Evening Star Newspaper, January 12, 1930, Page 94

T’hrough China’s Re An American Woman’s Adventures Amid Flood, Famine, Pestilence and W ar, Where Four Hundred Million People Live in Constant Fear—A Flight to Nanking When Trouble Strikes the White Colony. EDITOR'S NOTE: Warfare in China in recent years has become a Chinese puzzle to all but ex- perts. But there is nothing puz- zling in this straightforward ac- count of an American woman’s personal experience during the upheaval. Alice Tisdale Hobart was mar- ried in China and her honeymoon journey was a mule-cart trip over almost impassable roads. She has been in parts of China where no other white woman is known to have been. Here she pictures clearly and vividly what life means under the shadow of this reign of terror. BY ALICE TISDALE HOBART. “JHIS is the story of catastrophe being enacted in China today. It is not the story its great people will tell you—its presidents and military governors—the small recently-made.great, ex-makers of sweetmeats, ex-bandits, all of whom have had their chance at handling the affairs of state in China since the days of the republic. It is not the stcry they tell Neither is it the story of the tourist. I have read recently of that China, the experiences of an American womon traveling in China graciously passed from one Chinese great per- son to another. She saw China’s old art, heard scholars talk of its classics. She told of Canton. “City of jade and ginger,” she called it. But that is not the Canton I know. That is the traveler's China holding the cream of adventure; danger for sport’s sake. The extra nice dessert saved for guests. Ginger of ad- venture served from jade cups. As the wife of an American business man who has lived in the interior of China for 19 years, I do not see this country through the eyes of her great, or the eyes of tourists. I see it through the eyes of her merchants whose shop doors so often in the last years have heen close-barred fearing looting by advancing and retreating troops; through the eyes of its lowly ecommon people whose junks and samparns I have so often seen looted and commandeered under rifle fire, farmer folk whom I have seen devastated by floods, bandits and soldiers. N the Hunan Province there had been 14 wars in 15 years. How many floods, droughts, famines, pestilences and bandit raids, @irectly and indirectly dependent upon war, Hunan had experienced during that time no one could say. No one had kept a record. The yarious war lords who had acted as governors had not cared enough to keep track. All their time had been occupied in raising money and troops to fight their rivals. As for the people— perhaps they cared too much. Such misery is better forgotten. Over them constantly was thrown, backwards and forwards, the shuttle of war, entangling them in the network of calamities it wove. But now, at the beginning of the year, despite the fact that the disaster of last year’s drought filled the city with starving victims, there was a growing sense of confidence that Hunan might at last attain to some measure of peace. That was all the common people asked. They could work then. Three years before the governor had won over his general who, envious of the opium “squeeze,” had drawn off his soldiers and at- tempted to usurp the governor’s seat. Now during these three years he had learned a litle of the secret of good government. It was sur- prising, every one said, how he was developing. S0, in spite of the starving people going about with their begging bowls, and the occasional flareups of discontent and anti-foreign feeling caused by the preachers of Communism, there was a little sustaining hope in the hearts of the people and in our own. But, alas! the handmaiden of democracy in China is jealousy. In March a second general drew off his followers from the ranks of the reigning governor's army, and before we knew it this Gen. Tang sat in the governor's “yamen.” Uncertainty again took possession of the city. Sympathizers of the past regime lay in hiding or fled fearing imprisonment or beheading. Merchants groaned under the now habitual forced contribution to each new government. But endless sometimes seems the recuperative powers of the Chinese, and it was not long before the city took the new governer, Gen. "Tang, to its heart. By some trick of personality he became the people’s idol. A month and four days; then one fine April morning and this month-old military governor, 'Gov. Tang, marched away to the South carry- ing the seals of his office with him. Hunan was now caught up into the national issue, for Gov. Tang had been flirting with the Nation- alists of the South and had brought upon him- self the hatred of the war lords of the North, who feared to have the Nationalists ana their Soviet advisers in this buffer sta‘e of Hunan. For two days there was no governor in the city, and the people hid behind closed shoo doors fearing looting by the retreating soldiers, fear- ing they knew not what from the incoming army from the North. Another military aspirant from the North had won the gov- ernor’s seat. Again the city was in tumult, again the incoming government took forced contributions from the people; and South in the provinces, in a smaller city, the retreating governor ensconced himself with the seals of office and pressed the merchants there for larger and larger loans, loans which they knew would never be redeemed. Now we had two governors ruling the province! ’,UN! came and with it a great flood. Ten *" anxious, terrifying days. Our own garden, the source of our Summer’'s food, was buried under the river; our furniture huddied together on the top floor of the house, the kitchen under water. All around us we surveyed only the roofs of the native houses. Half the city drowned to its house-tops in the river. The people who had survived a year of “drought famine” which had followed upon a year of “flood famine™ lay silently within their houses close up against the rafters. Through the streets floated the filth and refuse of an overpopulated city. Dead rats and snakes, black and swollen and repulsive, floating car- casses of pigs. 