack the Church. Among them was one potential leader, a former hired laborer named Kuo Cheng-k’uan. He had worked many years for the Catholic landlord Fan Pu-tzu, and later had hired out as a mule driver to the Cathedral in Changchih. All his life he had suffered nothing but abuse from the Church.

With Cheng-k’uan’s help the cadres called the Catholics of the village together to discuss the case of Father Sun. Experience in other villages had already shown that a direct attack on the Catholic religion was not an effective tactic. While a few were ready to repudiate their faith, most believers were not. Whenever the teachings of the Church were attacked the majority of the faithful only rallied more strongly around the institution itself. For this reason the Long Bow cadres did not challenge Father Sun’s theology, but concentrated their fire on his secular activities. District Leader Liang adopted a selective approach when he opened the meeting. “After all,” he said, “no one knows about God. No one has seen him. Whether or not God exists, whether there is one God or whether there are many, is not the question before us here. The question before us is Father Sun, his collaboration with the Japanese, the heavy charges he made for giving protection to your property, the way he tried to force the whole village into the Church, his discrimination against the poor in all things.”

This speech moved even some of the most faithful believers. They began to recall one instance after another of injustice at the hands of Father Sun. Within a few hours more than 60 grievances were registered against him.

The next day the whole population of the village was called together. When the cadres asked the people if they dared accuse the priest everyone kept silent at first. Then District Leader Liang spoke again. He reviewed Father Sun’s record and this time stressed the exploitation he had practiced. “For every mass the Father read he spent but a few minutes, but for that few minutes he charged a whole quarter bushel of millet. He wouldn’t take a quart, he had to have a quarter bushel.”

At this point Sheng Kuei-t’ing, a former secretary of the Carry-On Society, a man who had managed the finances of the Church before the job fell to Wang Kuei-ching, stood up. “I will be the first to accuse,” he said. “I know in detail how the whole system worked. I myself was peeled and pared,” and he told all he knew about the income and the expenditures of the Father, the Church, and the Carry-On Society. When he had finished, many others volunteered, saying to one another, “If you will speak out, I will follow. If you are not afraid of God, then neither am I.”

As the meeting progressed Father Sun was brought from the lockup and made to stand before the crowd. One after another his own parishioners accused him to his face.

“You preach suffering and hardship for the people,” shouted Cheng-k’uan. “You say the poor should eat plain food and endure cold, never get angry and never do bad things. Then why should you eat meat and white flour every day? And if the taste doesn’t suit you, you order the cook to make it over again. And every night you sleep with the nuns. It’s suffering and virtue for others but for yourself, it’s comfort and sin.”

Father Sun did not deign to answer this. He stood before them defiantly and kept his mouth shut.

“And as for the mass,” continued Cheng-k’uan. “If anyone gave you a lot of money, you said it for him very quickly. If anyone gave you a little money you did the mass after a while, but if anyone had no money at all, there was no mass at all either. Is your mass a service to the people or is it just a business to earn some money?”

This brought the peasant Hsiao-su to his feet. “You told us a lot of lies,” he said, walking straight up to the priest and shaking his fist in his face. “You said that no one must bite the wafer you handed out. You said that if we bit it with our teeth blood would flow from it and we would be punished by God. But I didn’t believe it. One morning I took the wafer to the privy behind the church and I broke it with my teeth and crumbled it up. I found nothing but wheat flour. Not a drop of blood flowed out of it. Your words are nothing but lies. All you do is deceive people.”

“That’s right, all you do is deceive,” said Cheng-k’uan, joining Hsiao-su in front of the priest. “The Carry-On Society is supposed to help people, but the best land is farmed by the head of the Society and the landlord Fan Pu-tzu. When the Japanese came, we all asked for shelter in the Church. You found room for the landlords, but we poor Catholics could only wander about the yard until we were finally driven back onto the street. And of everything we brought to you for protection, you took 20 percent. Is that the way you help people?”

“Help people! Help people! They never help people,” said Wang Ch’eng-yu. “I have been a Catholic all my life and all I ever got for it was beatings.” The words poured from him in a torrent as he told how his little sister was taken into the orphanage and how he himself was beaten for joining the Buddhist rites. “When the Japanese came I was a match peddler,” he sobbed. “I was afraid they would seize my stock. I brought 70 boxes of matches to the Church for safekeeping. Society Chairman Wang put them in a drawer, but three days later when I returned there were only three boxes left. When I asked him what became of the matches he said, ‘Better ask the drawer.’ When I asked him again, he beat me up.”

By the time Ch’eng-yu had finished, other people were angry enough to speak out. A storm of accusations followed, many of them somewhat wide of the target, which was supposed to be the priest and his relations with the enemy. The fire tended to concentrate, instead, on the many-sided exploitation practiced by the Church and its leaders—a portent of the hurricane to come.

A non-Catholic, P’ei Shing-k’uan, said that he owed $50 to a church member. When he was unable to pay, Society Chairman Wang stepped in with an offer to mediate. He suggested that P’ei sell an acre and a half of land to the Church and then remain on it as a tenant. “I sold the land to the Church,” said the unhappy P’ei, pointing a finger at Father Sun, “but my creditor got nothing. It went to the Church as a contribution to God. When I asked to rent the land, I was told that I myself must join the Church. I refused and to this day I have not been allowed on that land.”

A Catholic, Yin Ch’in-ch’un, said, “Now I know that Catholic or not makes little difference. In the famine year I had nothing to eat. My children were sick. I was forced to sell four mou. The land was worth $50 for each mou but the Church demanded that I sell at $20. I was told I could have the crop, but when harvest time came round, I got nothing.”

Altogether more than 100 grievances against the Church and the Carry-On Society were voiced that day. Before the meeting was over, Father Sun was attacked by several angry peasants and badly beaten up. That night, with the help of persons still loyal to him, he escaped to Horse Square, and from there fled to Hungtung, a city in the Nationalist-held area to the west.

Father Sun fled with nothing but the clothes on his back. He left behind a gun, many vestments, a desk full of personal papers, and five acres of land that included an irrigated vegetable garden, one of a handful in the whole village. Among his papers were found a letter of introduction from Japanese headquarters in North China and instructions issued by the puppet New People’s Society for the improvement of the work of the rural Church.

Father Sun’s personal property was added to the wealth confiscated from 26 other families that had been brought before the village on charges of collaboration. Altogether the People’s Government took one hundred bags of grain from the accused as payment for grafted property and abuses of power made possible by their position as Japanese stooges.

All of this property was divided among the poorest people of the village according to the losses of each made public at the meetings. Those who took an active part and spoke out about the damages they had suffered got compensation. Those who did not speak out got less or nothing. In the course of these early distributions the leaders of the movement—Fu-yuan, T’ien-ming, Kuei-ts’ai, and the leading militiamen—took nothing, on the advice of District Leader Liang. They adopted this policy in order to demonstrate that the movement was for the benefit of all the people who had suffered from the occupation and not just for the leaders—a clean break with all the traditions of the past.

These early distributions did not go smoothly by any means. One of the main problems was fear. Many people who should have been compensated with property were still afraid to accept it. This was particularly true of the valuable and conspicuous things which could easily brand a person as a participant in the struggle. If the counterrevolution should gather enough strength to strike back, those who had property that originally belonged to collaborators would be the first to suffer. No lists would be necessary.

For several days two militiamen led one donkey all over the village begging household after household to accept it, but found no takers. A fine cart belonging to Wang Lai-hsun, the landlord who had been a puppet street captain, also stood for days without a claimant, even though it was the best cart in the whole village. It was worth at least 1,000 pounds of grain. The cadres, who had agreed not to accept anything themselves, had to knock on doors and persuade someone to be brave enough to take it. Finally a middle peasant named Chang-hsun, a man with a village-wide reputation for greed and stinginess, found the cart too tempting to resist. His ingrained shrewdness overcame whatever fear he had and, even though he already had one cart, he bought the cart that had belonged to Wang Lai-hsun for three hundredweight of grain—a real bargain. Later, when others began to lose their fear of a counter-attack, they complained that he had no right to buy a cart when many families had no cart at all. Then Chang-hsun offered to give the cart back to the village, but the cadres told him to keep it. To turn it back at such a time might lead some to think that he had lost confidence in the ability of the Eighth Route Army to hold the region.

***********

The Anti-Traitor Movement in the whole Fifth District was brought to a close in December 1945. In the course of the struggle, important “gains were made, but serious shortcomings also marred the record. The gains, as seen by a leading district cadre who made a report to the County Committee of the Communist Party, included the complete rout of the gentry-Kuomintang attempt to set up a regime based on the old political machine and the wartime collaborators. In the course of this rout, half the landlords and rich peasants in the district were attacked and punished with the confiscation of some or all of their property, thus cutting back considerably the holdings on which the old system was based. Many people were mobilized, organized, and educated by these events and learned to see some connection between collaboration and the dominant feudal class.

The shortcomings consisted of failure to draw the majority of the population into active participation—the cadres and militia did too much, the people as a whole too little—and lack of discrimination in the attack, little or no distinction having been made between collaborators on the basis of their class origin or motivation.

While some Communist leaders, at least on the county level, saw the Anti-Traitor Movement as an initial skirmish in an all-out war against the landlords as a class and tried to guide it in that direction, the majority of the active peasants saw it only as a movement of revenge for wartime injuries. They hated the traitors and wanted to strike them down once and for all. But the traitors, in Long Bow at any rate, were drawn from all classes. When the gentry withdrew from open participation in the village government, they found others to carry on for them. Hence there were middle peasants, poor peasants, and even hired laborers among the puppets. The members of the village police or Self-Defense Corps were all poor peasants, the block and street captains mostly middle peasants. Many of these people went along under economic pressure or were drafted into action under threat of violent reprisal. Some of them served the enemy only a few months, a few weeks, or even a few days. This latter group were known as the “one meal of wheat” traitors. By striking them all down as if they were equally to blame, the village cadres and the active peasants took shadow for substance, confused puppet with master, and punished the poor as heavily as they did the rich who were considered to be the real source and backbone of the collaboration. The poor were punished more heavily, in fact, for the main form of punishment was the confiscation of property, an effective and justifiable policy when applied to the gentry who had plenty of property to spare and had acquired most of it by exploitation past or present in the first place—but a disastrous policy when applied to poor working people who had very little to begin with, earned most of it by their own hard labor, and were reduced to beggary by the loss of it.* The collective nature of the punishment was also unjust. The whole family had to pay for the collaboration of one leading member.

Such a policy atomized the community, frightened many people, drove many middle peasants who were potential allies of the coming revolution toward, if not into, the arms of the opposition. In Long Bow Village alone, 16 middle peasant families and six poor peasant families were expropriated, in whole or in part, for collaboration. In the whole Fifth District the figure reached 181.

If the class question was obscured by the indiscriminate attacks of the Anti-Traitor Movement, the religious question was disastrously sharpened. Even though the charges centered on the activities rather than the religious beliefs of the collaborators, the fact that almost all of them were Catholics gave the movement a definite sectarian slant. This religious sectarianism reached a fever pitch with the escape of Father Sun. Since the Father himself was suspected of being a Kuomintang agent, all those suspected of aiding him were arrested, beaten in an effort to extract confessions, and accused of being agents also. The landlord Fan Pu-tzu’s second son, Fan Ming-hsi, and two poor Catholic peasants, Hu-sheng and Hsien-pao,- were held in the county jail for eight months while the incident was investigated. Hou Chin-ming, a third poor peasant, was charged with actually opening the door for the father. He was badly beaten and ran away to Hung-tung while he was still able to use his limbs. He left behind half an acre of land, three sections of house, and a young wife bought from the church orphanage a few years earlier.

The indiscriminate attack on all collaborators and the sectarian overtones that accompanied it gave the real agent, Wang En-pao, and his followers, a lever in their counter-campaign. As secretary of the Fifth District Kuomintang, Wang En-pao had organized a group of about 20 men, most of them landlords, in the various villages of the district. They attacked the new cadres for real abuses and spread rumors about imaginary ones. In Long Bow Kuei-ts’ai became a chief target. He was always in the lead when direct action was taken and had beaten many people. Wang Man-hsi, the man who tied up and led Kuo Te-yu into the first meeting, a 19-year-old of tremendous strength and enthusiasm, was another target. For the blows he meted out he was already admired by some and feared by others as the “King of the Devils.”

In Long Bow these verbal attacks produced no incidents, but in other places the landlord clique managed to incite certain people to action. One South Market militiaman named Ming Chun was found one morning hanging on the limb of a tree. A group of angry peasants strung him there after hearing rumors that he had taken valuable property to his own home and had forced his attentions on several women, all of them wives and daughters of collaborators. In Li\ Village Gulch, a strong Catholic center, the former district leader Yellow Dog Kuo, was thrown into a dry well and badly injured.

The hesitancy of some middle peasants, the anger of many Catholics, and the occasional counter-attacks that were the backlash of the sharp campaign could not halt or even delay the rising tide of struggle. A description of the reverse eddies should not be allowed to obscure the enormous enthusiasm which the punishment of the collaborators and the distribution of their property aroused in the great majority of the peasant families, whether or not they themselves had been active. When, in late December, the Eighth Route Army called for volunteers to strengthen the region against attack, Chang Chiang-tzu, the conscientious young head of the militia, led 25 men to the recruiting office at the county seat. Five were rejected for physical reasons, among them Chang Kuei-ts’ai, the vice-head of the village, who had syphilis, but 20 went on to join that army which alone could guarantee continued control of Long Bow by the landless and the land poor. This was the first example the people had ever seen of a government in power that asked for volunteers. Under the Kuomintang the young men had been led off to war with ropes tied around their necks. Now an expensive banquet was spread for the volunteers before they departed from the village, and each was given some spending money as a token of appreciation. They marched off with red carnations pinned to their jackets in a cacophony of beating drums, clashing cymbals, and the gay shouting of a crowd of small children who followed them all the way to Horse Square.

Dig Out the Rotten Root of Feudalism

In a very short time, in China’s central, southern, and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a tornado or tempest, a force so extraordinarily swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to suppress it. They will break all the trammels that now bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will send all imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local bullies, and bad gentry to their graves.*

Mao Tse-tung

OUT OF the confusion and near anarchy of the tempestuous Anti-Traitor Movement that followed the Japanese surrender came an assault on the land system itself. From chaotic revenge against collaborators, the young men of the resistance were led by the district Communist Party to a conscious planned attack on the landlords as a class. With this shift in emphasis, China’s 20-year-old land revolution, temporarily suspended by the war, began again in earnest and rapidly gathered a momentum too great to be checked by any political party or leader.

The campaign in the Fifth District of Lucheng County started with a famous meeting in Li Village Gulch, the first settlement south of Long Bow on the road to Changchih. This meeting was held on January 16, 1946, in an effort to educate the young revolutionary cadres in the fundamentals of class relations and class consciousness so that they could, as they themselves said, “get at the root of calamity.” All the young men who had just led the Anti-Traitor Movement to completion were brought together by the district leaders. The meeting lasted three days and three major issues were discussed: (1) Who depends upon whom for a living? (2) Why are the poor poor and the rich rich? (3) Should rent be paid to landlords?

The participants had no trouble voicing grievances against individual landlords. They protested all kinds of feudal services, such as the forcing of tenants to pick up and deliver landlords’ relatives, carry sedan chairs at weddings, give gifts at the New Year. They condemned the gentry for having taken the peasants’ wives and daughters to their beds almost at will, made concubines of them, or simply raped them and left them. They also catalogued the ways in which the landlords cheated when loans were given out or rents paid: the use of the small measure for passing out grain, but the substitution of the big measure when grain was collected; the adulteration of grain given out, but the thorough cleaning and winnowing of grain taken in. They pointed out how the landlords took advantage of the illiteracy of the peasants by keeping dishonest records.

The cadres were all in favor of a reduction in rents and interest. They went further and demanded that past overcharges be paid back and that families who had avoided taxes, throwing all the burden on the poor and middle peasants, be charged with all the back taxes they had not paid over the years. But when it came to the land system itself, there was some confusion. Many thought that where the land belonged to the landlords, through legitimate purchase or inheritance, rents should be paid. “If the landlords did not let us rent the land we would starve,” they said. Others disagreed sharply with this. “Can land be eaten? No. Land itself cannot produce food without labor and only those who labor have the right to eat. Why should one man have the right to say, ‘This land is mine,’ and then, without lifting a hoe himself, demand half of what is grown on it? Rent itself is exploitation.”

But many still said, “When I worked for the landlord he fed me, and at the end of the year he paid me. That was the agreement. If he had cheated me of my pay or refused to feed me I could accuse him, but since he did feed and pay me there is nothing wrong.”

Hour after hour the discussion went on in small groups and large meetings where the district leaders made reports and explained to the cadres the economic basis of the old society. They figured up how much grain the labor of one man could produce and then calculated how much food and wages a hired laborer received from the landlord for a year’s work. From these figures it became clear, not only that there was exploitation, but that the exploitation was heavy. The atrocities committed by the traitors were open and vicious. Everybody could see them and oppose them. The open oppression of some landlords was equally cruel and vicious. Everyone could see that too and oppose it. But the jan po hsueh, the hidden exploitation, of the average landlord, the exploitation inherent in land rent itself had to be pointed out and exposed, for was it not the root of all the other evils?

When the meeting broke up on the third day the three main questions had been settled in the minds of most: (1) The landlords depended on the labor of the peasants for their very life. (2) The rich were rich because they “peeled and pared” the poor. (3) Rent should not be paid to the landlords.

With this conclusion the peasant leaders of Lucheng County jumped beyond the official policy of the Communist Party of China and the Liberated Areas Government as a whole. Official policy was still “double reduction”—reduce rents and reduce interest rates. This was the policy of the wartime united front against Japan. Chairman Mao Tse-tung had proposed that this should continue to be the policy in the immediate postwar period because, although fighting had begun and had even developed on a large scale in some areas, it had not yet escalated into all-out civil war. It was incumbent on the Communist Party to explore every possible avenue of compromise that might bring peace while still preserving the basic gains won by the people of China. During such a period of exploration, the continuation of “double reduction” was mandatory. To have called for land expropriation at this time would have been provocative.

The initial talks between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang seemed to make headway. With General Marshall, special representative of the United States, acting as intermediary, a truce was signed on January 13, 1946. The two parties agreed that all fighting should cease for a six-month period while the possibility of a political settlement through some form of coalition government was explored. Pending such a settlement, the policy of the Communist Party Central Committee in Yenan was to carry into effect all coalition agreements, including “double reduction,” and hold the gentry to them. However, demands for land kept coming from below. The arming of the people for resistance had placed the peasants in a position to challenge the landlords and usurers in the countryside, and not even the tremendous prestige of the Communist Party or the critical situation of the country and the world could prevent this challenge from breaking out in one form or another and carrying with it many lower echelon cadres and Party Committees.

This increasingly explosive force was channeled for a time into forms of attack against the gentry that did not formally violate the provisions of “double reduction,” yet nevertheless transferred land from the gentry to the peasants. Conventional grievances concerning lower rents and lower interest rates were made retroactive to cover the war years in villages where the occupation had given the landlords a free hand not only to continue the collection of rent and interest but to increase the rate of both. Now the peasants demanded not only the correction of abuses but also the repayment of overcharges and the restoration of lands and property seized in default of debts which were, by “double reduction” standards, illegal. In practice, when the grievances were totalled up, the charges almost always mounted up to more than most gentry families could pay, and everything they owned was expropriated for distribution.. The peasants even matched the excesses of the 1930’s by a policy of sao ti ch’u men, or “sweep the floor out the door,” which meant to clean the family out of house and home and drive them from the area. They called this whole movement “settling accounts.”

***********

In Long Bow the young men returned from the district meeting full of enthusiasm. Chang San-ch’ing, the secretary of the village government, who was one of the participants, later said: “I was very happy when I returned from Li Village Gulch. Up until that time I had been just a little afraid. I carried a burden on my back. I figured that if all those who had worked for the Japanese were to be struggled against, then I too would become a victim, for I had worked for a Japanese drug company for more than one year. But at that meeting we were told that the Anti-Traitor Movement was over. We decided that we would now struggle against the landlords who had oppressed us for so long. Everyone who had been oppressed or exploited, who had borrowed money or rented land could now make accusations and get revenge. I was very happy. I was no longer the least bit afraid for I thought—I too have been oppressed. From childhood my family suffered under loans at high interest and I worked out as a hired laborer for so many years, and later, when I went out to work, I just served the master of the shop. So all my life I have been oppressed and exploited. Now my time has come.”

The first task faced by this group when they returned to the village was to organize a local Peasants’ Association. This was a voluntary organization of all working peasants recognized by the Liberated Areas Government of Shansi-Honan-Hopei-Shantung as the only legal organ for carrying out agrarian policy, conducting the struggle against the landlords, receiving confiscated property, and distributing it to the landless and land poor.

Farm laborers, poor peasants, middle peasants, rural handicraftsmen, and impoverished intellectuals such as schoolteachers, letter writers, and clerks sympathetic to the new land policies were all entitled to join when approved by the elected committee of the Association. All members had the right to speak, vote, elect, and be elected, and also the right to criticize and replace elected officers. They were obligated to abide by the rules of the Association, carry out its decisions, and pay dues. These dues amounted to one catty of millet a year.

Two cadres from the old Liberated Area in the Second District, where village Peasants’ Associations had existed for a long time, came to help organize the local group in Long Bow. Thirty of the poorest peasants in the village were first called together. They included women whose sons had been killed in the fort, peasant families whose able-bodied members had been forced into rear service far from home, and long-term hired helpers who owned nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Some of these families had already received food and clothes as a result of the Anti-Traitor Movement. Fu-yuan and T’ien-ming explained to them that the preceding distributions were only the beginning, that such a small amount of goods could not solve any real problems, that they should tackle the land question itself. Fu-yuan posed to them the question of “who lives off whom?” He urged each member to tell his or her life story and to figure out for himself the root of the problem.

Once again Kuei-ts’ai led off. In order to move the others he told his own history. “In the past when I lived in Linhsien I stayed with my uncle,” he said. “In order to get married my uncle borrowed 20 silver dollars. Within a year the interest plus the principal amounted to more than 300 dollars. We could not possibly repay this. The landlord seized all our lands and houses and I became a migrant wandering through the province looking for work.”

This reminded poor peasant Shen T’ien-hsi of the loss of his home. “Once when we needed some money we decided to sell our house. We made a bargain with a man who offered a reasonable price, but Sheng Ching-ho, who lived next door, forced us to sell our house to him for almost nothing.”

Then poor peasant Ta-hung’s wife spoke up. “You had to sell your house, but my parents had to sell me. We lived in a prosperous valley but we owned no land. In the famine year we were starving and my parents sold me for a few bushels of grain. If we had had some land I could have found a husband and been properly married. Instead, I was sold like a donkey or a cow.”

Story followed story. Many wept as they remembered the sale of children, the death of family members, the loss of property. The village cadres kept asking “What is the reason for this? Why did we all suffer so? Was it the ‘eight ideographs’ that determined our fate or was it the land system and the rents we had to pay? Why shouldn’t we now take on the landlords and right the wrongs of the past?”

T’ien-ming finally challenged them to action. “Now, the only question is, do we dare begin? The Eighth Route Army and the Liberated Areas Government stand behind us. Already in many places the landlords have been beaten down. We have only to follow the example of others. We have only to act with our own hands. Then we can all fanshen.”

“There are not enough of us,” said one.

“Then we have to find more members. Each one here should go out and find others. All the poor are brothers together. If we unite no one can stand in our way.”

Each of the 30 went home, visited with neighbor and friend, and each found two or three more peasants who could be approved by the whole group. Soon over 100 families had joined the Peasants’ Association. Most of them were poor, but among them were scattered a few middle peasants. Kuo Cheng-k’uan, the poor Catholic who had led the attack on Father Sun, a man who had worked all his life as a laborer, and whose wife had died of starvation in the famine year, was elected chairman.

Another Catholic, Wang Yu-lai, was elected vice-chairman. He came originally from Lin County, high in the Taihang range. He had once been a member of the local Kuomintang army, had later taken up banditry as a way of life, and was said to have joined the “Red Rifle” secret society as a young man. He had always been poor. Throughout the ten years he had lived in Long Bow he had worked as a hired laborer. During the Anti-Traitor Movement, and especially in the struggle against Father Sun, Yu-lai and his 18-year-old son, Wen-te, were noted for their courage and energy.

Several days of intense activity followed the establishment of the new Association. Many active members neglected all their regular work in order to mobilize the majority of the people for the struggle to come. And so, toward the end of January, the campaign to “settle accounts” with the landlords finally began.

The committee of the Peasants’ Association decided to tackle Kuo Ch’ung-wang first. He was not the richest man in the village but he was one of the meanest. His close association with the puppet Chief-of-Staff Chou Mei-sheng tarred him with the collaborationist brush. More important was the fact that while his tenants died of starvation during the famine year, he seized grain and hoarded it for speculation. The cadres, having learned from the failure of their first big meeting, held small group meetings ahead of time in order to gather opinions against Ch’ung-wang. Those with serious grievances were encouraged to make them known among their closest neighbors and were then mobilized to speak out at the village-wide meeting to come.

While the small meetings were in progress, the militia arrested Kuo Ch’ung-wang, searched his house and unearthed tons of grain. Much of it was rotten. On the day of the big meeting, the grain, which could have saved the lives of dozens of people, lay in the courtyard in a stinking mildewed heap. The people who crowded in to accuse walked over the grain and, as the courtyard filled up, some of them sat down on it. The smell and the sight of it reminded them of those who had died for want of a few catties and filled them with anger. Next to the grain stood two jars of salt water—salt that had been hoarded so long it had undergone hydrolysis. While the landless and the land poor went weeks without salt, Ch’ung-wang had let salt go to waste.

At this critical meeting, Fu-yuan, the village head, was the first to speak. Because he was a cousin of Ch’ung-wang, his words carried extra weight with the rest of the village. When a man was moved to accuse his own cousin, the provocation had to be serious.

“In the famine year,” Fu-yuan began, talking directly to Ch’ung-wang, “my brother worked for your family. We were all hungry. We had nothing to eat. But you had no thought for us. Several times we tried to borrow grain from you. But it was all in vain. You watched us starve without pity.”

Then Ho-pang, a militiaman, spoke up. His voice shook as he told how he had rented land from Ch’ung-wang. “One year I could not pay the rent. You took the whole harvest. You took my clothes. You took everything.” He broke down sobbing as a dozen others jumped up shouting.

“What was in your mind?”

“You took everything. Miao-le and his brother died.”

“Yes, what were your thoughts? You had no pity. Didn’t you hound P’ei Mang-wen’s mother to her death?”

“Speak.”

“Yes, speak. Make him talk. Let’s hear his answers!”

But Ch’ung-wang had no answers. He could not utter a word. When the peasants saw that he could not answer them they realized that they had him cornered, that they had already won a victory. Many who had been afraid to open their mouths found themselves shouting in anger without thought of the consequences.

The meeting lasted all day. In the evening, when the committee reckoned up all the charges against Ch’ung-wang, they found that he owed one hundred bags of grain. That night, under a full moon, the militia went to the fields with measuring rods and measured Ch’ung-wang’s land. They found that he had three acres more than were listed in his deeds and that for 20 years he had evaded taxes on that land while others had paid and paid. When they added this to the other damages claimed against him they realized that all his lands, all his houses, his grain, his clothes, his stock, and everything else that he owned would not be enough to settle the debt. Yet when they looked in his storeroom they found not hundreds, but only a paltry six bags of grain that could be seized.

The next morning when the people met again to carry on the campaign against Ch’ung-wang excitement ran high. Women even went so far as to bring food with them so that they and their families could stay right through the day and not miss a single minute. Liang, the district leader, opened the attack. He said, “This is our only chance to settle the blood-and-sweat debt of the landlord. Even if you take all his property it will never be enough. Ask him where he has hidden his gold and silver. Make him give up his precious things.”

“Yes, speak out. Where are the coins? Where have you buried the money?” came the shouts from the crowd. But Kuo refused to say anything beyond the fact that he had no silver and never had had any. Since nobody believed him, the militia were ordered into his house to make a search. They were joined by more than 60 peasant volunteers. They dug up the floors, ripped the mud bricks off the tops of the k’angs, tapped the walls. It was all in vain. They found nothing.

When the search proved fruitless, a few of the cadres took Ch’ung-wang aside. They told him that it was no use trying to hide his wealth. Since all his ordinary property was not enough to settle his account with the people, they would surely find his hidden wealth sooner or later. It would therefore be much safer and wiser for him to hand this over voluntarily than to face their wrath once they found it on their own. After several people had talked to him in the same vein Ch’ung-wang finally gave in. He told them where to dig. They found 50 silver dollars in an earthen crock.

When this money was brought before the people at the meeting, they became very angry. Here was proof that Ch’ung-wang had lied to them. Scores of people jumped up, ran forward, and began to beat him with whatever came to hand.

“Tell us where the rest is. You know that is not all,” they shouted.

Someone struck him a blow in the face. Ch’ung-wang held his bleeding mouth and tried to speak.

“Don’t hit me. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you right away. There is another 80 dollars in the back room.”

The meeting adjourned immediately while the militia and their enthusiastic helpers again went to search. They very soon found another cache of coins, but this only whetted their appetites and angered them still further. Ch’ung-wang was playing with them as a cat plays with a mouse in spite of the fact that he was their prisoner. First grain, then salt, now silver dollars—the bastard was richer than they thought! When they got back to the courtyard, they beat him again.

That day he gave up more than 200 silver dollars.

In the evening they let him go home but, unknown to him, set several militiamen to watch his house and listen in, if possible, on the conversations that went on inside it.

Landlord Sheng Ching-ho, the richest man in the village, sat at home all that day and listened to the angry shouts of the people as they accused Ch’ung-wang and swarmed over his house. After dark he crept out onto the street and stole to Ch’ung-wang’s door hoping to learn something about what had happened. Perhaps some plan could be worked out to counter this new offensive. He knocked quietly on the wooden door that was the sole entrance to Ch’ung-wang’s courtyard, but before anyone appeared to open it he was seized from behind by several militiamen and dragged off to the village lockup. It was then two days before the Chinese New Year. The wealthy families had planned all sorts of good things to eat and their wives and servants had been preparing and cooking for days. The leaders of the Peasants’ Association decided not to let Ching-ho pass such a happy holiday. They set the attack on him for the next day, even though that meant they had no time to mobilize opinions against him. As it happened, a blunder on the part of Ching-ho’s brother, Sheng Ching-chung, aroused the people more than several days of mobilization could possibly have done.

As soon as Sheng Ching-chung heard that his brother Ching-ho had been detained, he took a bag of wheat flour on his shoulder and went calling. He found the assistant village head, Kuei-ts’ai, at home talking with San-ch’ing, the village secretary. He set his bag of flour by the door, greeted them both warmly, and sat himself down to have a friendly chat. It did not take him long to get to the point. “I know your life is hard,” he said. “Since we are people of one village please do not stand on ceremony but help yourselves to this flour and pass a happy New Year. Later on, if you should meet with any difficulties, you should know that my door is always open and I am always ready to help.”

The two young cadres could hardly believe their eyes and ears. What did he take them for—rats who could be bought with a bag of flour? They drove him and his burden out of the house and went immediately to T’ien-ming. The next afternoon Kuei-ts’ai and San-ch’ing told a village-wide meeting how Ching-chung had tried to bribe them. Their story aroused a storm of protest and a flood of accusations.

“In the famine year he gave us nothing. He even drove beggars away from his door, but now suddenly he weeps for our hard life—now we are ‘people of one village,’” said one.

“It is clear he only wants to buy off the leaders and undermine our ranks. We should never be taken in by such tricks,” added another.

“This should be a lesson to all of us,” said T’ien-ming. “Never trust a landlord; never protect a landlord. There is only one road and that is to struggle against them.”

The cadres had been afraid that the people might hold back their accusations against Ching-ho, but Kuei-ts’ai’s report broke the dam. There was no holding back. Over 100 grievances were registered at that one meeting. So vicious had been Ching-ho’s practices and so widespread his influence that more than half of the families in the village had scores to settle with him.

What happened on the following day was told to me by Kuo Cheng-k’uan, Chairman of the Peasants’ Association:

When the final struggle began Ching-ho was faced not only with those hundred accusations but with many many more. Old women who had never spoken in public before stood up to accuse him. Even Li Mao’s wife—a woman so pitiable she hardly dared look anyone in the face—shook her fist before his nose and cried out, “Once I went to glean wheat on your land. But you cursed me and drove me away. Why did you curse and beat me? And why did you seize the wheat I had gleaned?” Altogether over 180 opinions were raised. Ching-ho had no answer to any of them. He stood there with his head bowed. We asked him whether the accusations were false or true. He said they were all true. When the committee of our Association met to figure up what he owed, it came to 400 bags of milled grain, not coarse millet.

That evening all the people went to Ching-ho’s courtyard” to help take over his property. It was very cold that night so we built bonfires and the flames shot up toward the stars. It was very beautiful. We went in to register his grain and altogether found but 200 bags of unmilled millet—only a quarter of what he owed us. Right then and there we decided to call another meeting. People all said he must have a lot of silver dollars—they thought of the wine plant, and the pigs he raised on the distillers’ grains, and the North Temple Society and the Confucius Association.

We called him out of the house and asked him what he intended to do since the grain was not nearly enough. He said, “I have land and house.”

“But all this is not enough,” shouted the people. So then we began to beat him. Finally he said, “I have 40 silver dollars under the k’ang.” We went in and dug it up. The money stirred up everyone. We beat him again. He told us where to find another hundred after that. But no one believed that this was the end of his hoard. We beat him again and several militiamen began to heat an iron bar in one of the fires. Then Ching-ho admitted that he had hid 110 silver dollars in militiaman Man-hsi’s uncle’s home. Man-hsi was very hot-headed. When he heard that his uncle had helped Sheng Ching-ho he got very angry. He ran home and began to beat his father’s own brother. We stopped him. We told him, “Your uncle didn’t know it was a crime.” We asked the old man why he had hidden money for Ching-ho and he said, “No one ever told me anything. I didn’t know there was anything wrong in it.” You see, they were relatives and the money had been given to him for safekeeping years before. So Man-hsi finally cooled down. It was a good thing for he was angry enough to beat his uncle to death and he was strong enough to do it.

Altogether we got $500 from Ching-ho that night. By that time the sun was already rising in the eastern sky. We were all tired and hungry, especially the militiamen who had called the people to the meeting, kept guard on Ching-ho’s house, and taken an active part in beating Ching-ho and digging for the money. So we decided to eat all the things that Ching-ho had prepared to pass the New Year—a whole crock of dumplings stuffed with pork and peppers and other delicacies. He even had shrimp.

All said, “In the past we never lived through a happy New Year because he always asked for his rent and interest then and cleaned our houses bare. This time we’ll eat what we like,” and everyone ate his fill and didn’t even notice the cold.

That was one of the happiest days the people of Long Bow ever experienced. They were in such a mellow mood that they released Ching-ho on the guarantee of a relative, let him remain at home unguarded, and called off the struggle for the rest of the holiday season.

But Ching-ho did not wait around to see what would happen when action resumed. He ran away the very next day. So did Kuo Ch’ung-wang. He and his wife fled to another county where they found temporary employment as primary school teachers. Later they fled that school and disappeared altogether. Nobody in Long Bow heard of their whereabouts thereafter.

In Ch’ung-wang’s absence, his brother and partner in business, Fu-wang, was brought before the Peasants’ Association. He was beaten so severely that he died a few days later, but in spite of this violent treatment he gave no hint as to where any further wealth might be found.

Wang Lai-hsun Is Next

A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing fancy needlework; it cannot be anything so restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an uprising, an act of violence whereby one class overthrows another.

Mao Tse-tung

WANG CH’UNG-LAI’S WIFE returned to Long Bow late in 1945. Driven out by the family that bought her as a child wife and forced into beggary, she and her husband had lived in another village for 20 years. When they heard that the landlords would be brought to account and old debts repaid, they hurried home only to be met by a stone wall of hostility from the local cadres. T’ien-ming, Fu-yuan, Kuei-ts’ai, and Cheng-k’uan had never heard of the couple. They were reluctant to let them join the struggle for they didn’t want to share the “fruits” with outsiders. When Ch’ung-lai’s wife went to the district office and protested, Fu-yuan was directed to call in Wang Lai-hsun’s mother for questioning.

The old lady denied that Ch’ung-lai was her son. “I only borrowed him,” she said. “He lived here half a year and then he ran away. I never ill-treated him.”

“Then why did you buy a wife for him?” cried Ch’ung-lai’s wife in anger. “And why, if he was not your adopted son, did I live in your family and suffer six years of beatings? Everyone in this village knows how Ch’ung-lai worked hard for more than ten years like a hired laborer in your family. Can you cover the sky with your hand?”

Fu-yuan believed her then, but since she and her husband were still strangers to most of the younger people, the Peasants’ Association gave them no property. They were allowed to live in part of Lai-hsun’s house and to farm one and one-half acres of Lai-hsun’s land, but nothing was turned over to them as their own. Ch’ung-lai and his wife had waited a long time; they could wait some more. They moved into their borrowed quarters and looked forward to the day when the struggle against Lai-hsun would come. They did not have long to wait.

Wang Lai-hsun followed Kuo Fu-wang to the tribune. When he appeared before his tenants and laborers, Ch’ung-lai’s wife was standing in the front row. She was the first to speak.

“How was it that you stayed at home while we were driven out?” she asked, stepping in front of the astounded landlord on her small bound feet.

“Because Ch’ung-lai had a grandfather. He had another place to live,” said Lai-hsun looking at the ground. He did not have the courage to look her in the face.

“But you too had in-laws. You too had a place to go. Why did you drive us out and make beggars of us? During the famine year we came to beg from you, our own brother, but you gave us nothing. You drove us away with a stick and beat me and the children with an iron poker.”

“I remember that day,” said Lai-hsun.

“Why?” shouted Ch’ung-lai’s wife, tears rolling down her dirt-stained face. “Why?”

“I was afraid if you returned you would ask to divide the property with me.”

This answer aroused the whole meeting.

“Beat him, beat him,” shouted the crowd.

Ch’ung-lai’s wife then took a leather strap from around her wasting body and she and her son beat Lai-hsun with the strap and with their fists. They beat him for more time than it takes to eat a meal and as they beat him Ch’ung-lai’s wife cried out, “I beat you in revenge for six years of beatings. In the past you never cared for us. Your eyes did not know us. Now my eyes do not know you either. Now it is my turn.”

Lai-hsun cringed before them and whimpered as the blows fell on his back and neck, then he fainted, fell to the ground, and was carried to his home.

After that meeting, Ch’ung-lai and his family were given outright the ten sections of house and the acre and a half of land that had only been loaned to them up until that time.

Wang Lai-hsun’s debt to the people added up to a very large sum but the militia found very little wealth in his home. In addition to the land and the houses he had only a few bags of grain. Even when beaten severely he insisted that he had not hidden silver or gold. He was a heroin addict, he said. He had spent all his money on heroin.

The peasants did not believe him, however, and, after getting nowhere by beating him, decided to carry the struggle to his wife. The meeting that day was held in the temple. When the people questioned Lai-hsun’s wife, she said that she did have some coins but that she had given them to Ch’ung-lai’s wife for safekeeping. This angered everyone. The militia ran to find Ch’ung-lai’s wife. When they brought her to the temple they asked her, “Why did you hide money for that landlord?”

“I never did,” said Ch’ung-lai’s wife. “Who told you that?”

“She did,” said the cadres, pointing to Lai-hsun’s wife.

Ch’ung-lai’s wife went livid with rage and rushed at the woman who had been her bitterest enemy for so long. But the cadres tore her from her victim and questioned her further. They didn’t believe her story. They thought she had fooled them.

“Tell us where you have the money,” they demanded.

When she answered, “How could I do such a thing? She is my enemy!” they started to beat her. Chin-chu, one of the poor peasants who had been a hired laborer for Lai-hsun, got out a pair of scissors and cut her flesh with them. Blood gushed out over her tunic.

But Ch’ung-lai’s wife screamed and fought back. “She didn’t even hide a needle in my home. She hates me because we moved back into the courtyard that she ruled for so long. She is accusing me to make trouble and you believe her!”

At last the young men decided that Ch’ung-lai’s wife was telling the truth. They let her go. Wang Lai-hsun and his family were driven from the courtyard just as they themselves had driven out the other half of the family so long ago. Now it was their turn to go and live in abandoned temples and beg for food. But they could not stand such a life. After a few weeks they left Long Bow altogether. All their land, property, houses, clothes, tools, and furniture were confiscated. Only the old lady, Lai-hsun’s and Ch’ung-lai’s foster mother, remained in the village. She stayed in an abandoned hovel just off the main street. One day she came to Ch’ung-lai’s home to beg a little food. The boy, her grandson by adoption, remembered her. He ran into the street and beat her with a stick, saying, “I’ll give you some of your own medicine.”

This old woman finally maimed herself badly trying to get warm in front of some burning straw. A gust of wind set her clothes on fire. Large areas of her skin were scorched. The pain was so great that she could no longer go out to beg. She died of starvation.

Thus were old scores settled one by one. The brutality of the old system echoed again and again in the convulsions of its demise.

***********

As soon as the Peasants’ Association finished “settling accounts” with Wang Lai-hsun, the other wealthy families were tackled one after the other. The landlords Li Tung-Sheng, Shih La-ming, Fan Putzu, Hsu Cheng-p’eng, and Cheng Lin-so were all dispossessed within a few days.

Because Li Tung-sheng had two adopted sons who had joined the Eighth Route Army, he was at first treated leniently, allowed to retain some land, and left to live in his own home. But the hunt for buried treasure soon changed all this. When the peasants asked him where his silver was buried he refused to tell them anything. Angered by his defiance, they beat him severely. They did not mean to inflict mortal blows but he died nevertheless a few days later. His wife and child thereupon handed over $200. They were allowed to stay in their house.

Shih La-ming was beaten to death at a large public meeting by an aroused group of his accusers. His daughter-in-law died of starvation after she was driven out of the family home. Her husband, the puppet officer and local despot, Shih Jen-pao, was already far away serving once again in the army of Yen Hsi-shan.

Fan Pu-tzu died of illness after being driven from the village. His surviving son, Fan Ming-hsi, was beaten to death as a Kuomintang agent, and his 17-year-old grandson ran away. His two daughters-in-law remarried in the village.

Cheng Lin-so had a brother who was a battalion commander in the Kuomintang Army. The peasants took no chances with him. They drove him and his whole family out.

Hsu Cheng-p’eng, the Kuomintang general, was an absentee landlord and he never came back to the village to be tried. His sister and her husband lived in his enormous house and tilled half his land. A cousin paid rent and tilled the other half. The Peasants’ Association took over all the land but took pity on the brother-in-law, who in fact had never been more than a hired laborer for Hsu. They gave him three acres. The cousin also received land of his own to till.

While the outright landlords reeled under this broad attack, other gentry whose status was not quite so clear also came under fire. Yang Kuei-sheng, a prosperous landlord’s son who himself labored on the land, was driven from the village with his whole family. Wang Ch’ang-yi, professional livestock castrator and self-proclaimed veterinarian, whose savings had been invested in Long Bow land, was deprived of seven acres. Yu Ken-ch’eng, the owner of several large tracts, lost eight of nine acres. Only the widow, Yu Pu-ho, who owned eight acres, escaped expropriation.

In the heat of the campaign even relatively minor exploiters were not safe. Families that rented out small plots of land, hired some labor, or loaned out modest sums at high interest were called rich peasants and attacked as such. To the 16 families of moderate means who were wholly or partly dispossessed in the Anti-Traitor Movement another half-dozen were added. Among them were Wang Ch’un-le, who owned six acres and a mule; Kuo Chao-ch’eng, who owned eight acres and an ox; K’ang Chen-niu, who owned ten acres and a donkey; and the three Ts’ui brothers, sons of a landlord, who between them owned 20 acres.

While individuals who exploited others in some degree constituted the main target of the Peasants’ Association, the various gentry-dominated institutions of the village were by no means forgotten. In these institutions the gentry had accumulated and effectively controlled more wealth than was privately possessed by all the landlords put together. All the assets of the North Temple Society, the Confucius Association, the village school, and several other religious, cultural, and clan organizations were liquidated. Over 30 acres of land were seized from such sources, not to mention grain, money, and buildings.

All this was but a warm-up for the main assault, the attack on the Catholic Church itself, for the Church was the primary center of wealth in the whole village and its financial arm, the Carry-On Society, was the largest single landholder. The campaign against the Church in Long Bow had begun, months before, with the arrest of Father Sun as a collaborator. Then it had died down, to flare up anew as the dispossession of the gentry aroused the population of the whole plateau region. The region-wide campaign reached its climax with a large mass meeting in Changchih where Catholics from 27 villages in three counties gathered to make accusations against their bishop, several foreign fathers, and the whole staff of the great South Cathedral that was the heart and nerve center of the Catholic faith in the Shangtang.

As a result of this huge meeting the property of the central institution was expropriated. Only the Cathedral itself and its immediate grounds were left to the Church. Everything else was distributed to the Catholics of the tri-county area, for it was well known that it was their contributions, voluntary and otherwise, that had made possible its accumulation. Lucheng County’s share was taken to Horse Square and there divided up. Long Bow alone got about half a million Border Region dollars’ worth of property (about $500). Fifty-two Catholic families of the village shared nine tons of grain, over 200 sets of fine clothes, and thousands of dollars among them. In cash alone, each person got $1,500 Border Region currency ($1.50 U.S.).

