Today we have an embargo on trade with the People's Republic of China. During the last war it was Chiang Kai-shek who blockaded the liberated areas under Yenan's administration. And it was the Americans who pierced Chiang's barrier and went into North China to establish a liaison post in Yenan to which I was assigned in October 1944.
I was there through the period of good relationship between the U. S. Government and Yenan, and also during the uncomfortable months of strained relationships. When we worked closely with the Yenan administration and its forces in the
war against Japanese , militarism, although limited in extent relationship was harmonious. Patrick J. Hurley's diplomacy brought about its deterioration. And as the war ended, we failed in the fight for peace. Our experiences in Yenan showed that the American and Chinese people could live together in peace and friendship.
In cooperating on the war effort, we learned about each other. We carried this relationship into social life in Yenan. We had to change some of our social attitudes and behavior, and the Chinese did also.
We Were Asked To Show Respect To Orderlies
In Yenan, we were asked not to address the teen-age orderlies who looked after our personal needs as "boy," a common expression used by foreigners in Nationalist China, and as I recall, in the South by white people toward Negroes. We were asked to call these orderlies, many of whom were war orphans, "men who looked after guests."
As for female companionship, we were told that we would be provided with clean entertainment. There were no prostitutes or "Jeep Girls" as there were in Chungking. An air corps sergeant made a pass at a young woman while dancing at the headquarters of the Communist-led 18th Group Army on the day the Americans first arrived in Yenan. The chief of staff of the 18th Group Army complained to the American commander who in turn, made all his officers and men unload their contraceptives.
The Women Kept Us Dancing All the Time
On Saturday nights Yenan entertained the personnel of the U. S. Army Observer Group. We went across the Yen River to the 18th Group Army headquarters to dance. We entered a barn-like auditorium. Almost every week General Chu Teh rushed out to greet us. He led us to a corner where live charcoal gave off a warm glow from makeshift burners. He poured us tea, piled dried watermelon seeds on a table for us to chew. We cracked them with bur teeth and spit out the shells.
Chu Teh huddled with his chief of staff, the exuberantly jolly General Yeh Chien-ying, and the two went around to talk to women sitting along the walls. Soon we were swarmed over by them and they kept us dancing all evening.
Agnes Smedley Taught Chu Teh To Dance
I watched legendary Chu Teh dance the first night I went to Wang Family's Plain. His break with the feudal past, with all its lush living, for the life of a revolutionary, becoming one of the leaders of the Chinese Communists, is a story in itself.
An enlisted man who had read Agnes Smedley's book on Red China suddenly exploded, as he also watched Chu Teh:
"How in hell did Agnes teach that guerrilla leader to dance?" The general was chugging along in a very businesslike manner with his left arm folded in toward his shoulder. There was not a bit of variety in his step. But he was keeping good time with the music produced by a squeaking Chinese violin, a drum, cymbals and a relic of a portable piano, whether it was "Jingle Bells" or a Shensi folk song. He never seemed to stop dancing once he got started, and the ladies were flattered to dance with him.
GIs Were In Great Demand
Most of the women who danced with us were students at the English or Russian language schools. The English school in Yenan was much the larger. The students were eager to practice their English on us. Women students dragged us out on the floor while young male students waited to catch us for conversations between dances. Between them, there was quite a competition and we were in great demand.
When Chinese New Year came, the peasants in the villages invited us to their places. We attended several village banquets. At our first village banquet a young woman who was apparently city-bred, acted as our hostess. In her padded cotton blouse and slacks, and blue cotton cap, this young intellectual met us at the top of a hill and led us into a cave where the table had been set. Her conception of an average GI, I soon learned, was incredible. She must have believed all the stories of American excesses circulating in China.
If she had read editorials and articles appearing in Chungking newspapers on "Jeep Girls," she must not have credited us with high moral standards. Some Chungking newspapers defended the "Jeep Girls" who the papers said, should comfort the American allies who are far away from home. Others lamented the shameful moral corruption of young Chinese womanhood, promenading in public with foreign soldiers.