'rpz river, with dirty yellow foam upon it, covered everything, claimed everything. Later, sickness and death it would harvest, too. Calamity without hope, each year things worse than the year before. Then silently the river fell away inch by inch, the world became blessedly normal. One morning the sun had shone and the river had sparkled, denying the bodies that lay M its depths. And at 10 that very day the rifles had begun popping! For ever backward and forward flew the shuttle of war. The two fac- tions were fighting. No one had dreamed of such a thing 12 hours before. The two mili- tary governors had agreed with each other to wait until the flood was over. Could they not have waited a day or two longer in order that the people might have had time to build up their collapsed houses, plant new crops, bury their dead? Twelve hours after we had been released from the clutch of the river, Gen. Tang's sol- diers, who had retreated in April, were march- ing triumphantly back. Their leader had got money and arms and troops from Canton and was returning. Not City of Jade and Ginger for us—Canton with its hatred of the white man, its slogans of “Away with Christianity. Away with foreign trade.” As I dressed quickly and hurried out to the garden I felt uneasy, as if in a short-sighted moment I had placed my home on the top of a volcano. But the battle did not come. What was happening? Why did the returning governor's army delay their entrance? Why did they not follow up that retreating army pouring out of the city? The hills, the city were alive with them—gray-clad, retreating soldiers, carrying fans and paper umbrellas, walking slowly, scarcely able to drag one foot before the other, tired and hungry and afraid, therefore ill- tempered, therefore bullying the common peo- ple. Little by little they passed out of our sight and out of the city, leaving it, for the second time in four months, without govern- ment of any kind. No more firing. Only a belated, retreating straggler or two moving along under the glow of his paper lantern. So we slept uneasily, hearing all night the rifies going off over in the city. I thought of the women of the city hiding as they had so often before, hoping they would not be attacked, hoping their hus- bands’ shops would not be looted, hoping there was enough money to pay the forced contribu- tion which would save their husbands’ lives. Off in the country the farmers’ wives were fearing these same things but with one more fear, the fear of the bandits robbing their houses, and kidnaping their children. ‘The next morning with curiosity mixed with fear I watched, from my terrace, junkload after junkload of troops arriving, floating the bright red flags of the Kuomintang, the Reds. ALL was activity again in the city. It was being made safe for the governor who had vacated it In such haste a few weeks before. Prominent men in the regime of yesterday who had not been fortunate enough to escape were beheaded. Each of the various governors had cleaned up the city in this way. The mer- chants, the rich were solicited for loans, no excuses were accepted; if money were not forthcoming the offenders would be thrown into foul prisons literally to rot, or, if the gov- ernment became very much in need of funds and thus short-tempered, they would be be- headed. The common people, trained by a suc- cession of governments to the habit of the THE SUNPAY STAR, WASHINGTON, B. C. JANUARY 12 1930. d Reign of Terror As our car drove down the streets, the children threw stones at us. chameleon, without much ado hung out the red flag of the new government. * And then the new conqueror entered the city! The popular hero. In the great Chinese hotels just across the river from my terrace, the lights blaze far into the night. Within them the military-great make merry. The bands play, quite indiscriminately “Marchiag ‘Through Georgia,” “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” and “Onward, Christian Sol- diers.” Sing-song giris stroll among the tables filling the glasses with wine, singing the sengs of the street. Meanwhile, through the city, the executioners with their long knives complete their work among the unlucky remnant of yes- terday's regime and threaten the hard-pressed merchants. Money and money! to feed and pay! There is but one way. Force it out of the people, contributions from the merchants. That is not enough. So many troops. A tax upon ricksha men, a tax upon the iceman. Never have those forced contributions of previous gov- ernments taken in those lowly coolies of the city, men who live constantly on the uncertain line between not-quite-enough and starvation. Often before the soldiers had commandeered these coolies to carry their belongings, taken their rice bowls and even their rice, but never before, in addition, have they had to give of their meager earnings. Thus