Taking the expropriation of the Cathedral at Changchih as precedent, the cadres of Long Bow and the leaders of its Peasants’ Association moved against the local institution soon afterwards. From the Church, the orphanage, the orphanage hospital, and the Carry-On Society they confiscated more than 40 acres of land, four milk cows, large stores of wheat and corn, 100 new quilts, 15 sets of priestly vestments, many sets of new children’s clothes, two bicycles, glassware, stocks of medicinal drugs, hundreds of candles, bronze crosses, bronze candelabras, 16 bronze lamps, and 2,000 silver dollars.

This time the property was not distributed to the Catholics alone but was pooled together with the property seized from the rest of the gentry for use by public organizations and for distribution to all the village poor.

As a final blow at Catholicism the leading lay leader of the Church, the manager of the Carry-On Society, Wang Kuei-ching, was attacked as a landlord. Judged by his landholdings alone, this man was only a middle peasant, but in the eyes of the peasants he deserved a landlord’s fate as one of those people who “collected rent and managed landed property for the landlords and depended on the exploitation of the peasants by the landlord as his main means of livelihood.”

When Wang Kuei-ching was brought before the village, feeling against him mounted to such a pitch that he was beaten to death then and there. The peasants might not have taken such drastic action had it not been for his two sons, Wang En-pao and Wang Hsiao-wen, both of whom had been exposed as leaders of the Kuomintang underground organization only a short while before, an exposure which revived all the open and latent suspicion of the Catholic community as a nest of agents and traitors.

The man who cracked the secret Kuomintang organization was a former clerk in the puppet administration of the county, one K’ang T’ien-hsing. K’ang wanted to become a teacher in one of the new village schools. The new county administration sent him to a special school where “old style intellectuals” received political instruction. There he began to question his past activities. He turned over a Kuomintang Party membership card to the school office and said that he had received it from Wang En-pao of Long Bow. The latter was immediately arrested. He admitted that he was the district secretary of the Kuomintang Party, that he was the leader of a group dedicated to the destruction of the Liberated Area, and that he was in contact with Yen Hsi-shan’s organization in Taiyuan, the provincial capital. T’ien-ming, who was responsible for police work, ordered Wang En-pao held for further investigation. That night the militiaman sent to guard him fell asleep. In the morning Wang En-pao had disappeared. After a thorough search the militia found his body at the bottom of a well.

The Kuomintang leader’s younger brother, Wang Hsiao-wen, accused the cadres of having killed En-pao. He publicly vowed to take revenge and was put under close surveillance by the militia. Hsiao-wen lived in a courtyard next to an old couple who could not see well. They were loyal supporters of the new government. One day they discovered some broken needles in a pan of millet that they planned to eat. They suspected their neighbor and warned T’ien-ming. After that the militia kept an even closer watch on Hsiao-wen. They found that he had struck up a friendship with several former Kuomintang officers who were quartered in the village as part of the student body of the Anti-Japanese Political and Military University, an institution housed at that time in the church compound. The officers were prisoners of war assigned to political training in anticipation that they could be won over to the side of the revolution. Within the confines of the village they came and went without supervision. Before Wang En-pao’s arrest and suicide they often visited with him. Afterwards, they got in touch with his brother, Hsiao-wen.

One day one of these officers escaped. Hsiao-wen was arrested and sharply questioned. Before the meeting he confessed that he had carried on the work interrupted by his brother’s death, that he had gathered information about the struggle in Long Bow—who had been attacked, who beaten, who killed, who were the leaders and who the active followers; that he had drawn up lists of names, given them to the captured officer, and helped him to escape. In this way he hoped to take revenge for the dispossession of the gentry and the death of his brother. This confession so aroused the people—and especially the militia—that Hsiao-wen was also beaten to death. They carried this anger with them into the struggle against his father, Wang Kuei-ching, and this is why he suffered the same fate.

Before the Liberation there had been 15 members in Society Chairman Wang’s family. Now none were left. Two had been killed, one committed suicide, and the rest ran away. Thus did the peasants settle accounts with the leading Catholic family of the village and at the same time erase an important center of counter-revolutionary activity.

With the destruction of the Wang family the Church ceased to exist as an organized institution in Long Bow. Although scores of believers remained, many of them bitter and angry over the struggle against the Church, no services were held, no sacraments were administered, and no offerings were collected. The sanctuary itself was turned into a warehouse for government grain. The great tower, minus its bells, was used only as a platform for megaphone announcements of village meetings and news of the world. The rest of the extensive compound was borrowed by various government organizations as temporary headquarters. Among these were the Anti-Japanese Political and Military University and the Fifth District Office.

***********

The campaign to “settle accounts,” launched in January 1946, lasted about four weeks. The destruction of the feudal land system, well begun by the Anti-Traitor Movement, was almost completed in this one month of drastic action. As a result of these two movements together, 211 acres were seized from exploiters, large and small, and 55 acres from various institutions. This amounted to more than a quarter of the village’s 931 acres. The situation was the same in regard to livestock, implements, stocks of grain, and housing. Twenty-six draft animals were taken from their owners. This was more than half of all the large farm animals in the community. Of a total of around 800 sections of housing, 400 were confiscated. Over 100 tons of stored grain were seized. Hundreds of silver dollars, much jewelry, many rooms full of furniture, dozens of implements and tools, and hundreds of sets of clothes of all descriptions were also taken.

It is difficult to make an estimate of the total value in U.S. dollars of all this property, movable and otherwise. Assuming the land to be worth $200 an acre, the stock $100 a head, the housing $40 a section, the grain $50 a ton, and other goods in proportion, everything added together could not have exceeded $100,000 in value. In terms of the capitalist West this was a ridiculously small figure. It was hardly enough to set up one large modern dairy farm in any fertile region of the United States in the late 1940’s. But in terms of Long Bow Village, its prevailing standard of living and the productivity of its peasant labor, this was an enormous sum, representing approximately five years’ average income for every man, woman, and child in the community.

The peasants called the expropriated property tou cheng kuo shih—the fruits of struggle. On these fruits they based their hopes for a new life.

The Fruits of Struggle

How can republican institutions, free schools, free churches, free social intercourse, exist in a mingled community of nabobs and serfs; of the owners of 20,000 acre manors with lordly palaces and the occupants of narrow huts inhabited by “low white trash”? If the South is ever to be made a safe republic let her land be cultivated by the toil of the owners or the free labor of intelligent citizens.... This country will be well rid of the proud, bloated, and defiant rebels … the foundations of their institutions must be broken up and relaid, or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain.

Thaddeus Stevens at Lancaster, Pa., 1865

MARCH CAME IN cold and clear. The sun moved in brilliant splendor across a cloudless sky but cast so little heat upon the earth that it did not even begin to melt the light mantle of snow that had fallen in the night. The glistening snow miraculously transformed the dusty, crumbling, adobe village and turned it into a fairyland of black and white, as pure and clean as the day the world was born.

In the reflected brightness of the open street that ran past the gate of South Temple stood two militamen. As they shuffled their benumbed cloth-shod feet and blew on their frost-bitten fingers, an impatient crowd of peasants in tattered winter garments, frayed shoes, patched shawls, and worn-out quilts grew in size before them.

Behind the massive wooden gates of the temple yard a dozen other militiamen ran to and fro, called to each other, carried out goods, led livestock back and forth, placed furniture in rows, and dumped clothes in neat piles as if preparing for a fair. As a result of these efforts the ancient temple, with its heavy wooden columns and upturned tile roof was soon surrounded by what amounted to a veritable exhibition of domestic artifacts, agricultural implements, and animal husbandry. On the street side of the yard stood the restless livestock section, its prime exhibit a yellow bullock with manure-caked flanks. Beside him stood a black mule, brushed until it glistened and decorated with strands of red yarn woven into its mane and forelock. Underfoot, tied by one hind leg, was a black sow, her dry shapeless teats dragging in the snow. Beside her romped two fat piglets from her fall litter. Close by, in a woven bamboo basket crouched a dozen chickens, their feathers bright with all the colors of the rainbow. Six longhaired sheep baaed and milled about in a flimsy stockade of kaoliang stalks.

On the right, behind the livestock, the farm implements were lined up. They included a large two-wheeled cart with iron-rimmed wheels, a wooden plow with an iron-tipped point, a harrow made of woven wattles, four heavy mattock-like hoes, a dozen three-pronged wooden pitchforks made from tree limbs that branched three ways, wooden shovels, rakes, seeders, manure buckets, a winch rope and a winch for raising water from a well, and many other useful things too numerous to mention.

To the left stood the great crocks, jars, and tightly woven baskets that the gentry used for storing their grain. There were also reed mats that could be made into field shelters, storage bins, or sleeping covers for a k’ang.

In the very center of the yard, tastefully arranged, were several finely shaped yet sturdy hardwood chairs and stools. Behind them stood tables, dressers, sideboards, and carved chests of cherry and mahogany, the latter fitted with massive brass corner guards and locks. Here also were displayed three large mirrors, one a full-length glass free from a single blemish. On the tables and on boards laid across wooden horses sat dozens of household implements—a loom, several spinning wheels, reels for winding cotton yarn, round-bottomed iron pots, bamboo baskets for steaming bread, and a stout press for forcing specially treated corn meal through holes in a steel plate to form corn noodles. Here also were needles, shuttles, a strong bow for fluffing cotton, and a flour sifter made of very fine mesh copper screen that was worth its weight in gold.

Other makeshift tables, closer still to the temple steps, were laden with clothes of all shapes, sizes, colors, and styles, from crude homespun work cottons to silk gowns and satin caps, embroidered undergarments, embroidered slippers, silk handkerchiefs, and kerchiefs of lace. Three great fleece-lined gowns for men lay at one end of the central table and beside them several silk-padded undertunics highly prized for winter wear. Here also were babies’ caps with silken dragons’ jaws and ears sewn on, a silver rattle, several silver bracelets, some earrings and other jewelled ornaments, bolts of machine-made cloth, odd bits of cotton, dyed and undyed, sleeve protectors for women who cooked, two alarm clocks, a chest full of rags useful for making shoe soles, and a whole table full of shoes, new and old, large and small—from satin shoes for the exquisite bound feet of a bride to coarse cotton and hemp workshoes already half worn through in the sole. Another whole table was piled high with cotton and silk quilts of every bright color—flowered, striped, and plain.

Here on display was the whole domestic and agricultural wealth of several prosperous gentry families, all of which had been transformed by bitter struggle into “fruits” belonging to the people.

Every item had been carefully recorded by a committee of poor peasants whose members, at that very moment, sat conferring at a table on the raised platform of the temple. Before them were scrolls of paper many feet in length, rolled up for convenience on round wooden sticks. On these scrolls, in black grass characters, were written the name and value in millet of every article in the yard.* Several young peasants who knew how to write, even if it was only by means of a brand of phonetic shorthand that would have shocked a true scholar, were busy trimming their writing brushes and rubbing their ink tablets in water in preparation for recording the decisions of the crowd that now filled the street, growing noisier with each interval of delay.

Finally everything was ready. The militiamen on the outside threw open the gates. People poured through waving in their hands the papers that showed they had been chosen, because of extreme poverty or proved grievances, for the privilege of first choice. The militiamen turned back all those without a paper and, after about 50 people had gone in, shut the gates entirely.

The bustle that had characterized the preparations in the temple gave way to pandemonium as the excited peasants surged from table to table, from display to display. Large items such as the farm cart, the bullock, and the mule had already been allocated by the committee. The men of the households that were to share the animals gathered round to look them over, push, feel, examine, and discuss them. It seemed that they would never tire of leading the animals up and down, holding their mouths open to judge their age, patting their flanks, or just standing back to admire their shapes. These were the first livestock many of them had ever owned. Even if each individual share was one leg, they were proud that leg was so sound.

While these lucky few looked over the livestock and the cart, the rest of the men and women, with all the enthusiasm of a crowd of country people at a big city fair, made the rounds of the courtyard, turned piles of clothes inside out and upside down, tried on gowns for size, paraded with silk tunics held up in front of them, put on the one large wolfskin hat and gesticulated with it before the full-length mirror. They spread out quilts, felt the texture of bolts of cloth, seated themselves in chairs, tested tables for steadiness, and all the while called to each other, joked, laughed, and carried on in the highest of spirits. Never since the world began had there been a day like this.

Each peasant had the right to choose one item. Before making a final decision all wanted plenty of time to look over the goods that were there, yet all hesitated to delay too long lest they lose their heart’s desire to some more decisive soul. Before many minutes had passed first one and then several more had made up their minds. With their chosen articles in hand they walked up to the steps of the temple and showed the committee what they proposed to carry home.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” asked San-ch’ing, the most skillful writer in the whole village, of old Tui-chin the bachelor, who balanced on his shoulder a baked clay jar almost as large as himself.

“That’s it,” said the old man cockily. “I haven’t anything at all for my grain. Never had that much grain before. This is just the thing.”

After some searching through the lists San-ch’ing found the crock on the scroll where it was catalogued along with other storage items and entered Tui-chin’s name alongside it.

“It’s listed at 50 catties,” he said, a note of doubt in his voice.

“That’s all right with me,” said old Tui-chin. “It’s worth all of that.”

Tui-chin was given a slip of paper listing the item and its price. This he handed to the militiaman as he went out the gate. As he trudged home he greeted all he met on the street with a broad grin.

“Fan shen le ma?” (Have you turned the body?) asked several.

“Fan le i ke k’ung shen,” (I’ve turned an empty body) replied Tui-chin, pointing to the huge jar and laughing heartily at his own pun. To “turn an empty body” meant to get nothing in the fanshen movement.

Others did not find what they wanted as easily as old Tui-chin. Or if they did they were not alone in their choice. Two old women decided at the same time on one flowered quilt. They fell to quarreling over it and ended up in a tug of war, each pulling the quilt to her with all her might while shouting oaths and insults at the other at the top of her voice. Cheng-k’uan, the Chairman of the Peasants’ Association, who was supervising the clerks at the table, had to rush down and step between them.

“If you fight that way you’ll tear the quilt in half and no one will have it,” he admonished good-humoredly. “Now tell me, why do you both want that one?”

Both women started talking at once, but Cheng-k’uan, who knew them well, hardly needed to listen. He decided that the quilt should go to the one with the largest family. He advised the loser to pick out a different quilt. “After all,” he said, “there are plenty more, even if this one is the best.”

In less time than it took to cook a noon meal over a straw fire the courtyard began to empty out, and soon thereafter in every lane and alley peasants could be seen trudging homeward with their newly acquired possessions. As soon as the first group had cleared the gate the call went out for the second, the representatives of households just a little better off, who were to get second choice. Most of them had already been waiting their turn for a long time. When the gate was opened they rushed in as eagerly as their poorest neighbors had done earlier.

And so it went all morning and all afternoon until the snow in the temple yard had all been trampled into the dirt and the whole area took on once again an ancient, dilapidated look that matched the growing disarray of the much-handled goods on the tables and the ground. Before night fell the last peasants had made their selections and carried or carted them away. Still there were quite a few things left behind. The militiamen, who had been on duty since before dawn and now had to clean up, decided that each of them had earned the right to pick out something and, though it was not strictly legal, each man set aside a small article before carrying the remaining wealth back to the storehouse.

***********

Such was a typical distribution in the course of the Settling Accounts Movement. The system described above was arrived at only after much trial and error, many meetings of the cadres and the officers of the Peasants’ Association, and several county-wide conferences at which the experiences of many villagers were pooled. When the first confiscated property was distributed in Long Bow, it was handed out not according to need but according to the grievances expressed at the meetings. This was done under the slogan shui tou, shui fen— “he who struggles gets a share.” This was logical at the time and based on a rough measure of justice. Those who had been robbed and cheated should have their property restored; those who had been exploited most heavily should get supplementary wages and benefits. Also, since many did not yet dare attack the gentry for fear of reprisal, those who dared accuse should be rewarded.

The actual distribution of property based on openly made accusations had a tremendous impact. People said, “Now we have proof that the Eighth Route Army really backs the poor. They take action and are not satisfied with empty talk. Yen’s troops talked well but cared nothing for us. They only seized our property and dragged us off to the front.” When they saw that active struggle actually paid off in land, houses, clothes, and grain, more people joined each succeeding movement. But even so, after several distributions it became clear that the more active peasants, the brave and the vocal, were getting more than their fair share of the “fruits,” while many a poor family that had suffered as much if not more, and needed land and chattels as much if not more, went without. It thus became obvious that active participation alone could not be the only criterion. Distribution on the basis of need had to be introduced. To handle such distribution the Peasants’ Association set up a special committee of 60. It was composed of the village cadres, the elected leaders of the Peasants’ Association, and delegates elected by the working peasants of each village neighborhood. (There were three such neighborhoods—southwest, southeast, and north.)

Where land was concerned the task of fair distribution was not too difficult. Since the village as a whole possessed approximately an acre of land per capita, those families who had less than the average were given enough to make up the difference. Complications that arose by virtue of the fact that the plots varied in fertility and that all plots were not equally close to the peasants’ homes were adjusted by painstaking calculation and juggling until most families were satisfied.

The redistribution of housing was handled in the same way. The village as a whole had less than a section of house per capita. Families without this average were given additional sections wherever possible. Here complicating factors were personal prejudice—some families would not share a courtyard with others whom they disliked—and the location of privies and wells. Privies were vital to every family’s economy. They were also very expensive to construct. They were deep, stone-lined cisterns large enough to hold all the solid and liquid excrement of a large family for a whole year. From them came the night soil, in semi-liquid form, on which almost the entire yield of the land was based. Since there were not enough privies to go around, families had to share them. If the families were on good terms, the sharing went well. If not, endless quarrels ensued.

As for wells, no one expected that every family should own one, but it was important that no one should have to walk too far for water. Judicious allocation of housing sections solved this problem in the main.

Draft animals and carts were even scarcer than privies and wells. Since there were only 50 animals in the whole village and since no animals owned by working peasants could be expropriated, the available animals had to be shared. It was common to allocate one ox to as many as four families, each of which thus became the proud possessor of “a leg.” This led to quarrels, but it also solved problems. At least those with one leg were better off than those who had none; for even when the draft animals were shared four, six and in some cases even ten ways, there were still not enough to go around. Carts were distributed in about the same proportion as the livestock.

The headaches encountered by the distribution committee in dividing land, houses, and stock were as nothing compared to those encountered in redistributing the miscellaneous property in a way to satisfy everyone. The village cadres and the delegates to the committee met for days on end to evaluate fairly all expropriated property in terms of millet, the standard grain, and to set up a system of grades which would properly classify all families on the basis of need. Various systems for making everything come out even were adopted, but in the end the most successful was a system that combined the direct adjustment of grievances with extra aid for the poorest and most needy.

The system worked as follows: The total value of all the goods available—grain plus household articles, tools, implements, and livestock—was first figured as a grain equivalent. Then every family was put in a “grade” based on need. Those families who had serious grievances against a landlord or rich peasant also had the value of the damage due them figured as a grain equivalent. If the family was already comparatively well off and therefore in a high “grade,” its damages were then reduced by a certain percentage. For example, a grievance worth one hundredweight of millet might be cut back to 70 pounds if the family had most of the things needed for carrying on production. The grain left over after the serious grievances were accounted for was then allocated to all the rest of the families based on their “grade.” As a result of all this figuring, each family was entitled to take home a certain amount of grain or its equivalent in other forms of property. When an article was chosen, its value was deducted from the total grain allowance for that family. The balance, if any, was paid in grain. Should the article chosen amount to more value than the grain allotted to them, the family had to pay the difference in money or grain according to the same scale.

This was a very complex system, but so too was the problem. Since the movement had a dual purpose, the rewards had to be based on a dual principle—repayment for past injuries and damages, and the fanshen or economic turnover of every family in the village. That it worked at all was due to a very definite measure of correlation between the grievances and the poverty of the families that made them. It was those who had suffered the most who made the most charges in the long run and at the same time needed the most to put them on a par with the rest of the village.

In order to insure that no one should take advantage of his or her newly won power, the village cadres and militiamen did not share in the first few distributions. “Wait until the people see that you are getting nothing and they themselves suggest that you should get a share,” was the advice given to Fu-yuan and T’ien-ming by District Leader Liang. But although the cadres were patient and waited unselfishly, no one suggested that they also should benefit from the struggle. Many militiamen decided that it was better to be a common peasant than a leading “activist” and asked to be mustered out. This brought the matter to a head and it was decided that everyone should be put in a “grade” according to his economic position and that everyone—cadres, militia, and ordinary citizens—should share and share alike.

At the same time, in recognition of the special burden borne by the militiamen, a certain amount of property was turned over to the corps for the benefit of that organization as a whole. This property included several acres of wheat land that had belonged to the collaborator Wang Hsiao-nan. The militia harvested the wheat and used a portion of the harvest plus some millet from a later distribution to set up a little shop where cigarettes and other articles of daily use were sold. There the militiamen doing guard duty at night could gather for a cup of hot water and a chat. The little shop became a sort of militiamen’s club.

The militia corps was the first but not the only organized body to receive “fruits” for common use. The Peasants’ Association took over the Western Inn from the Fan family and invested several hundredweight of expropriated grain as operating capital. Wang Yu-lai, vice-chairman of the Association, managed the inn and managed it so well that its capital increased several-fold in one year. From its profits came funds for the village school, oil for the lamps used at public meetings, and other incidental village expenses.

The Western Inn grew into the same sort of center for the cadres that the little shop had become for the militia. Cadres gathered there for meetings, for figuring up accounts, and for pleasure. As a result, many a free meal was eaten there in the course of the next two years, an incipient form of corruption that boded no good for the future.

The two confiscated distilleries also became public property. They were turned over to the Border Region Government liquor monopoly and operated thereafter as part of a wide network of publicly owned distilleries, the revenue of which helped in great measure to finance the cost of the Liberated Areas Government and the military effort necessary to defend it. Certain other “fruits of struggle” were turned over to the distilleries to help them maintain production. Other “fruits” were given to the consumer co-operative to put it on its feet. Most important among the latter were a cart and a mule which the co-op used to haul supplies.

***********

By the middle of March, when all the “fruits” had been distributed, the landless and land-poor found themselves living in an entirely new world. Two hundred and forty-two acres of land had been allocated to the families in this group, thereby doubling the acreage in their possession. Their holdings had jumped from an average of .44 acres per capita, to an average of .83 acres per capita. This amount of land did not make them wealthy by any means, but it was sufficient to maintain a minimum standard of living. It meant that they had moved from the ragged edge of starvation into relative security. Peasants who formerly grew only half enough to live on and had to work out or rent land for the remainder of their subsistence suddenly became peasants who could raise enough to live on, on their own land.

What was true of land was also true of other means of production. Families who had not possessed adequate shelter, draft animals, implements, and seed grain became families who owned all these things in sufficent quantity to maintain life. This happened not to just a few individuals but to more than half the population of the village. A hundred and forty families with 517 members “turned over” economically in the course of this movement.

The impact of this shift on the outlook and morale of the landless and land poor was tremendous. For the first time in their lives they felt some measure of control over their destiny. They slept under their own roofs, walked on their own land, planted their own seed, looked forward to harvesting their own crops and, what was perhaps best of all, owed neither grain nor money to any man. They were completely free of debt.

Shen Fa-liang, the former hired laborer in Sheng Ching-ho’s household, said, “Life is much better than before. Now I have land and house and work to do. There is grain in my house. I work very hard but I enjoy the results of my work because I carry all the results of my work back home and put it in my own jars. But in the past it was just the opposite. I labored very hard regardless of rain or shine, but all that work was for others, not for me. All the crops were very beautiful, but all the crops I had to carry to someone else’s granary. I couldn’t even see them any more, not to mention eating them. So in the past I worked for others. Now I work for myself and no longer suffer the painful life, the unhappy life of working for others.”

Ch’ung-lai’s wife felt the same way. “In the old days I worked as a servant; I was busy every night until midnight, and I had to get up before dawn. Now I am very busy too, but now I work for myself. This is happy labor. No one oppresses me and the money that I earn is my own. My condition now is good. I’ve got house, land to till, clothes to wear, and the right to speak. Who dared speak before? In the past when I served in other families, even when they didn’t beat or curse me, still, if I committed some trifling error their eyebrows and their eyes met. It is hard to eat with another’s bowl. To live in one’s own house and eat out of one’s own bowl is the happiest life.”

Wu-k’uei’s wife, a woman who had been forced to sell her son and who had been sold twice herself, summed up her feelings in one sentence:

“It seems as if I have moved from hell to heaven.”

Such feelings, when multiplied by 500, made for an atmosphere of extraordinary elation that soon changed even the everyday vocabulary of the village. The peasants all began to call one another “comrade” after the custom of the Eighth Route Army, and in place of the age-old greeting, “Countryman, have you eaten?” many poor peasants asked one another, “Comrade, have you turned over?”* To that question a large number could already answer, “I have turned.”

Half of China

How sad it is to be a woman!

Nothing on earth is held so cheap.

Boys stand leaning at the door

Like Gods fallen out of heaven.

Their hearts brave the Four Oceans,

The wind and dust of a thousand miles.

No one is glad when a girl is born:

By her the family sets no store.

Fu Hsuan

WHILE THE dramatic, violent, and often macabre scenes of the “settlement of accounts” and the exuberant, lively, often humorous incidents of the “distribution of the fruits” unfolded like the intricate plot of some day-long Chinese opera, another struggle began whose object was the liberation of women from the oppression of their husbands and from domestic seclusion.

A few poor peasant women in Long Bow, the wives of leading revolutionary cadres, early organized a Women’s Association where brave wives and daughters-in-law, untrammeled by the presence of their menfolk, could voice their own bitterness against the traitors, encourage their poor sisters to do likewise, and thus eventually bring to the village-wide gatherings the strength of “half of China,” as the more enlightened women, very much in earnest, liked to call themselves. By “speaking pains to recall pains,” the women found that they had as many if not more grievances than the men and that once given a chance to speak in public they were as good at it as their fathers and husbands, as had been proven by Chin-mao’s mother in that first district-wide anti-traitor meeting.

But the women found as they organized among themselves, attended meetings and entered into public life, that they met more and more opposition from the men, particularly from the men of their own households, most of whom regarded any activity by wives or daughters-in-law outside the home as “steps leading directly to adultery.” Family heads, having paid sound grain for their women, regarded them as their private property, expected them to work hard, bear children, serve their fathers, husbands, and mothers-in-law, and speak only when spoken to. In this atmosphere the activities of the Women’s Association created a domestic crisis in many a family. Not only did the husbands object to their wives going out; the mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law objected even more strenuously. Many young wives who nevertheless insisted on going to meetings were badly beaten up when they got home.

Among those who were beaten was poor peasant Man-ts’ang’s wife. When she came home from a Women’s Association meeting, her husband beat her as a matter of course, shouting, “I’ll teach you to stay home. I’ll mend your rascal ways.” But Man-ts’ang’s wife surprised her lord and master. Instead of staying home thereafter as a dutiful chattel, she went the very next day to the secretary of the Women’s Association, militiaman Ta-hung’s wife, and registered a complaint against her husband. After a discussion with the members of the executive committee, the secretary called a meeting of the women of the whole village. At least a third, perhaps even half of them, showed up. In front of this unprecedented gathering of determined women a demand was made that Man-ts’ang explain his actions. Man-ts’ang, arrogant and unbowed, readily complied. He said that he beat his wife because she went to meetings and “the only reason women go to meetings is to gain a free hand for flirtation and seduction.”

This remark aroused a furious protest from the women assembled before him. Words soon led to deeds. They rushed at him from all sides, knocked him down, kicked him, tore his clothes, scratched his face, pulled his hair and pummelled him until he could no longer breathe.

“Beat her, will you? Beat her, and slander us all, will you? Well, rape your mother. Maybe this will teach you.”

“Stop, I’ll never beat her again,” gasped the panic-stricken husband who was on the verge of fainting under their blows.

They stopped, let him up, and sent him home with a warning—let him so much as lay a finger on his wife again and he would receive more of the same “cure.”

From that day onward Man-ts’ang never dared beat his wife and from that day onward his wife became known to the whole village by her maiden name, Ch’eng Ai-lien, instead of simply by the title of Man-ts’ang’s wife, as had been the custom since time began.

A few similar incidents, one of which resulted in an errant husband spending two days in the village lockup, soon taught the poor peasant men to be more circumspect in their treatment of their wives, even if it did not teach them to appreciate women in public life any more than they had before.

The institution of wife beating was, of course, not ended in a few weeks by such means. But having once shown their power the women did not have to beat every man in order to make progress on this question. Thereafter, a serious talk with a strong-armed husband was often enough to make him change his ways, at least for the time being.

Chou Cheng-fu was a bare poor peasant who got land and house for the first time in the distribution that followed the “settling of accounts.” Land and house made possible the acquisition of a wife. Through a go-between he made a match with a puppet soldier’s widow ten years his junior. Perhaps because of the difference in their ages, Cheng-fu proved to be a very jealous husband. He would not allow his wife out of his sight for even an instant. Over this issue they soon fell to quarrelling. To settle the matter, he beat her, and she, being a woman of some spirit, went to the Women’s Association as Ch’eng Ai-lien had done before. Instead of retaliating against Chou Cheng-fu with sticks and kicks, the women sent a delegation to talk to him. They reminded him how hard it was for a poor peasant to get a wife at all. Once married he ought to treat his woman with great respect, be patient with her, and help her to overcome her mistakes, especially since she was younger than he. If he beat her she would only learn to hate him, their relations would steadily worsen, and in the end she might demand a divorce. In that case he would lose his wife completely. Since Chou Cheng-fu did not like the idea of a divorce he decided to be gentle with his wife thereafter. Later, when he went away to do rear service at the battlefront, he got a literate companion to write a letter thanking the Women’s Association for their help. The letter was written in the formal style used by scholars of the old school: “After I left home I thought it over and realized that you were kind enough to try and help us. Now I know that it is only through mutual love and respect that husband and wife can live happily together and build a good life.”

When asked if, as a result of these actions, women had yet won equality, one of the leaders of the Association said, “No, not yet. Things are a little better than before. Still, there are beating cases and most men still despise women’s words and think women are no use. We have to struggle for a long time to win equality. When we have land of our own it will help a lot. In the past men always said, ‘You depend on me for a living. You just stay home and eat the things I earn.’ But after women get their share they can say, ‘I got this grain from my own land and I can live without you by my own labor.’ When it comes to labor on the land, women can work just as hard as men even if they are weaker. They can do everything except plowing. They can even hoe if they can’t hoe so fast. But they cannot drive carts. Well, even this they can do, but some of the animals are pretty hard to handle.”

It was not long before the Women’s Association in some parts of the county set up plowing classes for women, and the fame of those who mastered agricultural labor spread far and wide. A widow in Shen Settlement startled everyone with her strength and skill. She could do everything a man could do and more. She could even push a loaded wheelbarrow on the highway and earn $12 a day, Border Region currency, transporting bricks. She was so skilled at planting that in the spring all the peasants in Shen Settlement wanted her, and no one else, to plant their millet.

In another village, only five miles from Long Bow, a woman was elected as village head.

Women such as these were rare, but as news of their exploits spread, others were greatly encouraged.

It would be very one-sided to imply that the only goal of the Women’s Association was equality for women. Without the successful transformation of society, without the completion of land reform, without a victorious defense of the Liberated Areas against the probing attacks of the Nationalist armies, it was impossible to talk of liberation for women. Many women realized this as if by intuition, and they made the Women’s Association an instrument for mobilizing the power of women behind the revolution in all its aspects—behind the “settling of accounts,” behind the drive for production, and behind the defense effort. Through the Association, classes were organized for literacy and for the study of politics, cotton loans were made to stimulate spinning and weaving, the women were brought together to make uniforms and shoes for the soldiers, and wives and mothers were urged to encourage their husbands, sons, and brothers to enlist in the army.

All of these activities were intimately linked up with the struggle for equality, with the demand on the part of women that they should no longer be treated as chattels. If this demand alarmed the men, the all-out support which the women gave to over-all revolutionary goals disarmed them and won from them a grudging admiration. In their hearts they had to admit that they could not win without the help of “half of China.”

Counter Measures

Men revolted in earlier ages too,

There’s nothing rare about such an ado.

Strange things pass on earth, as in the sky;

How else can the Heavenly Dog eat the moon on high?

In it goes at one side, and out it pops again;

Brightly as ever the moon shines then.

It’s always the good who come out on top,

The devil’s disciples soon have to stop.

Landlord Ts’ui in

Wang Kuei and Li Hsiang-hsiang

THE REACTION of the gentry to the devastating blows of the Settling Accounts Movement was as drastic as those who remained behind could make it. As far as the privileged classes were concerned, permanent expropriation was unthinkable. If the peasants could enforce the confiscation of land and property or even “double reduction,” then life was not worth living. Therefore, even though their sword—the local Peace Preservation Corps—had been broken, and their shield—the provincial and central armies of the Kuomintang—had been cast out, the landlords, the rich peasants, and their “dog’s legs” inside the Liberated Areas desperately contested the field. Those who ran away fled with the intention of returning to take revenge, and those who remained used all the resources at their command to disrupt the developing peasant power, neutralize as many people as possible, isolate the active young cadres, and preserve whatever was left of their power and prosperity. They hoped, at a minimum, to have something left to build on when the great offensive, being prepared in Chungking with American support, turned the tide of history, crushed the Liberated Areas, and put the traditional rulers back in power. It never entered their heads that this offensive too would be defeated in the long run.

As an elementary precaution the gentry concealed what valuable property they could in the homes of poor relatives, friends, tenants, and employees. Many peasant families who had little basic sympathy for the wealthy were cajoled, bribed, tricked, or threatened into helping them. Hsu Cheng-p’eng, the landlord who was a Kuomintang general, sent his cousin, who was a tenant on his land, 220 silver dollars for safekeeping. The puppet Chief-of-Staff Chou Mei-sheng turned half an acre of his best soil over to a long-term hired laborer, Chang Fu-hsin. He also hid 80 silver dollars in a second laborer’s house. The latter, Wang Chi-kao, covered the silver coins with copper ones and set the jar on a shelf. In each case, when the leaders of the Peasants’ Association found out about the concealed property, the poor peasants involved were beaten and wholly or partly expropriated themselves.

General Hsu wrote a letter to his cousin asking about the silver dollars. When the letter was intercepted by the village office, it touched off an attack on the cousin himself. Chang Fu-hsin, the laborer, was arrested and beaten when the captain of the militia found him planting Chou Mei-sheng’s half acre with his own seed. Wang Chi-kao went himself to the Peasants’ Association Committee to report the jar full of coins but was beaten nevertheless for having concealed it.

Families such as these were labelled “air raid shelters” by the other peasants and were mercilessly punished. As a result, persons who, by fair means or foul, had been persuaded to become “air raid shelters” tended to be passive, even antagonistic to further struggle because they feared, with reason, that if they were exposed they would be as fiercely attacked as the gentry themselves. They thought, “The landlords have put their feudal tails in our homes. When the people come for their property the landlords may lose their tails, but we will lose our heads!”

The severe punishment meted out to those who were found out and the fear that this engendered among those already enmeshed suggested to the gentry a new tactic. They converted what began as a movement to hide property into a movement to divide the people. They hid property in others’ homes in order to sow distrust and suspicion, in order to divert the attack from themselves and to set the peasants to fighting one another. They even went a step further and spread rumors that they had hidden property with others when in fact they had not. Since a negative is hard to prove, the victims of these rumors found it very difficult to clear their names. As had been demonstrated in the case of Ch’ung-lai’s wife, one landlord’s word that she had concealed money for Wang Lai-hsun led to a fearful beating and flesh-cutting torture. A false charge that could cause that much dissension was more valuable to the gentry than jars full of silver and gold.

Coquetry and seduction were also powerful weapons. The women of the gentry were often very beautiful. After all, landlords and rich peasants had long had their pick of the most beautiful girls in the countryside for wives and concubines. In addition to their natural graces, these women were taught to dress and pamper themselves. They knew how to charm men. While the wives of the poor labored endlessly in their huts and in the fields, gathered manure by the roadside, dug herbs in the hills, and were burned black by the sun, the landlords’ wives bathed, dressed in elegant clothes, spent hours combing their fine black hair, treated their fair skin with powder and oil, and developed the social graces necessary for entertaining important guests.

As the Settling Accounts Movement gathered momentum, the poor laborers who led it suddenly found themselves the objects of solicitous attention from women who had formerly never so much as glanced at them, much less spoken to them.

In Long Bow there was a young hired laborer named Ch’un-hsi who worked for a landlord in the neighboring Kao Settlement. The family treated him as one of their cattle, lodging him in the stable with the ox and the sheep, and giving him nothing but millet and chaff to eat. During the famine year his own mother appeared at the gate one day to beg for something to eat. When he slipped into the kitchen and took a bowl of millet for her, he was thoroughly beaten for his pains. When his mother came back again he was so afraid of another thrashing that he drove her away.

After the liberation of the region, the landlord’s daughter-in-law, who had formerly winced when he with his sheep dung odor went by, suddenly began to flirt with him. She cooked meat dumplings and other delicacies for his dinner, mended his torn clothes, and ultimately invited him to sleep in her quarters. All this was not for nothing, however. As soon as Ch’un-hsi’s head was well turned, she persuaded him to hide clothes and other valuable things for her father-in-law. When the peasants of the village launched a sharp attack against the family, which owned over 70 acres and had financed one member through the university at Peking, Ch’un-hsi protected them in every way that he could. When this property finally was divided, the daughter-in-law went out to work as a nurse; only then—when the family could no longer afford to hire him—did Ch’un-hsi return to his mother’s home in Long Bow. But he took no part in the struggle. He refused to accept any land, houses, or other property in the division then going on and persuaded his mother not to make any accusations because, he said, the Kuomintang would soon be back and punish them all.

This type of seduction was repeated many times with many variations. Even though a number of small exploiters were attacked in Long Bow, there was one rather wealthy family whose property was never seized. This was the family of the widow Yu Pu-ho. There were many reasons for her miraculous immunity but not the least of them was her very beautiful daughter, Pu-ch’ao. This girl had married a poor peasant from a distant village, a former puppet trooper who volunteered for service in the Eighth Route Army. After he left for the front she returned home to stay with her widowed mother. As a soldier’s wife she was entitled to help from the peasants of Long Bow Village. She lost no time in getting acquainted with the village leaders. She carried on flirtations and liaisons with a number of them simultaneously and even bore a son. No one knew who the father was, but since the baby died within a few days his parentage never became an issue. Disarmed by her status as a poor peasant’s wife and soldier’s dependent, and personally fond of her, the cadres made no move to confiscate her mother’s property.

A further twist to this motif was the man trap. The landlords used their daughters-in-law to entice the village cadres, encouraged them to sleep together, and then exposed the whole affair to the peasants in an attempt to discredit their leaders and destroy their prestige with the people. Carrying this one step further, they spread rumors about liaisons that did not in fact exist.

Simple bribery was another often attempted method. How Sheng Ching-ho came to Kuei-ts’ai and San-ch’ing with a bag of white flour has already been related. Other landlords did the same but on a more massive scale. They invited every cadre in the village into their homes to eat wheat, definitely a luxury meal, and thrust gifts of clothing, leather shoes, and watches at them. In Long Bow such invitations were not too successful, due in large part to the influence of T’ien-ming, but in Wang Village, in the same district, a large proportion of the young men newly catapulted into leadership compromised themselves in this way.

Here again, when the gentry were not successful in bribing leaders, they spread rumors to the effect that the leaders had been bribed, mentioned valuable things which they claimed had disappeared from their homes, and in every way tried to discredit the young cadres and cause friction between them and their followers.

In Long Bow a big issue was made of the altar lamps, cloth, and candles that were confiscated from the Church. Rumor had it that the altar lamps were made of solid silver—some said gold—worth hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars. Once they left the Church they were seen no more, yet no equivalent sum of money or grain found its way into the wealth available for distribution. The truth of the matter was that the lamps were made of brass, not silver or gold. They brought only a modest sum in the Changchih market and the money had immediately been spent on ammunition and rifles for the militia. In regard to other items that rumor claimed “missing” there were also explanations. The cloth had been made into shirts and quilts which were presented free to every volunteer who enlisted in the army. The wax candles were burned by the militia in their temple lodgings since they had no other source of light. But in the absence of a clear accounting, rumors of misappropriation gained wide currency, and the reputation of the village cadres was tarnished accordingly.

The most sophisticated tactic used by the gentry was infiltration. Able young men posed as revolutionaries, won the confidence of local Party organizations and village governments, and then carried on their wrecking activities from the inside. Although such infiltration was common in the Taihang region, in Long Bow no member of any wealthy family attempted such a thing.

To the methods of disruption mentioned above must be added the power of the landlord’s religious and superstitious authority. As has been pointed out, Confucianism and ancestor worship were deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the majority of the peasants. By claiming that their land and property came from their ancestors and therefore should remain inviolate, the owners caused many a peasant to hold back in the struggle. They also summoned fate to their side once more. “If you are poor, that is your fate. That is determined in heaven and no man can go against heaven,” they declared; or, “If you are poor, that is because your father’s tomb is poorly located. No one can defy the influence of air and water.” In the face of adversity they preached patience. If one went bankrupt, one could only wait for one’s luck to change, select a more suitable spot for one’s own grave, and hope that the eight ideographs of earth and heaven would be in better conjunction when one’s son was born. They also prophesied destruction from on high of all those who struggled against the existing order. They said the gods would punish all rebels for their temerity. “Can the sun rise in the west?” they cried once again, and pointed to the strikingly red sunsets in the summer of 1946 as a portent of the destruction of the Communist Party.

To lend weight to such ideas they used the spirit-talking technique for all it was worth. “The return visit” and the “distant view” turned out to be highly political. Those peasants who could be enticed into a seance together held up a tray that was sprinkled with a coating of sand. Then a medium, usually a young girl in an induced trance, held a chopstick suspended in her outstretched hand so it just touched the sand. As both the tray and the chopstick moved, lines were drawn in the sand which were immediately interpreted by the master of the seance as ideographs prophesying doom for those who raised their hands against the owners of property. “Chiang Kai-shek will return,” was another common message.

This last idea was the most persistent theme of the landlords’ propaganda activity. By spirit talking, by rumor, in conversation, and in public announcements, the gentry stressed over and over again the inevitable return of the Kuomintang and the swift punishment in store for all active participants in the Revolution. Weight was given to their words by the activity of the Home Return Corps, a semi-military organization created to take over and hold any area won back from the Liberated Areas by the Nationalist offensives. This corps, composed of landlords’ sons, their “dog’s legs,” hired thugs, and miscellaneous adventurers, instituted a white terror in the wake of the Central troops wherever they returned. They hunted down and killed not only active cadres but also their wives, children, and relatives, buried whole families alive, flayed people, and cut off their heads. The Home Return Corps also sent individuals deep into the Liberated Areas to carry out assassinations, poison wells, loot, kill, and spread panic. Assassinations, carried out at night, were common enough to acquire a name of their own, “black shots,” and there was no person in the revolutionary ranks, no matter how brave, who did not feel a twinge of fear when stepping outdoors after dark or travelling at night on deserted paths between one village and another.

To co-ordinate and direct all the elements of this offensive, the gentry built and rebuilt the Kuomintang Party and tried to maintain underground branches in every village. It was through the Party organization that information was gathered about developments in the countryside, lists of active revolutionary leaders and their peasant supporters were drawn up, money distributed where it would do the most good, and the over-all strategy and tactics of the conflict planned and put into practice. This whole effort depended for ultimate success on victories on the field of battle. Such victories could only be won by a strong, well-trained, militant army. With all the manpower of South, Central, and West China to draw upon, with thousands of American officers to train the conscripts, with all the surplus weapons of the Pacific War as their basic armament, and with the arsenals of America pouring in new arms all the time, the gentry felt confident of the future. Should all these fail, America still had, did she not, a monopoly on the atomic bomb? If they could not hold China, then they could destroy her.

To meet this many-sided offensive of the gentry the peasants had one basic weapon—unity—a weapon which, in the past, they had never been able to forge. That the peasants were able to forge such a weapon after the Second World War and employ it in the face of landlord disruption, terror, and massive, foreign-supported military mobilization was due to one primary factor—the leadership of the Communist Party.

Founding the Village Communist Party Branch

The Communist Party of China is the organized vanguard of the Chinese working class and the highest form of its class organization. The Party represents the interests of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people. While at the present stage it works to create a system of new democracy in China, its ultimate aim is the realization of a system of communism in China.

Constitution of the Communist Party of China, 1945

ONE NIGHT in April, T’ien-ming, the former underground worker now in charge of public security, and Kuei-ts’ai, the vice-leader of the village, stood guard together on the road that led south out of Long Bow toward the walled town of Changchih. Under the soft light of a full moon they walked up and down in silence. Several times during the first hour T’ien-ming slowed down his pace and turned toward Kuei-ts’ai as if prepared to say something, but apparently he thought better of it and walked on as briskly as before. Finally, he did speak.

“Comrade,” he said, looking Kuei-ts’ai straight in the eye. “In regard to the Eighth Route Army, what are your thoughts?”

Kuei-ts’ai was a little taken aback.

