Fourth, the slow train to Xi'an
It was the beginning of June, and Beijing was dressed in the green of spring, and countless willows and towering pines and cypresses transformed the Forbidden City into a fascinating wonderland; In the many quiet gardens, it is hard to believe that beyond the great roof of the splendid palace, there is a toiling, hungry, revolutionary and foreign invasion of China. Here, well-fed foreigners can live in their own little hideaway drinking whiskey mixed with soda, playing polo and tennis, and chatting, carefree and completely unaware of the silent insulated human pulse outside the walls of this great city, and many people live like this.
In the past year, however, even the oasis of Beijing has been plagued by the fighting atmosphere that pervades China. The threat of Japanese conquest, among the people, especially among the angry youth, provoked a grand demonstration**. A few months ago, I stood under the bullet-ridden walls of the inner city and saw tens of thousands of students gathered there, shouting in unison, despite the clubs of the gendarmerie"Unanimously resist Japan! Oppose the demands of Japanese imperialism for the partition of North China! "
All of Beijing's masonry barriers could not stop the repercussions of the Chinese Red Army's attempt to advance through Shanxi to the Great Wall. This expedition claimed to be to fight against Japan and regain lost territory, but it was inevitably a little Don Quixote, and was immediately intercepted by the elite new army of the 11th Division of Chiang Kai-shek's commander-in-chief, but this could not stop those patriotic students, who were not afraid of imprisonment or possible loss of their heads, and went to the streets in large numbers and shouted the forbidden slogan:"Stop the Civil War! The Kuomintang and the Communist Party cooperated to resist Japan and save the country! "
One midnight, I boarded a dilapidated train, a little uncomfortable, but very excited. I'm so excited because the trip in front of me is to explore a place that is thousands of years away in time and miles away from the medieval magnificence and luxury of the Forbidden City: I'm here"Red China"Go. I'm so"A little uncomfortable"It's because I'm injected with all the vaccinations I can get. A look at my blood through the eyes of a microbe, reveals a creepy procession of smallpox, typhoid, cholera, typhus, and plague germs in my arms and legs. These five diseases were all endemic in the Northwest at that time. In addition, there has been recent alarming news that bubonic plague is spreading in Shaanxi Province, one of the few places on earth where this endemic disease is endemic.
And my first destination was Xi'an. This place name has"Peace in the West"It means that the capital of Shaanxi Province has to take a train from Beiping to the southwest for two days and two nights to reach this terminal at the west end of Longhai Road. My plan was to go north from there and into the Soviet district, which was located in the center of the Great Northwest. Luochuan, a town about one hundred and fifty miles north of Xi'an, was then the starting point of Shaanxi's Red Zone. The area north of Nakcheon has been stained red except for a few narrow sections on both sides of the main highway and a few points that will be mentioned below. Roughly speaking, the area controlled by the Red Army in Shaanxi stretched from Luochuan in the south to the Great Wall in the north; The east and west sides are bounded by the Yellow River. The wide turbidity current flows north through Gansu and Ningxia from the edge of the Great Wall, enters Suiyuan Province in Inner Mongolia to the north of the Great Wall, and then zigzags eastward for many miles, and then turns south, crossing the Great Wall to form the dividing line between the two provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi.
At that time, the Soviets were active in this great loop of China's most trouble-prone river: northeastern Shaanxi, northeastern Gansu, and southeastern Ningxia. It is a historical coincidence that this area almost coincides with the original boundaries of the birthplace of China. Thousands of years ago, the Chinese formed a unified nation in this area.
The next morning, I looked at my traveling companions, and saw a young man and an old man with a well-rounded white beard sitting opposite me, sipping strong tea. The young man quickly struck up a conversation with me, first politely, and then inevitably about politics. I found out that his wife's uncle was a railroad clerk who was riding with a free ticket. He wants to return to his hometown in Sichuan, where he has been away for seven years. But he wasn't sure if he would ever get home. It is said that there are bandits operating near his hometown.