arises the low grumbling of the masses against their idol. Indeed, all is not well with the governor of today. Then did July add its catastrophe——chelera. We were not to escape the threat of sickness given in the flood. The sunshine, never pene- trating the dark hut-like dwellings along the tunneled streets, had had no chance to cleanse the city. The incoming army from the South, as is the way of all armies, was trailing sickness in its wake—cholera and typhus. Meager feed- ing, anxiety and the tropic. Summer heat forced down the resistive power of the masses. And then was the greatest delight of the hot Summer turned into the final curse. Watermelons began to appear to soothe the hot palates of the sweating, panting coolies carrying the burdens of the soldiers, the bur- dens of animals. In bright red slices they lay heaped on the trays of the fruit venders and over them hovered the flies of a filthy city. Then did cholera really descend upon us. Men writhed and died in the streets. But the bands still played, and the soldiers marched away to the North, and on the dark, mysterious waters of the river the Chinese set afloat the thousands of paper cups of lighted oil which danced in fairy gardens, cemmemo- rating those whom the river had taken. By August we had decided to seek peace in Nanking. Under too much disaster one's spirit dies. I felt if we remained we should become like the Hunanese—without hope. But there was cause for thanksgiving, too. In the for- eign community there had been no loss of life. We had been spared that last catastrophe. None of our members had been taken by sol- diers as in other places, and none had been killed, although one or two had been fired on in the country. Constantly we had feared that all the preachings of hate, the slogans—strike, destroy—would rouse the masses to murder. It was cur last day in Hunan. A knock on the door. The boy to make ready the baths. Usually he entered so softly. ‘“Master,” he cried today, entering as if shot from a cata- pult, “Plenty trouble. In the night, soldiers came over the wall of Mr. Moore’s compound. They have taken away the foreign master.” Seventy thousand men SO IT had happened at last! The thing thas we had dreaded. “More better,” said the boy now in pidgin- English for my benefit, “more better go Nan- king. Maybe that side more better. By and by this side more trouble,” and he swooped down on the lately packed bags. Thus like a kind of mother hen did he figuratively gather up his flock against the hawk. “What happened?” asked my husband. “Oh, 60 came over the wall, tied the gate- man, took the white man out of bed.” But the boy was through with that. He be- gan in pidgin-English again. “Missie, mere better take anyman wife go Nanking side. This Winter plenty trouble. Coolie, washman, gar- denman, all talkee he wantchee takee wife.” “Yes,” I answered, thinking one minute of what had happened to one of our number and the next of these wives of my servants and that I must take them, knowing all too well what the women of Hunan would have to en- dure this Winter. This arranged, the boy was ready to tell us a little more of our friend. He had been car- ried off in his pajamas and a pair of shoes. Even a hat they had denied him, although they had stayed some two hours trying to set fire to the oil stocks. He was the cldest man in our community—a man of 60, and we thought gravely of him tramping the hills in the tropic heat without any covering from the sun. A little later news came from some myste- rious source that a man carrying an umbrella in his right hand and a white towel in his left was to meet a representative of the kidnapers outside the north gate at noon. Our tragedy seemed bound to take on the fantastic elements of a movie scene. The day wore on. The man chosen to carry the umbrella and the towel came back with the ultimatum—$40,000 by tomorrow noon or the head of our friend returned to us in a basket. Were we living back in the dark ages or in a twentieth century democratic country? Night came on, our last night in the capital of Hunan, the night of our farewell party given by the little community. In one of the gar- dens on the island the paper lanterns were set aglow. And we looked across at the usual and beautiful spectacle of the city with its row of hotels, with their fantastically arranged lights throwing patterns on to the dark water of the river. In twos and threes we wandered about the lawn, All was as beautiful as fairyland except the fear in our hearts. One of our very own num- ber on a night just like this, even last night as we slept, had been taken from his bed, and now wandered somewhere a prisoner, with such a death threatening him in the morning. ‘The little community was sobered, each wondering if he would be the next. “Lucky people,” they said to us as they toasted us, “to be going away.” Thus for the last time we made merry with our neighbors on this island in the center of China, but the party dragged a little. Some one was constantly becoming absent-minded and breaking in with the remark, “Poor Jimmy Moore. I wonder where he is tonight,” or “It's rumored Jimmy Mcore is being held just out- side the city gate.” He might even be in sight of the lights of our island. And so we departed from Hunan. But the Hunanese were left. They could not depart. And if they went where would they go? Most of the provinces were the same. Backwards and forwards over them flew the shuttle of war. To us, at that time, Nanking seemed to