“What are my thoughts?” he exclaimed, hoisting his rifle onto his other shoulder. “What should my thoughts be? In the past I had nothing. I had an empty bowl. Now I have fanshened. Everything I have the Eighth Route Army gave to me. Wherever the Eighth Route Army goes I will follow.”

“And the Communist Party?” asked T’ien-ming.

“The Communist Party?” said Kuei-ts’ai, drawing his heavy eyebrows together so that a crease ran up the middle of his forehead. “The Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army—it’s all the same, isn’t it?”

“No, not exactly,” said T’ien-ming. “The Communist Party organized the Army. In the Army there are Communist Party members. The Communist Party directs the Army, but there are many soldiers in the Army who are not in the Communist Party. And it is the Communist Party, not the Eighth Route Army, that leads us in the battle against the landlords. It is the Communist Party that leads our fanshen.”

“I understand,” said Kuei-ts’ai, still not too clear as to just what the Communist Party was.

“If only we follow the Communist Party the working people will certainly win victory. We will overthrow the old capital holders and we will become masters in the house,” said T’ien-ming starting to walk again, this time very slowly.*

“Where is the Party then?” asked Kuei-ts’ai. “I want to see it.”

“It’s far away but there are Party members in the Army and also in the countryside. I too would like to see the Party. Will you go with me to find it?”

“Yes,” answered Kuei-ts’ai without a moment’s hesitation. “Let’s go as soon as possible.”

After that, every time Kuei-ts’ai found T’ien-ming alone he asked him when they would start out, but T’ien-ming put him off several times. Finally T’ien-ming said, “Why are you so anxious? Don’t you know that it is a long journey, and a very difficult and dangerous one?”

“Never mind how difficult or dangerous it is,” said Kuei-ts’ai impatiently. “You say the Communist Party leads us to fanshen. There is no other way out for us except with the Communist Party, so let’s go find it.”

“Think it over some more,” said T’ien-ming. “Are you willing to risk your life for the Party? In the future there will be many dangers, many hardships. You must be willing to sacrifice even your life, maybe even the safety of your family.”

“I have already made up my mind,” said Kuei-ts’ai. “Why do you keep talking about dangers, as if we weren’t in danger already?”

“In that case, your journey is over,” said T’ien-ming, smiling broadly. “The Party is right before your eyes. I am a member of the Communist Party.”

Kuei-ts’ai was astonished but he was also angry.

“Why did you trick me?” he asked.

“Because the Communist Party is a secret organization. If the enemy should ever come back we would all be killed. No one is allowed to tell of his membership. Even if you are arrested and beaten to death, you should never tell. You can say you belong to the Eighth Route Army but never that you belong to the Communist Party.”

Thus did Kuei-ts’ai first come into contact with the Communist Party. He was formally enrolled as a member a few days later.

T’ien-ming, who recruited him, had only been a member for a few weeks himself. He was picked as the first Party recruit in Long Bow Village by District Leader Liang when it became obvious that without a Party branch in the village itself the work of the Revolution could not progress. The gentry had made it very clear that their strategy was to split the peasants, set them to quarrelling with one another, undermine their morale, frighten them into inaction, isolate them from their political allies, and undermine the leadership of the Communist Party. The strategy of the peasants therefore had to be to unite all working people, overcome differences in their ranks, instil confidence in ultimate victory, isolate the gentry, and undermine their political leadership—the Kuomintang.

Such a strategy required a far-sighted, politically conscious, guiding core of individuals with close ties to the masses of the people at every level. None of the existing organizations in Long Bow could satisfy these requirements.

The village government was essentially an administrative organ in the service of the fanshened peasants. The village functionaries had their hands full solving the daily problems of the people, and acting as a two-way liaison between the village and higher levels of government.

The People’s Militia was the peasants’ own armed force. On the local level, it was their chief guarantee that their will would be carried out, but the militia did not determine what that will was. It was the servant, not the leader, of the peasant community. The problem was to keep it that way, for there was a strong tendency for those with arms in their hands to become an independent political force and follow the road to banditry and militarism.

The Women’s Association, organized to represent and mobilize “half of China,” could not very well be the guiding force for the other half, the males.

The Peasants’ Association was the militant popular organization of both men and women formed for the express purpose of carrying on the struggle against the gentry. But just because it was a popular organization open to all working people, it required a core of conscious, disciplined, dedicated people able to give guidance and unselfish service as leaders. There was no guarantee that such a core of leaders would be generated spontaneously by the struggle itself. Nor was there any reason to think that if such a core did develop it could break through the limitations imposed on the average peasant consciousness by the small-scale, fragmented private economy of which it was a product.

With four important organizations in the village a further problem arose, the problem of co-ordination. How could the village government, the People’s Militia, the Women’s Association, and the Peasants’ Association maintain a unified outlook? How could the contradictions that arose between them by virtue of their different functions be adjusted? Only a political party that drew its membership from among the leaders and active rank and file of all four of them could guide and co-ordinate the many-faceted revolutionary movement and solve the problems that faced the peasants in their drive to fanshen. This was exactly the role played by the Communist Party in every village in which a Party branch existed.

In the absence of such a Party organization in Long Bow, District Leader Liang, a Communist Party member of several years’ standing, guided the work of the young cadres for many months. Since his headquarters were in the village, he was often on hand when they needed him. But Liang was only one person. His presence was demanded in a dozen places every day. As the responsible leader of a whole district he could not possibly keep in close touch with all the problems of any one village. Even if he could have done so, no individual, no matter how brilliant, could match a dedicated collective body in wisdom. As the peasant uprising in Long Bow developed momentum it became imperative to organize a Communist Party branch that could guide it from within.

As soon as District Leader Liang and Secretary Liu of the Fifth District Committee of the Communist Party of Lucheng County decided that the military situation was relatively stable and that a reliable group of vigorous young leaders had emerged in Long Bow, they moved to recruit them into the Party and set up a village branch. T’ien-ming, the most mature and experienced of the village cadres, was an obvious choice as the first member. As T’ien-ming related it later, this is how he himself was recruited:

I heard about the Communist Party when I was in Hungtung as a carpenter in 1940. At that time there were many underground workers not five li [one li = ⅓ milel from the city. They often talked to us carpenters but I didn’t understand the difference between the Communist Party and the Palu [the Eighth Route Army]. I thought they were the same thing. Once a cadre told me that they were not the same; that though the Eighth Route Army was under the leadership of the Communist Party, it was not the Communist Party itself. Though I didn’t understand how this could be, I knew anyway that the Party was to serve the poor and overthrow the wealthy. When I returned to Long Bow and worked as an underground cadre I heard more.

After the Liberation, toward the end of the year, I once asked District Secretary Liu, “What is the Party and what is the connection between the Party and the Army, and can I join the Party?” He said, “You had better work hard and later we will talk about this again.” So he observed how I worked and that I was very steadfast in the struggle. Then he called me aside one day and said, “A Communist Party member is not the same as an ordinary person. He must make up his mind to sacrifice his life for the working people and struggle against the owning classes.” Then he told me something about the bright future of the proletariat and the Party. “If all the dispossessed unite together and work hard, the future belongs to us. But if you want to join the Party, you must remember that every Communist Party member must fight for the working people forever and never compromise.”

In April 1946, I was finally accepted as a member in the Communist Party without any period of probation and after that I worked even harder, both in the struggle and in the work of supervising and educating the other cadres so that they would not falter, take graft, or ask for more than their share of the “fruits.”

T’ien-ming’s first big task after he joined the Party was to develop a local branch and bring in other members. The basic requirement for new members was that they be of poor peasant origin. In addition to that they must be active in the struggle against the landlords and have prestige with the people. T’ien-ming picked Kuei-ts’ai as his first recruit. Others whom he approached were not so easily mobilized. There was, for instance, the young hired laborer Hsin-fa, a man who had owned neither land nor house in the past. He was brought up by a stepfather and ill-treated at home for many years. When Long Bow was liberated he was working in another village and returned only after the struggle with the landlords had begun. He immediately joined the militia, was honest, hard-working, and well liked. The young cadres decided to make Hsin-fa educational director of the militia, but he was worried about his past record and did not think he was fit to be a leader.

What worried him was the fact that he had once illegally transported heroin for the landlord T’ang Hsu-wen, a man who, in addition to supervising his many tenants in another village, led a gang of bandits. This gang smuggled heroin through the Japanese lines, and Hsin-fa, who was nothing but a hired laborer, was ordered to transport it. The first time he made a smuggling trip he didn’t know what was on his cart until he reached his destination. After that it was too late. He was already implicated and was forced by the gang to transport heroin many more times.

“Since I myself committed such crimes, how can I lead others?” asked Hsin-fa.

But T’ien-ming said, “Never mind, the main thing is to tell the truth about it and to try and understand the root of your mistakes. Even if you had killed someone there might be a reason for it, a reason that would explain it, and the Eighth Route Army will pardon those who speak frankly and are sincere with their comrades.”

So Hsin-fa told the whole story of his smuggling and T’ien-ming said to him, “Think how dangerous it was for you. You carried the heroin but they got the money. If you had been caught by the puppet police it would have been your head that came off, not theirs. You risked your life and got nothing. You did not want to go. This was not a great error.”

“That’s true,” said Hsin-fa, greatly relieved. “It was so dangerous that even now, whenever I think of it I break into a sweat. But now the Palu have brought me not only land and a house but they have also made me see clearly and relieved my mind of a great burden. I always thought that was a black mark against me, but now I understand that it is not my fault but that turtle’s egg of a landlord.”

After Hsin-fa accepted a position of leadership with the militia and had worked as a leader in education as well as in action, T’ien-ming decided to bring him into the Communist Party.

“What do you think of the Communist Party?” he asked Hsin-fa one day.

“The Communist Party is good. It has led us to turn over and I myself have turned over. What do you think?”

“I agree,” said T’ien-ming, “and I want to go find the Communist Party. Will you go with me?”

“Well,” said Hsin-fa, “I understand that the Communists are good but that word ‘Party,’ I don’t like it. Now we all fight so hard against the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) and everyone hates the Nationalist Party. Maybe afterward they will hate the Communist Party just as they hate the Nationalist Party now. If you want to go, go ahead, but I’m happy with my present position. Later, if I should be arrested by the Kuomintang, I can tell them that I am just a villager and though I worked for the Eighth Route Army I am not a member of the Communist Party.”

This was honest talk. T’ien-ming respected Hsin-fa for speaking frankly but he still hoped to convince him that he should join the Party. He warned him never to mention their conversation to anyone and later sent Kuei-ts’ai to talk with him and test him out.

“I heard that T’ien-ming visited you and talked with you about joining the Party,” said Kuei-ts’ai.

“No, T’ien-ming never said anything to me,” Hsin-fa answered.

T’ien-ming sent three others to test him in the same manner but he told them nothing. They asked him if T’ien-ming was a member of the Communist Party but Hsin-fa answered, “I know nothing about it.”

Tien-ming decided that Hsin-fa could keep a secret and that he was very honest. If only he understood the Communist Party he would join. Having gone so far, he could not stop in the middle in any case. He sent other members to talk with Hsin-fa. They reviewed the past with him, asked him how he had fanshened, and if it was not true that the Communist Party had led him to his new life.

“Yes,” said Hsin-fa. “I know the Communist Party is good and leads us to stand up, but I still don’t think I want to go and find it.”

Then T’ien-ming went again himself.

“I have already found the Communist Party,” he announced.

Hsin-fa was amazed.

“You have found it! Where did you find it? Since you have found it I will go with you, as long as I am not the first.”

“Think it through,” said T’ien-ming. “Prepare some food and some money and when you are ready we will go.”

“How much do you think I will need?” asked Hsin-fa eagerly.

“You’d better think it over thoroughly. We don’t want to make any decisions that we will regret later,” cautioned T’ien-ming.

But this time Hsin-fa was not to be denied. The very next day he appeared at T’ien-ming’s door with food and money for a long journey.

“Don’t be anxious,” said T’ien-ming. “The Party is right here.”

“Where?”

“I myself am a member,” said Tien-ming, looking closely at Hsin-fa to see if he would get angry as Kuei-ts’ai had done. But Hsin-fa was a much more easygoing man than Kuei-ts’ai. “Well,” he said. “If you are a member, of course I want to join. Maybe there will be more like us. I’m not the first but neither am I the last.” With that Hsin-fa too became a member of the Long Bow branch of the Communist Party of China.

***********

As the Party branch grew, women were recruited into it as well as men. Within a year more than 30 peasants joined, of whom seven were women.

One of the first women to become a Communist in Long Bow was a former beggar, Hopei-born Hu Hsueh-chen, a stocky mother of great physical strength and stamina. Her square jaw, prominent nose, and swarthy skin gave her a masculine appearance which was heightened by her bobbed hair and the loose-hanging pantaloons typical of male attire which she wore. She was the first woman in the village to bob her hair and discard the tapered trousers which most women preferred.

For 28 years prior to the Liberation she had lived a life that could only be described as a nightmare. As a young girl her father almost sold her to settle a debt. She talked him out of it, only to be married against her will to a pauper. She was then 16. Harried by famine from Hopei to Shansi, she was forced into beggary when her husband became a gambling addict and sold everything in the house, including their only quilt, for gambling stakes. She watched her first three children die before her eyes. One was trampled to death by a Japanese soldier, the second died of parasites and distended belly in the famine year, while the third wasted away in her arms when her own breasts shrivelled from starvation. When the fourth, a girl, was born to her she finally drove her thieving, good-for-nothing husband out and managed to survive the last years of the Anti-Japanese War by begging, gleaning in the fields after the harvest, spinning cotton for others, and hunting herbs in the hills. Without a quilt for a cover she and her daughter slept in a pile of straw through sub-freezing winter weather and somehow survived.

Liberation and the Settling Accounts Movement were to Hu Hsueh-chen what water is to a parched desert. She won clothes and threw away her rags, she won a quilt and burned her pile of flea-infested straw, she won land and gave up begging, and she won a roof over her head and set up a home for her little daughter. Knowing that all these gains were the result of struggle and not gifts from heaven, she attended every meeting and supported those who were active, even though she herself was afraid to talk in public and afraid to step forward and beat the “bastard landlords” herself.

Then she met a remarkable revolutionary cadre who helped to make her fanshen complete. This man, the “doctor” in charge of the infirmary at the Anti-Japanese Political and Military College which made the village Church its temporary headquarters, was also from Hopei. His home village was only ten miles from the one where Hu Hsueh-chen was born. He was first attracted to her when he heard the familiar broad accents of his parents on her lips. He came to pay a call. They talked about old times and familiar places. Soon thereafter, through a third person, he asked for her hand in marriage. Hu Hsueh-chen hesitated. She asked for a conference in order to make known to him the whole story of her past. She told him she could not stand any more suffering or oppression at the hands of a man. He, in turn, told her of his own life, how he had been driven from home at the age of 14 by a stepmother who hated him, how he had gone to Peking to work in a shop and later, when the Japanese came, had escaped into the Western Hills and joined the Eighth Route Army as an orderly or “little devil” in the medical corps. All the medicine he knew he had learned in the field caring for the casualties of the “Kill All, Burn All, Loot All” campaigns. He persuaded Hu Hsueh-chen that he was a man of principles and standards far in advance of the peasants whom she had known all her life. Most important to her was the fact that, as a product of the revolutionary army and its Communist education, he believed in equality for women.

They were married in February, 1946, and Hu Hsueh-chen never regretted having taken this step. Far from opposing her taking an active part in village affairs, her husband encouraged it. He even cooked supper for himself and the little girl so that his wife could attend meetings—a practice unheard of in Long Bow. He talked with her for hours at a time explaining the whole Chinese Revolution, its past and present, and described for her the society called Communism that they would eventually build.

When the struggle against the gentry reached its height, Hu Hsueh-chen’s new husband saw that she hesitated to lead, dared not speak in public, and dared not join in beating those under attack. He criticized her gently and asked if she wanted to save face for the landlords. “You must know that only after the destruction of the feudal system and the overthrow of the landlords can we poor peasants fanshen. From whence do the ‘fruits’ come? Only through struggle. You ought to work hard and lead the movement to help win fanshen for everyone.”

She became more active then, overcame some of her fear and shyness, and was elected a group leader in the Women’s Association. This made her husband very happy. He encouraged her to do even more, saying, “I have heard all about your hard life and suffering in the past, so now you should think—where did my fanshen come from?—my land, my house, my freedom to talk, my freedom to marry? Was it not because of the leadership of the Communist Party?”

A few weeks later the infirmary of the Military College was transferred to the village of Kao Settlement, about a mile to the northwest. Thereafter, the doctor came home only once a week. But when he came he always inquired how his wife’s work was going, and, as before, offered to cook supper so that she could be more active. He said, “Now I work outside and you work at home. You serve the people in your way and I will serve them in mine. Later, when we have time, I will teach you to read and write, just as the Army taught me, and in the future we can help each other a great deal.”

In late 1946 the Anti-Japanese Political and Military College moved away altogether. As long as he was in the Army, Hu Hsueh-chen’s husband had to move with it, but he regularly wrote letters asking after his wife’s welfare and urging her to work hard. “When you run into trouble don’t be gloomy,” he advised. “For there can be no trouble to compare with the past.” She took what he wrote to heart and became more active than ever in all the affairs of the village. When Militiaman Ta-hung nagged his wife into resigning as secretary of the Women’s Association so that she would pay more attention to her home, Hu Hsueh-chen was elected to take her place.

Soon after she took up her new duties, Hsin-fa came and asked her which was better, the Communist Party or the Kuomintang Party.

“Everyone knows the answer to that,” said Hu Hsueh-chen. “It was the Communist Party that liberated us from poverty and led us to fanshen. It was the Communist Party that liberated us from the Kuomintang. As for me, I got house and land while in the past I was nothing but a beggar. I could find no more than half a bowl of millet to eat every day and my children died of starvation. So how could I forget the Communist Party and the Eighth Routers?”

Later T’ien-ming himself came to talk with her. He asked her if anyone had spoken to her about the Party. She knew that the Party was supposed to be secret so she denied that anyone had come even though T’ien-ming asked her several times. A few days later he returned with an application blank and helped her to fill it out. While doing this he asked her if she would give her life for the Party and obey the discipline of the Party and its leaders. “If you should by chance be captured by the enemy could you keep silent even when threatened with death?”

To all this Hsueh-chen answered with a firm “I could,” and so she too was enrolled into the Party to which her husband, unknown to her, had long belonged.

The other women recruited into the Communist Party at this time included two of Hu Hsueh-chen’s assistants in the Women’s Association, two wives of leading cadres who were brought into the branch by their husbands even though they were not active leaders among the women, and two rather remarkable young women, each of whom, though already married, had fallen in love with a cadre and Party member; they were recruited into the organization by their lovers. One of these was Village Head Fu-yuan’s paramour, Shih Hsiu-mei. Her husband, a local carpenter, had left Long Bow several years before and had never returned. Ch’eng Ai-lien, whose husband, Mants’ang, had been beaten by the Women’s Association, was the other. Man-ts’ang had since died from an illness and Ch’eng Ai-lien had married the poor peasant Chin-sui. She had driven a hard bargain with the latter, refusing to take his name and retaining under her own control all of Man-ts’ang’s property. Mistress of her own fate at last, she came and went to suit herself and dispensed her favors as she pleased.

Of the 30-odd members of the Communist Party branch in Long Bow as it was finally constituted in that period, 80 percent were land-poor peasants or landless tenants and hired laborers and about 20 percent were land-owning peasants such as Fu-yuan. There were no members of rich peasant or landlord origin and there were no industrial workers.

Peasants or Workers?

Experience shows that after joining our Party on our terms, most of them (peasants and intellectuals) did seriously study and accept the Party’s education in Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung’s theory of the Chinese Revolution, observe Party discipline, and take part in the practical revolutionary struggles of the people. In the course of doing this they changed their original character and became Marxist-Leninist fighters of the proletariat. Many of them have even sacrificed their lives for the Party’s cause, the cause of Communism in China.

Liu Shao-ch’i

“AT ALL TIMES and on all questions, a Communist Party member should take into account the interests of the Party as a whole, and place the Party’s interests above his personal problems and interests,” wrote Liu Shao-ch’i in 1943. He went on to say:

If a Party member has only the interests and aims of the Party and Communism in his ideology, if he has no personal aims and considerations independent of the Party’s interests, and if he really is unbiased and unselfish, then he can show loyalty and ardent love for all his comrades, revolutionaries and working people, help them unconditionally, treat them with equality and never harm any one of them for the sake of his own interests.

He will worry long before the rest of the world begins to worry and he will rejoice only after the rest of the world has rejoiced.... Both in the Party and among the people he will be the first to suffer hardship and the last to enjoy himself. He never minds whether his conditions are better or worse than others, but he does mind as to whether he has done more revolutionary work than others or whether he has fought harder.... He is capable of possessing the greatest firmness and moral courage to resist corruption by riches or honors, to resist tendencies to vacillate in spite of poverty and lowly status and to refuse to yield in spite of threats of force....

He is never afraid of truth. He courageously upholds truth, expounds truth to others and fights for truth. Even if it is temporarily to his disadvantage to do so, even if he will be subjected to various attacks for the sake of upholding truth, even if the opposition and rebuff of the great majority of people forces him into temporary isolation (glorious isolation) and even if on this account his life may be endangered he will still be able to stem the tide and uphold truth and will never resign himself to drifting with the tide. So far as he himself is concerned he has nothing to fear.

He takes care not to do wrong when he works independently and without supervision and when there is ample opportunity for him to do all kinds of wrong things....

If for the sake of certain important aims of the Party and of the Revolution he is required to endure insults, shoulder heavy burdens and do work which he is reluctant to do, he will take up the most difficult and important work without the slightest hesitation and will not pass the buck.*

Such were the standards set for all Communists by the leaders of the Party. Communists were expected to give serious attention to these standards, not merely lip-service. If it could be said that few attained the level of selflessness and objectivity described, still hundreds of thousands strove to live up to these ideals and honored those individuals who most closely embodied them in real life.

Raw recruits from China’s isolated countryside quite naturally fell short in many important ways. In examining the motives which brought these peasant recruits to the Party Liu Shao-ch’i found some who from the beginning wanted to “fight for the realization of Communism, for the great aim of emancipating the proletariat and mankind.” But others had a variety of more personal, more selfish reasons for taking this important political step. As Liu Shao-ch’i wrote:

Some peasant comrades regarded as “Communism” the striking down of the local despots and the distribution of the land which we carried out in the past, and they did not understand genuine Communism as meaning anything more when they joined the Party. At the present time quite a few people have joined the Party chiefly because of the Communists’ determined resistance to Japan and because of the anti-Japanese national united front. Certain other people have joined the Party as a way out because they could not find a way out in society—they had no trade, no job, no school to attend, or they wanted to escape from their families, or from forced marriages, etc. Some came because they looked up to the prestige of the Party, or because they recognized, though only in a vague way, that the Communist Party can save China, and finally there were even some individuals who came because they counted on the Communists for tax reduction, or because they hoped to become influential in the future, or because their relatives and friends brought them in, etc. It was very natural that such comrades should lack a clear and definite Communist outlook on life and world outlook, should fail to understand the greatness and difficulties of the Communist cause, and should be unable to take a firm proletarian stand.**

A more apt analysis of the motives of the Communist Party recruits in Long Bow could hardly be drawn up. “Striking down the local despots and the distribution of the land” were no doubt the main things that drew these young people to the Party, but other motives were also prominent. Some saw in Party membership a chance to become influential. Militiaman Wang Man-hsi said when his reasons for joining the Party were later questioned; “I thought to join the Party was glorious. If one joined the Party one could get position and power. I went to the District Secretary to fill out the form but really I knew nothing about the Party at that time. The Secretary explained the requirements—serve the masses, devote your life to their interests, never compromise with the enemy or submit to difficulties—but, after I joined I was proud. I thought I had found a screen to protect myself and I did every bad thing.”*

Chao Ch’uan-e, an attractive young woman with a willowy figure, joined the Party primarily to protect her husband and her brother-in-law at a time when they were in danger of attack from the Peasants’ Association. She was a daughter-in-law in a well-to-do household that owned land both in Long Bow and in the Western Mountains many miles away. Because the family hired at least one year-round laborer, its members were regarded at the time as rich peasants. To ward off the attack Chao Ch’uan-e sought out the young cadres of influence, carried on affairs with several of them, and was invited by them to join the Party. By the time she actually did so, there is no doubt that her motives had undergone a subtle change. She had unintentionally caught some of her suitors’ enthusiasm for the Revolution. Her desire to protect her family remained basic in her decision to become a Communist, but it was tempered by the hope of something better for China and especially for China’s women—a free choice in marriage, the right to own property, the right to be treated as a person and not simply as some man’s chattel.

Among the Long Bow Communist Party members were also those who joined simply because their relatives and friends brought them in. This was certainly the main reason why militia captain Li Hung-er’s wife, Wang Man-ying, militiaman Shen T’ien-hsi’s wife, Chen Tung-erh, and militiaman Hsiao Wen-hsu’s wife, Jen Ho-chueh, originally made application. Nevertheless, they all answered questions as satisfactorily as Hu Hsueh-chen and were potentially as good Communists as she.

The relative shortsightedness, subjectiveness, even opportunism of the Long Bow peasants’ motives should not be exaggerated, however, for there were in the village a substantial number of young men who had had industrial experience and hence some knowledge of and sympathy for working class concepts of solidarity—the all-for-one, one-for-all basis of trade unionism. These men were semi-proletarian not only by virtue of being propertyless poor peasants who had worked much of their lives as hired laborers, but also by virtue of the fact that bankruptcy, famine, and war had forced them to leave home and seek employment in distant parts of the country where they became for a time either members of the industrial working force or employees closely associated with this group.

Ten of the early members of the Long Bow Party branch had, at one time or another, worked in industry, transport, or large-scale construction jobs far from home.

T’ien-ming’s father was a bronzesmith who labored for wages in Peking. T’ien-ming himself had worked out as a carpenter in a railroad center in Southwestern Shansi, and he first heard of the Communist Party from a fellow carpenter on the job. Hsin-fa, forced to flee from home in the famine year, worked for two seasons as a coal hauler in a Taiyuan steel mill. Chou Cheng-lo, a Communist recruited from among the village militiamen, had worked as a shepherd from the age of six, but he too spent two years as a steel worker when drought destroyed Long Bow’s crops. Cheng-k’uan, the ex-Catholic chairman of the Peasants’ Association, was employed for years as a teamster by the Cathedral in Changchih where he came into contact with iron workers and railroad men. Li Hung-er, who became captain of the militia when Chang Chiang-tzu, the organizer of the corps, joined the army, served as an apprentice in a spinning and weaving factory starting when he was 11 years old. Fu-yuan worked in a carpentry shop in Taiyuan that employed 90 men.

All of these men knew what it was to work for wages. They had travelled on trains, seen modern mines and mills, and heard something of unionism. When the Party leaders spoke of the working class, its unity and discipline, these men recognized what they were talking about, admired it and tried to emulate it.

What then of the “idiocy of village life” and the shortsightedness and lack of social experience of its victims which were stressed in an earlier chapter? The answer is that the isolation of thousands of out-of-the-way rural villages such as Long Bow was modified to some extent by the crisis of the 1920’s, 1930’s, and 1940’s. The setting up of large-scale industries along the coast and the Yangtze River and even in hinterland capitals like Taiyuan, the penetration of internal markets by manufactured goods, the ten-year Civil War in South and Central China, and above all the Anti-Japanese War, imposed an unwanted, a violent, and often a tragic mobility on a basically stagnant society, but a mobility that was nevertheless invigorating. The great famine of 1942-1943 also played a major role. This famine probably did more to lay the groundwork for a revolution in the Taihang Mountain region than any other single event or influence—first, because the terrible toll of lives it took reinforced widespread doubts as to the viability of the old way of life, and second, because it drove so many of the poor and dispossessed onto the roads. It forced them to travel to distant places, there to meet and talk with other disaster victims and persons of entirely different backgrounds. It forced them to hear new ideas, to open their eyes and ears, and eventually to return home remolded to a degree by their own experiences. When county leaders talked of Marxism, these returnees recognized that their words touched reality. They welcomed what seemed to them good sense and were eager to hear more.

Those who had traveled and worked in industry greatly influenced those who never left home. At least some of the broader outlook they brought back rubbed off on friends and neighbors. In this sense they acted as the yeast that causes the dough to rise.

Regardless of whatever motive or motives loomed largest in the decision of any given individual to become a Communist, all of the Long Bow recruits were influenced, at least to some extent, by the extraordinary prestige of the Eighth Route Army, which they identified with the Communist Party, and the even more extraordinary prestige of the Party’s national leader, Mao Tse-tung, who appeared to them as nothing less than the savior of the nation. They wanted to be Communists because they admired Mao Tse-tung and trusted his leadership. If they won victories they attributed them to Chairman Mao. They said, “Chairman Mao gave us land,” even though they themselves had built the Peasants’ Association, manned the militia, and actively dispossessed the gentry. Failures and injustices they also attributed to Chairman Mao. “Chairman Mao should not be like this,” said a man who had been beaten because he continued to go to church after the local priest had fled. In either case, it was taken for granted that Chairman Mao, whose name was synonymous with that of the Revolution, was responsible for every facet of the government, great or small. It was an enormous compliment and an equally enormous responsibility.

***********

The small-producer social origin and outlook of the new Party members, their subjective, shortsighted, often selfish, and certainly mixed motives for joining the core of the revolutionary movement did not discourage the Party leaders. “That certain people come to rely upon the Communist Party, come to the Party to seek a way out, and give support to the Party’s policies—all this cannot be regarded as wrong. They are not mistaken in having sought out the Party. We welcome such people,” said Liu Shao-ch’i.* He made it quite clear that the non-proletarian social origin of so many of its members and their subjective, one-sided motivation did not determine the class character of the Party as a whole. The Party remained a working class Party which transformed its non-working class recruits rather than allowing them to transform it. “The determining factors are our Party’s political struggles and political life, its ideological education, and its ideological and political leadership. … Through Marxist-Leninist education, Party members of petty-bourgeois (peasant) origin have undergone a thorough-going ideological reform, which changes their former petty-bourgeois (peasant) nature and imparts to them the qualities of the advanced fighters of the proletariat.”**

The principal problem in building the Party in the village was thus frankly recognized as a problem of “ideological remolding”—the education and reformation of revolutionary-minded peasants. The first duty of every Party member, as laid down in the Constitution of the Party adopted in May 1945, was therefore to “endeavor to raise the level of his consciousness and to understand the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung’s theory of the Chinese Revolution.” The other three duties were:

(1) To observe Party discipline strictly, to participate actively in inner-Party political life and in the revolutionary movement in China, to carry out in practice the policy and decisions of the Party, and to fight against everything inside and outside the Party which is detrimental to the Party’s interest.

(2) To serve the mass of the people, to consolidate the Party’s connection with them, to learn their needs and report them in good time, and to explain the policy of the Party to them.

(3) To set an example in observing the discipline of the revolutionary government and the revolutionary organizations, to master his own line of work and to set an example in various fields of revolutionary work.†

In the long run, the educational program of the Communist Party—the patient, reiterated efforts to reform, remold, and inspire the peasant recruits—was effective. Regardless of their social origin, regardless of their original motives for joining, the overwhelming majority of Long Bow’s Party members ended up wanting to be and trying to be good Communists.

It was a long, hard road.

To want to be a good Communist and actually to become a good Communist were two different things. Chairman Mao wrote that it took ten years to remold an intellectual of peasant, small business, or professional origin, ten years to rid him of conceit, personal selfishness, individualism, and contempt for manual labor. Peasants, according to this view, had less to overcome than intellectuals—at least they were not strangers to manual labor—but even peasants found that it took years to remold themselves.

To master Marxism-Leninism, to expand each individual’s political consciousness, to overcome subjectivism, reduce unprincipled vindictiveness, uproot that small producers’ tendency to take advantage of others for personal profit, and unite to build a new world—this was the struggle that began in April 1946 in Long Bow with the founding of the Communist Party branch there. The struggle continued year after year, with varying intensity and success; no doubt it still goes on.

The vitality of this effort was due to the fact that at all times the transformation of the Party members’ outlook was linked to the actual struggle going on in the village to transform the peasants’ miserable way of life and forge something better. From the very first day that the branch was set up its members undertook to lead the village to fanshen; and lead they did, for better or worse, therafter—not in isolation, of course, but as a basic unit in a nationwide Party of over a million members. The District Committee, the County Committee, the Border Region Committee, and the Central Committee with Chairman Mao at its head, all gave them guidance, but in the last analysis they had to do the work and they were responsible for its success or failure.

The leadership exercised by the Communist Party in Long Bow was not of the kind that most people in the West imagine. The Party could not and did not simply issue orders that the peasants had to obey, even though at certain times and on certain issues a strong tendency toward this type of “commandism,” as it was so aptly called, arose among the leading cadres, Communist and non-Communist alike. The Party led the village by virtue of the fact that its members held leading posts (but by no means a monopoly of them) in all the village organizations, won considerable prestige by the example they set, seriously studied problems collectively, and spoke and acted together once they decided on a solution. All this, it should be made clear, must be taken as having been accomplished in a relative sense, for not all the members of the Party were able to win prestige; some won notoriety instead. Also, the decisions of the Party branch were not always taken collectively, the whole membership did not always carry out the decisions when made, and sometimes the decisions that were made were quite wrong—as will be seen. Nevertheless, the Party branch was the best organized, the most active, the most serious and dedicated group in the village, and it tried to lead by example and persuasion, not by force.

The branch itself was divided into five groups, each with its own leader. Before any decisions were taken, before any campaign was launched, these groups first met, discussed the matter at issue, and formulated their estimate of the situation in the village and the temper of the people. The five group leaders, who made up the executive committee of the branch, then met to work out policy. When they agreed on a course of action they took their decision back to their small groups. In case of need the whole branch could be called together for a general membership meeting, but since this was likely to arouse the curiosity of the whole village and expose the existence of the Party, membership meetings were not lightly undertaken. Most of the work was done by the small groups and the executive committee.

From the day of its founding in April, 1946 the whole branch operated in the strictest secrecy. The danger of the possible reconquest of the area by the Central armies and the certain reprisal that would have been visited upon all Communists if this had taken place, made this absolutely necessary. Because of this enforced secrecy many elaborate excuses had to be made at home to account for the frequent absence of branch members from family chores and family gatherings. This was particularly true of the women whether or not their husbands were also in the Party, for women were traditionally not supposed to go anywhere, speak to anyone, or have any business outside the home. All self-respecting families enforced these bans quite strictly. Fortunately for the Party, among the very poor who had no property to protect or to pass on, families were not so well established. The poor peasant women who had to fend for themselves in order to eat came and went of their own volition.

Strict secrecy in regard to the Party also meant that whatever prestige individual Party members earned by their good work and whatever notoriety they won by their mistakes was reflected not on the Party as such but on the administration, the whole group of active cadres, Party and non-Party alike, who served as responsible leaders in the village office, the militia, the Peasants’ Association, and the Women’s Association. There was no question but that the Party members were the backbone of this whole structure, but since the average peasant did not know this, it was the whole structure that took the credit or the blame and not just its guiding core.

How important a role the Party played can be seen by an examination of the activity of the Party members in the main village organizations. All of the branch members belonged to the Peasants’ Association. Cheng-k’uan, one of the first recruits to the branch, was its chairman. (The vice-chairman, Wang Yu-lai, was not a Communist.) All the women Party members belonged to the Women’s Association. A woman comrade, Hu Hsueh-chen, was its secretary. Three other Party members were group leaders among the women. All the male Communists were enrolled in the militia. Li Hung-er, a Party member, was its captain. Hsin-fa, whose recruitment into the Party was described in the preceding chapter, served as educational director of the militia. As for the village government, its cadres were divided about equally, half of them Party members, the other half not. A Communist, Fu-yuan, was village head. Another Communist, Kuei-ts’ai, was assistant village head. (The secretary, San-ch’ing, was not a Party member.) Tien-ming, secretary of the Party branch, was in charge of all police work. The rest of the Party members—more than half the branch membership—held no leading posts at all. They were simply rank-and-file peasants who were expected to take the lead in any work they were asked to do, inspire others to greater effort, and study and make known the needs of their colleagues and neighbors.

Contradictions, Internal and External

Comrades! If the masses were all conscious, united, and free from the influences of the exploiting classes and from backward phenomena as some people imagine, then what difficulties would still remain in the Revolution? Such influences of the exploiting classes not only existed long before the Revolution but will continue to exist for a very long time after the victory of the Revolution and after the exploiters have been kicked out of their position of political power by the exploited classes.

Liu Shao-ch’i

TO LEAD successfully the struggle against the gentry, the Communist Party in Long Bow had to combat not only the splitting tactics of the enemy, but also the centrifugal tendencies constantly generated among the people, the landless, the land-poor, and the middle peasants. Combating enemy disruption proved to be the easier of the two tasks. Once the Party members realized just what the gentry was doing and why, they were usually able to neutralize its effects by education among the people or by a change in policy.

When the question of “air raid shelters” became serious, District Leader Liang, who was in touch with the work in 18 villages, soon realized that attacking poor families who had been persuaded to hide property only played into the gentry’s hands. As soon as he convinced the Communists in Long Bow of this, they persuaded the Peasants’ Association to change its tactics. Thereafter, instead of suffering attacks, the “air raid shelters” were rewarded for turning over hidden property with a share of the property itself. Those who had already been punished were given compensation for the damages. As soon as this was done, quantities of clothing, jewelry, and other goods that had once belonged to landlords were brought to the Peasants’ Association headquarters without a struggle and the ranks of the peasants were strengthened rather than split.

In those incidents where rank-and-file peasants had been seduced or bribed into a lenient attitude toward some exploiting family, the Party also advised education and persuasion rather than punishment and ostracism. Chang Ch’un-hsi, the hired laborer who was so infatuated with his former employer’s daughter-in-law that he would not join in any attack on the landlords of Long Bow, was chosen to attend a district-operated training class for just such “backward elements.” There the students studied the feudal system by recalling their own past lives. Listening to classmates whose situations had been so close to his brought all the bitterness of Ch’un-hsi’s past before his eyes. He remembered how he had been forced to drive his own mother away from the gate in the famine year, and wept. Seeing this emotion the other students focused their attention on him. They ridiculed his love for the landlord’s daughter-in-law. They pointed out what a shame it was to fall for a girl who had treated him like dirt in the past and now used him only as a shield for her family. In the end he resolved to give her up. When he returned to the village he joined actively in all the campaigns that followed and before long was himself enrolled into the Party branch.

Toward Party members and village cadres who wavered in their stand, the attitude of the Party was more strict than it was toward the rank-and-file peasants. Inside the branch much time was spent analyzing the class position of those who, out of lust for material gain, or just plain lust, gave protection to their class enemy. They were asked to change their ways. Seeing how despicable their actions appeared to others, some members voluntarily confessed to illicit affairs with gentry women and broke off such relationships. Others continued these affairs in spite of this education, the most notorious being Hsin-fa, who could not bring himself to break completely with Pu-ch’ao, the rich widow’s daughter. He rationalized this on the grounds that she was herself a poor peasant by marriage, even though it was obvious to others that by the favors she granted him she helped protect her mother from attack and expropriation. Since Hsin-fa was by that time a leading member of the branch, he went his own way in spite of sharp criticism.

Finding superstition still a powerful weapon in the hands of the landlord class, the Communist Party organized a special campaign throughout the district to free the minds of the people from bondage to geomancy, astrology, spirit talking, and mud idols, and to convince them that they themselves could remold the world according to their own desires. An important breakthrough in this campaign came in Sand Bank, a village several miles northwest of Long Bow. There stood a shrine to the god Ch’i-t’ien, a very powerful Buddhist deity who, when displeased, could curse one and all with dysentery. Since people only too often died of this disease, Ch’i-t’ien was greatly to be feared. Many a stick of incense was burned before his image and many an offering of food was left for his spirit to eat. The Party members of Sand Bank decided to attack Ch’i-t’ien just like any landlord. They figured up just how much money they had spent humoring him over the years and discovered that it was enough to have saved many lives in the famine year. When they took these calculations to their Peasants’ Association, many young men and women got very angry. They went to the temple, pulled the god out of his shelter and carried him to the village office. Before a mass meeting they “settled accounts” with him by proving that he had squandered their wealth without giving any protection in return. Then they smashed his mud image with sticks and stones. Some of the older people tried to stop them. They prophesied that everyone involved would die of dysentery within a few days. But the young men and women went right ahead. When no one fell ill that night nor throughout the whole of the next day, the hold of Ch’i-t’ien on the village collapsed. Only a handful of old women ever burned incense before his ruined shrine again.

News of this victory quickly spread to other villages. When the Party members in Long Bow heard of it they decided to deal with a similar god of their own—a god who was supposed to have the power to cure sickness. His image sat in a little temple on the southern edge of the settlement. Sick people traditionally burned incense before him, made obeisance by touching their foreheads to the ground, and then scraped up a little dust from around his feet, mixed it with water, and swallowed it. His devotees were lucky if they did not add dysentery to their other ailments after this “cure.”

The Communists first freed their own minds of dependence on this god by a long discussion in the branch and then led a similar discussion in the Peasants’ Association. Before long everyone was laughing at the “muddy water cures” of the discredited god. When a militiaman knocked the god’s mud head off, only a minority of old people were dismayed.

By such means the bonds of specific superstitions were broken down.

The success of the Settling Accounts Movement had a general effect that reinforced these intensive efforts. Once the gentry had been overthrown, it became obvious even to the slow-witted that the configuration of the “eight ideographs” at birth or the position of one’s ancestral graves no longer determined one’s fate. People took less and less stock in ancestral spirits who prophesied the immediate return of Chiang Kai-shek or in rumors that red sunsets symbolized the decline of the Communist Party. As their faith in superstition declined, their trust in the Peasants’ Association, the Eighth Route Army, and the Communist Party increased.

Since Long Bow was not a Border Village, the local Party branch did not have to mobilize people physically against those murderous forays of the Home Return Corps that in many places lent substance to the dire prophesies of the gentry. The Long Bow Communists, however, did combat the fear of a “change of sky” by reporting the victories of the armed working groups organized by the Party in Border Counties where the Revolution had no recourse but to meet the white terror of the gentry with a red terror of its own. Dressed in civilian clothes, the bravest and most skillful guerrilla fighters on the borders raided Kuomintang-held villages at night. Notorious counterrevolutionaries and landlords who had been responsible for the assassination of underground workers were kidnapped from their homes, tried in the fields for their crimes, and executed on the spot. This irregular war on the borders grew in bitterness and scale as time went on in spite of the fitful peace that prevailed on most of the battle-fronts under the auspices of the Marshall mission. The situation resembled very closely the border war in Kansas in the days of John Brown, and the peasants of Long Bow took as much heart from reports of small successes as did certain abolitionists of New England when they heard the news of Ossawatomie.

Everyone realized that the real test would come if and when the truce ended without an agreement on peace. Then the future of China would be decided by the armies in the field. Thus the strengthening of the Eighth Route Army, renamed the People’s Liberation Army in mid-1946, became a major concern of the Communist Party in Long Bow. A second area-wide recruiting drive was launched in the spring, and Party members were urged to lead the way by volunteering themselves or getting other members of their families to volunteer. Three Party members went in the second drive. Kuo Cheng-k’uan got his brother to go. Tien-ming did the same. Li Hung-er saw both his brothers off. Ch’eng Ai-lien, who had stopped her husband’s blows by going to the Women’s Association and who was now a Communist, persuaded her new husband Chin-sui to enlist. Altogether another 25 young men signed up. Again several were sent back because of ill health, but more than 20 were accepted and went on to become fighters in a rapidly growing army of peasant volunteers who had won land at home and meant to hold onto it.

This time, not only did the village government give the volunteers a grand banquet and a musical send-off, but each man was also given a brand new shirt and a brand new quilt, and a laquered plaque was hung beside his front door with the words “Glorious Army Family” written large upon it in ideographs of bright red. Many poems composed on the spot and recorded with free-flowing grass characters on large sheets of rice paper were pasted to the adobe walls beside these plaques. A typical one read:

Glorious are those who volunteer

To throw down tyrants.

March to the borders when the millet sprouts.

Fight for the people!

Defend our homes and lands!

Most glorious are the volunteers!

The biggest problem in recruiting for the army was not to overcome fear of enemy bullets or the hardships of campaigning, but to convince the men that their families would be well cared for and their livestock and crops well tended. The village government undertook to see that this problem was solved by organizing a “Preferential Treatment Committee” which set up a system of taikung or “substitute tillage.” Under this system every able-bodied man in the village was asked to do his share of work for the more than 40 men who had left for the front. Here again the Party branch played a big role. It was the Communists, with individual exceptions, who guaranteed the success of the system by doing their share, or more than their share, and inspiring others to do the same. On the “Preferential Treatment Committee” they led the way in establishing a system of inspection to make sure that all substitute tillage was well done and that all complaints by wives and mothers were promptly looked into. It was preferential treatment for soldiers’ families that really made possible a volunteer army in the first place and gave such a solid base to morale in the field.

One young woman wrote to her husband, “Since you joined up the neighbors often come to visit me. The three Wangs have all volunteered to do some work on the land. I suppose what worries you most is my pregnancy and you are afraid that there will be no one here to take care of me. But it is already arranged that beside my mother, our neighbor’s wife who is a member of the Women’s Association committee, is to live here with me. And if we haven’t enough millet to get through the year, the village office will supply us. So don’t be downhearted about home.”