Do you mean the Red Army? "
Oh no, not the Red Army, although there were also Red Army in Sichuan. I mean bandits. "
But weren't the Red Army bandits? "I asked him out of curiosity"They are always referred to in the newspapers as **or**. "
Ah, but you must know that the newspaper editors could not help but call them bandits, because Nanking ordered them to do so"He explained"If they call themselves communists or revolutionaries, they prove that they are also communists. "
But in Sichuan, isn't everyone afraid of the Red Army like they are afraid of bandits? "
Well, it depends. The rich are afraid of them, and the landlords, officials, and tax collectors are all afraid. But the peasants were not afraid of them. Sometimes they welcome them. "At this, he glanced uneasily at the old man, who sat there listening attentively, but did not seem to be listening. "You know,"He went on to say"The peasants were so ignorant that they did not understand that the Red Army was only trying to use them. They thought that the Red Army was serious. "
So aren't they taking what they say seriously? "
My father wrote to me that the Red Army had outlawed usury and opium in Songpan and redistributed the land there. So, you see, they're not exactly bandits. They have doctrines, there's no problem with that, but they're bad people. They kill too much. "
At this moment, the gray beard suddenly lifted his gentle face, and said an astonishing sentence very calmly:"Not enough killing! "We both couldn't help but look at him dumbfounded.
Unfortunately, the train was already in Zhengzhou at this time, and I had to change to a train on Longhai Road there, so I had to interrupt the discussion. Ever since, however, I have wondered what conclusive evidence this gentleman-looking old gentleman has to support his appalling arguments. On the second day's journey, the train (which was new and comfortable) crawled slowly through the bizarre, overlapping loess mountains of Henan and Shaanxi before finally entering the beautiful new station in Xi'an, and I wondered all day.
Soon after I arrived in Xi'an, I went to visit General Yang Hucheng, director of the Shaanxi Provincial Pacification Office. A year or two ago, General Yang was a self-respecting emperor in those areas of Shaanxi that were not controlled by the Red Army. He worked as a bandit and later gained power through the way many of China's most talented leaders came to power, and is said to have made a fortune along the road. But lately, he has had to share his power with several other gentlemen in the Northwest. Because in 1935, the former ruler of Manchuria, Zhang Xueliang"Young marshal"He took his Northeast Army to Shaanxi and took up his post in Xi'an Prefecture as the deputy commander of the National Headquarters for the Suppression of Bandits, the highest Red Army conscriptor in this area. And in order to spy on this young marshal, Shao Lizi, the attendant of the commander-in-chief of Chiang Kai-shek, was sent. This Mr. Shao is the provincial chairman of Shaanxi Province.
There is a delicate balance of power between these figures and others. And behind all these people is the commander-in-chief himself, who is trying to expand his ** rule to the northwest, not only to eliminate the Soviet democracy that is struggling, but also to wipe out the armies of Lao Yang and Xiao Zhang, using the simple method of making them kill each other This is an excellent three-act drama in political and military affairs, and the main strategy in the play, Chiang Kai-shek apparently thinks that only he himself understands. It was this miscalculation of the miscalculation, the haste in pursuing the above-mentioned ends, and the overconfidence in affirming the stupidity of his opponents, that led Chiang Kai-shek to become a prisoner in Xi'an a few months later, and to be at the mercy of these three sides! In what follows, I will talk about the astonishing arrest of the commander-in-chief, and how it has taken China's history in a new direction.
I met with General Yang in a newly completed 50,000-dollar megalithic mansion. At that time, he did not take his wife with him, but lived alone in the vaulted building with many bedrooms, the official residence of the director of the Pacification Office. It turned out that Yang Hucheng, like many Chinese during this transitional period, suffered from family disputes because he had two wives. The first wife was a small-footed woman he married when he was young, and his parents married him in Pucheng. The second was a lively and courageous woman like Madame Chiang Kai-shek, young and beautiful, already a mother of five children, both modern and progressive, who was said to have joined the Communist Party in the past, and was favored by General Yang himself. According to the missionaries, when General Young's new home was inaugurated, both wives appeared to have made the same minimum demands on him. They hate each other; They all bore him sons, and they all had the right to be his lawful wives; Both sides resolutely refused to move into the boulder-built mansion unless the other did not live in it.
To an outsider, things seem simple: the obvious solution is to leave one wife or marry another. But General Yang had not yet made up his mind, so he still lived alone.