Barbary Coast and Wild West Entertainment
Our hostess seemed to have set her mind on making us all drunk. An interpreter who went along with us said that Americans are great drinkers. So she kept filling our cups with the potent Tiger Bone and Pi Kar wine. She drank tea and mild wine and expected us to "bottoms up" with her. When we reneged she came to us, grabbed our hands and forced burning liquor down our throats. She laughed when we coughed and she slapped our backs to help the downward flow of liquor.
This young official who had been assigned to entertain us must have felt this was the proper role of a hostess entertaining rugged GIs at a village banquet. I was almost sure she had seen American movies showing bar scenes of the Barbary Coast or the Wild West. This seemed an extremely difficult role for her to play and beneath her acting there were definite signs of embarrassment.
GIs Conspire To Make Our Host Drunk
After this banquet we Americans conspired to make our Chinese host drunk at the next party. A drunk Chinese anywhere in China was a rare sight. So at the next village we individually toasted our host. There were about a dozen of us. Our host politely protested and wanted to have a joint toast each time. When we protested with equal politeness, he said he preferred weaker wine. As host, we said, he must consume Tiger, Bone or Pi Kar. After two hours our host was still returning drink for drink with each of us. Some of us began to suspect that the Chinese liaison officers had tipped off this village which had pitted their most powerful drinker against us to foil our scheme.
When the banquet was over our host reeled slightly. In deep suspense we watched him stand up. He thanked us for coming to his village. Then he started home. We followed him with our eyes as he entered a compound. I saw him enter a cave. Some GIs swore they saw him sprawl on the floor as soon as he entered the doorway. Whatever it was, our host carried himself with dignity to the very last.
Life of Negroes In U. S. Interests Chinese
I had an OWI 16mm movie projector with me in Yenan and part of my work was to show documentary American films. We invited students from the English school, from the Japanese Workers and Peasants' school where POWs were being re-educated; from the Korean Independence League and various other organizations. Films on TWA, mechanized farming and industrial production in the U. S. were all popular.
"Farmer Henry Brown," a film on a successful Negro planter, impressed peasants and soldiers. There were students who had reservations about this picture.
"This is not all true, is it," one of them asked me.
"Yes, it is," I told him.
"I don't believe you," he said, shaking his head.
"There are Negro farmers who are doing quite well."
"But they are so few. Most of them are poor, worse than our poor peasants."
"We have poor sharecroppers, surely."
"Why don't you show pictures about them?"
He thought we should show the good and the bad, not only the good, so that the film would point to improvement.
The Peasants Got a Look At Life In the U. S.
Others would join in the discussion and tell me of rural life in China, the superstitions of the peasants and how they were being combatted, and of the model farms and labor heroes. And in talking to them I learned many tilings which I would never have been able to observe during my short stay in China and because of my limited background knowledge of the vast country.
The 18th Group Army photo section took our films and projectors into the countryside to show movies to peasants who probably never had seen any in their lives. The photo section had an old gasoline generator. It loaded the generator on an oxcart and saddled the projector and amplifier on a mule, and in this fashion toured the villages.
The photo section also cooperated in holding exhibitions of enlarged OWI photographs on the Pacific and European war, and about the various facets of life in the U. S. To the guerrilla war fronts we sent U.S. periodicals, photographs and film strips which could be shown by a small projector drawing power from a hand-operated generator used in radio transmission.
I interviewed American observers who went into various guerrilla bases arid downed pilots who were brought out by the Chinese from behind Japanese lines. They reported on how our material on hygiene, medical research, industrial production and numreous other subjects was shown to troops, government workers and civilians.
If We Sided With Progress, There Would Be Peace
Months later in Sian, I met one of these rescued pilots. We were then helping Chiang Kai-shek in the civil war and the pilot said he did not want to fly. He told me of his experiences in the Chinese villages when for many months his northern Chinese rescuers helped him dodge the Japanese and finally brought him out to Yenan.
If we helped the Chinese peasants to get a better deal there would be no war; there would be peace," he said.
And his statement holds true today for Indo-China and other areas where the people want change, a better life with human decency and respect. And we all would be able to work with each other if we fought against poverty, pestilence and for independence for the people of various countries.