***********

Checkmating each new move of the gentry was not enough to guarantee victory. The Party branch in Long Bow had to make sure that the ranks of the people did not break down due to conflicts of interest and quarrels between the various groups and cliques that made them up. Since the main strength of the peasants lay in their numbers, it was important that their ranks be as broad and solid as possible. Where analysis showed an objective community of interest the Party tried to bring people together regardless of the subjective animosities and suspicions that divided them. Here the main criterion was class interest. The basic principle taught by the Party was that the class interests of all the poor and middle peasants, while not completely identical, were certainly mutually dependent and that this must, in the long run, override all other considerations. It followed that all poor and middle peasants could be united in a movement for fanshen in spite of splits and divisions arising out of family and clan ties, religious affiliations, erstwhile collaboration, past criminal activity, present illicit love affairs, or any other factor.

A most serious cleavage was that which existed between the minority of the peasants who had been attacked for collaboration and the majority who had attacked them. Once branded as traitors, the minority earned universal contempt, were often taken advantage of by their neighbors, and treated as second class citizens by the village government. If such treatment were to continue indefinitely, the collaborators would have no choice but to join forces with the gentry. At the suggestion of the district secretary, the Party branch studied this problem and decided to remove the stigma of collaborator from all those whose role in the puppet regime was minor. This included all the lu and chia leaders, the rank-and-file members of the puppet Self-Defense Corps, and the members of the counter-revolutionary Love the Village Corps who had taken refuge in the fort during the liberation battle.

T’ien-ming mobilized every Party member to take part in solving this problem. Communists visited each collaborator personally, discussed the past with them, and offered a constructive role in the future to all those who realized their mistakes and sincerely indicated a desire to join the revolutionary ranks.

“We are all poor brothers,” the Communists said. “The only difference between us is that you were deceived by the puppet officials. Think it over. For whom did you carry the guns? Was it not for the landlords? How come they sat comfortably at home and enjoyed life while you faced the bullets? They feared the Eighth Route Army. They knew that when the Eighth Route Army came the rich had entered upon their last day of rule. So they tricked you and deceived you and sent you to the fort to defend their power. Think it over. Who died when the bullets spattered the fort? Was it the rich or the poor?”

This was just what most of these young collaborators had been waiting for. They were not at all proud of the role they had played and wanted very much to be forgiven and invited to join the Peasants’ Association. Each was asked to go before the executive committee, speak frankly about his past errors, and explain what was in his mind when he went to the fort. All those whom the committee felt to be sincere in their repentance were admitted to membership in the Association and included thereafter in the “grades” when confiscated property was distributed. In the end no one was rejected.

The Party branch had no cause to regret this action. Not only did all of these young men actively join the Peasants’ Association, but many of them also became members of the militia, and several eventually joined the Party as well; among them were Shen T’ien-hsi who had served in the puppet Self-Defense Corps and Hsiao Wen-hsu who had been a soldier in the Fourth Column.

The split between the Catholic clique and the rest of the community was far more difficult to overcome. For one thing, the quarrels and mutual suspicions were deeply rooted, tracing back to the years before and immediately after the Boxer Rebellion, when the Catholic hierarchy lorded it over the people and imported converts from as far away as Hopei to settle in Long Bow on Church lands. This historical division was greatly aggravated by the Anti-Traitor Movement because of the predominantly Catholic nature of the puppet regime. By making peace with all rank-and-file collaborators, some of these wounds were healed, but the struggle against the Church itself opened new and deeper ones, particularly among the older believers. For one thing, charges of disloyalty arising out of the escape of Father Sun continued to be pressed with vigor. The three who had originally been arrested for aiding him—Lu Hsien-pao, Wang Hu-sheng, and Fan Ming-hsi—were released from the county jail after eight months, but since they themselves confessed that they had helped the father escape under orders from the Kuomintang leader, Wang En-pao, they were kept under surveillance.

Fan Ming-hsi, the landlord’s son, decided that his life was not safe. He met with Hsien-pao and Hu-sheng and suggested that the three of them join forces, assassinate one or two leading cadres, and flee to Hungtung. When he went to Horse Square to raise money for this flight, T’ien-ming became suspicious and ordered his arrest. Before a large public meeting, Fan Ming-hsi admitted his plans and was beaten to death by the militia. Hu-sheng and Hsien-pao lived on in Long Bow under a heavy cloud of suspicion thereafter.

A small group of believers who continued to attend mass also aroused suspicion. By that time the only services held in the district were held in Horse Square. There, one mile to the north of Long Bow, a Catholic priest still lived. The cadres wondered, often out loud, if those who walked the long mile every Sunday morning really did so only to worship God.

On Easter Sunday in the spring of 1946, an incident occurred that fanned all the latent suspicion and hostility into flame. Because of the religious importance of the day, more than the usual number of Catholic peasants went to Horse Square that Sunday. After the services some of the Long Bow contingent gathered in a Catholic leader’s courtyard. A man whom everyone said had led Father Sun to Hungtung was also there that day. A rumor started that he met in secret with the peasants. When those who had come from Long Bow returned home, every one of them was arrested and questioned and, in the course of the questioning, beaten. Not only were they believers in an “agent” religion, not only did they support a Church tainted with collaboration, not only were they present at a meeting with a notorious agent, they also went to Horse Square without applying for travel passes.*

Because they went to Horse Square without passes, T’ien-ming crowned all the Easter Sunday worshippers with “agents’ caps”—i.e., he charged them with being Chiang Kai-shek’s agents and enemies of the Liberated Areas.

After that, those who still wanted to go to Church were afraid to ask for passes. When they went secretly without passes, they aroused even sharper suspicion than before and were beaten whenever they got caught. Among those who, in spite of all this, continued to go to Horse Square whenever they found a way to leave the village undetected were three whom the village cadres especially distrusted. These were Li T’ung-jen, former assistant village head under the puppet regime, his brother, Li Ho-jen, also a minor puppet official, and their close friend and neighbor, Shen Ch’uan-te. Each time they were detained and questioned they insisted that they only went to attend the mass, but rumors of meetings that had nothing to do with religion persisted and kept the issue very much alive.

The suspicion under which these practicing Catholics lived deepened the traditional rift in the community. A clique grew up, with Li Ho-jen at its center and Shen Ch’uan-te as its mouthpiece, that hated the revolutionary cadres, opposed the work they were trying to do, and developed in time into a potential center for counter-revolutionary activity. That this potential never flowered was not due to the efforts of the Party branch at the time. On this question they were unable to rise above the prejudices of the past and the fears of the moment and consequently took no effective remedial action.

In the meantime, among the majority of the non-Catholic peasants in Long Bow, the Easter affair and the continued illegal travel to Horse Square only confirmed the already deeply rooted suspicion that the Catholics were in fact agents who were not to be trusted. The popular reaction to the emergence of the Li Ho-jen clique was to spread rumors that isolated its members even further.

This widespread suspicion did not touch, or touched only slightly, the many ex-Catholics or nominal believers like Cheng-k’uan, who joined wholeheartedly in the struggle against landlord domination and against the Catholic Church as one of its aspects. Wang Yu-lai, vice chairman of the Peasants’ Association, and his son, Wen-te, both of whom were ex-Catholics, actually took the lead in denouncing other Catholics as agents and traitors, an activity which won them the confidence of the other cadres and the intense hatred of the Catholic community.

The most serious rift in the ranks of the peasants was that which began to show up in the course of the Settling Accounts Movement between the land poor on the one hand, and the independent small holders or middle peasants on the other. It was serious because of the numbers involved. Even if the Catholic community as a whole had been alienated by the attack on the Church, which it was not, this would have involved, at most, one fifth of the village. The small holders made up two fifths of the village. Since the poor peasants were in no position to “go it alone,” a split between them and the small holders could doom the revolution.

The Anti-Traitor Movement made a solid alliance of all peasants difficult because there were small holders among the collaborators who were dispossessed. The attack on the Catholics as agents greatly aggravated the difficulty because among them there were also small holders.

The Settling Accounts Movement threatened the very basis of cooperation between the two groups because no clear line was drawn between friends and enemies, between the peasants and their exploiters. Many prosperous peasants who owned their own land did not see much difference between their economic status and that of certain “objects of struggle.” They remembered loans given out to neighbors in the past and the hiring of help during the harvest season and broke into a cold sweat. “Maybe we are exploiters too?” they said to one another. They quietly withdrew from active participation in village affairs, could be brought to meetings only if the militia went knocking on doors and ordered them out, and were often overheard making sarcastic remarks about fanshen.

The leaders of the Party branch saw this change in the attitude of many families, heard the warnings issued constantly by higher Party and government bodies against damage to “middle-peasant” interests, and decided to do something about it. Through the Peasants’ Association, special meetings were held to talk things over with the independent tillers. They were urged to speak their minds. One who had been attacked as a puppet block leader said, “I have already been punished. If things go on this way I’m afraid the same thing will happen all over again.” Another asked, “What is going to happen when you equalizers run out of oil (landlord and rich peasant property)? Who will be next?” Others asked why they had not been in the “grades.” Even though they had many difficulties, lacked implements, stock and tools, they received nothing from the “fruits.” “Why,” they asked, “should we be active in the struggle?”

All welcomed the cancellation of debts and the new progressive tax system designed to reward hard labor. But they feared that if they took advantage of it by laboring hard, they would eventually be cut back like chives whose flat green leaves were cut off for food each time they pushed their way above the soil. Was this to be the ultimate reward of thrift and hard labor?

In order to dispel “the chive cutting outlook,” branch members urged the Peasants’ Association to “open the grades” to all families who lacked anything vital to everyday welfare, and even to those who really had everything they needed, as a demonstration of solidarity. Furniture, grain, and clothing were then handed out much more widely than before. Two hundred and ten out of 252 families in the village received at least something in the later distribution. This relieved the fears of the more prosperous to some extent, but it did not solve the problem because there were still tremendous pressures from below for further expropriation. Since all the really wealthy people, the well-known “money bags,” had already been cleaned out, the moderately prosperous could hardly feel safe.

In the summer and fall of 1946 the worst fears of this group were realized, for during these months a new wave of struggle was launched.

All Out War—Retreat

Those who advocate “halting the enemy beyond the gate” oppose strategic retreat on the ground that retreat means losing territory, endangering the people (“breaking up. the pots and pans,” so to speak), and creating an unfavorable impression on the outside world. If we will not let the pots and pans of a section of the inhabitants be broken for once, then the pots and pans of the whole population will go on being broken for a long time.

Mao Tse-tung

IN THE SUMMER of 1946, the fragile truce between the Communist Party of China and the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek broke down completely. The Truce agreed upon on January 13th was for six months only. It officially expired June 30th. Although both sides acted to extend it pending further talks, spreading battles in July made this impossible. Civil War began in earnest during that month.

Both sides blamed the other for the breakdown of the truce. General Marshall, in his report to President Truman, tried to apportion the blame equally between the two Chinese parties and thus absolve himself and his government completely, but it soon became obvious from the trend of the war, if from nothing else, that the truce came to an end because Chiang Kai-shek and his American advisers thought they had accumulated enough strength in North China, and Manchuria to wipe out the Liberated Areas. During the entire six months of the truce, military supplies poured into Nationalist-held ports for allocation to armies being trained by American officers and transported to strategic positions in North, Northeast, and Central China by American ships and planes. This was done under the innocent cover of delivering lend-lease supplies already “in the pipeline” and completing the 39-division program inaugurated while the Anti-Japanese War was still in progress. Between V-J Day and the end of July, over $600 million worth of lend-lease supplies reached China—more than had come in throughout eight years of international war. In addition to this, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of surplus property, abandoned in the Pacific theater by the American Army, Navy and Marine Corps, were turned over to Chiang Kai-shek. This included over $17.5 million worth of guns, ammunition, communications equipment, and miscellaneous supplies owned by SACO (Sino-American Co-operative Organization), a joint espionage and sabotage operation carried on by the American Navy and Chiang’s security police under the notorious Tai Li, China’s Himmler.*

By the time the truce expired, most of the 39 American-equipped and trained divisions, plus 167 re-armed regular divisions of Chiang’s army, were ready for battle and strategically placed throughout the North. They moved confidently for a showdown. In the campaigns of that summer and fall it was Chiang’s armies that took the offensive and Mao’s armies that were on the defensive.

The White Paper issued by the American State Department in 1949 makes this quite clear:

During the period of General Marshall’s mission in China, the government considerably improved its military holdings. Government armies in mid-1946 comprised approximately 3,000,000 men, opposed by something over 1,000,000 Communists of whom an estimated 400,000 were not regular troops. During the latter part of 1946, the Nationalists made impressive gains, clearing most of Shensi, Kansu, north Shansi, south Chahar, part of northern Hopei and Jehol, and nearly all of Kiangsu. The government seized Kalgan, Tatung, Chengte, and gained control of the Ping-sui Railroad.

In Shantung the Nationalists achieved a major advance, clearing much of the Tsin-pu Railway (Tientsin-Pukow). Communist gains during this period were limited to minor advances into Honan and Hupeh, and infiltration around government positions in Manchuria. By the close of 1946, the superiority of the Government’s forces was in most areas as yet unchallenged.**

The pressure exerted by Chiang Kai-shek’s American-backed offensive increased tension throughout the Liberated Areas. No attempt was made to conceal the gravity of the situation as important cities and railroad lines on all sides of the Taihang region fell to the enemy. The reaction of the peasants in Long Bow was mixed. Some were badly frightened and wondered if they ever should have begun the struggle. Others strengthened their determination to win in the end, come what might. The national leaders of the Communist Party took the forced withdrawals calmly. This was but another encirclement similiar to the five that Chiang Kai-shek had mounted in the 1930’s and to countless others carried out by the Japanese during eight long years of occupation. With many years of experience to draw on and a vastly stronger position than they had ever held before, the members of the Central Committee were confident that the encirclement could and would be smashed.

Such an outcome depended, in the last analysis, on the kind of support which millions of peasants were willing to give to the Revolution. The crux of the matter lay in the land question. With land in their own hands the peasants could be counted on to volunteer for service in the regular armed forces by the hundreds of thousands, to support the front with transport columns and stretcher brigades, and to organize irregular fighting units in every corner of the Liberated Areas. Land ownership was capable of inspiring both at the front and in the rear the kind of determination among the rank and file that no terror could shake and no reverses deter. Land ownership could also release among the people that infinite capacity for concealment, harassment, ambush, and surprise attack that is the despair of enemy commanders. It could serve as the foundation for a wall of silence capable of sealing the ears and stopping the eyes of the enemy’s offensive intelligence so that both the regular and irregular forces of the Revolution could concentrate and disperse, attack and retreat with relative freedom.

In short, only the satisfaction of the peasant’s demand for land could provide during the coming period of Civil War the kind of inspiration and cohesion that the spirit of resistance to national subjugation had provided during the war against Japan. Furthermore, “Land to the Tiller” was a necessary step in the transformation of China, the key to the destruction of the old pattern of society and its replacement by an independent, modern industrial society. In the land question both the short- and the long-range interests of the people coincided.

In order to insure that the full potential of the people for victorious defense against the impending Nationalist offensive was aroused in good time, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party had already issued a directive which reversed the wartime policy of “Double Reduction” and called once more for “Land to the Tiller” inside the Liberated Areas. This policy declaration, issued on May 4, 1946, came to be known as the May 4th Directive. It was at one and the same time both a call for all-out land equalization wherever such a program had not yet been attempted and a recognition of the kind of struggle that had already taken place on the initiative of local Poor-and-Hired Peasants’ Leagues and Peasants’ Associations in the Taihang Mountains and elsewhere. The directive said, in part:

In the struggles of opposing traitors, settling accounts, reducing rent and interest, the peasants have been acquiring land directly from the hands of the landlords and have thus been carrying out the system of “Land to the Tiller”....

Under these circumstances our Party must of necessity have a consistent policy: we must resolutely support the direct action adopted by the masses to carry out land reform and assume a planned leadership so that in every Liberated Area land reform may be quickly accomplished in accordance with the scale and intensity of the development of the mass movement.

In line with the defensive aim of all policy at this stage, the provisions of the May 4th Directive were relatively mild. Rich peasants were to be subject only to rent-and-interest reduction. Expropriations were to be carried out against landlords but, as David and Isabel Crook have pointed out:

Distinctions were to be made between “tyrants,” traitors, and big landlords on the one hand and ordinary small and medium landlords on the other. Wherever possible the latter were to be dealt with by negotiation … It goes without saying that even the former were to be left with means of livelihood. Commerce and industry, even that belonging to landlords, was to be protected, and in general a policy of magnanimity was to be pursued, with no physical violence and above all no taking of life except by formal legal procedure. All, including people of the landlord class, who had co-operated in the struggle against Japan were to be treated with consideration. Together with the various non-peasant elements, they were, so far as possible, to be drawn into a united front against feudalism and Kuomintang dictatorship and for peace, democracy, and national unity.*

In regard to the status of middle peasants the May 4th Directive was unequivocal. Middle peasants were to be drawn into the movement as allies, encouraged to participate fully in all decisions, and under no circumstances were their lands or their interests to be harmed.

The May 4th Directive reached Lucheng County after the Civil War had already reached flood tide. In the heat of a defensive campaign, with a large Nationalist army advancing to within 50 miles of the county seat, its moderate proposals were honored more in the breach than in the observance. The struggle that actually developed became even sharper and more violent than that which had gone before. The County Committee of the Communist Party called for san t’ou, szu yu, wu pu liu, which meant “three things thorough, four things possessed, and five things resolved.” The three basic goals were to accuse thoroughly, to struggle thoroughly, and to fanshen thoroughly.” “Food to eat, clothes to wear, land to till, and houses to live in” were the four things to be possessed by all landless and land-poor peasants. “Let no poor peasant remain poor, let no backward element remain backward, leave no question between the people be unresolved, leave no feudal remnants in the people’s thinking, and leave no landlord in possession of his property,” were the five problems to be resolved.

These slogans summed up the whole agrarian revolution in one sentence and inspired the young cadres to complete the transformation of their society within a few weeks.

The campaign that resulted was based on two assumptions: first, that serious feudal exploitation still existed in the county, and second, that large numbers of peasants had not yet fanshened.

Since almost every family of wealth and position had already lost most of its open holdings (land, houses, draft animals, and farm implements) and at least some, if not all, of its hidden wealth (buried silver and gold), the first assumption might well have been questioned. On the other hand, since there were thousands of poor peasants in the village who lacked much that was necessary to make them independent producers, it seemed obvious that the confiscations had not been complete enough. In practice, the stubborn persistence of poverty was taken as proof of both assumptions and provided the rationale for a new assault. If the poor were ever to fanshen— and who dared say they should not?—more wealth would have to be found.

But where was the “oil” to come from? Who would provide the fruits? On the one hand, all the remaining hidden wealth of the gentry must be dug out; on the other, all those families who tried to pose as ordinary peasants but who were in fact in one capacity or another exploiters must be expropriated. The attack, in other words, had to be deepened and the target had to be broadened.

One way to broaden the target was to examine not only the exploitation of the recent past, but to go back through the generations and seek out all the wealth which had originally been acquired from the blood and sweat of tenants and hired laborers by the fathers or even the grandfathers of the small holders of 1946. This was called seeking out the “feudal tails.” Tracing back three generations did indeed unearth many new “objects of struggle” who possessed “feudal tails.” So great had been the inherent tendency of Chinese society toward the dissipation of wealth through the practice of equal inheritance that very few persons could claim with confidence that their families were free from the taint of past exploitation, that they possessed nothing that was not earned by hard labor.* Those who had inherited the divided estates of recognized landlords were especially vulnerable. They were automatically designated as landlords themselves. And this was so even though they worked every day in the fields, for these very fields were considered to be “feudal tails.”

With such an approach the cadres and poor peasants of Long Bow began a second whirlwind campaign to expropriate for the poor the fruits of exploitation, past and present. The campaign lasted 20 days. Since the heads of most of the well-known gentry families had already either fled the village or been killed, wives, sons, daughters, and relatives were brought before public meetings to answer accusations. Not the leading male representative, but whole families became the object of attack. The militia took advantage of the divisions and hatred within families. By individual cross-questioning, by playing off one against the other, by severe beatings and threats, many more silver dollars, a number of gold boats (an ancient form of money), and large quantities of fine clothes were unearthed.

After dealing thus for the second time with the gentry, the militia moved on to the “feudal tails.” One such family, with the surname Wang, was all but wiped out.

Wang Hsiao-nan and Wang Hua-nan were well-to-do peasants who had not divided the six-acre holding which they inherited from their landlord father. They lived in one courtyard with their wives and their aging mother. The elder brother, Hsiao-nan, had a son. Hua-nan was childless.

When the second wave of confiscation began in Lucheng County, their married sister, who lived in North Market, about a mile to the northeast, came home one day with 2,000 silver dollars which she begged her mother to hide for her. This represented a great part of her landlord husband’s family savings. At a secret consultation which Hua-nan and his wife knew nothing about, Hsiao-nan and his mother agreed to bury the treasure behind their house. In all of Long Bow only the two of them knew that there was such a sum of money and where it was hidden. Neither of them told. But the sister in North Market, when pressed by her husband’s own tenants, confessed to the cache. A greater part of the population of North Market thereupon marched to Long Bow in triumphant procession, dug out the money and carried all of it home with them. So elated were they at finding such a huge sum that they hired a drama corps to stage a Chinese opera and celebrated with food and drink for three whole days and nights.

The young men of Long Bow, taken completely by surprise, and angered by the removal of so much wealth from under their very noses, attacked the whole Wang family as landlords and landlord protectors. They reasoned that if 2,000 silver dollars had been successfully hidden for so long, perhaps thousands more still lay buried in the ground. When Hsiao-nan could not lead them to a second cache, they beat him cruelly. They would have done the same to Hua-nan but for the fact that he was away from home hauling grain. When Hua-nan could not be found, the enraged peasants seized his wife and beat her in his stead. The beatings served no purpose other than punishment, for no further wealth was ever found; but both Hsiao-nan and Hua-nan’s wife died of the injuries they received. Five of the family’s acres were confiscated as were most of the sections of their house, and all of their personal property from clothes to the round bottomed pot they used for cooking.

When Hua-nan returned, a few days later, the excitement had died down. The peasants let him live, but with no property left in the family he had to work out as a hired laborer in order to feed himself, his sister-in-law, her son, and his old mother.

***********

By the time the millet ripened in the fall of 1946 the military situation had become more critical than at any time since the Japanese surrender. Not only were the Central Armies taking back strategic positions on the fringes of the Liberated Areas, but a strong detachment of Yen Hsi-shan’s Provincial Army was simultaneously driving across the heart of Southwest Shansi in an effort to seize as much of the autumn harvest as could be carried away before the peasants had a chance to hide it. This detachment had already reached Hsincheng, only 45 miles to the south, and was expected to attack Changchih within a matter of days.

The People’s Liberation Army, heavily engaged on other fronts, let Yen’s troops come. This was one of the successful tactics for breaking encirclement worked out by Mao Tse-tung in the 1930’s. Armies that could not easily be smashed by frontal attack were allowed to drive deep into a Liberated Area, tempted to overextend themselves, and then, under constant and clever harassment, forced to withdraw or face piecemeal annihilation under the combined attacks of local and regular forces quickly concentrated for the counterattack. Villages in the path of such a drive prepared for temporary occupation by hiding all grain and valuable property, by sending their women and children deeper into the mountains, and by mobilizing their young men for harassing action. Experienced leaders had seen this work out time and time again, but peasants, facing reoccupation for the first time, could hardly help but feel nervous. The gentry, on the other hand, assuming that the advance of their armies signified a turn in their fortunes, openly threatened people with reprisal, arranged to fire “black shots” in the night, and joyously looked forward to a “change of sky.”

Strange happenings set the whole village on edge.

A militiaman left a meeting early one night because he was not feeling well. As he stepped out onto the main street he found the village lying quiet under a crescent moon. Only the lone sentries, out of sight at the edge of the fields still moved about. Looking south the sick man saw, or thought he saw, a figure squatting in a dark corner where a side alley ran off from the street. He walked toward the place. Nothing moved. He shouted. There was no answer. Then he took his gun from his shoulder, cocked it with a loud click, pointed it at the man, or the shadow, he wasn’t sure which, and called out, “I’ll shoot.” The shadow suddenly came to life. Before the militiaman could move a muscle the sound of running feet in the alley made clear that a hostile intruder had escaped.

A few days later the majority of the militia went to Li Village Gulch for a training session. Seven men stayed behind. Four of them kept watch in the north, south, east and west, while three who were sick slept in the temple that was their headquarters. These were Kuei-ts’ai, vice-head of the village, who had syphilis, and two rank-and-file corpsmen who suffered from itching sores of the skin. In the middle of the night Kuei-ts’ai heard loud knocking on the street side of the wall. He moved quietly to the compound wall, slid along it, and peered through the crack between the two halves of the wooden gate. There stood a man carrying at his waist a bright object that looked like a pistol. Kuei-ts’ai asked the man why he knocked. The reply came in a dialect that was unintelligible. Kuei-ts’ai repeated the question twice but received no further answer. Then he ordered the man to leave. The stranger made no move to go. Finally Kueits’ai pulled the pin on a grenade and threw it over the wall. The nocturnal visitor left in a hurry and was never seen again.

Unable to explain these incidents and fearful lest the gentry, with the help of enemy infiltrators, might actually be preparing a conspiracy in the village, T’ien-ming ordered a nightly check-up of the homes of all rich peasants and landlords, all important ex-collaborators and all Catholics implicated in the escape of Father Sun. In the middle of the night militiamen made their rounds in pairs, knocked on the doors of all suspects, ordered the occupants to let them in, and searched the premises for unregistered guests, leaflets, weapons, or other signs of counter-revolutionary activity.

At the same time the village government, under instructions from the Party and government leaders of Lucheng County, launched a “Hide the Grain Movement” to prevent seizure of the autumn harvest should the enemy troops advance that far. Thousands of families dug pits in the ground or found caves in the hills where they could store their crops and possessions. They also arranged with more isolated villages for temporary shelter for their women and children. Some peasants went even further. They were so frightened that they secretly sent back to landlord families the property and clothing they had received in the distribution, or they began to pay a little rent for the use of expropriated land. The wife of one village chairman even hired herself out as an unpaid servant in an ex-landlord’s household in return for a promise of protection when the gentry again took power. All this was known as ming fen an pu fen or “take the fruits in the light, return them in the dark.”

In the face of this spreading panic the Communist Party took steps to strengthen morale and prevent the return of “fruits” in the dark. Through the Peasants’ Association they extended the Hide the Grain Movement into a movement to “examine fanshen.” The situation of every family in regard to land and property was again reviewed. Those who had secretly returned property were urged to take it back. The method of breaking an encirclement by temporarily yielding territory while mobilizing all the forces of the people to combat the enemy was clearly explained to all. “Unity will certainly defeat the counter-offensive” became the slogan of the day.

What began in the fall of 1946 as a defensive move was soon transformed by the village cadres and more active poor peasants into a third great offensive against the gentry. Under the slogan pu ta lo shui kou, p’ao ch’i lai yao liao shou (if you don’t beat down the drowning dog, he’ll jump out and bite your hand), all the remaining members of the families already under attack were again brought before public meetings. Their last remaining wealth was demanded. With the enemy troops so close at hand and the threat of counter-revolution growing day by day, the campaign was more than ever charged with emotion and marred by excessive violence. Since, by this time, there was no more land, housing, or ordinary property left that could be confiscated, buried silver and gold became the main objective of the active peasants. This time the ancestral tombs of all the prominent families were dug open and searched for valuables. The tireless treasure seekers left the yellow subsoil piled in scattered heaps around the gaping holes where underground vaults had been found. Carved obelisks of granite and marble lay like scattered dominoes where they fell. So numerous were the rifled tombs that the whole countryside seemed to have been bombarded at random by huge shells. These scars inflicted on the land itself in bold defiance of all superstition demonstrated to all who passed that the poor had indeed turned over. To the gentry, this earthly resurrection of their ancestors was an affront which in their wildest nightmares they had never dreamed possible.

But it was the living, not the dead, who really felt the bite of the poor peasants’ angry blows. In many cases the living, at least those among the living who still remained in the village, were women. Hence it was they who bore the brunt of this final attack.

The gentry wives astonished the peasants by their fierce resistance and contempt for pain. “All you had to do to make a man talk was to heat an iron bar in the fire,” a militiaman told me years later, “but the women were tougher. They would rather die than tell us where their gold was hidden. Burning flesh held no terror for them. If they weakened at all, it was in the face of threats to their children.”

In the long run, however, even the gentry women were no match for the aroused peasants. One after another they were forced to confess where they had hidden the last of their family wealth. Cache after cache of money, silk, embroidered clothes, and jewels was discovered. Each new discovery so angered and excited the people that the campaign mounted in intensity with each passing day. In January the wealthy landlord Sheng Ching-ho had himself turned over to the peasants over $500 in coins. Then he ran away. In July his wife surrendered another $400 and a golden boat. Then she fled with her children. Only the sister-in-law remained in the village. During this third campaign she yielded up another $1,000. Nobody believed that this was the full extent of Ching-ho’s buried wealth, but the sister-in-law, even when tortured, would reveal no more. Two hundred dollars were confiscated from Chou Mei-sheng, the chief of staff of the puppet government before he too ran away. No gold, but quantities of fine silk and woolen clothes were found in the vaults that belonged to Hsu Chen-p’eng, the absentee general. His sister led the peasants to them to save her own life.

The enemy advance that created the extraordinary tension of this third wave of assault did not get beyond Hsincheng after all. As the military crisis eased, the Peasants’ Association in Long Bow, frustrated by the fact that no major new sources of wealth could be found and unable to single out any more families that could legitimately be called exploiters even under the three generation rule, gradually dropped the campaign altogether. This brought an end to the expropriations inspired by the May 4th Directive.

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The land equalization campaigns of the summer and fall of 1946 were disappointing to the poor peasant activists who had manned them. When all the “fruits” were divided there were still many families who felt that they had not truly fanshened. Nevertheless the shared wealth did strengthen to a certain extent the ability of the community to produce. The land-poor gained approximately 80 acres of tillable soil and scores of sections of housing. More important than real estate, however, was the treasure unearthed. The silver, the gold, and the jewelry extracted from the once affluent gentry amounted to over $4,000 in value. When distributed among 200 families, each got approximately $20, or a year’s earnings for a hired man.

Most of this money was immediately converted into means of production by the peasants who received it. An indication of this was the sharp rise in the number of draft animals in the village. Within a few months large livestock increased from 71 to 103 head, a 45 percent jump that was the result of cash-in-hand expeditions to other regions to buy stock. Carts, plows, seeders, and other implements also increased.

Checking on the accomplishments of the land reform movement at this time, the Communist Party Committee of Lucheng County found that feudal landholding and feudal political power had been effectively destroyed throughout the five districts under its supervision. It also found that the means of production had been broadly redistributed and was consequently satisfied that the goals of the May 4th Directive had been achieved. The County Committee therefore turned its attention to the next big problem on the agenda—how best to put the liberated wealth and resources of the county to work, how best to stimulate production. The general welfare of the people, the ability to provide sufficient support for the armies defending the Revolution at the front, and the ability of the economy to survive the strains of the blockade imposed by Chiang Kai-shek—all this depended on the success of the production movement.

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Organizing Production

For thousands of years a system of individual production has prevailed among the peasant masses, under which a family or household makes a productive unit; this scattered individual form of production was the economic foundation of feudal rule and has plunged the peasants into perpetual poverty. The only way to change this state of affairs is gradual collectivization, and the only way to bring about collectivization is, according to Lenin, through co-operatives.

Mao Tse-tung

SPLASHED on a Long Bow wall in whitewashed ideographs larger than a man was the slogan, “The Battle for Production Is As Vital As The Battle at the Front.”

In a courtyard behind these words four women wound the warp on a loom. From a nearby doorway came the peristent hum of spinning wheels in motion. The sound was created by a mother, two daughters and a small son sitting cross-legged on grass mats and spinning as if their very lives depended on it. An older woman in the same room threw a shuttle back and forth over a clacking wooden loom. She caught the tapered block as it emerged and tossed it back again almost faster than the eye could register.

Out on the street numerous small children wound thread on shuttles as they ran about. In their wandering they had to duck between clusters of donkeys and mules that almost blocked all traffic through the village center. These animals, equipped with pack saddles, were about to be led off to the mines at Yellow Mill. There they would pick up coal and haul it to Changchih. In charge were two peasants of a mutual-aid production group whose members made the animals available for transport work while they themselves were preoccupied with other tasks.

Keeping a watchful eye on the pack animals were several boys with small iron forks and wide wicker baskets shaped like clam shells. Into these baskets they deftly gathered any manure dropped by the animals and carried it off to their father’s cistern where it supplemented the family store of night soil and promised an increase in next year’s crop.

Peddlers pushed with difficulty down the crowded street. Here a man with a heavy load of pottery balanced on a high-wheeled barrow sold the produce of a mutual-aid group in Licheng, a county town more than 40 miles to the east. There a lean hawker shouldered a carrying pole laden with slabs of ink individually wrapped in coarse yellow paper. He too represented a mutual-aid group made up of ten poor peasants in Wuan County who made writing materials in the slack season.

In the village square, carts from the mountain counties laden with coal, ore, hemp, dried persimmons, walnuts, live pigs, wool, and other highland products on their way to southern markets locked hubs with similar carts from the Yellow River Valley laden with reed mats, bamboo chairs, raw bamboo poles, and other lowland produce bound for the mountains. Every table in the village inn was jammed with carters. They consumed great bowls of broth in which floated strips of mutton and fat cracklings obtained from the fat-tailed sheep that were the property of still another mutual-aid group. By marketing their meat locally the group members earned far more than they would have by taking it to the county town. The men eating the broth carried with them tales of production achievements from widely scattered villages and unconsciously stimulated further mutual-aid efforts in the communities through which they passed.

Such variety and intensity of productive effort had never before been experienced, certainly not within living memory. The boom could be attributed to two main sources.

On the one hand, it was the natural result of the fact that every peasant had, at last, some land to till, some equipment with which to work, and the prospect of a good crop. The fact that the crop would go into his own jars and bins and not into the storerooms of some landlord or usurer greatly enhanced the incentive to produce. The increased yields that resulted expanded per capita income and with it purchasing power. This in turn stimulated the rebirth of hundreds of slack-season handicraft products which again in their turn increased both income and purchasing power.

On the other hand, the boom was stimulated by the planned policies and determined organizing effort of Communist Party committees, government administrators, financial institutions, and the leaders of mass organizations at all levels.

Mutual-aid groups for labor exchange on the land and the pooling of resources for subsidiary occupations did not simply appear. They were organized and promoted on a vast scale. The whole purpose of the land distribution, as envisioned by the Communist Party, was to remove the fetters that bound production, to release the energy and enthusiasm of the peasants, and to lay the basis for a transition from “individual labor based on an individual economy to collective labor based on a collective economy.” Once the question of land ownership was settled the mutual-aid movement—the embryonic form of co-operation in production—was considered to be the key to progress in the rural areas.

Mao spoke many times of the two great “organizings”—organize to overthrow feudalism and organize to increase production. One without the other was futile. Mutual aid, labor exchange, and coperation in production were impossible on any large scale as long as landlord-tenant relations predominated. Where one man owned all the means of production—the land, the implements and the draft animals—and the other man owned only his own two hands, there were no grounds for getting together. There was no basis for exchange. The rich man simply hired the poor man. Once the sharp attack on the landlords and rich peasants had created a community in which all families held approximately equal amounts of land, implements, and livestock—mutual aid, labor exchange, and co-operation began to sprout up on every side.

In the Taihang Mountains in 1946 and 1947, mutual aid was not only relatively easy to initiate, it was absolutely necessary if the peasants were to produce at all. There simply were not enough carts, donkeys, oxen, seeders, or even iron hoes to go around. In order to produce, people had to share. Mutual aid was necessary for still another reason. Primitive as the means of production were, no family could afford to have a complete set of the implements and draft animals necessary for production. One good mule could farm 20 acres. But no family owned as much as 20 acres, or even half that much. The largest holding in all of Long Bow was a little more than eight acres for a family of nine people. Even this large family could not use all the productive capacity of one mule. If they had tried to keep a mule and a cart and a plow and a harrow and a seeder, the capital investment would have been grossly out of proportion to the production possible on eight acres of land. Therefore a family that owned a mule was not likely to own the other essential implements, not even a cart, even though the latter was used as much for transport on the roads as it was for agriculture.

Since there were not enough draft animals and implements to go around and since the landholdings were too small to engage efficiently any complete set of equipment, it was essential that people get together, swap and share what they had, and help each other out. Labor exchange, which had existed in China for thousands of years on a spontaneous but limited basis, suddenly became a great agricultural movement.

Yang Chung-sheng, a landowning Long Bow peasant with a large family to feed, led the best-organized local mutual-aid group. Starting with five families who joined together of their own accord in 1946, it soon grew to include 22 families who owned a total of over 80 acres of land. Among the earlier members were four soldiers’ dependants and two families without able-bodied members who had been left out by other groups. But even this dead weight did not dampen enthusiasm. The group produced so well that new families constantly applied for membership. As finally constituted the 22-family constellation mustered 12 able-bodied men, two “half-labor-power” children, and two “half-labor-power” old people for field work. In spite of the fact that they had a very large area to till per man, they were always the first to finish any work, whether planting, plowing, hoeing, or harvesting. This was because they got along well and helped each other out, not only in the fields but also in solving all problems of livelihood. For example, Li P’an-ming, the peasant who was director of public affairs for the whole village, fell sick just at planting time. He was not able to get up off his k’ang. The group met to discuss what to do and decided that they would tend his land without asking anything in return as long as he was sick. They agreed that they would not even accept meals in his home. At the same time, because Li P’an-ming was short of grain, the group loaned him enough to tide him over until the summer harvest. Before Li got well the first hoeing had been completed. The group told him that he could pay them back another year if he wanted to, but in fact they never recorded the work done and never demanded payment. Thus all of Li P’an-ming’s problems were solved. This greatly encouraged the other members of the group, for they realized that if they were ever in trouble they too could get help. Their morale rose. They all worked harder than before and at the end of the year were chosen as the model team in the village.

Aside from the fact that the members of Yang Chung-sheng’s team were good friends to begin with, they attributed their success to the fact that they organized well, met often, discussed every problem thoroughly and worked out a good system of keeping records so that the exchange of labor time balanced out in the long run. Yang never tried to tell the group what to do. When they met they talked things over and only when they agreed did they act. They always tilled the land of soldiers’ dependents first, asking only their meals in return. Families without manpower paid wages for all work done, but the group did not demand that these wages be paid at once. Those who had no grain could wait until after the harvest to settle up. A committee of four was elected to report on all hours put in and on all exchanges of implements and draft power. One member who could write and figure on the abacus was appointed to tally up the accounts. At the end of every period—that is, planting, hoeing, harvesting, etc.—a balance sheet was drawn up and a settlement made. Everyone paid up what he owed except those who were in difficult circumstances and needed more time. This satisfied all participants and helped to maintain morale at a high level.

The group met briefly every evening to plan the next day’s work. When the cocks began to crow before dawn, no time was wasted in consultation. Everyone went straight to the field without having to be called. When the six animals possessed by the group members were not needed in the fields, they were taken by their owners on transport work that was individually planned and executed. In other words, the group did not try to pool all the activities of its members. They worked together where the advantage was greatest and went their separate ways where that was more suitable. To add to their winter production they pooled their resources to set up a beancurd plant. They hired an old peasant, Ch’un-ching, who had just come from the old people’s home in the Catholic compound at Kao Settlement, to work there full time.

In the fall of 1947, elections were held throughout the Taihang for model peasants and workers. Among the six chosen to go from Long Bow to the district elimination meeting was Yang Chung-sheng. None of the Long Bow contingent was chosen to represent the district at the county or Border Region level. Nevertheless, the meeting did inspire them to organize further production groups.

When Yang returned he and the Long Bow blacksmith, Huan-ch’ao, helped to set up a co-operative carpentry shop. The village still held a sizable quantity of wood that had been confiscated from the gentry but had not been distributed. It also had available more than a hundred pounds of iron. This wood and iron, plus some tens of thousands of Border Region dollars (1,000=$1, U. S. currency) were loaned by the village office to Chung-sheng and Huan-ch’ao as operating capital. All the carpenters in the village were invited to join them. Eleven of the 14 agreed to come in. Together with Huan-ch’ao the blacksmith, and Li Lao-szu the stone mason, this constituted a membership of 13.

Whenever work was slack on the land these 13 gathered in one of the big empty rooms of the “foreign house,” as the big brick compound formerly owned by absentee general Hsu was known, and fashioned things of wood—shovels for use in winnowing grain, hubs for cart wheels, cart bodies, chairs, tables. At first they were not able to make whole wheels because Huan-ch’ao did not know how to fashion or shrink on the iron hoops that held the wheel together. But a request for help was sent to the county Workers’ Union and two experts were immediately assigned to Long Bow to teach Huan-ch’ao all that he needed to know. They stayed for a month, made sure that the blacksmith learned the whole process from beginning to end, and then returned to Lucheng.

The co-owners of the carpentry shop were paid on a point system according to their skill. The blacksmith got the most points—98. The seasoned carpenters got 80 points. Li Lao-szu who was really a stone mason got 79 points (they were lenient with him because he was poor), and one young apprentice got 48. From the total gross income of the shop, expenses were first subtracted. These included the wood, the iron, and the other materials used to make implements and carts, plus the food and fuel used to make the meals which the men shared while at work. Twenty percent of the net income was then turned over to the village in payment for the capital put in from public funds. The remaining money was divided according to the points allotted each man. When the accounts were settled, the members found that they made only about three sheng of millet a day as against the seven that could usually be earned by a good carpenter working on his own.* This did not make them very happy but they reasoned that anyway they had steady work. Many a carpenter, though he got seven sheng a day, could not find work each day, and so in the long run came out no better. Granting credit also lowered their earnings. Since the purpose of the carpentry shop and of the whole production movement was to help poor peasants fanshen, these poor carpenters undertook to build carts and implements for many families that could not afford to pay cash. As a result they had many accounts outstanding in both Long Bow and other nearby villages. If they could collect all these funds, their earnings would almost double. There were even a number of prosperous peasants who had bought things that they could afford to pay cash for but hadn’t because, they said, “Others don’t pay; why should we?”

In spite of all these problems, the carpentry shop flourished, technique improved, orders grew, and more and more products were turned out each month. Wood supplies soon ran low. Then the co-operators had to make a journey to Fu Village in the distant Western Mountains, where they bought standing trees, cut them down with hand tools, and hauled them home by cart. Later, the logs were cut into boards and billets with bucksaws, one man standing high in the air on top of the braced log while another man stood on the ground below him. Each day spent on such work earned the worker three sheng of millet.

Mutual-aid type organization was not confined to work on the land or to the labor of male craftsmen. Women also organized mutual-aid groups, most of which concentrated on textile production. Because of the inroads of machine-made textiles in the previous decades, many wives and mothers no longer knew how or had never learned to make cloth from raw cotton in the home. The Women’s Association therefore had to start from the beginning with a spinning and weaving class whose students, coming from dozens of families, lived together in the “Foreign House” of General Hsu, and learned by doing. Once the students became proficient they transformed their class into a spinning and weaving group rather than return to their homes for individual production. This was because the women, young and old, found it much more congenial to work together in a large group than to sit isolated in their homes endlessly spinning or pushing a shuttle. Also, when one worked alone at home, it was easy to fall asleep early in the evening and thus shorten the hours of work. By meeting together, exchanging gossip, studying, and singing, the long evenings passed quickly and productively. Some husbands and fathers soon complained over the absence of their women from home for such extended periods. When complaints could no longer be ignored, the women compromised by working at home during the day and with the group in the “Foreign House” in the evening.

I have no record of the amount or value of the cotton cloth which this one large Long Bow group created, but a similar group of 70 women in another Taihang village won region-wide recognition by producing enough textiles in one season to buy 55 sheep, 35 pigs, two draft animals, and farm implements worth $335 in U. S. currency.

Almost as important as mutual aid in stimulating production was the new tax system introduced on the heels of land reform by the Border Region Government. The new regulations as they finally crystallized out of a very confused situation constituted what was known as “The Proportionate Single-Tax System with Exemptions.”* The old tax system, when it did not simply take everything that police and troops could find, penalized the conscientious producer by demanding a fixed proportion of the actual crop harvested. The bigger the crop, the bigger the tax. The new tax system reversed this and rewarded the conscientious producer by basing its demands not on the actual crop harvested in the current year, but on the average amount harvested in previous seasons. What was taxed was not the land as such or the crop as such but standard mou. A standard mou was defined as any amount of land that yielded 10 tou (one tou =0.285 bushels) of millet. To determine how many standard mou a man possessed one only had to calculate his annual average yield in tou and divide by ten. The tax that he paid was set as a proportion of this standard. Anyone who worked hard, applied new methods and increased his yields, paid no tax on that part of the crop exceeding the fixed standard no matter how large it was, and this was true for a definite number of years. If, for instance, a peasant dug a well, irrigated his fields, and thereby doubled his crops, this made no difference at all to his tax base until three years had passed. Similiar provisions rewarded other forms of effort such as reclamation.

All crops grown on virgin land (land uncropped for more than six years) were tax free for three years. Crops grown on reclaimed land (land uncropped for any period up to six years) were tax free for two years.