His embarrassing situation is not uncommon in modern China. When Chiang Kai-shek married Soong Meiling, who was rich, studied in the United States, and believed in ** teaching, he also encountered the same problem, and he dismissed his two old-fashioned wives to solve this problem. This decision was highly praised by the missionaries, who have been praying for his soul ever since. However, such solutions are novel ideas imported from the West, and many Chinese still frown at them. As for Lao Yang, who was born in a reckless manner, he is probably not as concerned about the fate of his soul as he is about the traditions of his ancestors.
Don't think that General Yang Hucheng was a bandit in his early years, so he must not be qualified to be a leader. Such assumptions do not apply in China. Because in China, if a person has been a bandit in his youth, it often means that he has a strong character and will. If we look at China's history, we can find that some of China's most capable patriots were once labeled as bandits. As a matter of fact, many scoundrels, hooligans, and traitors who committed the most heinous crimes have risen to prominence with the appearance of upright gentlemen, the hypocrisy of the stale poets and clouds, and the foolish witchcraft of the Chinese scriptures, although they often have to use the powerful arm of a simple bandit to achieve this end, which is still more or less the case today.
General Yang had a bad reputation among most foreign missionaries anyway, so he couldn't really be a bad guy. His revolutionary history shows that he was originally a rude peasant, and he may have had lofty dreams of changing his world greatly, but after he took power, he did not find any way, and he gradually felt tired and confused as he listened to the words of the diners around him. However, if he had such a dream, he did not confide in me. He refused to ask questions and politely appointed one of his secretaries to accompany me on a tour of the city. Besides, when I met him, he had severe headaches and arthritis, and I certainly didn't want to insist on asking him difficult questions in the face of such troubles. On the contrary, I am very sympathetic to his predicament. Therefore, after a brief interview with him, I took my leave, intending to go to His Excellency Shao Lizi, the Provincial Chairman, to seek some answers from him.
Chairman Shao met me in his spacious Yamen garden, and after the scorching heat of the dusty streets of Xi'an, I found it cool and comfortable. The last time I saw him was six years ago, when he was Chiang Kai-shek's personal secretary, and he helped me visit the Commander-in-Chief. Since then, he has risen to prominence in the Kuomintang. He was a competent man, well educated, and now the commander-in-chief bestowed on him the privilege of provincial chairman. But poor Shao Lizi, like many other civil officials who were provincial chairmen, ruled beyond the gray walls of the provincial capital, and the area outside the city was divided between General Yang and Zhang Shaoshuai.
His Excellency Shao Lizi himself once was"**"It would be a bit disrespectful to mention this matter now. He was, in fact, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. But we should not be too harsh on him, because in those days, being a Communist Party was a fashionable thing, and no one knew very well what it meant to join the Party, only that many talented young people were Communist Party members. Later, Shao Lizi repented, because after 1927, it was already very clear what it was like to be a Communist Party, and it was something that could make your head move. Since then, Shao Lizi has become a devout Buddhist, and no longer shows any traces of heresy.
What happened to the Red Army now? "I asked him.
Not much left behind. In Shaanxi, there are only some remnants. "
So the war continues? "I asked.
No, there is not much fighting in northern Shaanxi now. The Red Army is moving to Ningxia and Gansu. They seem to want to get in touch with Outer Mongolia. "
He turned the conversation to the situation in the southwest, where the rebellious generals were demanding an army to fight against the Japanese. I asked him if China should be at war with Japan. He asked rhetorically"Can we fight? "Then, the chairman of the provincial government, who believed in Buddhism, told me his views on Japan truthfully, but he did not allow me to express them, as all the Kuomintang ** did at that time, they could tell you their views on Japan, but they could not publish them.
A few months after this visit, poor Shao Lizi, together with his commander-in-chief, was embarrassed by some rebellious young men under Major Marshal Zhang Xueliang over this anti-Japanese issue, and they no longer reasoned and accepted it"Maybe one day"Such a reply. And Shao Lizi's little fat lady was a foreign student who came back from Moscow, and later also"Mutiny"Former communists were besieged by some rebels and bravely resisted arrest.
However, during our conversation, Shao Lizi did not reveal the slightest premonition about all this, and after we exchanged views, we had reached a very similar point of view, and it was time for me to say goodbye to him. I've figured out what I want to know from Shao Lizi. He had confirmed what my acquaintances in Beijing had informed me that the fighting on the northern Shaanxi side had ceased for the time being. Therefore, if there are proper arrangements, it should be possible to go to the front. So I set out to make these arrangements.