To guarantee that all families retained enough grain after taxes to survive (a matter with which the old regime had never concerned itself), the yield from one standard mou, or 2.85 bushels of millet per capita was entirely exempted from all taxation. These exemption provisions were similar to the $600 exemptions of the United States federal income tax law. However, the Border Region tax regulations went the United States one better in this respect. Oxen and donkeys were granted an exemption equal to 40 percent of a standard mou, or 1.14 bushels of millet, while horses and mules were granted 70 percent, or 1.9 bushels, thus guaranteeing a minimum of food for livestock as well as for their masters.

The proportional features of the law also paralleled the United States income tax provisions. Families harvesting an average amount of land per capita paid 25 catties of millet, or approximately 20 percent of the yield on all taxable standard mou, but families who held more than the average amount of land and hence harvested more than the average paid a proportionately higher tax.* Those who harvested twice the per capita average of the community paid as high as 40 percent of their income in taxes. Above this the rate did not go. A higher rate was hardly needed. After land reform there were very few households that harvested more than twice the per capita average.

All of these features together—the exemptions, the standard mou method of calculating the tax base, the deferred taxation of improvements and the proportionate increases for higher incomes—combined to develop a tax system reasonable in the eyes of the peasants. It was clearly designed to guarantee subsistence, reward effort, and discourage laziness and neglect; and it definitely helped to stimulate a tremendous movement to improve and reclaim land and raise production.

Before mutual aid and the new tax regulations could stimulate a truly mass movement, other important subjective and objective problems had to be overcome.

Some people had to be convinced of the need for winter work. Having harvested from their own land more grain than they had ever seen before, they tended to be complacent. One peasant said, “In the past when I earned two bushels of millet and three of corn I thought I was well off. This year I harvested between 15 and 20 bushels and I said to myself that I would relax for a few months and enjoy myself and stop worrying about food and clothes.” But a group of neighbors meeting to figure up family accounts soon stripped him of any illusions of prosperity. They found, after careful calculation, that in order to live until spring he would need at least five bushels more than he had. A second peasant said, “There’s no use figuring for me. There’s no question but that in one year I have harvested enough food for two.” Skeptical neighbors added his totals and found that he hardly had enough grain to last the winter, not to mention salt, cooking oil, and other essential staples which still had to be bought.

Other families, fully convinced of the need to produce, were discouraged by lack of capital. Here mutual aid, by pooling the meager resources of several poor families, solved part of the problem. But credit from the local co-op or the newly organized People’s Credit Bank of Lucheng County was also important. The bank didn’t wait for the peasants to come to it. Bank managers and clerks travelled through the villages of their neighborhoods and made first-hand surveys of the people’s needs. The limited funds which they had to lend were thus channelled into the hands of those who needed them most. Traditional banking practices, such as loaning money only to good risks who could guarantee collateral, were sharply condemned by the revolutionary press which gave wide coverage to the experience of Comrade Ts’ao of the Pinghsun Credit Bank. This energetic man personally visited every village served by his bank. In one hamlet he found eight families who, although they had received some land and housing in the distribution, had no surplus whatever that they could use for winter production. Four of them were soldiers’ dependents and two were widows with children. He loaned each family 100,000 Border Region dollars ($35). They immediately invested these funds in a hemp shop and a transport brigade that provided work for all. They told Ts’ao, “Our government is really concerned with people. Now bankers bring money right to our homes and see to it that our problems are solved. We will do our best to produce.”

Just as the provision of credit was not left to the profit calculations of private entrepreneurs, so the supply of raw materials for spinning and weaving was not left to the vagaries of local weather and its influence on the cotton crop or to the ability of women and children with scant resources to purchase fibre. Ginned cotton from the plains of Hopei was advanced to mountain communities through their Women’s Associations, thus guaranteeing a large spinning and weaving movement wherever hands lay idle.

At the same time the dampening influence of middlemen’s high profits and speculatory manipulations was mitigated by the creation of a vast network of village-controlled and financed consumer cooperatives. These popular institutions provided staples at low prices and an outlet for rural produce at a fair return.

An expanding market was also greatly aided by the growth of transportation facilities. Easy credit stimulated transport by carrying-pole, wheelbarrow, bicycle, pack animal, and two-wheel cart. So did the improvement of roads and highways. Most striking of all was the construction of a narrow gauge railroad which, under the direction of the embryonic Railroad Bureau of the Shansi-Hopei-Honan-Shantung Border Region Government, pushed halfway through the Taihang Mountains from the east.

The new railroad was not the only form of public enterprise that grew up alongside the extensive private and co-operative forms already mentioned. The government also went heavily into mining, smelting, and munitions manufacture, to mention but a few important areas of public production. Even in Long Bow a munitions plant was established that soon rivalled the community’s two distilleries in size and volume of output. This produced nitrates from organic ash. The nitrates were used to arm the explosive shells that the People’s Liberation Army was demanding in ever increasing numbers. Changing tides at the front had brought massive windfalls of captured American equipment. Gradually the peasant-style rifle-and-hand-grenade army was being transformed into a modern force that boasted both tanks and artillery.

Twice a year, by government decree, every peasant in the Fifth District was required to bring five catties of ash to the new plant housed in an empty building on Long Bow’s eastern rim. For this ash the peasants were paid a standard price. The demand for organic ash soon mushroomed far beyond anything that could be satisfied by the embers of the peasants’ cooking fires and stimulated an endless search for waste material. Over the hills and valleys of the district arose wisps of smoke that were visible for miles, as young and old burned the leaves, weeds, roots, and trash that would make it possible to blast Chiang Kai-shek, “The Old Root of Reaction,” right out of Nanking.

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Whether or not Chiang Kai-shek could ever actually be blasted out of Nanking depended in large measure on the uninterrupted progress of this production movement and the solid basis which it alone could provide for a new politics and a new culture. Yet, as the months passed, many signs indicated that all was not entirely well on the home front. The full potential of the economy was being undercut by several negative trends, all of which arose from the same source—the very thoroughness with which the drive of the poor to fanshen had smashed down all feudal barriers and then gone on to “level the tops and fill the holes.”

One of these trends involved a clear violation of policy. In spite of repeated warnings by the Central Committee, in spite of the clear language of the May 4th Directive, the expropriation proceedings against the gentry had not stopped with feudal property. To the young activists in the villages a landlord was a landlord, a rich peasant was a rich peasant, and an exploiter was an exploiter. They did not recognize any such phenomenon as a dual personality—a landlord capitalist, or a capitalist landlord. When they attacked they took everything—land, housing, stock, tools, buried treasure—and also business ventures. As a consequence, in the whole of Lucheng County, very few enterprises of a private nature survived the 1946 campaigns. Most of them had either been destroyed by a division of their assets or had been taken over by various mutual-aid groups to be run as co-operatives. The over-all effect of such expropriations was to stifle private initiative, a drag on production which the underdeveloped state of the economy could ill afford. While co-operative efforts filled a great need, they could not, on their own, provide all the capital and incentive necessary to an all-around development of production. For this, private enterprise was considered essential.

An even more serious drag on expansion was the growing reluctance of those families who had been attacked as exploiters and those of their more prosperous brethren who feared such an attack, to produce with zest. While the poor who had fanshened went at production with unprecedented enthusiasm, those who had helped to make their fanshen possible, or feared that they would be called upon to contribute to it later, hung back. The “chive-cutting thought” that had sprouted in the spring of 1946 spread with accelerated speed in the following fall and winter. At a time when the majority were doing their best to create wealth and make themselves as rich as Li Hsun-ta, a substantial minority hesitated.* They did only as much as was necessary to feed their families and guarantee another year’s crop. In the meantime they waited to see what the shape of the future might be.

Most serious of all was the political friction which the deepening of the expropriation drive and the broadening of its target produced. The excesses of the movement divided the peasants as surely as its over-all objectives had united them. And it was this tragic division which served as seed-bed for the growth of all kinds of abuses of power and arrogant misbehavior on the part of some leading cadres and militiamen when they began to be confronted with apathy and opposition from unexpected quarters.

Abuses of Power

Some comrades have committed mistakes of commandism, adventurism and closed-door-ism. … They did not believe that it was the masses who were emancipating themselves. Instead they stood above the masses to fight in their stead, to bestow emancipation on the masses, and to issue orders. … Especially when doubt and dissatisfaction had arisen among the masses because of slogans that were too advanced or policies that were too “left,” they tried all the harder to carry on the work by issuing orders, by coercion or even by punishment.

Liu Shao-ch’i, May 1945

ONE AUTUMN EVENING when the “Beat Down the Drowning Dog” campaign was at its height, the poor peasant Kuo Yuan-lung worked until after sunset on a plot of land in the middle of the fertile flat southwest of Long Bow. This was the first piece of earth the lean young man had ever owned and he spent every spare minute on it. On this particular evening he was busy pulling the stubble left behind from a crop of millet that had already been harvested. After uprooting the stubble clusters from the ground, he shook the dirt from the roots and piled the truncated clusters together so that he could carry them home for fuel. At the end of a row he straightened up to rest his tired back and heard Kuei-Ts’ai’s megaphone-magnified voice announcing another meeting. The strange sound came, as always, from the top of the church tower. What the meeting was about, who was to be settled with this time, it was difficult to make out. The only words that came clearly across the open fields at that distance were “Come to the meeting—everybody out—meeting tonight—.”

“Your mother’s…,” said’ Yuan-lung. “Another meeting! Will there ever be an end to meetings?” And he hummed a little jingle that he had heard that day from the disgruntled Li Ho-jen: “Kuomintang shui to, kungch’antang hui to.” (Under the Nationalists too many taxes; under the Communists too many meetings.)

“They can meet without me tonight,” he muttered. “What’s to come of all this anyway? There’s nothing left to dig up, no oil left to find. We shake the trees again and again, but the fruits and nuts have already been knocked down and the branches are bare. Now that I have land I’d rather work it. Besides, I’m tired,” he added as he leaned down to pick up the last pile of stubble and roots. He carried it across the field and added it to the huge bundle he had been collecting all afternoon. Swinging this enormous burden onto his back he headed down the path toward the village. In the semi-darkness, with only a faint glow in the sky behind him, Yuan-lung and his load looked like a haystack that had suddenly grown legs and started to walk. When he reached his own house, a low mud hovel on the very edge of the settlement, he dropped the roots and sat down for a moment to rest. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes.

When he opened them, Wang Man-hsi, the militiaman, was standing in front of him.

“Didn’t you hear the call to meeting?” asked Man-hsi in a menacing tone.

“I heard it but I couldn’t leave the stubble,” said Yuan-lung, standing up and moving warily back a step.

“If you heard it, why aren’t you there? Come along now, we want everybody,” growled Man-hsi, moving toward Yuan-lung as Yuan-lung moved back.

“But I haven’t eaten.”

“Eat your mother’s…. A struggle meeting has already begun and you talk of eating. I’ll teach you to eat!” and with that Man-hsi hit him across the chest with the flat of his hand. “Come on, get going.”

Man-hsi, though shorter than Yuan-lung, was far stronger. Over his shoulder he carried a rifle. Yuan-lung had no choice but to obey. He started out the gate. As he did so Man-hsi gave him a kick and fell in behind him swearing loudly.

“You donkey’s penis! As if we didn’t have trouble enough without rounding up slackers like you. Where do you think your fanshen came from? The Lord of Heaven?”

They had not gone far when Man-hsi told him to stop. The militiaman ducked into another courtyard and soon came out with a second poor peasant, old Pao, who had obviously been asleep. Under Man-hsi’s orders the two proceeded down the alley. By the time they reached the main street Man-hsi had collected seven peasants. As they turned the corner and headed toward the square they met another militiaman, K’uan-hsin, who came from the other side of the village with five more. In this manner a large crowd was brought together that night.

***********

What had happened? Why did the militiamen have to go out and round up a crowd? If the struggle was in the interest of the poor peasants, surely they would have been in the very front ranks of the gathering. A year earlier one could have attributed their reluctance to “change of sky” fears, but to say now that they were afraid would have been only a part of the story. Almost all these people had been very active during the winter and throughout the spring and summer. Why did they hang back in the fall?

The reluctance of a growing number of landowning peasants and even many poor peasants to continue the struggle grew out of uncertainty in regard to the future. The tremendous gains brought by the Anti-Traitor Movement in 1945 and the Settling Accounts Movement in early 1946 had not been matched by the campaigns of the following summer and fall. The expenditure of a vast amount of time and energy had pried loose a few much-needed dollars, but these dollars had by no means solved the problem of poverty or made any radical change in the over-all fanshen situation.

Many felt that the effort expended in mass meetings, interrogations, tearing down k’angs, and opening up tombs could more fruitfully have been spent weeding and hoeing, digging privies, and sinking wells. At a time when the Communist Party members and cadres of the village government might have been leading a production movement they had been absorbed in a treasure hunt. Though the rewards of this hunt were not negligible, still the cost seemed far out of proportion. The damage inflicted in terms of people killed, households disrupted, buildings demolished and graves uprooted could not be shrugged off. Meanwhile the tendency to lop off “feudal tails” raised specters that refused to be laid to rest. Where would it all end? Was anybody really safe?

The peasants supported violence in smashing the old regime. But violence for loot alone, violence that was basically punitive, violence that turned on those who practiced it, turned out to be stark, senseless, repellent. Though no one in the village put it thus in so many words, such thoughts undoubtedly lurked in the recesses of their minds and made them draw back. Yet as more people drew back from active participation in new campaigns, the leaders began to push harder; and so a crack appeared between the dedicated revolutionaries and many rank-and-file peasants who had supported them wholeheartedly up until that time.

The style of work that developed out of the cadres’ attempt to “keep things moving” in spite of this growing rift was called “commandism.” Without realizing what was actually happening, many leading cadres in Long Bow began to issue orders instead of educating and persuading people, and because most people obeyed these orders—some because they too thought the redundant attacks necessary, some because they always followed orders, and some because they dared not do otherwise—the leaders did not realize how much support they had lost. Those peasants who did not obey they condemned as backward—suan liu liu te, or “sour and slippery” trouble-makers who needed to be taught a lesson. Some of these were arrested, beaten, and punished with extra work for soldiers’ families, or extra terms of rear service such as stretcher bearing or transporting supplies to the front. Some were even sent off to join the army, but since they went unwillingly the army wisely rejected them.

The towering war tension of those months coupled with this emerging commandism created an atmosphere in which all the other weaknesses of the peasant cadres as revolutionary leaders took root and grew apace. The individualism, the lack of vision, the impetuosity which characterized these men and women as small producers began to manifest themselves in many of the ways Mao Tse-tung had outlined 20 years earlier.* That strange dichotomy—slack discipline within the revolutionary ranks coupled with harsh measures to enforce obedience among the people as a whole—mushroomed to alarming proportions, and with it, vindictiveness, cliquism, loyalty to persons rather than to revolutionary principles, and ultimately hedonism leading to petty theft, evasion of public duty, wide-spread philandering, and even rape at the point of a gun. Abuses of power characteristic of the political machine of the old regime re-emerged, albeit still in pale reflection. But without that patina of wealth, leisure, culture, and tradition which had long served to obscure the basic violence of gentry rule, these new abuses paraded in stark relief against the background of the people’s Utopian dreams.

The militia, on whom the main burden of each campaign fell, were quick to slide into certain habits well known to traditional upholders of “law and order.” They developed among themselves a battlefront psychology that served as justification for everything they were tempted to do. Since they spearheaded every drive, led in beating the “struggle objects,” poured out their sweat to dig up the k’angs, courtyards and tombs of the “old money bags,” and above all, risked their lives through the long cold nights as they stood guard against counterattack, they felt entitled to special privileges. Many of them thought it unfair to receive no return for service to the people beyond the fanshen in which all shared. Among them were some who also thought it unfair to be judged by ordinary standards of morality. As heroes of the hour, these began in small ways to help themselves. When some article among the hundreds confiscated from the gentry caught their fancy, they took it when nobody was looking. If some comely woman aroused their passion, they seduced her if she was willing. If she were a “struggle object,” they took her whether she was willing or not. When asked to do their share of labor service, these men began by thinking up all kinds of excuses and ended up with outright refusals. They even shirked work for soldiers’ families and prevailed upon their neighbors to go in their stead.

Perhaps the most notorious practitioner of this type of abuse was Wang Man-hsi, the rank-and-file militiaman and Communist Party member who was known as “The King of the Devils” for his readiness to beat up the people’s enemies. He had played a very important part in the Anti-Traitor Movement and the campaign against the gentry. Now, like the cop in the city market place who helps himself to the fruit in the stalls, Man-hsi took it for granted that the people owed him a few extras. The nighttime check-ups of the campaign against counter-revolution gave him ample opportunity to tip the scales in his own favor. Since the homes which he entered were almost all homes of “struggle objects,” he had no qualms about carrying off whatever suited him. He took two catties of hemp seed from Li Pao-chin’s house. From a widow’s garden he helped himself to garlic and chives. He liked the fruit on Yu-hsien’s trees so well that he came back several times for more. In Shao Lap-chang’s yard he not only picked ripe plums, but broke off a whole branch and carried it with him on his rounds. From Kuo Fu-kuei, ex-puppet police chief, he took a beautiful dry gourd because “it was so pretty.” From another ex-puppet he took a ripe watermelon. When the man protested, he shut him overnight in the village lockup.

When Man-hsi found a woman of gentry origin alone he took full advantage of his good fortune. Saying, “Bastard landlords, they took our women, why shouldn’t we take theirs?” he raped one landlord’s daughter, a visitor from another village, in the back court of his newly acquired home. Later he and another militiaman ordered the daughter-in-law of a local “money-bags” out of her neighbor’s house on the grounds that no one was allowed to sleep away from home. Then they took her to an empty yard and forced themselves upon her. Man-hsi, on his own, approached the wife of the fugitive Chin-ming several times, threw stones over her wall, questioned her about her husband, and ordered her out to village meetings. He only failed in his plan to possess her because her neighbors lived so close to her back wall that they could hear every noise in her house.

From being the scourge of the gentry it was an easy transition for Man-hsi to become the scourge of the average man. By rapid stages he developed many of the habits of the traditional village bully. When Li P’an-ming, the peasant in charge of public affairs, asked him to do rear service, Man-hsi swore at him, claimed that his ox was sick and sent him to see the poor peasant Lao-ts’un instead. When Lao-ts’un, for his part, also refused to transport grain, Man-hsi beat him up as a shirker. Another time, when asked to transport grain, Man-hsi went grudgingly, took the straw and beans another man had set aside for the trip and, by depriving the other man’s animal of feed, caused it to founder on the road. On that same trip he beat an honest poor peasant and threw his quilt on the floor because the fellow had the nerve to take for himself the only empty spot on an otherwise crowded k’ang in the only inn in the village.

Man-hsi refused to do his own share of work for soldiers’ families, but became very angry when others were slack in this respect. He beat them and brought them to the village office for questioning. When it was his turn to stand guard over the “fruits,” Man-hsi also took a few items from the public warehouse. He stole a small mirror, a sickle, an umbrella and a pack basket suitable for hauling grain on the back of a donkey. Later, when others wanted to borrow this basket from him, he refused to lend it, saying to himself, “Easy come, easy go.”

A militiaman who rivalled Man-hsi for stubborn misbehavior was Shen Yu-hsing. He was a tall, raw-boned man with a dour disposition and a sad face already deeply lined before the age of 30. Although his father was a life-long hired laborer, Yu-hsing had somehow managed to study six years in the village school, had learned to read and write, and had then peddled sugar for a living through several mountain counties. During the famine year, without any money with which to buy sugar, he worked in an industrial plant in Taiyuan. When Long Bow was liberated he was far from home. He returned empty-handed with nothing but rags on his back and not even a single quilt for a cover. Everything that he later acquired he owed to the Revolution. From the Peasants’ Association he first borrowed a pair of pants and a jacket. In the redistribution of collaborators’ property he was given a quilt. When he went to the front as a stretcher bearer, a women’s sewing group made him the first pair of shoes he had worn in over a year. As the Settling Accounts Movement gathered momentum he did well. He added an acre and a half to the original half acre inherited from his father and received four sections of housing. He very early joined the militia. In the spring of 1946 he also joined the Communist Party. He did this because some of his closest friends were already members.

Sudden prosperity, membership in a powerful party, and a rifle in his hand went to Yu-hsing’s head. Like Man-hsi, he craved women. A prostitute who had slept with him for money in the old days refused him when he came to her empty-handed. He twisted her arm and took her anyway. When a landlord’s daughter rejected him, he arrested her and took her to the village office on charges of spreading false rumors. One night he broke into a poor peasant’s home by prying open the lock with his knife and seduced the mistress of the house, who was sleeping there alone.

The object of his attentions was Chin-chu’s wife, an earthy woman of loose morals who had had many lovers over the years. Her husband was strong but cowardly, very slow-witted, dirty, and quarrelsome. It became almost a game in Long Bow Village to cuckold the heavy-browed, unhappy laborer and then taunt him about it afterward. In his rage all he dared do was beat his wife, a routine duty which he performed with gusto. For this harsh treatment she repaid him with never-ending nagging, quarrels over trifles, and continued unfaithfulness.

Yu-hsing, who was still a bachelor, took a liking to Chin-chu’s wife after that first night. He tried to persuade her to leave Chin-chu and marry him, a very serious crime in the eyes of the villagers who were willing to overlook much licentious behavior, but never the break-up of a marriage. In order to have time alone with Chin-chu’s wife, Yu-hsing ordered Chin-chu out to all public meetings and then slipped back to the house himself. When there were no meetings, he brazenly carried on his flirtation in Chin-chu’s presence. One winter night he broke the door open, complained that his hands were cold and put them under Chin-chu’s quilt to warm them. There he kept them for more time than it takes to eat a meal. When Yu-hsing left that night Chin-chu beat his wife so cruelly that she woke all the neighbors with her cries.

Although Shen Yu-hsing was himself head of the production committee of the Peasants’ Association, the more important he became, the lazier he got. He swore at others when they worked badly on co-operative projects, but did as little as possible himself. Once he was asked by Fu-yuan, the village head, to organize a group to work on the land of a soldier’s family. The soldier’s mother sent hot food to the field early in the morning so that the men would have something to eat when they arrived, but nobody came to eat all day. Yu-hsing had simply ignored the request. When the peasant Chao-ch’un refused to loan Yu-hsing his cart the latter attacked him and took it anyway. Whenever Yu-hsing saw Ch’un-ching, manager of the beancurd plant set up through mutual aid, peddling beancurd on the street, he popped a piece of the curd in his mouth to try out the flavor, but he never bought any and never paid for what he ate. When Ch’un-ching finally lost patience and refused to give him any more free samples, Yu-hsing felt insulted. He broke into Ch’un-ching’s home at night and stole several pounds of the newly-made curd. The other members of the mutual-aid group thought Ch’un-ching himself had stolen it and questioned him sharply. The quarrel that ensued almost broke up the group.

Both Yu-hsing and Man-hsi were rank-and-file militiamen. Though they were the worst behaved, they were not the only ones who did as they pleased. The question arises—why didn’t the corps keep its members in line? Why didn’t the militia captain call them on the carpet and discipline them? If Chang Chiang-tzu, the founder and first captain of the corps had remained in the village, he might well have done so, for he was a dedicated and conscientious man. But this very dedication caused him to volunteer for the army in the very first recruiting drive. When he left for the front, Li Hung-er took his place as captain. Li Hung-er was young, active, and eager. He was a brave leader of men in action, but like many in his command felt entitled to special privileges after having faced danger. This weakness was aggravated by a liking for high living and beautiful women that was stronger even than that of his most susceptible subordinate. Since he himself spent his evenings courting other men’s wives, it was unrealistic to expect that he would hold his colleagues in check or maintain high personal standards before the corps in other respects.

Hung-er, with a German Luger on his hip, a white sash around his waist, and a sparkling white towel on his closely shaven head, cut a dashing figure. He knew well how to charm young women and also how to bully them when necessary. He courted five or six mistresses at a time and kept them in line by making them jealous of one another. One of his first affairs was with Chao Ch’uan-e, the young wife who feared that her family would be attacked as rich peasants. Since her husband was away most of the time working the family holdings on the Western Mountains, she had plenty of opportunity for casual flirtation. Later Hung-er took a liking to Ts’ui-ying, the very attractive bride of a recent recruit to the People’s Liberation Army. Since it was an arranged match between two young people who had never set eyes on each other, the bride had no particular attachment to her soldier husband and was much flattered by Hung-er’s attentions. Hung-er arranged for her to move out of her in-laws’ one-room house into the quarters of a second soldier’s bride who had a room of her own. There he visited her night after night. For variety he seduced the hostess too. The latter was afraid to protest because, as Ts’ui-ying said, “Hung-er is a king in this village. If you displease him he might mobilize the whole of Horse Square against your father’s family since they are so prosperous.”

Later, still another young woman caught Hung-er’s eye. Her name was Fu-e and her husband was a member of the militia under Hunger’s command. Hung-er arranged for him to depart on a long trip and then went to Fu-e with the announcement that “now everything is convenient for us.” When the girl’s aunt came to stay, Hung-er sent her home. When Fu-e remonstrated that this open flaunting of convention might arouse the village against her, Hung-er ordered her to be happy. When she wept instead, he beat her. When Fu-e’s husband returned, Hung-er arranged for her to join the weaving class sponsored by the Women’s Association. Since the students all lived and worked together in the “Foreign House” at the south end of the village, Hung-er was able to visit his mistress there every night. When the girl expressed fear that Hu Hsueh-chen, the head of the Women’s Association, might discover their liaison, the militia captain said, “She dare not oppose me. She’s in the palm of my hand.”

In order to cut a more dashing figure, Hung-er was not above taking a few items from the public warehouse. Chief among these was a pair of spectacles which he thought made him look cultured (an attribute he most certainly lacked at the time). He also took a fountain pen and a pair of brightly colored socks. Gifts for his favorites of the moment cost money, and since in the winter he had little produce that he could sell for cash, he took what he needed from the village stores. Once he took a large jar of salt. Salt, in that saltless region, was as good as silver dollars. The salt taken by Hung-er had been confiscated from Chief-of-Staff Chou Mei-sheng, who had himself grafted it from the public supplies when he was a puppet official. When the keeper of the warehouse found the salt missing and raised a hue and cry, Hung-er lined up the whole militia and demanded to know who had stolen the salt.

Since Man-hsi had stood guard that day, the weight of suspicion fell most heavily on him and no denial on his part did much good because of his already established reputation for carrying away property.

Thus did Hung-er, to cover up his own misdeeds, reward Man-hsi, his most active corpsman, faithful follower, and partner in many an amorous escapade. Hung-er and Man-hsi were so close, in fact, that they had swapped sisters in marriage. With such close personal and family ties one could hardly expect that Hung-er would supervise or correct Man-hsi’s behavior or vice-versa.

Hung-er, Man-hsi; and Yu-hsing were not only militiamen; they were also Communists. Why didn’t the Party branch criticize them, make them correct their behavior, or expel them? As a matter of fact, Fu-yuan and T’ien-ming did make efforts to reform all the the wayward and especially to reform Hung-er, who was setting a bad example for the whole militia. Several times he was brought before the branch executive committee and criticized for his “rascal affairs.” When confronted with his transgressions in open meeting Hung-er was very contrite, apologized for bringing disgrace to the Party, swore that he would correct his behavior and promised to hold the militia in check in the future. But within a few days he seemed to forget his promises and returned to his old ways. When T’ien-ming criticized him privately, Hung-er became angry and swore at him for a meddler. Both T’ien-ming and Fu-yuan found it hard to make a big issue of loose morals because they themseleves were also involved in illicit affairs. Until they found the strength to give up their own liaisons and learned to lead by example, they could not hope to have too much influence along such lines.

Yu-lai, the deputy leader of the Peasants’ Association, made this point clear. This very selfish and quarrelsome man took over a privy that had already been allocated to another peasant, An-feng. When Fu-yuan criticized Yu-lai for occupying An-Feng’s privy, Yu-lai retaliated with direct action. He came to Shih Hsiu-mei’s home at night with several of the militia and arrested Fu-yuan as he slept with her on the k’ang. Thus was Fu-yuan ridiculed before the whole village. He found it difficult to criticize others after that.

The Blackmail of Wang Yu-lai

Certain persons, when solving all kinds of concrete problems, place their personal interests above the Party’s interests; or they are always worrying about their personal gains and losses, weighing their personal interests; or they engage in jobbery, taking advantage of Party work to achieve certain personal aims; or they attempt to pay off their personal grudges against other comrades on the pretext of a question of principle, or of Party interests.

Liu Shao-ch’i, 1942

IRONICALLY, it was Wang Yu-lai, vice-chairman of the Peasants’ Association, who was responsible for the worst abuses of power—abuses which were of a very different order from the petty transgressions and excesses of a Man-hsi or a Yu-hsing, however crude these might be. The ex-bandit, ex-Catholic Yu-lai developed a system all his own for gradually extending his power and influence until he became the most hated man in liberated Long Bow. His method was as old as politics—the witch hunt. Even though T’ien-ming, chairman of the Party branch and director of public security, was responsible for all anti-agent work and asked no help from Yu-lai, the latter, who was neither a Communist nor a policeman, set himself up as a one-man investigation committee, security guard, and arbiter of political loyalty. He prowled around alone at night checking on the state of law and order and accused all those with whom he quarrelled of having secret liaison with the Kuomintang. It was he, more than any other cadre, who put the “agents’ caps” on Catholics’ heads and then used these “caps” and the threat of punishment that went with them to buttress his own position.

By such activity Yu-lai impressed the district leader, a worried man who was glad to see such zeal, especially from an ex-Catholic. At the district leader’s suggestion, Yu-lai’s son, Wen-te, was transferred from the militia to public security work. In the fall of 1946, Wen-te became T’ien-ming’s assistant. Thus, through the back door, Yu-lai gained a foothold that he had been unable to establish through the front door—an official connection with police work. Since his son, Wen-te, was very much under his influence it was as if Yu-lai himself had been appointed to assist T’ien-ming.

Like most self-appointed guardians of political purity, Yu-lai apparently believed that he was really saving the community from counter-revolution. When he went to the county seat on an animal-buying expedition, he boasted that he had single-handedly turned Long Bow upside down. “I can discover enemy agents without even putting on my spectacles,” he declaimed, before a skeptical audience at a street-corner mutton-soup stand. “My beard is a high official’s beard and whoever is ordered by me to die must die.” So saying he scowled the fierce, eyebrow-clashing scowl for which he was famous and looked intently at the faces in the crowd in front of him as if about to pick out an enemy agent right then and there.

During those fateful months of late 1946, when Nationalist troops were driving on Changchih and many persons truly expected a “change of sky,” there was some truth to Yu-lai’s boast that he had turned the village upside down. More than 20 peasants came under suspicion through his efforts alone and though none of them was officially investigated, charged with any crime, or sentenced to punishment, they were subject to constant harassment, detentions, questioning, and discrimination in day-to-day affairs.

If Yu-lai had any doubts about his self-proclaimed mission, they were easily stilled by the gains that accrued to him personally while his anti-agent campaign lasted and his colleagues still believed his accusations. He silenced all critics and solved all personal problems in the same monotonous manner. When he was criticized for refusing to do rear service, he attacked his critic as an agent. When one of his neighbors questioned some joint production accounts, that neighbor was declared an agent. When the parents of his son’s “bought and paid for” fiancee tried to delay the wedding because their daughter was under age, he called them agents too.

This latter accusation and the forced marriage that resulted became a famous case in Long Bow and led eventually to Yu-lai’s own removal as a cadre. The girl, Shen Hsien-e, was without question the most beautiful teenager in the village. She had perfectly proportioned features, lips like twin cherries, jet-black almond eyes under thin arched brows, a glowing olive complexion set off by a delicate cascade of bangs that reached halfway down her forehead and a long black braid that hung to the middle of her back. Her feet, though unbound, were small, as small as many bound feet, and her hands, delicate and slim-fingered, moved with the grace of a butterfly in flight. Animating this outward beauty was an irrepressibly saucy spirit, full of song, laughter, temperament and mischief. Hsien-e was like some mountain flower, exquisite in shape and bright in color, that had somehow blown in and managed to blossom amid the dirt and squalor of the dilapidated, war-wrecked community. There was no man so old, so sick, or so busy that he did not turn his head when she went by.

Yu-lai did not need his glasses to spot feminine beauty any more than he needed them to unearth alleged subversion. He had picked out Hsien-e for his son during the famine year when she was still a little girl and had offered her father, Shen Hsi-le, $90 and 40 catties of millet in return for a promise that she would become Wen-te’s bride when she came of age. On that money and grain Hsi-le kept his family alive through the terrible winter of 1942. In 1946, although the girl was still only 14, Yu-lai demanded that she marry his son without delay. Hsi-le refused to let her go. Yu-lai demanded his money back with interest. Hsi-le set out to raise the money. Afraid of losing the girl, Yu-lai changed his tactics and accused Hsi-le of being an enemy agent. Since the poor man had actually helped Father Sun escape and was among those Catholics who returned to the church at Horse Square for mass on that famous Easter Sunday, it was not hard to make this accusation stick. Yu-lai arrested Hsi-le, strung him up and beat him with a mule whip until he himself confessed that he was in fact an agent. To make doubly sure, Yu-lai also arrested Hsi-le’s nephew, Hei-hsiao, a boy from Hukuan, where Hsi-le had orginally lived and where his daughter, Hsien-e, was born. Hei-hsiao was beaten by Wen-te until he confirmed the story told by his uncle. Then Yu-lai put it up to Hsi-le—either give up his daughter or face investigation by the county police. Hsi-le agreed to the match.

When Wen-te took his fiancee to the district office for a marriage license he told her to lie about her age if she valued her father’s life. She said she was 16. The license was issued and the marriage duly consummated by carrying the bride to her husband’s home in a red sedan chair. Once they had her there, her husband and father-in-law never let the captive beauty out of the house. They worked her like a slave in the traditional manner and beat her frequently. Because Yu-lai had such power in the village, even the Women’s Association dared not intervene.

Yu-lai’s closest neighbor, Ch’ou-har, had reason to believe that the father and son beat the young bride most severely when she rejected her father-in-law’s advances. Ch’ou-har told some of his cronies what he suspected. When wind of this got back to Yu-lai, he sent his son, Wen-te, to thrash Ch’ou-har. The son did his job well. He beat the old man with a plow handle until he fell unconscious, and when Ch’ou-har came to on the ground, Wen-te beat and kicked him some more. From that day onward Ch’ou-har also wore an agent’s cap.

Seeing just how ruthless Yu-lai could be, the cadres all gave him a wide berth. Since nobody could positively prove that his charges were false, and since it was common knowledge that counter-revolutionary conspiracies did exist, Yu-lai’s growing blackmail went unchallenged for a long time. When the vice-chairman of the Peasants’ Association issued orders, people thought twice before refusing them.

***********

Early in 1947, Chang T’ien-ming, Shih Fu-yuan and Chang Kuei-ts’ai, the three most able and experienced cadres in the village left Long Bow to help organize land reform and winter production in other communities. The promotion of these three to full-time district work no doubt strengthened the administration of the Fifth District as a whole, but it was a severe blow to progress in Long Bow itself.

The men who replaced the three all lacked prestige, experience, and political understanding. Either they were wanting in strength of character or else they were very self-interested. Not only did they prove unable to reform the political climate, but under their novice leadership all the excesses, transgressions, and abuses of power characteristic of the militia under Hung-er, and the political blackmail carried on by Yu-lai and his son grew to even more alarming proportions.

The tall, handsome Hsin-fa, who had for some time been educational director of the militia without achieving any remarkable results, replaced T’ien-ming as secretary of the Party branch. Unlike T’ien-ming, however, he did not have the prestige of an underground anti-Japanese fighter to draw upon in leading the people. Nor was he strong-willed enough to make a fight for the principles in which he believed. He preferred rather to keep on good terms with everyone and become known as a lao hao jen or “old good fellow.”

Ch’un-hsi, the hired laborer, who had refused for a long time to join the attack on the gentry because of his love for his former employer’s daughter-in-law, was chosen to take Fu-yuan’s place as village head. He not only lacked prestige; he lacked confidence in his own ability, wanted above all the good opinion of others, and therefore, although he worked hard, was unable to criticize, correct, or lead others.

An older man, Wang Hsi-yu, a close friend of Wang Yu-lai, replaced Kuei-ts’ai as deputy village head. Hsi-yu had been active in all the campaigns of the Settling Accounts Movement but at heart was a self-seeker. His father had exploited the whole village in the old days as a licensed middleman—a person officially designated to act as a go-between in business transactions, extracting a commission whether or not he performed any service. Perhaps because of this background Hsi-yu still exhibited a strong tinge of middleman’s opportunism on which he relied to advance his personal fortunes at the expense of the rest of the community.

Yu-lai’s son, Wen-te, by a natural promotion, took T’ien-ming’s place as head of public security. He was very young, very strong-willed, very interested in women—he outdid even Hung-er with his liaisons—and very much under the influence of his father. With Wen-te’s promotion, Yu-lai’s foothold in police work soon became a stranglehold upon it.

Hung-er, with all the faults previously mentioned, remained captain of the militia.

This left Wang Yu-lai, still deputy chairman of the Peasants’ Association, as the oldest, most experienced, and strongest-willed of the cadres. Even though he was not a Communist, he easily dominated the others and set the tone of public life. The chairman of the Peasants’ Association, the ex-Catholic Cheng-k’uan, the one man who by his rank and position could and should have kept Yu-lai in check, was no match for him. Cheng-k’uan was sincere, good natured, hardworking, but he had no conception of the evil Yu-lai intended and was easily misled. He was the type of man known to the peasants as lao shih or honest. Wang Yu-lai well knew how to impose upon such “honest” peasants as Cheng-k’uan.

With such a constellation of leaders it was hardly a coincidence that the Chinese New Year, which fell in February in 1947, began with a shocking incident. A large group of militiamen, who for convenience were still quartered in the North Temple, decided to celebrate the coming of the long-awaited holidays in the manner of old-time rural guards. They chose Man-hsi to go to the puppet Chief-of-Staff Chou Mei-sheng’s home, seize his daughter-in-law and bring her to headquarters for their collective enjoyment. There in the temple they stripped her and possessed her, one after the other.

It was likewise hardly a coincidence that after the promotions of January the spring recruiting drive degenerated into a farce which brought political life in Long Bow to its post-liberation nadir. When the Border Region Government issued its third call for an enlarged army, Party members and militiamen were asked to take the lead as before. Hung-er, whose two brothers were already in the army, went to Ch’un-hsi, the new village head, with a frown on his face. “Look here,” he said, “You’ll have to decide whether I should go or not.”

“Wait a minute,” replied Ch’un-hsi. “Don’t get excited. Maybe there is some other way.”

Egged on by Yu-lai, who had old scores to settle and did not fancy sending his own son off to fight, they decided to fill the village quota with some of those “sour and slippery” characters who had given the new administration the most trouble from the very beginning. With Man-hsi’s muscular help, the outstanding puppet leaders and the disaffected Catholics who wore invisible “agent’s caps” were hauled to the village office and told to prepare for a trip to the recruiting office.

Li Ho-jen, the leader of one dissident clique, had himself just returned from a term as stretcher bearer at the front. He brought back with him a discharge paper stating that he had been sent home early because of illness. Despite this paper Yu-lai charged him with deserting the stretcher corps and ordered him to enlist at once in the army. Shen Ch’uan-te, Ho-jen’s mouthpiece and chief admirer, although well over 40 years old, was likewise instructed to report for duty. So was Chin-chu, the slow-witted peasant whom Yu-hsing, for one, wanted out of the way, the better to court his free and easy wife. Chin-hung, a middle peasant whose career as a member of the puppet Self-Defense Corps had been especially notorious, “volunteered” when Yu-lai said to him, “You were eager enough to serve the foreign devils; how come you are afraid of battle now?”

Altogether a dozen or so “sour and slippery” characters were collected. Along with a few genuine volunteers, they were packed off to the recruiting office in Lucheng. Old Shen, whose hair was already turning grey, looked around him as they marched off and said, “This is indeed a father and son army”—a play on words which the local cadres did not find funny. (The People’s Liberation Army was commonly called by the affectionate title of “Brother and Son Army.”)

When the Long Bow contingent arrived at the county seat, the recruiting officers were shocked by the advanced age and bedraggled appearance of the majority. They questioned the recruits closely and soon discovered that they were not volunteers at all. They thereupon sent them home together with an investigator whose task it was to find out how such a motley crew had ever been assembled in the first place.

A second drive was organized with great difficulty. In the end another dozen young men were found who really wanted to go or were persuaded to do so. Among these was at least one who had little choice. This was Li K’ao-lur, a young immigrant from a Nationalist-held village in Hopei province. He had eloped only a few weeks before with a girl of the same surname who was a resident of his home village and a distant cousin. He had fallen in love with her, and she with him, but according to local custom the match was out of the question. Not only was a match between cousins considered incestuous, but both the young people had long since been promised to others. When they defied the whole community and ran away, they were sentenced to death in absentia. They fled to the Liberated Area of the Taihang Mountains and finally arrived in Long Bow where young Li had an uncle to whom he appealed for help. This uncle let the young couple live in his house temporarily, but word of their refuge somehow reached their home village. A representative was sent by the Li clan to bring them home for trial and punishment. When the representative arrived in Long Bow, he went straight to the village office and demanded that the runaways be turned over to him. Ch’un-hsi stalled for time by pretending that he had never heard of the two lovers. Then, hard up for recruits, he made a bargain with Li K’ao-lur. If Li would join the army, Ch’un-hsi would deny all knowledge of his whereabouts, send the clan representative home empty-handed, and recommend to the Peasants’ Association that the pair be given land and housing in Long Bow. With his life, his marriage, and his future assured, Li K’ao-lur agreed. The army got a fine recruit.

This recruiting drive only pointed up what had become increasingly obvious for a long time—that the revolutionary cadres and militiamen of Long Bow were gradually alienating themselves from the people by arbitrary orders, indiscriminate beatings, the assumption of special privileges, and “rascal behavior.” Nor was Long Bow the only community in the district where a relatively small number of active young men had “mounted the horse,” as the peasants so aptly put it, and were riding around to suit their own fancy. By the same token the Fifth District was not the only district where such things were occurring in Lucheng County, nor was Lucheng County itself an exception among the counties of the Taihang Region. In the spring of 1947, the government and the Party organization of the Taihang Region took note of the critical situation and launched a “Wash Your Face” campaign designed to put a stop to all such tendencies, and to overcome the opportunist and hedonist attitudes that fostered them.

The method adopted in this campaign was to set up a gate or council of delegates, elected by the peasants at large, before which all the cadres had to answer for their motives and their actions. The phrase “Wash Your Face” came from Chairman Mao himself who had many times explained that the thoughts of revolutionary leaders inevitably became spotted and stained by the corrupt habits of the past and the rotten social environment that surrounded them on every side, just as their faces became spotted and stained by the dust and dirt of the natural environment. These spots and stains had to be washed off frequently just as people daily washed their faces to make them clean again. And just as one could not see the dirt on one’s own face without consulting a mirror, so one could not clearly see one’s own bad thinking and bad behavior without consulting the people who suffered as a consequence of both and could therefore reflect a truer image.

Delegates were duly chosen by the peasants of Long Bow, and the village cadres went before them to review their records and examine their errors, but the movement was not successful. As soon as the district leaders called for criticism, not only the honest majority but also the “sour and slippery” minority came forward with opinions. The opinions of this latter group were destructive, designed to overthrow rather than reform the revolutionary cadres. Those who raised them spoke without thought as to who might be found to replace the objects of their wrath. From such an overthrow only the landlords stood to gain.

Instead of allowing this storm of criticism to rage and using it to educate the peasants to distinguish honest from dishonest opinions so that the cadres could reform and all the people profit from a living political lesson, the district leaders lost their nerve and retreated. They intervened on behalf of the cadres and in effect suppressed criticism, both honest and dishonest. As a result, although some cadres, getting a scent of things to come, changed their outlook to a certain extent and corrected some of their faults, others, such as Yu-lai, only became more arrogant than before and retaliated against those who had dared to criticize them. Clearly something more drastic was needed if the tendencies which were already alienating the leaders from the people and undermining not only the village administration and the Peasants’ Association, but the Communist Party branch as well were not seriously to undermine and compromise the Revolution.

***********

In January 1948, the future of the whole movement, in spite of its extraordinary successes, was far from certain. In Long Bow the upheaval had swept like a whirlwind through the village, had broken up the old landlord-tenant system, and smashed it beyond repair. It was mourned, if at all, by only a small minority. But only bits and pieces of that which was to replace it had as yet been created. Exploitation and privilege, some of it new in form, still existed. Very little had been permanently settled. The oligarchy of the gentry based on centuries of tradition and buttressed with all the sanctions of custom, religion, Confucian ethics, and the naked force of hired guns, had been replaced by an interregnum of young, formerly landless or land-poor peasants. They were bitter, creative, passionate, selfish, full of energy, full of hatred, full of yearning for something new and better, yet easily diverted down paths of pleasure and privilege. Suddenly thrust onto the stage, backed by the rifles of a 100-man militia and supported by the overwhelming majority of the people who had divided the “fruits,” what would they do with their new power?

Did these leaders, who had climbed from the mud and slime and still carried with them the stains of their origin, possess the vision and the skill to correct the excesses that marred the movement? Could they abolish petty advantages won through the lever of leadership, lead all the poor to stand up, and unite the whole population around that vast program of private, mutual, and public production which alone could lift Long Bow out of the miasma of the past? And if they did not possess such vision and skill, who did?

The Search for the Poor and Hired

Since powerful imperialism and its allies, the reactionary forces in China, have occupied China’s key cities for a long time, if the revolutionary forces do not wish to compromise with them but want to carry on the struggle staunchly, and if they intend to accumulate strength and steel themselves and avoid decisive battles with their powerful enemy before they have mustered enough strength, then they must build the backward villages into advanced, consolidated base areas, into great military, political, economic and cultural revolutionary bastions, so that they can fight the fierce enemy who utilizes the cities to attack the rural districts and, through a protracted struggle, gradually win over-all victory for the revolution.

Mao Tse-tung

Cosmic Wei Ch’i

O wait for the pure sky!

See how charming is the earth

Like a red-faced girl clothed in white!

Such is the charm of these mountains and rivers

Calling innumerable heroes to vie with each other

in pursuing her.

Mao Tse-tung

WINTER IN North China is a radiant season. Clear skies often follow one another in unbroken succession for weeks at a time. Day after day the sun, no bigger than a ten-dollar gold piece, slides across a translucent sky and bedazzles all the visible world with light so bright that one has the feeling of living at a great height, of existing on a high plateau from the edge of which one can well look down on all the less-favored, nether regions of the universe. Adding substance to this feeling is the barrenness of the landscape. Surely, only on the moon are such vast expanses of hill and mountain so desolately bare of trees, so stripped of brush, so plucked of thorn or scraggly heather.

In the loess regions of the Yellow River bend this other-worldliness is accentuated by the contouring and terracing by means of which men, through countless generations, have transformed the dome-shaped heights. Like the drooping petals of many-petalled flowers, the fields of loess overhang each other. And though, in reality, they are all made up of the same ochre-brown, wind-blown soil, the play of light and shadow on the many-surfaced knolls and ridges brings to the countryside an ever-changing pageant of color.

A stranger travelling here is startled to see smoke rising from the ground. Is it possible that the blanket of loess on the earth’s crust also serves as cover for volcanic furnaces? No. The smoke comes from the kitchen fires which the peasants have built in their cave homes. The cavernous native dwellings burrow horizontally into the perpendicular walls of earth that drop from the edges of the terraced fields and line the sides of water-gouged ravines. From the innermost recesses of these caves, flues rise to the slopes above, emitting smoke that bears witness to domestic life in places seemingly devoid of human habitation.

From such a cave as this, lost in the badlands of North Shensi, Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Communist Party of China, surveyed the continent that surrounded him in the last weeks of December 1947, and discussed what he saw with those colleagues of the Central Committee who had remained with him on the western side of the Yellow River.

Superficially, their position seemed perilous indeed. In March the Nationalist General Hu Ts’ung-nan, famous for his celibacy and his concentration camps, had invaded the Yenan region with 300,000 men, all crack troops that had never been risked in battle against the Japanese. These forces quickly occupied Yenan itself and then moved north to take Yenchuan and Suiteh. By autumn General Hu held most of the county towns and all of the main highways of North Shensi. Mao, with a small headquarters group, played hide and seek with the enemy’s scouts while the 25,000-man Northeast People’s Army enticed the main body of the invading forces into a hare-and-hounds trek through the hinterland. To observers in Shanghai and Washington, this looked like the last of the annihilation campaigns of the 1930’s with the revolutionary forces completely encircled and the Communist leaders in danger of capture.

The balance of forces was assessed quite differently by the Communist Party. Mao summed up the Party’s estimate in an address entitled “The Present Situation and Our Tasks” which was delivered on Christmas Day, 1947. Mao later called it “a programmatic document in the political, military, and economic fields for the entire period of the overthrow of the Chiang Kai-shek ruling clique and the founding of a new democratic China.”* It was a speech so extraordinarily calm and confident in tone that it is hard to believe, even now, that it could have been delivered from hidden heaquarters by a leader with a price on his head.

In the preceding decades, Mao had covered most of China’s 18 original provinces on foot. As he prepared this speech he must have recreated, in his mind’s eye, the whole sweep of his vast country and tried to envision entire, in all its variety, in all its contradictory and dialectical motion, the ebb and flow of the great struggle then in progress in China. In the context of such a panorama, the predicament of his headquarters group came into focus as only one facet of a many-sided nation-wide campaign, the outcome of which could not possibly be decided in the badlands of North Shensi, but ultimately only on the plains of Manchuria and in the great basin of the Huai River in Central China.

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In order to clarify the military aspects of China’s revolutionary war, Mao had more than once compared the Chinese sub-continent to a vast board marked out with intersecting mountains and rivers as if for a game of wei ch’i (known in Japan as go). In this game, which is played with hundreds of uniform chips, enclosures may be formed not only around unoccupied spots but also around the adversary’s unprotected men which are then taken, their empty places being transformed into conquered territory. In wei ch’i, unlike chess, the interest is not concentrated in one spot, around the king, but is diffused all over the board. Every single spot is equally important in affecting the outcome and counts in the grand total which represents the position of each side at the end of the struggle.

Refusing to “match pearls with the dragon god of the sea” (that is to match force with superior force in head-on collision), Mao had traditionally maneuvered his relatively scarce red chips—the armies, brigades, and regiments under his Party’s command—in such a way as to encircle and wipe out, one after the other, the enemy’s far more numerous white chips—the armies, brigades, and regiments under Kuomintang, later Japanese, and then again Kuomintang command. “Preserve ourselves, annihilate the enemy”—such was the primary requirement of the struggle.

As the Civil War of the late 1940’s spread across North China, even little children soon learned to grasp the lethal arithmetic of this strategy. Lists of enemy soldiers killed, prisoners taken, and guns and bullets captured were tabulated on conspicuous walls in every liberated village. As the tallies mounted, it became obvious that at a certain point all the terms of reference must change and that qualities must be transformed into their opposites. The few must become the many and the many must become the few. The weak must become the strong and the strong must become the weak. On front after front the defensive must evolve into the offensive, and the offensive must decay into the defensive. Eventually a dynamic revolutionary China must replace a stagnant, counter-revolutionary China.

In the military sphere only one thing could undermine the success of the revolutionary forces: the abandonment of the wei ch’i-like fighting tactics refined by Mao Tse-tung out of the raw experiences of 20 years of revolutionary warfare. As long as the commanders of the People’s Liberation Army addressed themselves to the annihilation of enemy combat power and not to the capture of cities, as long as they avoided battles of attrition and obtained quick decisions by concentrating three, four, even five or six times the forces arrayed against them in any given battle, as long as they replenished their units with most of the manpower and all of the arms captured in such battles and thus made the front, as well as the rear, their recruiting ground and supply base, the People’s Liberation Army was bound to win every major campaign and ultimately victory in the Civil War. Thus did Mao project the military future in his Christmas Day speech.

But war is only an instrument of policy, a continuation of politics by violent means. Without a valid political line no volunteer army could long hold together, no military strategy long succeed. To the problem of over-all policy, therefore, China’s revolutionary leaders had always devoted the bulk of their attention. Applying wei ch’i-like tactics to this sphere as well, the revolutionary forces aspired to occupy as much political space as possible, to win as large a section of the social fabric as could be won, to neutralize those sections that could not be won over, and so isolate the genuinely hostile sections that they could be overwhelmed. As Mao put it, the political line of his Party was one of “developing the progressive forces, winning over the middle forces, and isolating the die-hard forces.”

By “progressive forces” Mao meant the workers and poor peasants. By “middle forces” Mao meant the middle peasants, small independent craftsmen and traders, students, teachers, professors, and free professionals. He also meant all those capitalists who had not yet been swallowed up by the four big families of the Chiang clique and the foreign business interests to whom they were linked. These two latter groups, plus the landlords, made up the “die-hard forces.”

The “middle forces” could not be won over if the “progressive forces” insisted on socialism as the immediate goal. More basic still, the objective conditions required for a transition to socialism, for the abolition of private ownership in the means of production in all fields, did not exist in China. Mao therefore proposed as the goal of the Civil War an intervening stage of society to be characterized by a mixed economy and a multi-class government. He outlined in three sentences how such an economy should be created: “Confiscate the land of the feudal classes and turn it over to the peasants. Confiscate monopoly capital, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, T. V. Soong, H. H. Kung, and Chen Li-fu and turn it over to the new democratic state. Protect the commerce and industry of the national bourgeoisie.”

Upon the three-fold foundation of this proposed public, co-operative, and private-enterprise economy, Mao called on the Chinese people to erect a coalition government in which many groups and parties would share power with the Communists. Such was the basic program of the Chinese Revolution put forth by Mao Tse-tung on the eve of 1948.

“Develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces, isolate the die-hard forces”—the whole of this political line, and not some single aspect, was vital to success. Yet warping pressures constantly arose. Reports from widely scattered areas indicated that tendencies toward Left extremism in land reform and commandism in leadership were all too common. From below came the impulse for an all-out struggle which would ignore the “middle forces,” destroy private commerce and industry, expropriate middle peasants and re-order the world in the interest of the poor peasants and workers alone. At the same time the reports showed a strong Right tendency on the part of certain middle-level cadres and some key leaders in the villages. They were thwarting the just demands of the poor peasants and workers and advocating compromise with the gentry because they feared the Kuomintang offensive and hesitated before the prospect of massive U.S. aid to Chiang Kai-shek. Mao and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party waged an unending battle against both these impulses, either of which could lead to disaster. The emphasis, however, at least at the beginning, was against rightism, for rightism undermined the very will to fight.

In the countryside the “middle forces” were predominantly the middle peasants. These independent small holders numbered close to 100 million in the nation as a whole and comprised 20 to 40 percent of the peasants in any given community. Their support was absolutely essential to any realistic program of social change.

In his Christmas speech, Mao outlined a balanced peasant policy very concisely: “First, the demands of the poor peasants and farm laborers must be satisfied; this is the most fundamental task in the land reform. Second, there must be firm unity with the middle peasants and their interest must not be damaged. As long as we grasp these two basic principles, we can certainly carry out our task in the land reform successfully.”

To make sure that these policies were not only understood but also faithfully carried out, Mao further called for a drastic overhaul of the whole Communist Party organization:

In the Party’s local organizations, especially the organizations at the primary level in the countryside, the problem of impurities in the class composition in our ranks and in the style of work is still unsolved. During the 11 years, 1937-1947, the membership of our Party has grown from several tens of thousands to 2,700,000, and this is a very big leap forward. This has made our Party a more powerful party than any in Chinese history. It has enabled us to defeat Japanese imperialism, beat back Chiang Kai-shek’s offensives, lead the Liberated Areas with a population of more than 100 million, and lead a People’s Liberation Army two million strong. But shortcomings have also cropped up. Many landlords, rich peasants, and riffraff have seized the opportunity to sneak into our Party. In the rural areas, they control a number of Party, government and people’s organizations, tyrannically abuse their power, ride roughshod over the people, distort the Party’s policies and alienate these organizations from the masses and prevent the land reform from being thorough. This grave situation sets us the task of educating and re-organizing the ranks of our Party.

Three days after this speech the Draft Agrarian Law which clearly defined the content of the Communist Party’s new agrarian policy was announced to the whole nation. The road ahead was as precisely marked as law and verbal declaration could make it.

But to define a policy and to carry it out in practice in tens of thousands of isolated villages are two different things. This is especially so when that policy contains within itself some elements of conflict. Mao’s two basic principles on the peasant question seemed clear enough; yet they were difficult to carry out in practice because, to a certain extent, they embodied a contradiction. As has been demonstrated in the case of Long Bow Village, poverty in North China was so all-embracing that the demands of the poor peasants and farm laborers could hardly be satisfied by distributing the property of the gentry alone. The expropriation of at least a part of the property of the less onerous exploiters was necessary if the poor peasants were to gain the minimum worldly goods they needed. In many communities even major inroads into the possessions of such middle families could not guarantee fanshen to all the poor. Yet even the slightest inroads invariably threatened the middle peasants if it did not, in fact, actually dispossess them. To protect the interests of the middle peasants and not harm them in any way apparently meant to disappoint many poor peasants and leave them without such essentials as a share in a donkey, a cart, or a plow.

Here was the hard kernel of the problem, the issue around which, once the landlords had been overpowered and stripped, the storm of the land revolution continued to swirl. On the antagonisms thus engendered, commandism, hedonism, and opportunism fed. If this contradiction was not properly resolved, democracy could hardly be expected to flourish. A major clash between poor and middle peasants might well do away with peasant self-rule before it had a chance to establish itself. From such a denouement only the Kuomintang and its American backers stood to gain.

That is why, in the winter of 1948, the Communist Party organized work teams in all the old Liberated Areas and sent them to representative villages to check on the status of the land reform movement. By concentrating strong forces in a few places the Communist Party and the Border Region Government hoped to obtain an accurate estimate of differing conditions and to work out a program of action suited to the peculiar problems of each area. The guiding strategy here was the point-and-area method by which China’s revolutionary leaders approached all serious problems, investigating and solving them first on a small scale in individual communities, then applying the lessons learned on a large scale to whole districts and counties.

In Lucheng County the Communist Party picked 11 communities. Long Bow Village was chosen as one of these not because it was typical but because it had so many special problems; and these problems had created an extremely complicated, difficult, and potentially dangerous political situation. If the knot in Long Bow could be untied, there were few tangles in the whole region that could not be unravelled.

All this, of course, my interpreter Ch’i Yun and I were quite unaware of when we went to Long Bow to see what the land reform movement was all about. We chose Long Bow simply because it was the village closest to the university where we were teaching, a village to which we could easily walk each day and return before dark.

To the Village

The only way to know conditions is to make an investigation of society, to investigate the life and activities of each social class …. To do this, we should first cast our eyes down and not hold our heads high and gaze skywards. If a person does not care, or does not make up his mind, to cast his eyes down, he can never really learn anything about China.

Mao Tse-tung

ON THE March day in 1948 that Ch’i Yun and I first set off for Long Bow, the weather was far from auspicious. Two inches of snow had fallen in the night, completely obliterating the promise of spring which had so stirred me during the New Year celebrations of the previous week. Instead of puffs of white in an azure sky, an unbroken overcast pressed down on all the visible world. So dark was the underlining of this cloud mass that the new snow seemed to have lost all its whiteness and to have absorbed the dark, near-black of the sky. A cold wind gathered chill as it swept the frozen land. Even the heavy wool-lined greatcoat that was my most valuable possession failed to keep me warm, while Ch’i Yun, who wore only a single woolen scarf about her neck to supplement her worn padded suit, actually shivered as she walked.

Ch’i Yun was not quite five feet tall. In order to see her face I had to stoop. Even then I couldn’t see much of it as her head was bent forward to avoid the wind and she had pulled her soft visor cap so far down over her forehead that only her lips, now drawn and grey, were still exposed. She warmed her hands by shoving each of them into the ample sleeve opposite so that her arms formed an unbroken roll against her chest. Head down, elbows pressed against her ribs, body thrust forward into the wind, she was a lumpy bundle of faded blue that might have been woman, child, or walking panda. I almost laughed, but the cold was no laughing matter. It had, however, one advantage. It kept the snow dry so that our feet, clad in cloth-soled shoes, were not immediately soaked through.

In such weather one expected the countryside to be deserted, but that day it seemed abnormally desolate. Not one human being, nor for that matter any other living thing, stirred on the surface of the land. The village we were approaching seemed like some ruin long abandoned to the rats, the field mice, and the wolves.

Nor was our first encounter in the village any more reassuring than the weather. We found no one on the main street. Quick glances through the gates we passed revealed courtyards just as empty. Then suddenly, from a side alley, stepped a young man clad in a dark blue cadre’s jacket. In his hand he held a revolver, cocked and ready to fire.

“Comrade,” said Ch’i Yun calmly, “We are looking for the district magistrate.” As she spoke she handed the armed man a letter stamped with the great seal of Northern University. Her black eyes, under heavy lashes, liberated from under the visor of her cap at last, looked boldly at him.

“I’ll take you to him,” said the man, holding his revolver in his right hand while he turned the letter awkwardly around with his left. Then, seeing us both staring at the gun, he added “Pardon the armament. We had some trouble here yesterday.”

He turned and led us down the street, glancing into each courtyard and alley as he went, obviously on edge, ready for anything. We passed a high brick wall that cut the large grounds of the former Catholic mission off from the street and turned into one of the outer courts of this extensive compound. This court turned out to be the seat of the district government. In a low-ceilinged, earth-floored room two more blue-clad cadres were seated at a low table. As they stood up to greet us, we could see their breath on the air. Both were armed, as was our guide, with German Lugers.

One of the men who rose from the table was District Magistrate Li. He took our letter of introduction, read it, welcomed us, and then he too apologized for the guns.

“We don’t usually carry them,” he said. “But conditions here are exceptional. Someone tried to kill one of us yesterday.”

“Don’t you know who it was?” asked Ch’i Yun.

“We’ve arrested four suspects, all of them leading cadres in this village. But who knows? The attacker may still be at large. We can’t take any chances.”

This Li was a short man with a friendly smile and a gift for lively talk. The second man, taller by a head than Li, was Comrade Hou Pao-pei, leader of the land reform work team. Magistrate Li turned over to him our letter with the suggestion that he arrange for us to visit one or two poor peasant families as an introduction to the village.

“That is what we are doing now,” said Hou, speaking slowly, as if his every word were weighted. “We have been in the village a week and we have done nothing but visit the homes of poor peasants. We have already found a number of basic elements. If you’d like to talk to some of them, I can arrange it.”

By “basic element” Hou meant an honest-to-goodness poor peasant.

Ch’i Yun and I were as anxious to meet some real poor peasants as Comrade Hou was to introduce us to them, even though under the circumstances I felt very much like a visitor at a gallery being led to a hall of living exhibits.

Team leader Hou strode ahead of us out the door and through the compound gate to the street. He did not bother to draw his gun as he went, nor did he glance nervously around as had our first guide. Although apparently aware of great danger, he faced it stoically. He was obviously not a man to panic easily.

We turned southward down the main street and then eastward up a narrow lane. It lay so deep in shadow that I wondered for a moment if night had fallen.

Comrade Hou led us directly to a mud hut that was miserable, dark, almost bare of possessions. Its furnishings consisted of one tall wooden cabinet set against the wall, a low k’ang, and a mud-brick stove. The only utensils in sight were one large earthen jar, three cracked bowls, and one round-bottomed iron pot. This was the dwelling place and these the worldly goods of the poor peasant, Wang Wen-ping.

Inside the hut the still air was as cold as the north wind that blew down the open alley outside. Wang’s iron pot sat on the stove, but there was no fire burning there, nor was there anywhere in sight any fuel from which a fire could be made. That fire was not a complete stranger to this dwelling was indicated by the paper on the single window. This had not been renewed for many years and had been stained dark brown by smoke. In two or three places the paper was badly torn, but these breaks did not add chill to the interior because there was no door across the entrance in any case. Once our eyes got used to the darkness we saw also that all four walls and the wattled ceiling overhead were black with layered creosote.

On entering this hut our nostrils were assailed by an indescribable odor—organic, sharp, yet not foul. This was an odor that we were to become familiar with as time went on, the odor of raw garlic from the throats of the occupants of the house. When one came close enough to catch the air that one of the garlic eaters had just exhaled, the stench was overwhelming, stinging, rank, but diffused as it was in this cold room, it hung like some memory of decay and puzzled us both.

We sat down on the edge of the k’ang. Wang’s wife huddled into a corner and covered herself with the only ragged quilt that the family possessed. Wang himself squatted by the doorway, his back to the wall opposite us, and used the sill as a convenient obstacle against which to knock his pipe to remove the ashes. This pipe he constantly filled, lit, puffed, and filled again, thus infusing into the garlic-tainted air an acrid tinge of tobacco smoke.

Wang’s broad face was heavily accented by two full eyebrows and a ragged mustache. His skin was rendered abnormally dark by a patina of grime that nothing short of an afternoon in the bathhouse at Changchih could remove. His clothes, hanging loose as a lizard’s skin over his gaunt frame, were patched at the arms and worn through in many places so that they revealed, as through a lattice, the soiled cotton padding beneath. This padding had been so mauled and compacted by years of wear that it hardly seemed capable of insulating him any longer from the cold. Yet he appeared to be quite comfortable as he squatted in front of us.

The room was so gloomy that it was hard even to make out the features of Mother Wang. I recall only a few wisps of greying hair, a toothless grin, heavy lines on a leathery face, and a black tunic spotted with grease.

Slowly, haltingly, in response to persistent questioning, Old Wang began to tell Ch’i Yun about his life, and she relayed everything he told her to me.

Wang and his wife had once owned land in Long Bow but lost it to a landlord through default on a small debt. Famine drove them from the village and they wandered many years as beggars. When they finally came home after the war, they brought with them enough money to buy half an acre and received two and a half more as their share of the “fruits,” but since they owned no draft animal and since Wang could no longer work hard, life was still very difficult for them.

“I belong to a mutual-aid team,” the old peasant said dolefully. “But it seems as if I am always working for others and they never work for me. There are four poor families in the group, and all the work for soldiers’ dependents is done by the four of us. We get no return for that.

“As for the distribution, I didn’t get much. The cadres said I was an obstinate old man and didn’t give me any part of an ox or a donkey. Others got them all right. I didn’t even get a cart. They didn’t even let me buy a chest that I liked. It was given to someone else. But the cadres got what they wanted.”

“Didn’t you get anything useful?” Ch’i Yun asked.

“I did get a long table, a little wooden box, an old pair of trousers, the felt mat on the k’ang, and two ragged suits for the boy.”

“What about the wooden cabinet?” asked Ch’i Yun, pointing to the tall chest.

“Oh no, that is not mine. That belongs to the neighbors. They needed room for their loom and had to get it out of the way.”

“Didn’t you get a house? What about this house?”

“This is the house I used to live in. It was mine years ago. I lost it when I lost the land. Now I have it back again,” said Wang without the slightest trace of enthusiasm.

“What do you think about your class? Do you think you are still a poor peasant?”

“I think I have really fanshened,” said Wang, “because now I have three and a half acres, a house, food to eat, no debts. But still I am a poor peasant. Everybody says I am poor because I have no draft animal. I have to pay for plowing and when I grind grain I have to push the stone around by myself. My land is poor. None of the land around here is any good. Also I am old. I have no capital for handicraft production though the old lady does do some spinning. But she can only spin two ounces a day. If she does any more her arms ache. For a catty of thread she can get a catty and a half of cotton at the co-op. But that’s a poor rate.”

Old Wang blamed many of these difficulties on the bad cadres and suggested that all the poor peasants should organize strongly together to protect themselves, “because there may still be some bad elements in the village.”

Just as we were about to take our leave a second peasant pushed his way through the door. He was in a loquacious mood and extremely anxious to contact the foreigner. A sprightly man of 54, well-muscled and energetic, he sported a combed and clipped grey beard that gave his face the distinguished look of some gentleman in a London club. To add to this effect, his padded pants were made of white undyed homespun in a village where most men wore dark blue or black. This was actually a sign of poverty, an indication that he could not afford dye, but to me the white recalled the cricket club affluence of the colonialists in Shanghai and Hong Kong. His jacket was light blue and very clean. On his head he wore a felt skull cap. Instead of the usual wood and brass tobacco pipe, he carried in his hand a pipe made of silver.

This peasant introduced himself. His name, he said, was Shen Ch’uan-te and he was a “basic element.” Then he launched into a rambling story that seemed to have no end. There was no need to ask him questions, for the words poured from his lips in a torrent.

The hardships of his early life closely paralleled those suffered by Old Wang but he did not dwell on them. What he wanted to tell us had to do with events that followed the liberation of the village after the Japanese occupation. The new cadres, he swore, were worse than the old. He listed them all in order of merit, beginning with Hsin-fa, the secretary of the branch, who was tolerable, and ending with Wen-te, the captain of the police, and Hung-er, the captain of the militia, who were both tyrants.

Exactly what the cadres had done to our informant was not clear. He spoke up, he said, and they called him an agent. Then they denied him his share of the “fruits of struggle.” Almost in the same breath he boasted that he had received three acres of land, some grain, and some clothes. All he had ever done to arouse the cadre’s wrath was to go to Horse Square to pray in the Church there. For that they clapped an agent’s cap on his head. Though he still went to meetings, he did not dare say anything and only sat in a dark corner afraid.

“Mao Tse-tung,” said Shen, “should not be like this!”

This poor peasant with the silver pipe and the white cotton pants would have kept us the rest of the day and half the night as well if we had been able to sit and hear him out. Unfortunately, we could not do so. We had to get back to Kao Settlement before dark and so broke off the interview and took our leave of Wang and Shen while the latter was still detailing the grievances so long pent up in his breast.

As we walked back across the flat at nightfall I asked Ch’i Yun what she thought of the men we had met.

“Old Wang seemed honest enough to me,” Ch’i said. “But he doesn’t understand much. As for that Shen, he likes to blow the cow [boast]. I don’t believe half of what he said.”

“One thing is certain,” she added after taking a few quick steps in silence. “There are plenty of problems in that village.”

***********

One immediate problem overshadowed all others. This was the need to investigate the attempt to murder a work team member which had occurred the day before.

Undisputed facts about the attempt were few. They had been summarized for us by the Team Leader Hou as follows:

Chang Ch’uer, the youngest member of the team, was returning to the District Office from Shen Ch’uan-te’s home after dark when an unknown assailant leaped on his back, pulled him to the ground, choked him into unconsciousness, and dragged him toward a nearby well. Hu Hsueh-chen, the leader of the Women’s Association, heard Ch’uer cry out. She jumped up from her k’ang and ran out into the street, but by the time she got there Ch’uer’s assailant was gone. She found the young cadre lying gagged and senseless a few feet from the deep well. Hu barely had time to take a close look at what she assumed to be a corpse before her Catholic neighbors, Shen Ch’uan-te and Li Ho-jen, came out of their homes. These two immediately ran for help in the direction of the District Office. They returned with several work team cadres, put Ch’uer’s limp body on a stretcher, and carried him off to the hospital in Lucheng. There the county’s sole doctor found him badly bruised and suffering from shock due to partial suffocation but not seriously hurt. He was expected to live, perhaps even to return to work within a few days.

Who could have made this attack? Both Shen and Li, the peasants who had arrived so promptly on the scene, insisted that Yu-lai and his son Wen-te must be responsible. Were they not former bandits? Had they not made threats against the whole village? Surely none but these two could have attempted a deed so foul. Of course, it was admitted, these two might not have done it themselves. They might have persuaded Vice-Chairman Hsi-yu or Militia Captain Hung-er to carry out their plans. They were all in the same clique, after all, but whether or not they had done it with their own hands, they were surely behind the crime.

This opinion was shared by a large number of people. Wherever the cadres of the work team asked, they got the same answer—Yu-lai. And so, on that same night Yu-lai, his son Wen-te, and the two village leaders most closely associated with the father-and-son pair were arrested and taken to jail.

Faced with what appeared to be a flagrant counter-revolutionary act, Team Leader Hou made some rapid-fire decisions. He distributed side arms to all his team. He asked them to sleep and eat together in the District Office, and he arranged for them to drop all other work until they succeeded in tracking down enough evidence to convict the arrested men.

Hou followed these steps with a drastic reorganization of the village administration. All village cadres, both Party and non-Party, were suspended. All mass organizations such as the Peasants’ Association and the Women’s Association were dissolved. All members of the Communist Party branch were called into secret session for a critical review of their past work. This effectively removed them from all normal activity and responsibility.

These moves left the village without a government, without any village-wide organizations, and without any guidance from the Party branch which, for better or worse, had decided upon and led every action since midwinter of 1946.

The only group in a position to fill the vacuum thus created was the work team itself. Of necessity, Team Leader Hou and his assistants had to assume the powers of the village government and take responsibility for all day-to-day affairs; all this, of course, in addition to the investigation and reorganization of the fanshen situation for which they had originally come and the detective work required by a serious crime.

The latter task continued to absorb the attention of the entire village. Morning, noon, and night the peasants met in gatherings large and small to assemble concrete evidence, to review the circumstances surrounding the mysterious assault, and to reassure one another that counter-revolution could never challenge their new power. Many bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence supported the prevailing opinion that Yu-lai and Wen-te must be responsible for the crime. Li Ho-jen carefully examined the towel that he had removed from Ch’uer’s mouth and found that it was exactly the same as six other towels found in Yu-lai’s home. Wen-te’s wife, Hsien-e, confirmed the identity of the towels. Shen Ch’uan-te said that Yu-lai and his notorious son had been seen plotting together near the scene of the crime only a few hours before it took place. He even claimed that he had heard one of them say, “Never mind, as long as I am cadre, we can always take revenge.” None of this information, however, could be called conclusive. Most of it was offered by people who had reason to hate the men they implicated. It would not make very convincing evidence in the County Court. Everyone knew, for instance, that almost all the towels in the village came from the same supplier, a Hantan cooperative that embroidered “Good Morning” in English on its wares.

On March 11, the Party Bureau of the Taihang Subregion ordered Team Leader Hou to turn the investigation over to the police department of Lucheng County, where it belonged, and put his team back to work on the land reform problems which they had come to solve. This Hou did, but with a heavy heart. He felt that he had failed in a very important job and that the days spent on the abortive investigation had been days completely wasted. The other team members shared Hou’s frustration, but Ch’i Yun and I, who walked the long mile to Long Bow each day as observers, felt differently. For us, each visit had widened our acquaintance with the village, had introduced us to new and colorful inhabitants, and most important of all, had familiarized us with the work team in whose hands the destiny of the community now lay.

The Work Team

The Chinese Revolution at the present stage is in its character a revolution against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic-capitalism waged by the broad masses of the people under the leadership of the proletariat. By broad masses of people is meant all those who are oppressed, injured or fettered by imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic-capitalism, namely, workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals, businessmen and other patriots.

Mao Tse-tung, 1948

THERE WERE no higher cadres, no leading Communists, no persons with long revolutionary experience as organizers and propagandists among the people sent to Long Bow to help put the Draft Agrarian Law into effect. The team consisted in part of peasant leaders from Lucheng County who had only recently been promoted to full-time work outside their own villages; the other part of the team was composed of students and teachers from Northern University, many of whom were getting their first experience of village life. Altogether some 15 people joined in the work. However, the number actively engaged on the team varied from time to time due to the fact that some of those originally assigned to the task were later transferred to urgent work elsewhere, while others occasionally took leave to straighten out personal affairs at home, recuperate from illness, or harvest their crops.

The local cadres who were assigned to Long Bow were the equivalent of such peasant activists as T’ien-ming, Kuei-Ts’ai and Fu-yuan. After leaving Long Bow to become district cadres, those three were assigned to just such work teams in other “basic villages.” It was their counterparts from other districts of the county who were appointed to the Long Bow team. In the interest of objectivity, people who grew up and became leaders in one village went to another village to help reorganize and vice versa. Such nuclei of local cadres on every team were then leavened and strengthened by the addition of intellectuals and students from distant places, many of them city bred.

The team which Ch’i Yun and I found in Long Bow reflected in microcosm the Chinese society from which it was formed. Almost every one of the social classes in the country was represented on it, including the gentry. Although the landlords as a class were a main target of attack, the coalition had always found room in its ranks for what were known as “enlightened gentry.” As individuals, therefore, even landlords, or to be more accurate, sons and daughters of landlords, found their way to the Revolution and onto the team. This heterogeneous make-up of the land reform team was neither an accident nor a coincidence. It was the result of policy, the policy of the Communist Party of China, which viewed the Revolution as one vast action of many classes and strata against imperialism and feudalism and tried, even on the lowest level, to give life to that coalition.

Hou Pao-pei, the leader of the Long Bow team, came from Sand Market, a village in the Fifth District of Lucheng County only a few miles northwest of Long Bow. He was 29 years old, tall, strong, and dour. What one noticed first about Hou were his hands. They were large, powerful, calloused, more suited to grasping the handle of a hoe than to wielding a writing brush. These hands were attached to a pair of solid arms and these in turn to a raw-boned, rugged frame that rested on two ample feet always firmly planted on the ground. Despite his size and solidity, Hou moved gracefully and with vigor, though never quickly. Every move he made was careful and deliberate. He thought slowly and talked slowly, but he was no fool. He was absolutely honest, painfully shy, very much weighed down by his responsibility for the work of the team, and not at all sure about how to proceed. Though he felt himself poorly qualified to lead, it was easy to see why the county leaders had made him team captain. Hou was so thoroughly steeped in peasant ways and peasant culture that he hardly needed to ask what other peasants were thinking. He knew it already, as if by instinct. His speech was down to earth and full of popular proverbs, trite, pedestrian; yet when he opened his mouth people listened because what he said made sense.

“From childhood I was always very steady and firm,” he told us when we asked him about his life. “Our relatives despised my family because we had nothing, but I would not humiliate myself before them. From the beginning I had the idea that if you fall on the ground you should get up by yourself. As the saying goes, ‘Judge one’s youth at three, judge one’s manhood at seven.’ When I was still a little child all my relatives and the villagers decided that I would either be a very able man or a very bad fellow. Though my family was poor we always said, ‘We are poor but our will is not poor,’ so I always tried my best to work and never asked help from anybody.”

Hou, like so many of the active young men already described, had labored many years as a wage worker. At an early age he left home for a job as a room boy, later clerk, in a large, market-town inn. He returned to his village as a hired laborer, went into the hills as a coal miner, picked up seasonal jobs at harvest time, was conscripted into the labor gang that built the railroad to Changchih, escaped from this gang to become a rickshaw puller in the county seat, and ended up working in a large flour mill as a mechanic. He had thus seen a good deal of the country, had travelled to cities large and small, and worked with men from many places. Though the sophistication of the towns had not rubbed off on him, a lot of worldly knowledge had.

Throughout his wanderings Hou maintained close ties with the anti-Japanese resistance movement. His elder brother led the underground organization in Sand Market and was killed shortly before V-J Day by soldiers of the puppet Fourth Column. When the village was freed from Japanese control, Hou returned home immediately and joined the drive against the puppets and collaborators. He showed such courage and ability in this campaign that his neighbors elected him village head, chairman of the Peasants’ Association and director of military affairs.

By the time the Settling of Accounts Movement began, Hou had become the leading figure in his home community. He led it so well that he was elected “Fanshen Hero” not only for Sand Market but also for the whole Fifth District. In the county-wide elections that followed he won the fourth highest number of votes as a model land reform worker. “For the prize I won a new plow,” Hou said. “After the election we heroes were invited to a grand festival in the county seat. We saw plays and operas, both old style and new. Flowers were pinned to our tunics and we rode on horseback through the city. When we returned home we were welcomed by every village along the route. The people met us with parades and music and marched us through the fields to the border of the next village.”

Hou was obviously not a man completely unknown to the people of Long Bow.

Hou’s assistant on the work team was Li Sung-lin, known to all as “Little Li” because of his short stature. He was a plump jolly man of 26 who came from a middle peasant family of Bone Village, a community far back in the mountains that had never been occupied by the Japanese but had been repeatedly raided in an effort to destroy the guerrilla forces based there. In the course of the raids the Japanese killed the Li family ox and seized the Li family donkey, but all the people of the village escaped harm by hiding in mountain caves which the Japanese never found.

Li went to school until he was 15. Then he worked for two years on his father’s land. When the war began he joined the guerrilla government of the county as an orderly, but because he was literate soon won promotion to the post of stencil cutter, then to the position of secretary to the Third District, and finally to the post of assistant judge of the County Court. All of this work was carried out under conditions of guerrilla war, with the government constantly on the move and its personnel never knowing from which direction the next attack might come. Three times Little Li was surrounded by Japanese squads and each time he barely escaped with his life. Once the whole county staff climbed over the back wall of a compound as the Japanese broke down the front gate. The enemy caught and killed the county clerk and shot the magistrate’s personal guard. Li had time enough only to pull on his pants and run. He lost his coat, his bedroll, and his precious fountain pen.

When the war ended Li was appointed to various important jobs such as editor of the local gazette, cadre in the organization department of the Communist Party, and vice magistrate of the Fourth District.

The other four local members of the team who stayed in Long Bow until the work was completed were Han Chin-ming, 30; Chang Ch’uer, 23; Li Wen-chung, 25; and Liang Chi-hu, 26. All of them had impressive records as guerrilla fighters and peasant organizers in their home villages. The background of Li Wen-chung, a good-looking man with enough energy and spirit for two, who had started life with no hope at all, was typical.

Li began his story by saying: “I was born in the village of West Snake River. My own family owned neither land nor house nor anything else. When I was two years old I was bought by a poor peasant who had no children of his own and was brought to Horse Square. This man—you could call him a stepfather—worked as a hired laborer, but because he smoked opium he never had any money. As for me, as far back as I can remember I worked for others or begged for food. Thus I lived until I was 14.”

At 14 Li ran away from home and joined the Shangtang Guerrilla Corps, a detachment of Yen Hsi-shan’s Provincial Army. Soon after he joined this force it was surrounded by the Eighth Route Army and went over to the revolutionary side. The young recruit found a place as a bugler with the famous Eighth Routers, but a few months later he was left behind because the detachment moved on to Shantung and he was considered too young to serve as a soldier.

Li then worked two years in a factory, served six months in a conscript labor corps, farmed at home, saw his stepfather die of starvation after trying to live too long on beancake, and barely crawled away alive himself to find work as a rickshaw coolie in Taiyuan. There he was shanghaied onto a construction gang, escaped, worked as a coal coolie, and finally returned home a few months before his native Horse Square was liberated by the same massed attack of militia and regulars that reduced the Long Bow fort.

The former beggar immediately plunged into the anti-traitor and land division movements. He won a post of leadership in the community by helping to solve an inter-village fight over who should divide the property of one very rich landlord who had hoarded more than 37,000 silver dollars. Soon thereafter he was elected secretary of his local Party branch and then called to the Fifth District Office for full-time work. When the work in Long Bow began, Li Wen-chung was still single, a rare thing for a male over 18 years of age in Lucheng County.

Such were the local men who came to Long Bow to carry out the Draft Agrarian Law—all native sons, blood of the blood, flesh of the flesh of Lucheng County’s people. They had all been through the searing catastrophes of war and famine, and all had taken a leading part in transforming village life after the liberation. To carry on this work came as naturally to them as breathing.

But to succeed in this work was something else again. Success depended on many factors: on one’s grasp of a complex situation, on one’s ability to analyze and organize, on the validity of the policies to be carried out. The key to all but the last of these was training.

Training for land reform work had started at the very highest levels of the Communist Party and the Border Region Government as early as October 1947. Long before the Draft Agrarian Law was made public it had been circulated to all leading personnel in the vast Shansi-Hopei-Honan-Shantung Border Region and had then been formally considered at a gigantic marathon conference. This conference, held at Yehtao, in the heart of the Taihang range, was attended by 1,700 leaders of county magistrate or regimental commander rank. The deliberations, which centered on the ideological examination of every participant, lasted 85 days.

Out of the Yehtao Conference had come an estimate that the land reform in the Border Region as a whole was still far from adequate. At Yehtao the idea that the revolution might have gone too far in some places tended to be overlooked. Plain warnings that middle peasants must never be made the “objects of struggle,” that landlords and rich peasants must not be left without means of livelihood, and that commercial and industrial holdings must not be touched, though often repeated, in the main went unheeded. Emphasis was placed on the first of Mao’s two principles: “Satisfy the demands of the poor peasants and hired laborers.”

“We must start from the class outlook, the method, the stand of the poor-and-hired peasants. We must stand firmly at their side; we must refer all things to them and do everything starting from their interest.” These words of Regional Party Secretary Po Yi-po, words which represented only a part of his position, were raised aloft as the banner under which the Revolution should march.

As a result, when the members of the Lucheng Party Committee returned home from the Border Region Conference, they came intent on a shake-up. They immediately set about to study anew all pertinent data concerning the fanshen in Lucheng County. When statistics showed that thousands of poor peasants had not yet truly stood up, they assumed that this was because landlordism had not yet been thoroughly uprooted. And if, after three years of “thunder and lightning, drum and cymbal” campaigning, landlordism had not yet been uprooted in Lucheng County, could anyone but the Communist Party be blamed?

A quick and superficial check on the background of the comrades in the village branches convinced the County Committee that at least 40 percent of the local Communists were of landlord or rich peasant origin. The failure of the poor to fanshen, the commandism, the hedonism, the nepotism, and the favoritism so common everywhere they attributed to the counter-revolutionary class origin and disruptive activity of this large group.

As a result of this survey, the optimistic estimate that had been made by the county leaders in 1946 was reversed. In 1948, the Communist Party Committee of Lucheng County declared that land reform in the area under its jurisdiction had been seriously compromised, if not aborted.

A conference of all full-time political workers in Lucheng was immediately called. It convened at a village called Lu Family Settlement and lasted the entire month of February. Secretary Ch’en presented the County Committee’s new estimate of the situation to the assembled cadres in great detail. He blamed himself and the Party members before him for the sorry picture and demanded and received from each participant a statement of class origin and a searching self-criticism of past behavior. Those who admitted serious errors received discipline in the form of warnings and suspensions. A few who subbornly refused to criticize themselves or justified their past wrong-doing were expelled from the Party. At the conclusion of the meeting, the majority went back to their work in the field prepared to lead a drastic redistribution of the land and wealth of their county and a drastic reorganization of village administrations, Party branches, and mass organizations.

In the minds of these men and women as they took up their new tasks there lingered a vivid phrase from Secretary Ch’en’s final report: ‘“He who cannot find poor peasants in the villages doesn’t deserve to eat!”

***********

The students and young teachers from Northern University who joined this nucleus of peasant cadres were from an entirely different world. Either directly or indirectly they were tied to the landlord class whose overthrow was the object of all their work. There was, for instance, the lean, sharp-nosed Professor Hsu, an intellectual from Peking. He had never known physical labor in any form, not to mention hunger or hardship. His experience of the actual life of the Chinese people was thus one-sided, to say the least. His academic qualifications, on the other hand, were impressive. As an economist he had read a large number of books, was an enthusiastic student of Marxism, and could debate the fine points of value theory with anyone. He looked upon his assignment in Long Bow as an opportunity for research, as a chance to collect first-hand material about Chinese rural life which would add to the theoretical insight which he had already stored up. He came to the village well supplied with books and writing materials, but was at a loss when face to face with the peasants. He found their accent hard to understand, their motives strange, and their manners uncouth. Professor Hsu, for all his good intentions, was like a fish out of water in the countryside. He made one mistake after the other.

Much better adapted to work in the village was my assistant and interpreter, Ch’i Yun. She was typical of the three women who came from the University. Although officially assigned only to help me, she soon became an important and lively addition to the team and was allocated as much work as any other member. Unfortunately, we were so busy attending meetings, interviewing peasants, taking down verbatim notes, and translating charts and papers that I never formally requested her life story, and she, on her part, volunteered very little about herself. Even her name was an assumed one that she had adopted in order to protect those members of her family who still lived in Nationalist-controlled regions.

About Ch’i Yun I learned only that she was a college graduate from a large coastal city who, very soon after the Japanese invasion of North China, went to Yenan. There she married a revolutionary of similiar background and bore two children. She rarely mentioned her husband but I gained the impression that he and she were separated, not only temporarily by their work but permanently by choice.

Because Ch’i Yun’s own work took her away on long trips through the Liberated Areas, her two children were brought up in the nursery school for cadres’ children in Yenan.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, trained people were urgently needed all over North China. A great exodus by foot, donkey, and ox cart took place from Yenan. Ch’i Yun joined this exodus, worked as an interpreter for the truce negotiation teams set up by General Marshall’s mission, and then was transferred to the Liberated Areas Relief Administration for similar duties. Her children, left behind in Yenan, moved eastward with their school when the Kuomintang attack on the Northwest began. In 1948 they were located somewhere in the mountains to the east of Changchih—close enough so that she was able to see them occasionally, make clothes for them, and tend their other special wants, but not close enough so that she could visit them every day or every week.

Ch’i Yun’s round friendly face was not beautiful in any particular detail but, taken together, her features were attractive and feminine. By dress and coiffure she did nothing to enhance them, however. Her fine long hair was rolled up each morning and tucked under a visor cap in such a way that only a few wisps ever strayed to lend a touch of charm to an otherwise austere appearance. Her bulky padded suit completely concealed her figure. Only from the small size of her feet, encased in dainty, self-made cotton slippers, could one guess that her limbs might be graceful and well-proportioned.

I often thought what a hardship it must be for such a woman to live the life of a spartan revolutionary cadre in the bleak North China countryside after a childhood of relative luxury and comfort in the city. Yet she seemed to pay no attention whatsoever to cold, fatigue, lice, fleas, coarse food, or the hard wooden planks that served as her bed. For her this was all a part of “going to the people” who alone, once they were mobilized, could build the new China of which she dreamed.

Ch’i Yun’s high spirits in the face of extreme physical hardship pointed up a curious fact which we discovered on our very first day in the village. This was that the morale of the intellectuals, for whom land reform represented a complete change in way of life, was far higher than that of the local cadres.

The local cadres worked steadily but without enthusiasm. When they met in the evening to discuss what had been done or to make plans for the future, they often sat for minutes at a time without saying a word. It was as if some heavy burden weighed upon their thoughts and inhibited their tongues.

Not so the students and teachers from Northern University. They plunged into the heart of village affairs with eagerness and enthusiasm, made discovery after discovery about the life of their own countrymen, developed new and interesting friendships with people whom they would never have met in a lifetime of academic pursuits, and looked on the hardships involved partly as adventure and partly as steeling for future revolutionary activity, a test they hoped to pass without flinching. That is not to say that village life was much harder than life at the guerrilla University. In some ways it was less spartan. In Long Bow the food, at least, had some variety and oc-sionally a peasant’s k’ang was warmed by fire. The same could never be said of the University, where neither wheat nor corn ever broke the monotony of boiled millet in the students’ mess and fire never warmed the clammy stone corridors, the high-ceilinged rooms, or the backyard adobe sheds that served as dormitories for staff and students alike.

What made village life a challenge was the dirt and the squalor which surrounded the poorest peasants and the unbearable suffering that was the lot of so many victims of disease. While the itch of lice and the welts left by bedbugs were passed off jokingly as “the revolutionary heat,” the suppurating headsores, malarial fevers, slow deaths from tuberculosis and venereal disease were not joking matters. Land reform workers slept on the same k’angs, ate from the same bowls, and shared lice and fleas with people diseased beyond hope of recovery. Yet I never saw anyone complain. They came prepared for this and for much worse.

Their training had no more been left to chance, to spontaneous revolutionary enthusiasm, than had that of the local cadres. The outlook of the intellectuals had been consciously developed during an extended period of education and discussion, criticism and self-criticism, that preceded the departure of all team members for the countryside. During the weeks of small meetings which occupied the time of all teachers and students after the promulgation of the new Draft Law, every person in the University, regardless of status, made a survey of his or her own past and examined his or her own class origin. In the freezing quarters where the students lived, they met day after day in small groups of 15 to 20 to study the class nature of Chinese society and to discuss where each one fit as landlord, peasant, bourgeois merchant, or free professional. In order to “join the revolution,” persons with upper-class backgrounds had to give up all attachment to their pasts and take a firm stand with the workers and peasants. They had to resolve to apply in life the revolutionary principles which had so easily caught their imaginations in theoretical form and to bring their everyday behavior into line with their professed opinions.

For many individuals, taking a new stand was no abstract question to be decided by cool reasoning simply on its economic or political merit. Their own families had been or soon would be under attack. Some of their parents had already been beaten to death by angry peasants. Some of them were apt to end up in charge of land division in areas where their own property lay. They had to face the possibility of accusations and actions leading to the destruction of their homes and families. The new Draft Law opposed all beating and torture, opposed any treasure hunt for buried wealth, opposed all “sweep-the-floor-out-the-door” solutions. Nevertheless, peasants and cadres had been carried beyond policy in the past and, if the battle became heated, might well be carried beyond it again. It would be naive to think that everything would be peaceful in the future.

Many participants found that they could not sleep at night. They lost their appetites and burst into tears when they faced this choice, or confronted past mistakes. Even the students from less privileged families found this educational process painful. They had to rethink their lives from the very beginning, re-examine all their values, and rededicate themselves to a cause that gave them no personal advantage whatsoever.

Yet those intellectuals who were changed by the process seemed to be grateful. The spartan life, the intellectual ferment, the group companionship, and the physical and mental well-being that developed as a result of remolding their ideology moved most of them deeply. They were exhilarated by the knowledge that they were drawing closer to the heart of the Revolution and were themselves undergoing an awakening, a metamorphosis from “I and my wants” to “we and our needs.” They could feel the great thrust of this awakening both subjectively and objectively. When the call came to go to the villages they went eagerly to do battle with all of the past that was rotten, corrupt, and painful.

Those With Merit Will Get Some Those Without Merit Will Get Some

Why should the poor and hired peasants lead? The poor and hired peasants should lead because they make up from 50 to 70 percent of the population, are the most numerous, and work the hardest all year long. They plant the land, they build the buildings, they weave the cloth, but they never have enough food to eat, a roof to sleep under, or clothes to wear. Their life is most bitter, they are oppressed and exploited and pushed around. Hence they are the most revolutionary. From birth they are a revolutionary class. Inevitably they are the leaders of the fanshen movement. This is determined by life itself.

Proclamation to the Peasants, March 1948

Shansi-Hopei-Honan-Shantung

Border Region Government

A NEW starting point for the work of the team was provided by an announcement explaining the meaning of the Draft Agrarian Law which was sent out by the Party Bureau of the Shansi-Hopei-Honan-Shantung Border Region and printed simultaneously in all the newspapers of that vast area. The announcement was couched in simple terms and outlined, in a few short paragraphs, just what the new law meant for peasants who, in spite of years of effort, had not yet fanshened.

Little Li, vice leader of the work team and a surprisingly accomplished orator, introduced the document to Long Bow Village by reading it aloud. As he read he stood at the end of a long loft that made up the second story of the foreign-style house that had once belonged to the absentee landlord and militarist, Chief-of-Staff Hsu. The building was now held as “surplus property” by the village office. Scattered about the loft, seated on bricks, chunks of wood, and an occasional folding stool, all of which had been carried up the steep ladder on the outside wall, sat about 50 or 60 peasants especially selected by the work team as the poorest in the whole community. The men sat in clusters, lit their pipes, smoked, or simply listened with rapt attention; the women, grouped in their own coteries, worked busily at domestic chores. Some sewed shoe soles, some spun hemp, others wound cotton thread from large reels into balls. The mothers among them kept a watchful eye on their young children, ragged urchins with smudged faces and bare bottoms exposed from behind, who tumbled about among the assembled people, laughed, chased each other, and cried. Small babies, not yet able to walk, sucked at deliciously exposed, milk-swollen breasts or fell asleep in maternal arms blissfully unaware of the historic words that rang through the loft, claiming the power to change their whole lives.

“Brothers and sisters, peasants of the Border Region,” read Little Li with genuine theatrical flourish. “In the course of the past two years our Border Region has carried on a powerful, enthusiastic land reform movement. Already over ten million people have thoroughly fanshened but there are still areas with a population of 20 million who have only partially fanshened or not fanshened at all.”

From the nodding heads, the whispered asides, it was obvious that the peasants in the loft counted themselves among the 20 million whose fanshen was still incomplete.

“Now everyone must fanshen.

“There were some mistakes in the past. Some of our village cadres were landlords; others, even though they weren’t landlords, listened to the landlords. Some soldiers’ and cadres’ relatives were landlords. These were not thoroughly settled with.”

Without stopping to analyze whether this was actually true in Long Bow, the peasants accepted the statement with enthusiasm. It implied that there would be further struggles and further “fruits” and that they, as the organized poor peasants, would get these “fruits.” They nodded and waited for more.

“Some families got more in the distribution because they were soldiers’ relatives, or cadres’ relatives. The fruits were distributed according to many systems, according to need, according to membership in the Peasants’ Association, according to one’s activities in the struggle. This was not fair. Because of this some got a lot, and others got very little.”

Here indeed was something to savor. The peasants remembered the early struggles well. Politics rather than class had decided the outcome then. It was traitors and collaborators who had been attacked and those who beat them down who received the wealth. Later movements corrected but never entirely overcame these inequities. Religious prejudice, political suspicion, and a measure of favoritism continued to distort the results.

“That’s exactly right,” said an old woman who sat close to Ch’i Yun, never for an instant ceasing to wind thread. “You had to be on the inside to get anything.”

“The Draft Agrarian Law is designed to correct all such mistakes,” declared Little Li, still reading from the document. “Articles One and Three call for destruction of the feudal system and the creation of a system of ‘land to the tiller.’

“What does this mean? It means that no matter who you are, whether you are a county magistrate, a commander-in-chief, or an official of whatever level, if you are a feudal exploiter your property will be confiscated. Nothing will or can protect you.”

“Hear that now!”

“That’s the way it should be!”

“Nobody can escape this time.”

These comments and many others in the same vein emerged at random, like corn popping in a pan.

“Article Six says that property will be distributed according to the number of people in the family. It is very simple—those who are politically suspect will get some, and those who are not politically suspect will get some. Those with merit will get some and those without merit will get some. Landlords will get a share and rich peasants will get a share also. Some middle peasants will give up a little, some will get a little, most will not be touched at all. That which was not equally divided in the past is to be divided. Those who got too little in the past will get more. Those who got too much will give it up. The surplus will be used to fill the holes. Everything will be divided so that everyone will have a fair share.”

If the previous paragraphs had aroused enthusiasm, this paragraph sent it bubbling and rippling through the loft. The peasants were beside themselves with delight. Among them were at least a dozen who had been called agents, had received less than equal treatment because of it, and lived in the shadow of further attacks. For them the announcement cleared the sky. Politics, religion, furtive trips to Horse Square, collaboration, past mistakes, quarrels, personal vendettas, the weighing and balancing of thoughts and activities, merits and demerits—all these were declared irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was poverty. If you were poor you would get property—land, tools, livestock, houses.

“Do you understand what I have read?” asked Little Li over the hubbub engendered by his words.

“We understand it very well,” said the old woman next to Ch’i Yun. “We only wish we could remember every word of it.”

“It couldn’t be better,” said a man in a ragged jacket. “I myself never fanshened.”

“Understand it? Of course we do!” declared many voices from all over the loft.

Little Li went on to declare that the poor peasants themselves must right the wrongs and unite with the middle peasants to elect a democratic Village Congress which could then supervise the work of all cadres and recall all those who abused their power. But the main point, the point that impressed the people most, had already been made: Those with merit will get some and those without merit will get some. Everything will be divided so that everyone will get an equal share.

***********

The statement read by Comrade Li, which outlined the coming campaign for the mass of the peasantry, was supplemented by a far more detailed directive which explained to the cadres of the work team just how they were to go about accomplishing their major objectives.

According to this directive, which was issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on February 22, 1948, the villages of the Liberated Areas fell into three basic types. Included in the first type were those in which land reform had been successfully carried out and only minor readjustments and corrections were needed to complete the movement. The second type comprised the villages where equal distribution was more ragged, landlords and rich peasants still owned more and better land than the average and many cadres had received more than their fair share of the “fruits.” In the third type were those villages where, in spite of certain efforts at equal distribution, land reform had not been effectively carried out and feudal relations of production still remained dominant.

The first task of the work team was to determine which of these types best characterized the village of Long Bow. In case of doubt, a complete class analysis of the community had to be made and the holdings of the various classes compared. Villages of the first type had to contain not only a majority of fanshened peasants (50 to 80 percent of the population) but the per capita holdings of the remaining poor had to be at least equal to two thirds of the per capita holdings of the middle peasants.

To determine the type of any village meant to determine the course of action which must subsequently follow. If the village were of the first or second type, the necessary economic adjustments were to be made as quickly as possible so as not to disrupt the year’s production work, and the work team must then concentrate on the democratic reforms which were to usher in a new political life for the whole community.

If the village proved to be of the third type, then the whole Draft Agrarian Law had to be applied from the beginning. A Poor Peasants’ League had to be organized, a campaign against the remaining gentry mounted, confiscation of gentry holdings completed, and equal distribution of all confiscated property effected. Only after all this was finished could the democratic reforms be undertaken.

Whether the situation in the village was good or bad, whether the land reform had been carried out well or poorly, future progress depended upon the quality of the political leadership inside the village and consequently on the quality of the members of the Communist Party branch. It was necessary therefore not only to classify the villages as outlined above but also to classify them according to the kind of Communist Party branch that existed in each. If a nucleus of Communists with reasonably good records existed, then the branch was called Kind I. Such a branch need only be re-educated by means of criticism and self-criticism meetings and encouraged to take a leading role in all future work. If the branch was dominated by landlord or opportunist elements then it was declared Kind II or III. Such a branch must certainly be reorganized, perhaps even dissolved. Political direction of the village must temporarily be turned over to the Committee of the Poor Peasants’ League or the Peasants’ Association and a new branch constituted only during the course of the reforms.*

The democratic reforms which were to accompany or follow the completion of the land reform program were to consist of:

(1) A re-examination of and reorganization of the Communist Party branch and a critical re-evaluation of the records of all village officials, whether Party or non-Party.

(2) The establishment of a sound Peasants’ Association made up of the vast majority of poor and middle peasant families and led by democratically elected officers.

(3) The eventual establishment of a new village government composed of an elected Village Congress, representative of all social strata, and the appointment by this Congress of all village officers, such as the village chairman, the village clerk, the militia captain, the police captain, and the man in charge of public service.

Such in brief was the task that faced the work team in Long Bow. The members had to decide which type the village fell into and what kind of Communist Party branch it contained. On the basis of these estimates suitable organizational steps had to be taken and suitable reforms carried out.

Simply to make an accurate estimate of the true state of affairs was a major project. No outsider could hope to possess enough detailed information to decide who were middle peasants, who were poor peasants, and how much each actually held. To gather such information required the active support of all the peasants. First it was necessary that they acquire standards of judgment, and then they must collectively undertake the work of classification and evaluation.

In their haste to get started on more fundamental problems, the work team cadres in Long Bow did not wait until they had completed this arduous task of investigation before they made up their minds about the basic situation in the village. Without consultation among themselves, without taking any formal decision, they assumed that land reform in Long Bow had been stillborn. It followed that the village must be Type III and its Party branch Kind III. All mass organizations remained dissolved, all village cadres remained suspended, all Communist Party members continued to meet in secret session. Long Bow was treated as a village where the whole slate had to be wiped clean and the peasant movement had to be reorganized from the ground up.

The first step in any such reorganization had to be the creation of a new Poor and Hired Peasants’ League. But before such a League could even be started, some determination had to be made concerning who were the poor and who the hired. A detailed classification of the whole community therefore became mandatory and the thoroughgoing investigation which the cadres had earlier bypassed crowded all other matters off the agenda after all.

Self Report, Public Appraisal

For those whose duty it is to give guidance and direction, the most essential method of knowing conditions is that they should, proceeding according to plan, devote their attention to a number of cities and villages and make a comprehensive survey of each of them from the basic viewpoint of Marxism, i.e., by means of class analysis,

Mao Tse-tung, 1941

“THERE ARE seven in my family. Last year, before the marriage of my son I had six.”

So spoke Wang Kuei-pao. He was a heavy-set man perhaps 40 years old. Crow’s-feet spread from the corners of his eyes. On his weathered face grew a ragged stubble of hair that had never matured into a beard.

“Why speak of last year? Speak of the way it is now. Soon you will have a grandson and that will make eight,” said a wit from across the room. He was pressed against the side wall of the hut by the crush of people at the meeting and I could not even see who had spoken, as I myself was pressed against the opposite wall.

Wang, the expectant grandfather, continued his report unperturbed. “I have three and a half acres. I reap about ten bushels to the acre. My son is a teacher in another village. I have no draft animal.”

“No doubt you are a poor peasant,” said a third voice.

“That’s easy. He’s a poor peasant. He hasn’t even fanshened.”

“Your family has increased but your land remains the same. In the future you’ll have even more mouths to feed.” The speakers supported one another.

“Well,” said Wang, with a bravado based on the security he felt in being poor. “Go ahead and classify me. Call me a rich peasant if you want to. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

But everyone agreed. There was not the slightest doubt. Wang Kuei-pao had been a poor peasant all his life and a poor peasant he remained.

A man named Ting-fu followed Wang. He reported three and a half acres for three people, no livestock, no implements, a broken-down house of three sections, and a shared privy.

“Ting-fu has toiled his whole life through,” said one of his neighbors.

“He is the hardest worker in the whole village,” said another.

Ting-fu was classed as a poor peasant without further ado.

Thus classification of the classes began in Long Bow.

***********

The handful of peasants who listened to Wang Kuei-pao and Ting-fu were “basic elements” chosen by the work team as the nucleus of the new Poor Peasants’ League—a League which was to remain “provisional” until it assumed its final form. Their primary objective was to find others as poor as themselves who could swell the ranks until the new organization became capable of exerting leverage on the whole community. In the process they would also make a preliminary estimate of the potential allies (middle peasants) among their neighbors and of the “objects of struggle” (rich peasants and landlords) who still lived among them.

The classification method used was called tzu pao kung yi, or “self report, public appraisal.” The “self report” meant that every family head must appear in person and report his sources of income and his economic position prior to the liberation of the village. “Public appraisal” meant that all members of the Provisional League must discuss each report and decide, by sense-of-the-meeting, on the family’s class status.

Everyone knew that these classification proceedings could transform the Draft Agrarian Law from a general declaration of purpose into a concrete reality. Decisions concerning class status would eventually determine the future of every family. Those classed as poor peasants could expect to gain prestige as members of the new Poor Peasants’ League and to acquire prosperity by coming into enough worldly goods to make them new middle peasants. Those classed as rich peasants could expect expropriation of all their surplus property, leaving them with only enough to earn a living like any other fanshened peasant. Anyone classified as a landlord faced complete expropriation and then the return of enough property to live on. The classification, in other words, could not be regarded as an academic matter, as a mere nose count, as a census. It laid the basis for economic and social action that affected every family and every individual in the most fundamental way.

Because this was so the peasants took an extraordinary interest in the classification meetings and gathered without complaint, day after day, to listen, report, discuss, and judge.

It soon became obvious that every family wanted to be classed as far down the scale as possible. To be called a middle peasant meant to receive nothing. Only those classed as poor peasants could expect to gain. Therefore every family wanted to be classed as poor, and every family head, no matter how poor, tried to minimize what his family had possessed prior to liberation and deprecate what the family had received since.

For the minority at the upper end of the scale, downgrading was even more vital. All the prosperous peasants were fearful lest they be shoved over the line into the rich-peasant category and lose out. Even the middle-peasant category included an upper group, the well-to-do, who could legitimately be asked to give up something. Those who feared that they owned enough to be called well-to-do wanted no part of any such condition and fought hard to convince their neighbors that they really had no surplus, that they were simply average middle peasants.

Since everyone wanted to be downgraded, since “poverty was best,” I expected the final result of the classification to be a general shift downward. But this was not the case, and the reason for it was quite simple. The preliminary classification was undertaken by a group of families already designated by the work team as poor. It was in their interest to place others in higher brackets for two obvious reasons—in the first place, unless some families were classed as landlords, rich peasants, or well-to-do middle peasants there would be no property to distribute; in the second place, if there were large numbers of families classed as poor, whatever “struggle fruits” materialized would have to be spread thin. Clearly, the fewer families there were on the sharing end, the more each family would be likely to get.

The two contradictory trends, the desire on the part of all those being classed to be downgraded, and the desire on the part of those doing the classing to upgrade everyone else, tended to cancel each other out. In the course of the reports and appraisals the true situation of each family tended to be revealed.

For this happy result, credit must also be given to the method of discussion employed, a method that enabled every individual to talk over each case. This method was known as ke ts’ao, a word that literally means “ferment” and finds its American equivalent in the “buzz session.” After each family presented its report, the chairman called out, “Ke ts’ao, ke ts’ao.” Then all those who were sitting together in those natural clusters formed as people came to the meeting fell to discussing the case. They continued to discuss it until they more or less agreed. As agreement was reached in various parts of the room, the hum of voices gradually died down. Then the chairman called out, “Pao kao, pao kao!” (report, report).

A spokesman for each group, designated on the spur of the moment by those who sat around him, then expressed the consensus arrived at by his companions in the course of their “ferment.” If the opinions of the scattered groups did not coincide, the chairman tried to clarify the differences, review the facts in the case, and ask the family under consideration to report in greater detail. Then he called for another ke ts’ao and repeated this process until a real sense-of-the-meeting was reached. No votes were taken. To decide such matters by a vote meant to impose the will of the majority on the will of the minority, with all the hard feeling that such an imposition was sure to cause. Objectively, the work team felt, any family must stand somewhere in the scale. A real understanding of the family’s condition should enable the peasant judges to place the family in its proper niche. To vote meant to admit defeat, to make a subjective rather than an objective decision. When no sense-of-the-meeting could be reached, the cadres advised putting off the classification until further study of the standards and further investigation of the facts clarified the whole picture.

The complete lack of facilities for any form of large gathering established ideal conditions for the informal ke ts’ao discussions that characterized Long Bow meetings. Instead of coming together in a room equipped with rows of chairs, such as would be found in any Western meeting hall, the peasants had to gather in some empty loft, some abandoned room, some quiet portion of the street, or in the largest of their private homes. Each had of necessity to bring his or her own private seat—usually a brick, a block, or a little stool made of wood and string—and sit down wherever the company proved most congenial. The groups that crystallized in this way formed natural discussion circles that made it possible for any meeting to switch to a “buzz session” without the least rearrangement or disturbance. Thus everyone had a chance to participate and express opinions whether or not he or she actually spoke to the gathering as a whole. This system enabled shy people to speak first in small groups and gradually build up confidence to the point where they were willing to stand up and talk before the multitude. Truth was well served by such an arrangement because what one person forgot another was sure to remember. The collective proved wiser than any individual, and in the end a consensus of the participants emerged.

For Ch’i Yun and myself these meetings served as a window opening on the inner life of the village. The peasants, who had seemed on first acquaintance to constitute a fairly homogeneous mass—poverty-stricken yet energetic, ignorant yet shrewd, quarrelsome yet good humored, suspicious yet hospitable—turned out to be a most varied collection of individuals. Each possessed marked originality, and each faced problems peculiar to his or her situation that often obscured the general problem of livelihood, the overriding necessity to fanshen.

With a “well bottom” view of the world still limiting their vision, most peasants found it hard to separate their personal problems from the basic economic situation that was the root of their misery. They tended to concentrate on traits of character, unresolved feuds, past insults, and other peripheral issues to the neglect of the true criterion for determining class status—their own relation to the means of production.

The audience, also made up of peasants, was equally subjective. Time and again, Little Li, Ch’i Yun, and the other work team cadres who sat in on the meetings had to bring the discussion around to objective economic facts and warn against classifying some family in the upper brackets because the family head had collaborated with the Japanese, habitually beat his wife, or sided with his wife against his mother.

Yet so strong ran the feeling against exploitation, collaboration, and criminal behavior that sometimes the team cadres themselves were carried away. When this happened, their prestige and eloquence were such that they easily swayed the whole meeting.

Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggarman, Thief

The class status of most of the population in the rural areas is clear and can be easily differentiated without much divergence of view. Their class status should first be ascertained. In the case of a small proportion of the people whose class status is unclear and difficult to ascertain and where there is a divergence of view, they should be dealt with later and classified after thorough study and after obtaining instruction from the higher authorities. Impatience in determining the class status of these people must be avoided lest errors should be made which lead to their dissatisfaction. If any mistake is made, it must be corrected.

Liu Shao-ch’i

CHANG CH’I-TS’AI, one of the poorest individuals in the whole village, provided the first stumbling block to that nucleus of poor peasants who set out to classify the whole village in March.

The group had little trouble just so long as they dealt with typical cases. Heads of families had only to make the briefest kind of report before they were unanimously declared to be poor peasants or middle peasants. Consequently, during the first two or three days of the proceedings some 40 families were classed without controversy and most of those who were declared to be poor were invited to participate in classifying those who followed them.

When they got to Ch’i-ts’ai, however, the peasants disagreed sharply. The difficulty stemmed from the fact that he had never owned even a fraction of an acre of land. Furthermore, he had never worked on the land for others. All his life he had labored as a builder of houses. On the wages thus earned he had raised two sons and a daughter. A second daughter he had given away as a child bride during the famine year. After the birth of his fourth child his wife had died.

In the distributions of 1945-1946, Ch’i-ts’ai had received almost five acres of land, a donkey, one third of a cart, and many hundredweight of grain. This was enough to make him a middle peasant in 1948. His neighbors all agreed on that. What they found hard to decide was, what had been his class before liberation?

“His class was bare poor,” volunteered several peasants after hearing Chang’s report.

“But there is no such class as ‘bare poor,’ “protested Little Li, the work team cadre sitting in on the meeting. “There are hired laborers who own no land and work for wages on the land of others; there are village workers who also own no land but have skills such as carpentry, masonry, blacksmithing, and weaving; but there is no such thing as a class of ‘bare poor.’”

The peasants, however, could not conceive of a way of life without land. To live without land was to live in a state of perpetual disaster. Anyone who had no land was “bare poor” and the sooner he acquired land the better. To set up a separate class of people who owned nothing and call them workers did not make sense.

The specific skill possessed by Ch’i-ts’ai also confused the issue. The peasants found it difficult to separate the man from his trade and arrive at the common category “worker.” If he was not simply “bare poor,” he was a housebuilder. But housebuilders could hardly constitute a class. Could his wife be called a housebuilder too? Could his children be called housebuilders? It seemed that only the person who practiced the trade could be classed according to that trade and hence be called a worker, if worker he had to be. The rest of his family should be something else.

When Little Li repeated his argument the peasants “gave up the gun” and agreed to call Ch’i-ts’ai a village worker, but it was quite clear that very few understood what this meant.

Another worker, Chang Huan-ch’ao, the blacksmith, posed an even greater puzzle. Some peasants wanted to call this hot-tempered, swarthy-complexioned man an exploiter because he did such poor work and charged so much for it.

“He’s a middle peasant,” said one neatly dressed woman with a reputation as an amorous widow. She spat out the words “middle peasant” as if they bore some sort of stigma. “He’s a middle peasant because he earns good money as a blacksmith, and besides his work is no good. Last year he cheated me. He charged me an awful price but the work was no good and even the iron was poor. He exploited me.”

“He’s not skillful; we all know that,” said a grey-bearded elder. “But if you don’t want to be exploited by him you can always call in others to do the work. It’s different with the landlords. With them you have no choice. You pay rent or you starve. But with Huan-ch’ao, if you don’t like his work you can always take your job elsewhere.”

“Go ahead, say what you think,” said Chang himself, scowling darkly. “Your opinions are very good and I would be the last to get angry.”

“Truth is,” said a second widow, “the tools you make are no good. You really should improve your workmanship.”

“I accept your criticism,” said Huan-ch’ao, desperately trying to hold back his rising temper. He knew that to explode now would land him in the middle-peasant category for sure.

“He’s never been a skillful blacksmith,” the grey-bearded man said again. “But if you say that for this reason he exploits you, then all blacksmiths must become very gloomy indeed.”

Finally Yuan-lung, a young neighbor of Huan-ch’ao’s, proposed a solution. “He’s a poor peasant,” he said with an air of finality. Several pipe-smoking cronies of the speaker hastened to back up this idea, but the women still looked doubtful.

“If you can’t decide now, we’ll discuss it later,” suggested Little Li, but this suggestion won no more support than the other.

The League members finally agreed that since Huan-ch’ao had always owned a little land he should be called a poor peasant. This solution had one added advantage. It avoided the mysterious category of “worker.”

In the case posed by Huan-ch’ao the peasants confronted a basic problem of economic theory. Their dispute arose from the obvious fact that the work done by different individuals, whether judged by the quantity or by the quality of the output, is not equal. In spite of this, wages and prices tend to standardize, a reflection of the socially necessary labor time required to turn out any given piece of goods. But to arrive at the concept of socially necessary labor time required a breadth of experience and a level of abstract reasoning that could hardly be expected of the peasants of Long Bow at this time. What they saw was a poor craftsman asking for the same return on his labor as a good craftsman, and this smacked to them of exploitation.

Ch’i Yun could hardly restrain her chuckles as she explained to me the give and take over Huan-ch’ao, the blacksmith. That a skilled worker could exploit the people who hired him was a startling idea to anyone with a Marxist outlook, and she marveled at the ingenuity of those peasants who had thought it up. She grossly underestimated their inventiveness, however, for on the very next day they found exploitation in an even more unlikely place—in the relation between a widow and her lover.

There lived in the village a lean old peasant named Wang who had long been in love with, or at least was wont to make love to, a rich peasant’s widow named Yu Pu-ho. What little of value he possessed or produced, Wang sooner or later brought to his prosperous and beloved mistress. While his own son and daughter-in-law hired out in order to eat, he skimmed everything edible from his homestead and sacrificed it on the altar of love. If his hen laid an egg, he offered it up. If the eggplant in his dooryard garden produced a firm purple fruit, he brought it around. He even neglected his own land to work long hours on that of the passionate widow.

When Wang’s paramour came before the Provisional League, the spokesman for one group of women took the floor at once. “We think she is a double landlord. She exploits hired labor and she exploits her lover. She exploits everything he has, even the eggs from his hens.”

At this everyone laughed except the prim black-clad widow herself and Old Wang. The latter, expecting the worst, looked anxiously around the room for some sign of disagreement.

Wang need not have been so concerned. The men did not agree with the women.

“If he’s exploited, that’s his lookout,” shouted a well-groomed youngster from the warmest spot on the k’ang. “He wants it that way. What can we do about it?”

The “double landlord” classification was withdrawn.

Some peasants found still a third form of exploitation in the behavior of certain scoundrels or lumpen elements. Just as every Western city has its declassed people, its professional beggars, its small-time racketeers, and skid row derelicts, so every Chinese village once had its yu min or rascals, men and women without legitimate means of support, gamblers, “broken shoes” (prostitutes), narcotics peddlers, and drifters. In political tracts and mobilization speeches they rated only occasional mention, but in real life they were very much a part of every village scene.

In Long Bow the most notorious of these yu min was Wang T’ao-yuan. Of him people said, “Hsiang yen pu li k’ou, shou tien pu li shou.” (The cigarette never leaves his lips, the flashlight never leaves his hand.) He had survived the lean years of the occupation on profits from heroin peddling, on brokerage fees earned selling other people’s wives, and on the proceeds of the sale of his own wife, a record unsavory enough to have made him an object of universal scorn and hate.

Wang had reformed somewhat after receiving land in the distribution but he still shrank from hard work. Only a few weeks before he appeared to be classified he sent his nephew on a coal-hauling expedition instead of going himself. The temperature that week hovered around zero. The nephew did not know how to care for an animal in such a frost. As a result, the one donkey owned by the family caught a chill, fell ill, and died.

In spite of all this, the peasants were curiously lenient with Wang T’ao-yuan. His broad comic face and genial disposition seemed to charm them. If nothing else he had always been a good companion. Because he knew how to laugh at himself and to make others laugh too, people found it difficult to stay angry at him for long.

But Cadre Liang, who passionately hated dope and purveyors of dope, was not willing to see T’ao-yuan get off so easily. Ignoring the economic criteria for judging the man’s class, he slashed at the criminal nature of his past.

“Perhaps there are some who want to save face for T’ao-yuan,” suggested Liang. “They had better think it over. Who led the entire family in smoking poison? If Long Bow had not been liberated they would all have died of starvation. And why did he sell the stuff? Why, in this whole village did no one else sell heroin but he? Let’s ask why many an honest laborer among you has not yet fanshened. Then compare your condition with his. In the past, there were those who stood higher than the poor peasants. Now, after liberation they still have the upper hand. Why are such people always able to take advantage of every situation? Why? T’ao-yuan should be forced to explain his past.”

Responding with alacrity to Liang’s suggestion, T’ao-yuan said, “I began smoking heroin in the famine year and everything I had went to pay for it.” There was a suggestion of languid sensuality in his stance and a puckish grin came and went on his face as he revealed his amoral past. “When I had nothing left I took my wife to Taiyuan. We were half dead from hunger before I finally found a buyer for her. He gave me six bags of millet. That sealed the deal.”

Even to T’ao-yuan this sounded a little brutal so he added a twist to the tale that put the blame where it obviously belonged—on his wife.

“While I was out looking for work I had to leave my wife alone at the inn. She took up with another man. The master of the inn tipped me off and suggested that I get rid of her. He also found the buyer.

“I helped Wang Hsi-nan sell his wife too,” continued T’ao-yuan, but once again he cleverly absolved himself. “Hsi-nan suggested it and even sought me out; he came over and over again. His wife was ‘white, bright, and lovely,’ but she was an idiot. She couldn’t cook or sew. She couldn’t even wipe her own behind. He got stuck with her and he wanted to get rid of her. He wouldn’t stop pestering me so finally I undertook to sell her. I got nothing for my pains. Even after she was delivered I didn’t have enough left over to buy heroin. I was in terrible shape. But Hsi-nan played square. He at least found me some heroin.

“I know it is a bad thing to sell heroin. I exploited others. I preyed on the addicts. But now I have fanshened. I received land and property but I do not deserve any such thing. I know my fanshen was due to my poor brothers and I must thank them. I wish you would criticize me more.”

“How do you feel about the death of your donkey?” asked a neighbor.

“I borrowed BRC 200,000* to buy the little bastard. Now it is dead. You can imagine yourself how I feel,” said Wang, and he began to weep right there in front of the whole group.

“How do you feel about selling your wife?” asked several women.

Wang T’ao-yuan made no answer. He only wept more despondently.

“Well, you sold her, and now you weep about it!”

“No,” said Wang. “I am not weeping for my bartered wife. I am weeping for my dead donkey.”

To punish him they classed him as a middle peasant, but even this did not satisfy the women. “He ought to be classed as a landlord’s running dog,” said several. But they said it in a whisper because the men, on the whole, sympathized with Wang.

*********

Disagreements over the class status of various Long Bow residents pointed up the need for accurate standards of comparison. In preparatory conferences the work team cadres had studied such standards. Now, as the problems of differentiation grew more and more complicated, they introduced them to the peasants of the Provisional League.

The standards they introduced were roughly the same as those adopted by the Communist Party of China in 1933 when the first “Land to the Tiller” policy was carried out in the old revolutionary base at Juichin, Kiangsi.** Most of the poor peasants, after two years of campaigning, understood the standards fairly well, but as they applied them the deficiencies of the relatively simple concepts of 1933 became more and more apparent.

The Juichin standards, it turned out, were strong in defining the center of gravity of each rural class, that pole which determined the special nature of its typical members and their special relationship to the means of production. The standards were weak, however, in defining exact boundary lines between the classes. They lacked the precision necessary to distinguish between the many borderline, atypical cases that showed up so frequently in real life.

By far the most important dividing line was that between the middle peasants and the rich peasants. The Draft Agrarian Law of 1947 had made this the great divide between friend and enemy, between the people and their oppressors, between revolution and counter-revolution. It was absolutely essential that this line be clear and unequivocal. Yet here the Juichin documents were most ambiguous. In describing middle peasants the document said, “Some of the middle peasants practice a small amount of exploitation, but such exploitation is not of a constant character and the income therefrom does not constitute their main means of livelihood.”

Anyone using these standards would have to know exactly what small, constant, and main meant in order to carry out the intent of the law.

In regard to the difference between poor peasants and middle peasants the same kind of difficulty arose. On this dividing line the Juichin document stated, “In general middle peasants need not sell their labor power but poor peasants have to sell their labor power for limited periods.” Another sentence indicated that even middle peasants sometimes did sell their labor power. In order to make a precise determination, one would have to know what was meant by in general and limited periods.

As classification progressed, both the cadres and the peasants in Long Bow keenly felt the need for something more precise. This need was met, in part at least, by a set of supplementary regulations issued by the Central Committee in the fall of 1947. On the dividing line between middle and rich peasants these regulations stated that an income received from exploitation that was less than 15 percent of the gross was small and hence permissible for a middle peasant. Anything over that was considered large and enough to put the family over the line into the rich peasant category.

On the dividing line between middle and poor peasants, the regulations made clear that the labor power sold by middle peasants was mainly surplus labor power or the labor power of the children and old folks. Any family that consistently sold the labor power of its able-bodied adult members must ordinarily be classed as poor.

Another keenly felt need was for some definite base period. Was one to consider the present status of the family, the status several years back, or the status in the light of several generations? When left to themselves, the peasants of Long Bow tended to go back two and even three generations. This was in accord with habits deeply ingrained in the Chinese people, habits which had much precedent in the culture of the past. Under the old imperial examination system, for example, candidates had to prove not only that they themselves were not representatives of some barred category (boatman, actor, prostitute, or other “wandering” type) but also that their parents and grandparents were free of any such taint. Settlers in Shantung whose parents or grandparents had migrated from Hopei still regarded themselves as Hopei people.

This concept of hereditary social status helped to explain the wide support given to the campaign against “feudal tails” which had so sharpened the struggle and broadened the revolutionary target in 1946. Yet such a concept could hardly be said to conform to conditions of modern life. The disintegration of traditional Chinese society under the impact of foreign conquest, commercial dumping, dynastic decline, civil war and famine had introduced such a mobility into social relations (most of it downward) that it was no longer realistic to think of tracing back even five years, not to mention a few generations.

In view of these facts, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party added to the supplementary regulations a section which strictly defined the base period to be used in making a determination of class status. In areas liberated after 1945 it was to be the three years prior to the liberation of the village. For the Fifth District of Lucheng County this meant the years 1943-1945. Each family was to be judged according to its economic position during those three years alone. The fact that a family had once been very wealthy, rented out land, or hired many laborers, made no difference to its class status if, during the three years of the base period, its able-bodied members earned their own living or a major portion of it by their own labor. Likewise, the fact that a man had once been a poor peasant made no difference at all if, during the base period, he had collected rents, hired laborers, or loaned out money at usurious interest rates.

By the same token, inherited wealth possessed by families who labored for a living during the base period could not be touched. It mattered not in the least what the source of any family’s wealth might be. If the able-bodied members of that family earned their living by the sweat of their brow during the three years prior to the liberation of their village, they themselves were not rich peasants or landlords and could not legally be attacked or deprived of any property.

In brief, the reforms called for in the Draft Agrarian Law were to be based on class status, not class origin, on current means of livelihood, not on past privilege or past penury.

The Revolutionary Heat

I began as a student and acquired at school the habits of a student; in the presence of a crowd of students who could neither fetch nor carry for themselves, I used to feel it undignified to do any manual labor, such as shouldering my own luggage. At that time it seemed to me that the intellectuals were the only clean persons in the world, and the workers and peasants seemed rather dirty beside them. I could put on the clothes of other intellectuals because I thought they were clean, but I would not put on clothes belonging to a worker or peasant because I felt they were dirty. Having become a revolutionary I found myself in the same ranks as the workers, peasants, and soldiers of the revolutionary army, and gradually I became familiar with them and they with me too. It was then and only then that a fundamental change occurred in the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feelings implanted in me by the bourgeois schools. I came to feel that it was those unremolded intellectuals who were unclean as compared to the workers and peasants, while the workers and peasants are after all the cleanest persons—even though their hands are soiled and their feet are smeared with cow dung. This is what is meant by having one’s feelings transformed, changed from those of one class to those of another.

Mao Tse-tung

THE CLASSIFICATION meetings continued for days. Hour after hour we sat in the ice-cold adobe dwellings of the poor and listened as discussion followed report and report followed discussion. We were glad when the press of people was such that padded limbs and torsos leaned against us from all sides. In such close quarters the heat generated by each participant helped to keep his neighbor warm. When the crush was great enough, body heat even took the chill off the air in the room. Unknown to me this close contact made inevitable a form of heat that continued to warm all participants long after the meeting was over.

One cold night as Ch’i Yun and I walked homeward across the flat toward Kao Settlement, I began to notice an uncomfortable burning sensation on the skin of my shoulders and up both sides of my neck. This soon spread to the small of my back and to those areas of my stomach where a worn leather belt held my padded trousers tight against my flesh.

As soon as I got home I took off my jacket, turned it inside out, held it close to the burning wick of the single, bean-oil lamp allotted to me, and took a close look. The lining was alive with flat, crawling mites, some of them transparently white, others already dark with engorged blood. Lice!

So that was it. The ubiquitous vermin had found me already!

Having examined my jacket, I took off my pants. They were as alive with lice as the jacket.

My padded outfit could not be washed, nor could I in good conscience ask for another. There was only one thing to do—pick off the lice, crush them, and start over. I knew well enough how lice were hunted. How many times had I watched peasants sitting in the warm sun with their jackets over their knees pursuing the slow-crawling vermin, catching them between their thumb-nails and squeezing them until they burst? But that night, holding my jacket close to the flame, I could not bring myself to begin. I pictured to myself how the lice would snap and crumble, how the blood would spurt. I had no stomach for it. Finally I laid the jacket on the floor, found a pair of chopsticks, and picked the lice out of the lining as if I were picking delicacies off a banquet table. One by one I dropped them on a smooth brick and crushed them with a stone. By this aseptic but laborious method I gradually cut down the voracious army in my garments.

While I was in the midst of the hunt one of my English students came to the door. Shamefaced, I dropped the chopsticks and threw the jacket over a chair. It was too late. The student had seen what I was up to and began to laugh. Through him word soon spread to the whole University and into the village beyond that Old Han, the American, was catching lice with chopsticks and crushing them with bricks and stones.

Such was my baptism of fire, such my introduction to the notorious “revolutionary heat” that several generations of Chinese students and intellectuals had learned to bear without complaint because they felt that their country needed them among the people.

When the time came to search my clothes the second time I found that I was far less squeamish than at first. Soon I was hunting lice like a veteran and exhibiting the bloodstains on my thumbnails to anyone rash enough to tease me about chopsticks and bricks.

Just as I became accustomed to the lice I also became accustomed to other aspects of village life that had at first upset me: shaves from an itinerant barber whose hot but far from sterile towel made no distinction between eyes half closed with trachoma and eyes as yet unharmed; once-a-month baths in the public bathhouse at Changchih where the flotsam washed from countless earlier patrons floated in an oily film on the steaming pools, where men relieved their bladders in one corner of the room and spat wherever they found it convenient; meals taken in the hovels of the poor where one shared chopsticks with people suffering from incurable disease and swallowed down, day after day, the dreary boiled corn dumplings called ke ta; daily encounters with privies in which night soil accumulated the year round and gave off such fumes of ammonia that tears started in one’s eyes and the stomach churned.

Eating out was the real test. When we first arrived in the village the attack on Little Ch’uer had caused a general retreat. Team Leader Hou, fearing for our safety, had asked us to take our meals with the rest of the cadres in the District Office. But as the days went by, tension abated. After a couple of weeks Hou decided that we could eat out as the rest of the team members had already begun to do. Each day we took millet tickets issued to us by the University and gave them to a poor peasant’s wife in return for our noon meal. In this way we gradually became acquainted not only with the most active poor peasants in the village, but with their homes, their wives, their children, and their less active relatives as well.

Some of these homes were as spotlessly clean as a dirt-floored, earthen-walled, paper-windowed North China hut could be made. The floors were swept, the k’angs dusted, the bright-colored quilts neatly folded back against the wall of the sleeping quarters, and the round-bottomed cooking pot, the bowls, and the chopsticks scoured until they shone.

In other homes we found the opposite condition. The dwelling of Tseng Chung-hsi, former puppet policeman and a peasant who had lost both house and land in the Anti-Traitor Movement, may serve as an example. Tseng was the informer who had betrayed So-tzu, Lai-pao, and Fu-yuan to the puppet captain in the Long Bow fort and so was blamed by the entire village for the deaths of the two resistance heroes. That he was still alive seemed incongruous, especially when one recalled the violence of the post-liberation reaction against puppets and collaborators. However, we found him not only alive but in possession of land and housing handed out to make up for that which he had lost. That the new equalled the old was doubtful. Tseng’s whole family lived in a cramped shed that was divided into two equal parts. On one side were housed the farming implements and carpenter’s tools that enabled him to make a living. Several chickens roosted on these implements and spread their droppings at random on the floor. On the other side six people ate and slept—Tseng, his wife, two daughters (aged one and 13), and two sons (aged three and seven). The room was a shambles, smoke-blackened and cluttered with scraps, wheat roots, broken tools, crocks, and rags. On the narrow k’ang that filled the south end of the living space lay the eldest daughter. She lay under a grime-covered quilt; through its holes portions of her emaciated limbs protruded. She coughed, spat blood, and coughed interminably. For a year she had been immobilized there, near death from turberculosis. The rest of the family slept beside her, shared food and utensils with her, and breathed the same air she breathed in that stagnant, smoke-filled hell.

The odor of decay all but overpowered us as we came through the door. In addition to the strong aroma of baby urine that rose from the floor, the pungent scent of chicken dung wafting in from the adjacent room, and the swirling smoke from the wheat-root fire, the air was saturated with the rotten smell of the girl’s lacerated lungs. Tseng’s 30-year-old wife, thin, careworn, her face already wrinkled like that of a woman twice her age, served us lukewarm corn dumplings in bowls caked with the dried leavings of many a previous meal. For lack of any other resting place, we sat on the k’ang beside the dying girl and ate.

I knew that the bowls, the chopsticks, the very air that we were breathing was infected with tuberculousis, but I had to carry on as if nothing were amiss. This was a test of stamina such as every land reform worker went through. Unless one were willing to share the trials of other people, one did not deserve their trust. I thought to myself, “If Ch’i Yun can take this, I can too.” One glance in her direction indicated that she was completely oblivious to her surroundings. She was eating her dumpling as if it were a sugar bun, and talking to Tseng’s wife. She soon learned the woman’s maiden name, where she came from, how much Tseng had paid for her, whether she had ever been to a village meeting, and what she thought of the Women’s Association.

Ch’i Yun was magnificent. She was doing her job. The least I could do was to eat the corn in front of me.

Eating out brought us into touch with people in a way that a thousand meetings never could, and soon we became fast friends with a score of peasants who looked forward to our coming and vied with each other in issuing invitations.

Prominent among these was the old woman whom we had noticed winding cotton so intently as Little Li read the Announcement to the Peasants in Chief-of-Staff Hsu’s loft. At every subsequent meeting she sought us out, filled us in on the background of the people who appeared before the Provisional League for classification, and related to us all the latest gossip from the southwest sector of the village. At the same time she took an active part in the meetings herself. Ch’i-Yun decided that this woman was a genuine “active element” who could play an important role in the events to come and asked the District Office to arrange a meal in her home.

This old lady’s married named was Wang. She was known to most of the villagers as Old Lady Wang, but because her husband was very old and no longer able to work, some ignored him altogether and called her Jen-pao’s mother, as if she were already a widow. Jen-pao was the 18-year-old son whom she was sending through high school at the county seat on the proceeds of her spinning and weaving.

When we showed up for our first meal, Old Lady Wang never stopped working and never stopped talking.

“Every day that I work,” she said, “I can earn ten catties of millet. Why should I waste time at all these meetings? Well, I want to know more and I think all poor peasants must fanshen. One can’t just worry about oneself any more. If we don’t unite none of us is safe.”

That she wasted time at meetings was something of an exaggeration. We knew that she never came to a meeting without some work in hand and spent her time furiously reeling, stitching, or spinning. But we did not challenge her statement. No doubt at home she accomplished twice as much.

She proudly showed us her loom which she was threading in preparation for a new bolt of homespun cloth and boasted of all the skills she possessed such as spinning, weaving, fluffing cotton with a taut-stringed bow, and making shoes. She was one of the few women in the village who still knew how to weave at a time when that ancient art had suffered almost total extinction due to the cheap imported and coastal manufactured textiles.

The old lady told us how she had come from Shantung Province more than 20 years before, after her first husband had died. She, her mother, her brother, and her daughter ran out of money on the road. They tried to sell the little girl for enough cash to continue. A buyer was found, but when the time came to leave the child behind, both the grandmother and the child cried so bitterly that the man thought better of the deal. He returned the child and gave the family enough wheat flour to last them a few more days. But tragedy trod the heels of luck. Even before the wheat had been consumed, the little girl fell ill and died.

The surviving wanderers from Shantung finally arrived in the mountains of Shansi as outright beggars. A distant relative arranged for Old Lady Wang to marry the laborer, Wang-shen, a man 20 years her senior. It was either marry or starve to death, so the handsome young widow consented. The match was ill-starred from the beginning. She was so badly treated by Wang’s brother that her own mother and brother walked out one day in protest and were never heard from again.

“I did not hate him,” Old Lady Wang said of the brother, who had long since died. “It was the old society that made him cruel. In the old society everyone oppressed others.

“During the famine year I peddled beancake. My pants wore so thin that people could see my p’i ku (buttocks) through the holes and made fun of me,” she said. “Now things are much better. We got an acre and a half at the time of the distribution and 30 bushels of corn and millet. We also bought half a donkey, and I got an old felt mat for the k’ang for five ounces of grain. The cadres didn’t want me to have it, but I got it anyway.”

In spite of her improved condition, Old Lady Wang thought that she had not really fanshened. With only two sections of house, how could she take in a daughter-in-law when her son married in the fall? There would be no place for the girl and the land would hardly yield enough to support them. And what would happen when she had grandchildren? “The only other thing that worries me is the fate of my mother and brother,” she said, wiping away involuntary tears. “They left so long ago! I often weep when I think of them.”

But the tears soon dried on her cheeks as she got out her bow and began to prepare some raw cotton for the lining of a padded suit.

***********

Old Lady Wang’s home, though small, was often used for meetings. It was centrally located. It contained no small children underfoot who might disrupt the proceedings, and it was always neat and clean.

It was in this house that the poor peasant Chang Lao-pao clashed with his estranged wife over his class status and exposed another of those domestic tragedies left over from the old society, tragedies that corroded the very roots of Long Bow’s social life and made a mockery of the vaunted Chinese family system so celebrated in the West.

One might suppose that the relations between a man and his wife should have very little to do with his class status, but in this case the relationship became central because the per capita holdings of Chang’s family varied greatly depending on whether one included his wife and daughter or not.

On March 20th, Lao-pao came before the Provisional League to make his “self report.” He was a tall man with a leathery face and deeply wrinkled skin. It was hard to judge how old he was because the wrinkles made him look 50, whereas the vigor of his movements and the fullness of his muscles indicated that he might be still in his thirties.

Lao-pao said that in 1942 he owned three acres and supported four people. They got along well enough until the famine year. Then he took his family to Taiyuan. He brought them back in 1946. He had never owned livestock or farming implements. He said he was a poor peasant.

“But his wife always earned her own living,” protested Old Lady Wang, well aware of what that meant in terms of sweat and pain. “Before 1942 she worked in another village as a servant. After that she hired out as a seasonal laborer and supported herself and her daughter. We can’t count them in the family.”

“Can you get along with your wife?” they asked Lao-pao. “If not, you are a middle peasant.”

At this Lao-pao lost his temper.

“Call me any class you like. Call me a landlord if you want to.”

“Let’s call his wife and ask her,” suggested Old Lady Wang.

“She’s nothing but an old bitch,” said Lao-pao. “Why should you ask her? You’re here to class me. Why not do it according to my condition? If you don’t believe what I say, do as you like.”

He was just like a stone. Everyone agreed on that.

“The fact is, he can’t get on with anyone but his mother. She’s the root of the whole trouble,” said several of his neighbors.

In spite of Lao-pao’s objections, they called in his wife.

She turned out to be a thin browned woman, prematurely aged and clad in garments that were dirty, ragged, and many years old. They barely concealed two breasts which hung down like flaps of old leather over her stomach. Her hair tumbled in tangled knots before her face, some strands of it already grey. She talked rapidly, bitterly, but with spirit. She brought with her a wan little girl, about seven years old, but so small she might have been four. The youngster was also clad in rags. She stared silently at the crowd of peasants with her large black eyes and kept her mouth tightly shut.

“I have no opinion about his class myself,” said Lao-pao’s “old lady.” “I’ve always been walked over by him and his mother. He’s not such a bad man himself, but his temper is short. As for my mother-in-law, I can say nothing good for her. She never spoke rudely to my face, but only clawed me when my back was turned and ran me down to her son so that we quarrelled. As for me, I worked as a servant in Horse Square, Yellow Mill, and many other places. Though they never gave me any cloth, still I made clothes for him and supported myself with my own hands. All my neighbors know that. I only speak true words.”

“What about your class? Do you want to be classed as one family or separately?”

“It’s all the same to me,” she said, shrugging her lean shoulders. “I have no opinion.” A sharp edge of bitterness was clearly discernible in her voice.

When they asked Lao-pao, he said the same thing. “I have no opinion.”

His wife disputed this. “He doesn’t want me to return home. We separated the year before last. I was out working. When I got back they had already moved into a new house and locked the door. I wanted to pack up and move there but my big box was too heavy for me to lift, so I went to his mother to ask for help. She said, ‘If you want you can move it yourself. Otherwise stay where you are. We have no place for your big box or you either.’ I knew what she meant. But since the k’ang was so big, big enough for ten boxes of mine, I asked her why she said that. Two people can hardly use one end of that k’ang. This started a quarrel. The neighbors came then. They tried to get Lao-pao to carry my box over but he refused. Since then I have lived in the old place by myself. He doesn’t speak to me when we meet in the street.”

“Lao-pao is always in a squeeze,” said one peasant. “He dares not say anything to offend his mother, nor can he make peace with his wife. He’s just like a hand towel, always in the middle and both sides lay the blame on him. But really, he only cares for his mother and abuses and beats his wife.”

“Don’t waste your time on this case,” said Lao-pao to the meeting in general. “I know I’m just the dirty towel.”

“Don’t force him into anything,” countered his wife. “I can live on by myself.”

A reprimand from Cadre Liang and a sympathtic suggestion from Ch’i Yun that Lao-pao at least try to reunite his family had no effect

“If I had such a good wife, I would kneel down before God,” said an old bachelor. He was the same man who had tried to smooth the way for the blacksmith, Huan-ch’ao. “You, you don’t know how painful is the life of a single man. You had better look at it from all sides. How will you get on after your mother’s death? You’d better take this chance to get off the stage.”

But Lao-pao only shrugged at this too. They finally classed him as a poor peasant anyway, but as one who had now fanshened. He strode off cursing.

His wife stayed on and, as the meeting broke up, talked to the group of women that formed sympathetically around her.

“You can do nothing to help my family,” she said. “My neighbors have already tried many times. It is no use. It’s better this way. I live by my own work and my life is better than before. Then it was one quarrel after another. Once I asked him to get some water from the well. But he was too lazy to go. Later he got out some beans and started building a fire. I said, ‘You’re too lazy to get any water. How do you think you will cook those beans?’ He hit me so hard I fell to the floor but I pulled him down with me and only the neighbors finally separated us. If they hadn’t, one of us would be dead. Another time he cut my left arm with a spade. Once we cut wheat in the field. His mother brought food and we quarrelled. When she left he cut me across the forehead with his sickle.”

After listening to these stories the women all said it was better for Lao-pao’s wife to live alone. Then she could bring up her daughter in peace. “If you return, you will only suffer oppression. Only after your mother-in-law dies can you be reconciled.”

That there was another side to this story we heard only later. Some of the young women, less sympathetic to Lao-pao’s wife, told Ch’i Yun that the sharp-tongued woman earned money in other ways than labor, that she had conceived a child by another man, and that she had killed it with a needle after it was born. If this was true, the tragedy was only compounded.

Brothers

And the Lord said unto Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” And he said, “I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?”

Genesis

TO THRESH the wheat from the chaff, to separate the kernel of truth from the husk of falsehood sometimes taxed the collective wisdom of the whole Provisional League. This was particularly so when families prosperous enough to hire labor came up for review. From below came tremendous pressure to push them over the line into the rich peasant category. From the more prosperous came intense counter-pressure. The cadres of the work team, whose role it was to guard the objectivity of the proceedings and to see to it that the law was followed both in letter and spirit, were pushed now one way, now another. More often than was wise they allowed their weight to fall on the side of extremism among the poor.

This was exactly what happened in the case of Li Pao-yu, a man wiio owned six acres of land, five sections of housing, and a courtyard with 27 fruit trees. On these better than average holdings lived a family of four: Li, his wife, an adopted son, and a daughter-in-law. On the surface there seemed nothing out of the ordinary about the family, but once the work team cadres began to probe more deeply, all manner of curious facts came to light. Li Pao-yu, some said, was not a peasant at all, but a merchant who had made enough buying and selling in distant parts to purchase land in Long Bow. So unaccustomed was he to hard work on the land that six acres were more than he could handle, even with the help of a teen-aged son. He hired as much as 50 days’ seasonal labor each year to plant and gather his crops. While the hired laborers sweated in the fields, Li and his wife ran a gambling table in their home. Sometimes they joined the game; sometimes they simply acted as bankers or croupiers. And this was not all. Another rumor had it that Li’s wife had been mistress to the landlord Sheng Ching-ho. It was the many gifts which the latter bestowed upon his favorite, not peddling profits, that made it possible for the Li family to purchase land. Evidently, all of landlord Sheng’s gifts had not bought the loyalty of his mistress. It was well known that she had carried on an affair with the lusty peasant Hsiao-tseng for years. Everyone remembered with amusement how she had ended up hanging by her wrists from the gable of the village office when Pao-yu complained to the puppet authorities.

Li himself came before the Provisional League clad in garments faded and frayed from much washing. He said he thought he was a middle peasant. He might have convinced the majority of this, but someone asked him about his brother. Was it not true that his brother had lived with him and worked for two years as an unpaid hand on his land and that his brother’s wife had done all the work in their home?

Li did not deny that his brother, Li Lao-szu, had lived with him, but his view of the relationship between him and Lao-szu was just the opposite of that suggested by his questioner.

“I saved Lao-szu from starvation,” he said. “I gave him and his whole family a home when they had no place to go. Many times I suggested that they leave, but they were dependent upon me and were afraid to move out. Of course,” he added with an embarrassed laugh, “It was nothing. Who wouldn’t help a brother?”

Lao-szu, when called, had a very different story to relate. His long sorrowful face well suited the tale he had to tell. “When I came from Linhsien with my family, I gave my brother everything I had. I even gave him one of my sons, for he had none of his own. But he treated us like slaves. We worked day and night in the fields and in his house but we got nothing, absolutely nothing for it. When I tried to leave, Pao-yu swore at me. Told me I was ungrateful. I finally ran away without telling him. I reclaimed some land on the Western Mountain and came back for my family afterwards.”

After hearing this side of the story some of the poor peasants called Pao-yu a rich peasant; others said he was certainly a landlord. Pao-yu went home pale and shaking with fear. He was afraid to tell his wife what had happened. When she nagged him he lost his temper. “It’s your fault,” he shouted. “You couldn’t even treat my own brother decently and now look at the mess you’ve landed us in!”

“What mess?”

“They’re calling us landlords,” he screamed. “That’s the mess.”

But Pao-yu’s wife did not panic. She remembered that Lao-szu had left their home the year after their adopted son was married. The base period had not even begun at the time. Lao-szu’s labor, whether exploited or not, could hardly count.

The next day Pao-yu appeared before the Provisional League again. Confident and cocky he announced the discrepancy in dates. But the announcement did not have the effect foreseen. Most of the peasants were ready to accept his argument, but Little Li, the work team cadre, suddenly arose and passionately denounced him as an exploiter so mean that he lived off his own brother’s labor and then tried to wriggle out of it on a technicality.

“Not only did they labor for you, they even gave you a son! Where is your conscience? Are you so afraid of your wife that you forget the feelings of a brother?” Little Li trembled as he spoke.

“Why did you give your brother a whole acre after liberation? Was that not a crumb to stop his mouth? If I were you I would weep for shame!”

Li’s appeal put Pao-yu in a worse position than before. Clutching at any straw that might relieve the pressure, Pao-yu pleaded with them concerning his fruit trees.

“They’re really worthless,” he said. “Last year I got only BRC 10,000 from the lot.”

“Perhaps we had better ask the man who planted them about that,” said Shen Ch’uan-te, the Catholic.

This was no problem. Old Hou, the man who had sold the courtyard to Pao-yu, was sitting with the group. “When you shake those trees the money falls down,” he said. “What fine trees they are! I planted them myself, but I had nothing to live on. When my son died of starvation, I sold the court to Pao-yu.”

“What can I say if no one believes me?” Pao-yu protested, more to the walls than to his audience. Tears were already starting in his eyes.

The next day Ch’i Yun and I ate in Pao-yu’s home. The courtyard did not look very prosperous. The ex-merchant and his notorious wife lived in a low adobe shed built along the north wall. The west wall had crumbled in the middle and a neighbor’s pig had scaled it. The pig was rooting among the controversial trees. They were thorn dates. Some of them were already dead. Others carried as many dead branches as live ones. It seemed to me that if anyone shook them, dry twigs instead of money would fall down.

In order to impress us with her poverty, Pao-yu’s wife fed us the leanest corn dumplings we had ever eaten. Her son, the boy given her by Lao-szu, looked as if he had never had anything else to eat. He was stunted, almost dwarfed, with a head that seemed to sit on his chest. At 12 he had been married to a girl of 20 so that Pao-yu’s wife might have a servant to replace the sister-in-law who had run away. Early marriage had certainly done him no good.

The lady of the house was dressed in the plainest of tunics. Her black hair was drawn straight back from her forehead and tied in a severe knot behind. Wrinkles showed around her eyes and mouth. It was hard to imagine that she had once been a successful courtesan. With tears in her eyes she told us of the sacrifices she had made to keep her brother-in-law happy, to give him the best of everything.

“Now I can’t think it through. In my family there are only two. This child is theirs. After we die who will inherit the property? We save and work, not for our own sakes, but for the son of another. But he says we have ill-treated him! It is so painful.”

That afternoon Pao-yu came once more before the meeting. Cadre Li, having thought better of his outburst of the day before, apologized for having intervened. He read from the book that passage which told how to differentiate a well-to-do middle peasant from a rich peasant. The main point was not the existence of exploitation but the extent of it. In the gross income of a rich peasant, at least 15 percent had to come from rent, interest, or profit on hired labor. On that basis, Pao-yu was clearly no rich peasant.

“Yesterday,” said Old Lady Wang, “you got angry and interrupted us. Then we got angry and called you a landlord. But really you are not.”

“I was so frightened,” said Pao-yu. “How could I suddenly have become a landlord? When I went home I dared not tell my wife. I did not sleep all night. Even well-to-do middle peasant seemed too high. But now I think that is right. Everyone else seems to think so. What can I do? I have thought it through.”

Since his words carried no ring of conviction, Cadre Li tried to reassure him. “We don’t mind spending time. If you still disagree you can wait until after the mass meeting. Even after that you can appeal to the higher authorities.”

But Li had apparently decided that he could not do better.

“I’m a well-to-do middle peasant,” he said.

As the meeting broke up someone whispered, “His wife ought to be called to the meeting. Maybe she could learn something.”

“She! Never!” came the whispered reply.

***********

Between classification meetings Ch’i Yun and I often went out to visit individual peasants, especially those whom Ch’i Yun thought should be admitted to the Provisional League.

One day we were talking to Old Kao, a demobilized army veteran who lived in the foreign-style house expropriated from Chief-of-Staff Hsu. Suddenly, Li Hsin-ai, the girl who had eloped with her cousin from central Hopei, burst into the room.

“Oh!” she said when she saw Ch’i Yun and myself. “I thought Comrade Liang was here.”

“Why Comrade Liang?”

“I need help. My chimney just fell down. All my pots and bowls are smashed to powder. The roof is ready to follow the chimney down. What will happen to my child? When I asked the carpenters to repair it for me they said, ‘Where will you get all that money? It will take several days’ work.’ With my husband off in the army I have to do everything myself. This morning I went out to find fuel; then I had to carry water. Now I have left my baby on the k’ang, but I am afraid. The mutual aid group gives me some help, but I have to do so many things by myself and the baby takes so much time that I can only spin an ounce a day in exchange for the help.”

Here she broke down weeping, but wiped away her tears and went on between sobs, “I don’t want to move. I have many friends in my courtyard, but I don’t know what to do.”

She was a very beautiful girl, not the delicate willow-wand type, but full-bodied, almost voluptuous, especially with her breasts distended and ready to nurse. Concealment of the upper body was not a part of modesty in Long Bow, and the girl stood before us now with her tunic unfastened so that both her breasts and her soft stomach were exposed to view.

Kao, overcome by her presence, gallantly offered her the pick of the rooms in his “foreign house.”

“You can have this section. I’ll move on down a few doors if you like.”

When the young mother hestitated, Ch’i Yun told her not to worry. Something would surely be done to resettle her. After all, her man was in the army. Li Hsin-ai left us smiling. Only two streaks of dirt down her cheeks indicated that she had been weeping desolately a few moments before.

When we took leave of Kao we decided to have a look at the house where the chimney had fallen down. Ch’i Yun wanted to get better acquainted with its occupant, the unusual young woman who had defied convention and threats of death to marry the man she loved. In Long Bow men made fun of Li Hsin-ai. The middle peasant Chin-hung, a former puppet soldier himself, was fond of telling the story of her “rascal affair” to anyone who would listen. Then he laughed as if it would kill him. Young women took a different attitude. None of them said it aloud, but in their hearts they admired and even envied the girl for her courage. The older women, on the other hand, tended to side with the men. It was their veto that blocked Li Hsin-ai from membership in the Provisional Poor Peasants’ League.

We found Li sitting on her k’ang nursing her handsome baby. One whole corner of the adobe building had collapsed to form a heap of rubble at her feet. As she had already made up her mind to move, the house no longer weighed on her mind. What she wanted to talk about was Chin-hung and his ridicule.

“He should not laugh at me like that,” she said, pouting. “My parents would not agree to our marriage so we had to run away. But as for the child, it is my husband’s. Chin-hung laughs as if his pot were clean, but everyone knows about his doings. He ought to speak out in the village meeting if he has so many opinions. Let’s hear what the others have to say. Just because my husband is away in the army he oppresses me.” With that she broke down and began to weep again.

A Curved Road

The purity of the leadership of the peasants’ associations at all levels should be safeguarded. The masses should be mobilized to re-elect the leadership where there is impurity. Here, the term ‘purity’ does not mean the adoption of a closed-door attitude toward such farm laborers, poor peasants or middle peasants who have committed certain errors. Nor does it mean their exclusion from the peasants’ associations. On the contrary, they should be welcomed into the associations, educated and brought into unity. The term ‘purity’ here means to prevent landlords, rich peasants, and their agents from joining the peasants’ associations and, still more important, from holding leading positions in the peasants’ associations.

Liu Shao-ch’i

BY THE END of March all the families in the village had been classified. Many difficult cases had come up, and with each case a story—a traitor who had been expropriated even though he was bare poor; a nine-year-old orphan who held twice the average landholding in the village but had nothing else to his name, not even a bowl or a pair of chopsticks; a spendthrift who had sold all his land before the liberation to buy food, had squandered his share of the fruits since, and then contracted a debt that already amounted to three hundredweight of millet and several silver dollars; a cook who made so much money that he bought up land in the famine year and married a landlord’s widow; a professional castrator of pigs who had so prospered on high fees that he was able to hire others to work his land; a Long Bow-born laborer who, returning home penniless after 30 years employment in another county, arrived after everything had been divided and received nothing; an old man who had given his share of the family land to a brother and then gone to live with and work for a neighboring widow. Now his brother wanted him to demand back wages from the widow and share the bonanza with him, but the old man refused to break with his benefactress.

An almost endless succession of tragedies, incidents full of pathos, greed, rollicking humor, cruelty, and kindness unfolded as the people reported their condition. But what the peasants were really looking for didn’t turn up. There just did not seem to be any landlords or rich peasants left in the village and that meant that there would be very little to distribute when all was said and done. As the peasants themselves admitted, they could find no more “oil.”

The only family still in possession of any surplus property which might make them rich peasants was that of the lusty old widow, Yu Pu-ho, mistress to poor peasant Wang and mother of the exquisite Pu-ch’ao. Because her status was still obscure, she was called before the Provisional League several times.

Everybody had to admit that the widow was clever. She had always carefully observed which way the wind was blowing and tacked accordingly. When the puppet troops held power in the county, she married her daughter off to a squad leader in the headquarters battalion. Although a poor peasant by birth, this soldier’s rank was exalted enough to provide his relatives with some protection against looting and rape. The widow also persuaded her son to enlist. Later, when the puppet troops surrendered to the Eighth Route Army, she persuaded both men to volunteer for service with the revolutionary forces and brought her daughter home to Long Bow as “cadre bait.” Thus she shifted course without getting hurt, won the right to aid as a soldier’s dependent, and even received her share of the “fruits.” So intimate did her daughter become with the village cadres that she bore one of them a son. No one knew who the father was, but he apparently had influence, for the fact remained that no attack was ever launched against the widow.

The publication of the Draft Agrarian Law and the arrival of the work team plunged Pu-ho into renewed danger. This time it looked as if she would not be able to find a way out. Nevertheless she was determined not to give up without a fight. When she appeared to answer questions she wore several layers of thickly padded clothing.

“Up to her old tricks again,” confided Old Lady Wang to Ch’i Yun in a loud whisper. “When the struggle movement first began she put on all the padding she could find. She thought she wouldn’t feel so much pain when we beat her. But she was never even attacked. Her daughter saw to that.”

The widow reviewed her sources of income with a slight nervous stutter. She listed five people, eight acres, eight sections of house, a donkey, a cart, all necessary implements. She said that her husband had died long ago. Since then, because her son was young, she had employed hired labor. What she forgot to mention was the fact that while her husband lived he never worked, and after her sons grew up they never worked either. They had always employed hired hands while they themselves followed the “Five Don’t Go Policy”: don’t go to work if it rains, don’t go if it is cold; don’t go if the wind blows; don’t go if the sun is hot; don’t go if you are tired. After Liberation the widow held onto all her land but sold her donkey and her cart.

“How come you no longer have the cart and donkey?” she was asked.

“One day my son took a trip and sold them.”

“But why?”

“How should I know? He sold them without asking me.”

This seemed very unlikely. The peasants did not believe a word of it. They felt sure the donkey had been sold to avoid confiscation.

“In any case, she later bought another donkey,” said one.

“Yes, when she thought she was safe.”

“But this new donkey is old and torn,” protested Wang, her lover, rushing to her defense.

At this all the women burst out laughing.

“How can a donkey be torn?” they asked.

This upset Old Wang very much.

“Of course a donkey can be torn,” he said. “Why do you want to make out that the donkey is sound when he is really falling apart?”

His words fell on deaf ears. The peasants knew that Old Wang would defend his beloved to the end. They did not deign to argue the case. Instead they held a ke ts’ao and there decided that the widow was a rich peasant.

***********

The discovery of one rich peasant still in possession of some wealth was small solace to the members of the Provisional League. In the course of their investigations they had unearthed a total of 174 families who had been poor peasants during the base period, only 72 of whom had as yet fanshened. This meant that there were over 100 families in the village who still faced great difficulty in making a living. The problem was not primarily a shortage of land, for there was enough land to give every man, woman, and child almost a full acre. The problem was the shortage of livestock, carts, implements, housing, and manpower. For even though most of the draft animals had already been shared among four or more families each, there were still dozens of households that did not even own one leg of a donkey, not to mention a spoke in the wheel of a cart. There were also large numbers of widows and old people who had no one to help them in the fields. How to make middle peasants of all these people was the problem that faced the Provisional Poor and Hired Peasants’ League. On the face of it, the problem seemed insoluble.

The work team had no more idea than the peasants of what to do about this discrepancy, but proposed, as a first step, that the Provisional League be enlarged to include all honest poor peasants. At the same time the work team launched an examination of the village accounts in order to determine where all the “fruits” had gone. This idea came from a newspaper story that described just such an “accounts examination” in another village. Perhaps in that way enough property could be unearthed to fill some of the gaping holes. In the absence of landlords and rich peasants this examination tended to focus attention on the cadres as possible “objects of struggle.”

The enlargement of the Provisional League proved to be a slow process. The standards used for classing a family were, by their nature, objective. One had only to look at the per capita holdings and measure the proportion of the family income derived from exploitation to arrive at a decision. But the standards for deciding who should or should not be members of the League included the words “honest” and “hardworking.” About such concepts there was plenty of room for argument.

Some of the women, and especially Old Lady Wang, were sticklers for moral purity.* They had vetoed Li Hsin-ai because she had eloped and they had vetoed Hsiao Lao-chang, a life-long laborer, because he lived with a widow as if she were his wife. Now in the interest of expanded membership the women finally decided to offer Hsiao a big concession. If he would only break with the widow, he could join the Provisional League. A message was sent to him to that effect.

Old Hsiao turned the tables on them. He was too honest to promise to do better, which was the attitude that many others took. He said instead, “Unless I can marry the woman, I’ll never join the League. What’s the use of your old League if it can’t help me get what is good for me?”

For this alone they might not have rejected Hsiao, but he went on to attack all the rest of the membership.

“Everyone’s face has a smudge on it,” he said. “All pots are black; in and out of the League it makes no difference. Help me marry the widow and I’ll join up with you.”

“How can we possibly do that?” they asked one another.

They took it for granted that Hsiao Lao-chang must remain a widower and his paramour, Tzu-ming, a widow. The fact that the lovers were fond of each other, faithful to each other, and wanted to marry had nothing to do with the case. By tradition a wife was supposed to remain loyal to her dead husband until her own demise. That this was impossible for most people made no difference. A widow who married brought disgrace on her husband’s whole family and lost all claim to her children into the bargain. All children were considered to be the heirs of the male parent alone. On them devolved the duty of caring for ancestral tablets and maintaining the family line. Their mother was only a convenience, a chattel, a servant brought in to provide male heirs. If she chose to leave, she left alone and in disgrace. That is why, instead of second marriages, there were so many illicit liaisons between widows and bachelors in Long Bow.

Only if the male partner agreed to take the woman’s married name did the situation change. Such a couple were allowed to marry because the alliance constituted no threat to the in-laws, gave the husband no right to the children, and posed no threat to the ancestral tablets. There were several such matches in Long Bow. One of them was the alliance entered into by Chin-chu, the irascible, oft-cuckolded shepherd whose difficulties with Militiaman Shen Yu-hsing have already been described.

But poor Chin-chu was long denied membership in the Provisional Poor Peasants’ League even though legally wed. Men regarded the surrender of his family name as a crack in the solid front of male supremacy, a crack that threatened the status of all males. Women looked down on him for “dancing to his wife’s tune.” “If she says a few sweet words to him, he forgets his own birthday,” they gossiped. They also disliked his wife. Rumor had it that she frequented market-day fairs in order to solicit business as a prostitute. And she not only slept with strangers for money, she regaled them with stories. Anything that happened in Long Bow would sooner or later be relayed by her to villages far and wide.

Men like Lao-pao, who mistreated their wives, men like T’ao-yuan, who had a reputation as rascals, all notorious former puppets and their relatives were also barred from the League. The only people about whom questions formerly had been raised but who were now admitted with alacrity were those dissident Catholics who had once been called agents. Most of them lived in the southwest corner. A few had been included in the League from the very beginning. They saw to it that the rest were invited.

As a result of exclusion for the above-mentioned reasons, almost half of the poor peasants in the village were not invited to join the Provisional Poor and Hired Peasants’ League. A full month after the work team arrived, nothing lasting could be said to have been accomplished in this direction.

The meetings set up to examine the village accounts also bogged down. Comrade Hsu, the intellectual from the University, undertook to head up this work because he had a good head for figures. He selected a committee of poor peasants to help him. Among them was Shen Ch’uan-te, the talkative Catholic whom Ch’i Yun and I had interviewed on our first day in Long Bow. Shen and the others selected by Hsu were convinced that the village cadres had misappropriated vast quantities of “fruits,” but all their efforts to gather facts bogged down in confusion. They went at the problem like a board of judges. They called one cadre after another and bombarded each with questions. When the answers led to contradictions or indicated that someone else was responsible they threatened their witnesses with dire punishment, swore at them, and put them under house arrest. Cheng-k’uan, former head of the Peasants’ Association, became so distraught by this treatment and by his inability to provide the committee with satisfactory answers that he tried to commit suicide by jumping in the well behind his house. Fortunately, he was discovered before he took the plunge.

When it became clear that the local cadres could not answer all questions concerning the fanshen accounts, the committee decided to interrogate those who had already left for work in the district and the county. Kuei-ts’ai, former revolutionary vice-head of the village, came home to visit his wife and was detained. T’ien-ming, former public security officer and founder of the Party Branch, returned to Long Bow for a production meeting of the Fifth District and was also detained. Fu-yuan, former village head, who was working on a land reform team in another village, was ordered home by mail. All were asked to stay in one courtyard until their interrogation was completed.

But neither Kuei-ts’ai nor Fu-yuan nor T’ien-ming helped clear up the accounts. Although they were able to answer many questions, they would admit to no large amount of graft and gave reasonable explanations for the disappearance of such valuables as the church candlesticks. Old Shen took the lead in suggesting that they go to the ex-landlords for information concerning the wealth that had been taken from their homes. Comrade Hsu supported him but Team Leader Hou recognized the move for what it was—an attempt to convict revolutionary cadres with information solicited from their class enemies. Hou called in both Hsu and Shen and sharply repri manded them. Such a move could only open wide the door to chaos. It would give the landlords a heaven-sent opportunity to split the peasants’ ranks with false charges.

Old Shen was stunned by the criticism. He insisted that his only aim had been to get at the facts and that he had completely forgotten how the landlords had falsely fingered people in the past. But the more he denied it, the more the suspicion took root and grew that he was not entirely innocent in the affair. Crestfallen, he took a back seat on the committee.

With the impasse at the accounts examination, the work of the Long Bow team reached a stalemate on all fronts. The morale of the team members, including that of the intellectuals from the University, dropped sharply and so did that of the villagers.

Many people began to suspect, though no one said it openly, that there simply was no “oil,” either in the form of surplus property remaining in the hands of the prosperous or in the form of misappropriated “fruits” in the hands of the leading cadres. Continued fanshen on any significant scale was therefore out of the question. Meetings were still held to enlarge the Provisional League and to survey cases of extreme hardship resulting from the depletion of grain stocks as spring approached, but they were poorly attended and indifferently conducted. Nobody seemed to know what was wrong or what to do.

The Party Secretary of the Third Administrative District of the Taihang Subregion arrived unexpectedly in the midst of this stalemate. I was favorably impressed by the man who wore that exalted title. Secretary Wang was obviously well educated, yet he had none of the arrogance so typical of many Chinese intellectuals and so amply demonstrated by Comrade Hsu. Nor did he put on any of the airs of the old-style Chinese bureaucrats. He projected instead the warm extroversion of a hard-working peasant. He wore a faded blue-grey cotton jacket, arrived in the village on foot, and departed on foot when his work was done. He made it easy for the team cadres to tell him their problems because he listened patiently and questioned calmly. As he listened his broad face took on a serious but never severe demeanor; he nodded often but did not interrupt. He smiled often, spoke slowly, and emphasized his meaning with expressive motions of his hands.

All morning and most of the afternoon he listened. In the evening he suggested what amounted to a completely new approach. He advised the team to drop the accounts examination meeting immediately. It was not going well, he said, because it was premature. The Poor and Hired Peasants’ League had not been consolidated, there was no mass base, no democratic platform from which to examine the past work of the cadres. To set up an accounts examination off in one corner could never bring good results. Only the active participation of the whole village could ever straighten out the record of the past. This could become possible only when the people became well organized and themselves took the work in hand as a major task. Nor were the accounts the heart of the problem; they were only one aspect of the old cadres’ life and work. At the proper time the whole of the cadres’ existence, their “style of work,” their willingness to serve, their outlook, their honesty, everything—not just how many items of property they received—must be examined.

Secretary Wang also advised greatly intensified efforts to enlarge the Provisional League. He estimated that not more than 20 poor peasant families would be found unfit to join. All the rest should be in—former collaborators, cadres’ relatives, immoral widows and all. He pointed out that it was the conditions of the past, the buy-and-sell marriages, the ban on divorce, the restriction against the remarriage of widows that made illicit sex relations common throughout rural China. To set high standards in this regard would not be realistic. Those peasants who continued to object to others on moral grounds should be convinced that the strength of the whole poor peasant community was needed to carry through reform and that in most cases the behavior that shocked them was not an individual matter but the inevitable result of the society in which they were all born.

“What must be stressed is class,” said Secretary Wang. “The class origin of people and nothing else. Only on the basis of the growth of class consciousness can any of the problems be solved. This includes the religious problem. By uniting on a class basis the most diverse religious elements can be brought together.”

This brought Secretary Wang to the question of the counter-revolutionary suspects, most of whom were Catholics. Here also he advised leniency. As long as the people involved were poor peasants they could be won over, he said. But they could never be won over if they were isolated and discriminated against; they had to be drawn into full participation politically, economically, and socially. In order to make a dramatic progress on this question he suggested that the work team send for Chin-ming, the young man who had fled in 1946 when charged with aiding Father Sun. If Chin-ming agreed to return home, he should be given a full complement of land, housing, and implements. This would dispel the fears that still lingered in the minds of so many other Catholics and would immensely strengthen the League.

Finally, Secretary Wang suggested that the dissolution of all the old organizations and the suspension of all the old cadres as if they were all bad, corrupt, or even class enemies, was a mistake. He felt certain that Long Bow Village would turn out to be, not a Type III but a Type II community, a place where much good work had been done and most of the cadres were basically sound politically. If this proved to be so then the work team was on the wrong track entirely. The whole course of its work would have to be re-examined.

Comrade Hou immediately carried into practice Secretary Wang’s three main suggestions. Hsu’s Accounts Examination Committee was dissolved. The cadres held under house arrest were released and allowed to return to work, but only after each had appeared before the Provisional League and promised to heed any call for future questioning. The new lenient standards for League membership were explained to the existing League groups and within a few days more than 100 families were admitted. The new members included Li Hsin-ai, the girl who had eloped; Lao-pao, the wife beater; and Wang T’ao-yuan, the former dope peddler. Even Kuo Fu-kuei, village head under the puppet regime and the most hated collaborator in Long Bow, was accepted. In addition one of Hou Chin-ming’s cousins was dispatched on foot to Hungtung to explain the new situation to that involuntary exile.

It was obvious to everyone that a new wind was blowing.

As if to emphasize the change a whole platoon of students from Kao Settlement suddenly appeared the next day and replaced all the slogans on the village walls. The new slogans, which they painted in huge white characters, dealt more directly with land reform and mentioned the Civil War less. A random sampling translated for me by Ch’i Yun read:

“All Power to the Peasant Congress”

“The Communist Party Is the People’s Hired Laborer”

“Level the Tops, Fill the Holes, Equalize Good Land and Bad”

“Criticize and Correct the Cadres’ Mistakes”

“Elect Good Cadres, Remove Bad Ones”

“Protect and Develop Commerce and Industry”

“Establish a Democratic, Free, Peaceful and Prosperous New China”

“Graft and Corruption Is Forbidden. Seized Fruits Must be Returned”

On one wing of the village school the slogan writers painted a line of characters which said, “Raise Our Cultural Level, Strengthen Our Political Consciousness.” On the other was blazoned, “Combine Teaching, Learning, and Labor.”

Drama in the Fields

Since our art and literature are basically intended for the workers, peasants, and soldiers, popularization means extending art and literature among these people, while elevation means raising their level of artistic and literary appreciation. What should we popularize among them? The stuff that is needed and can readily be accepted by the feudal landlord class? Or that which is needed and can readily be accepted by the bourgeoisie? Or that which is needed and can readily be accepted by the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia? No, none of these will do. We must popularize what is needed and can readily be accepted by the workers, peasants, and soldiers themselves.

Mao Tse-tung

TOWARD THE END of March, Ch’i Yun and I received permission to move to the village to live. Thereafter, instead of staying at the University to teach and visiting Long Bow daily, we stayed in Long Bow and visited the University two or three times a week for classes.

The move to the village made us a more integral part of its life. By spending our leisure as well as our working hours there, we soon became much more widely acquainted and genuinely accepted than before. Although for our own safety we were not allowed to board out in peasant homes, the quarters assigned to us were in no way barred to the public. We each had a room in the old rectory behind the Church. Peasants came and went there as freely as they did in their own courtyards. Ch’i Yun soon became the trusted confidante of many poor peasant women, and I established a reputation as “King of the Children.”

This reputation came about because, besides roughhousing with the youngsters, an activity which most Chinese never indulged in, I fixed all their school slates so that the wooden frames did not come apart at the corners. The trick was to cut strips of metal from old tin cans and tack them across the corners of each frame. Someone else might have done this long before if there had been any tin cans lying about, but tin cans were about as scarce in those mountains as river bottom land. I had some old ones left over from my UNRRA rations and so set up shop. As a result, the children came to me to solve all kinds of problems, to play games, and to relay exciting news.

One morning three ragged little girls, black eyes shining, long braids dancing in the wind behind them, ran up to take me by the hand. They half dragged, half pushed me to the eastern edge of the village shouting, “The play has come.” Sure enough, there in the middle of a large field a stage was rising, a stage of long pine poles bound together with rice straw rope and overlaid with boards.

This mushroom-like apparition turned out to be the creation of the Lucheng County Drama Corps, now on tour. The corps was composed of 50 members, most of whom had been poor professional actors until they received land in the great distribution of 1946. Now they worked their land half the year and gave plays the other half—from harvest time in the fall until spring planting came around again. They received no pay for their work but did get millet tickets from the county government for room and board. They carried on because they enjoyed acting and wanted to tell the story of the Revolution to as many peasants as possible. They moved to a new village each day and performed every afternoon and evening. They ate in village homes, as we did, and lodged with their mealtime hosts. Props, travel expenses, and incidentals were all paid for by the county government. Performances were free.

In contrast to the traditional Chinese opera, which was performed on a bare stage, this traveling troupe went in for realism. They provided a curtain, props, colorful scenery, and sound effects that included singing birds, croaking frogs, chirping crickets, pattering rain, and howling wind. These radical innovations, even though they sometimes shattered the illusion of reality which it was their purpose to create, were extremely popular. So was the modern content of the plays. People travelled for miles to see the performances and often followed the company through two or three villages.

With this exciting attraction in town for the day, all other activities ceased. Three one-act presentations in the afternoon followed by a full-length modern opera in the evening kept both cadres and people from whatever work had been planned.

The afternoon plays were comedies. In the first one a young Liberation Army soldier, home on leave, pretended to be a deserter. This so upset his wife that she tried to commit suicide. Only after the neighbors arrived to honor her husband’s battlefront heroism with a large red carnation did she realize that he had been fooling her in order to test her revolutionary ardor. The second play portrayed an army cook who overslept and did not have time to steam the bread which was his unit’s staple fare. Calamity was averted by an old peasant woman who stayed up all night to prepare the much-needed rations.

In the interval between plays a troupe of brightly-costumed boys and girls performed lively k’uai bar or singing rhymes spoken to the accompaniment of bamboo claques. These rhymes dramatized themes of current interest such as the Draft Agrarian Law, the production drive, and the impending Party purification. All this was only a buildup however, for the evening’s pièce de rèsistance—a four-hour-long modern opera entitled “Red Leaf River.”

As night fell thousands of peasants moved onto the level ground before the stage, each one carrying a brick or a stool to sit on. By the time the curtain rose, the whole area was solidly packed with people sitting knee to back and shoulder to shoulder in animated yet orderly expectation.

“Red Leaf River,” the name of a village as well as a stream, told the story of Old Wang and his neighbors, poor peasants who had gone to the mountains to reclaim waste land just as Li Lao-szu of. Long Bow had done. After years of root grubbing and terrace building, they created a habitable settlement only to learn that their wild mountain was now claimed by a landlord. He demanded heavy rents and feudal exactions but very cleverly allowed his agent to pressure the tenants for payment while he himself played the charitable gentleman. This landlord wore a long, fleece-lined gown, smoked a water pipe, washed his mouth out with boiled water which he spat on the floor to settle the dust. Whenever anyone offered him a cup of tea he carefully wiped off the rim that his lips were about to touch. After eating his fill of delicacies he picked his teeth with grotesque disregard for the sensibilities of others and belched contentedly. Each of these gestures created a commotion in the audience, for the peasants recognized in this man an uncanny likeness to Long Bow’s own Li Tung-sheng.

Old Wang, desperately in debt, thought if he could only get past the agent and speak to the landlord, he might win some relief. He shed these illusions quickly enough when the landlord raped his daughter-in-law, outlawed his son for throwing a rock through the mansion window, and destroyed Wang’s hut. The grief-stricken daughter-in-law committed suicide. Wang’s son ran further into the mountains to join the Red partisans. Old Wang himself, now a landless beggar, stoically waited for the wheel of fortune to turn.

As the tragedy of this poor peasant’s family unfolded, the women around me wept openly and unashamedly. On every side, as I turned to look, tears were coursing down their faces. No one sobbed, no one cried out, but all wept together in silence. The agony on the stage seemed to have unlocked a thousand painful memories, a bottomless reservoir of suffering that no one could control. It was a scene not easily forgotten—a makeshift stage of pine poles set under an enormous vaulted sky, a night so dark that even the brightest stars seemed faint and far away, and below the stars nothing but utter blackness, not a flicker of flame visible anywhere except on the stage. There a single kerosene lamp cast a pale yellow glow on actors and scenery alike. It was as if the attention of the whole universe were focused on that small space. And, in the very center, a young girl, her song more a wail, more a sob than a song, spread her arms wide in despair and asked, “Why? Why? Why?”

As that cry carried out across the field, the women, huddled one against the other in their dark padded jackets, shuddered as if stirred by a gust of wind, and something like a sigh moved in a wave from the front to the back of the multitude.

The girl flung herself into Red Leaf River. Abruptly the music stopped. The silence on the stage was broken only by the chirping of a cricket. At that moment I became aware of a new quality in the reaction of the audience. Men were weeping, and I along with them.

The second act brought a complete change of mood and a theme so up to date that one wondered how the company had found the time to write and stage it. Three years had passed since the suicide. The Liberation Army had come to Red Leaf River. An attempt at land reform had already been made, but the landlord was still alive, still belching contentedly, and still in control of the village. He talked now in a very progressive vein, praised Mao Tse-tung, offered to give up four acres, and fraternized openly with the village head, an opportunist who considered the landlord to be a very enlightened man.

Into the plot at this point walked a county cadre of poor peasant origin. His mission was to organize a Poor and Hired Peasants’ League. When he asked the landless people if they had any problems, they all said, “No.”

This negative response caused uproarious laughter in the audience. “That’s the way we treated you when you first arrived,” said the peasants sitting around us.

In time the county cadre gained the people’s confidence, organized a strong League, exposed the landlord’s machinations, and took the lead in expropriating his holdings. The second act reached its climax at a rousing mass meeting where a group of angry peasants led by Old Wang’s son, rushed forward to beat the landlord. He would have been killed on the spot but for the cadre who stopped the attack and suggested that the tyrant be turned over to the People’s Court. A grand, hope-filled finale, in which the entire cast burst into a song of joy for the future, ended the performance.

As the crowd broke up, I listened to the excited comment of the people. They were unanimous in proclaiming the second part of the play more to their liking than the first, although, from a dramatic point of view, the first part seemed to me undoubtedly superior. In fact we had seen two plays, with the second and positive one falling far behind the earlier tragedy in emotional appeal. But the people did not enjoy the tragedy. The pain it recreated was too acute, too close to their own bitter lives of such a short time ago. They preferred the optimistic final half, the battle and the victory. The only fault they found with the final part was that no one beat the landlord. He was turned over to the People’s Court instead of punished on the spot as the “son-of-a-turtle” deserved.