Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  The most incompetent general with the fewest friends sat there with a ramrod-straight back and a face of iron. General Han Fuju, ‘hero’ of Jinan and shameless looter of the city’s citizens. General Chiang Kai-shek, consummate politician that he was, quickly sensed the mood of the meeting and proceeded to denounce the cowardly Han. (It would be possible to later reduce a properly contrite Han’s sentence to imprisonment as the execution of one cowardly general might swiftly lead to the execution of a whole lot more cowardly generals!) But the obstinate and deeply stupid Han resolutely refused to play along with Chiang’s game. As Chiang’s denunciations increased, instead of hanging his head in shame, the culprit stared ever more defiantly and contemptuously back at Chiang. Chiang finished his excoriation with a full-hearted condemnation of Han’s cowardice and avarice in Jinan. ‘Such a traitor deserves only death,’ he roared. And sat down. Han stared directly back at Chiang. ‘If I lost Jinan,’ he growled, ‘who lost Beijing and Tianjin and Shanghai and Taiyuan and Nanking?’

  After that there wasn’t anything Chiang could do. He sentenced Han to immediate execution.

  *

  But the theatrics of Han’s execution – its form, its symbolism, its precise mechanics – still had to be worked out.

  Chiang pondered the various options.

  It could be done with a firing squad in the military barracks next door to Chiang’s government offices. But that would be too – military. The people would want a people’s execution! Preferably on a scaffold on the Bund surrounded with millions of cheering citizens watching a huge executioner taking off his head with an enormous axe. They’d love that! But the other generals would hate it.

  He had an idea.

  Wuhan had always been protected by the god Heishen – the Great Black Dragon of War. It is said, in Wuhan, that one of Heishen’s clawed feet rests north of the Yangtze on Tortoise Mountain and the other on its south bank at Serpent Mount. And thus he protects Wuhan.

  In the folds of Serpent Mount lies the ancient and deeply venerable Changchun Daoist Temple. If Han was executed there his execution would both please the generals with its piety and deeply reassure the populace that Heishan’s foot still lay firmly on all serpents of evil.

  Changchun Daoist Temple it was.

  Han Fuju’s carefully choreographed execution was enacted at first light the next morning. Han chose to wear the traditional long dark gown and black skull cap of a Chinese gentleman. He was preceded at all times during the procession by his magnificent, silver-plated coffin at which he continuously stared and in which he obviously found deep consolation.

  The cortège, consisting of himself followed by his fellow generals, wound its way slowly up two flights of stairs in the temple to its sanctuary on the third floor. A cushioned stool had been set in the middle of the room; the coffin was gently placed just before it. Han knelt on the stool. He looked at his coffin and then looked upwards. General Hu Zongman, a young and rising protégé of Chiang Kai-shek, stepped forwards, raised his pistol, and fired a single shot into the back of Han’s head. Han slumped lifeless headlong into his waiting and welcoming coffin. A coffin so magnificent it guaranteed his sure and stately procession through all the halls of the afterlife.

  During this execution the three extremely angry generals stood impatiently to the rear of the other generals. The three were Bai Chongxi, Li Zongren and Feng Yuxiang (the friend of Lao She). After the previous day’s meeting they had gone discreetly to the Generalissimo’s private office and there demanded even greater concessions. That in exchange for showing him public fealty, they would take over effective command of the war. Chiang knew his position was weak but on one point he would not yield. While he would allow Generals Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren to have command in fighting the war, he would not allow the socialist Feng Yuxiang anywhere near the fighting. Feng would have to stay here in Wuhan.

  The three generals looked at each other. The most senior general, Bai Chongxi, now Deputy Chief of the Chinese General Staff, spoke for them.

  ‘Very well,’ he told Chiang, ‘but in exchange we demand that here in Wuhan General Feng is put in charge of reconstruction and propaganda. That you keep your secret police away from his writers and journalists.’

  Chiang bit his lip.

  In addition, Bai Chongxi said it would be necessary that Feng leave Wuhan for two days so that he could inspect the site General Li had chosen for the battle and advise him on techniques of close combat and night fighting in which Feng excelled. Chiang agreed to this.

  As they left the three generals agreed to meet in Taierzhuang in three days’ time.

  2

  We are half asleep. In the darkness my wife moves closer to me. Her warm body starts to fit into, cozy up to me. It is as though we are in a warm sea. I become aroused, I start to— suddenly a child wriggles into our bed. Demands it joins our warmth. Then another burrows insistently between us, demanding territory, then a third. What was going to be pleasurable in one way becomes pleasurable in a very different way. An entire family lying and sleeping as one.

  I wake up. I am not in my bed with my wife and my family. Instead I lie all alone in a very cold bed in Wuhan. Which is good. Because it means I cannot hang around in my bed indulging myself in untruthful fantasies. Instead I must be up and about my work. When my wife ordered me to abandon her, my children and my mother, so I could work for the good of our country, fight for socialism and feminism and the Lord Jesus Christ, she did the right thing.

  The first light of a cold winter dawn is creeping into my room. I get up, look out of my window. In the distance I make out the dark silhouette of the Serpent Mount with the peaceful Changchun Daoist Temple nestling in its folds. I light a cigarette. I glance quickly at the bare-branched red persimmon tree which grows in the courtyard below, then I move across to the water bowl on the side table and splash my face with its ice-cold waters. Too late I realize I still have my cigarette on my lower lip. A fizzle. Carefully I detach the soaked tobacco stuck to my lip, dry my face on a cloth, and relight another one. I pour the heaped contents of last night’s ashtray into the wastepaper basket, place the ashtray again on my desk, and sit.

  Last night til three in the morning I was working on a propaganda play – a street theatre drum song piece named ‘Wang Xiao Drives a Donkey’. I now read the results. Wang Xiao, a peaceful industrious young peasant who breeds donkeys to sell at market, is shocked to witness at first hand the appalling barbarities of the Japanese invaders and decides immediately to volunteer for the army in order to fight the barbarians.

  I shall go enlist in the army.

  I am a man of indomitable spirit,

  To die for my country I feel no regret,

  It is better than living as a slave under the bayonets of the enemy.

  To do this he bids farewell to his invalid mother – I think I’ve managed to get some genuine emotion into this bit – then sets off to fight.

  As I turn around and look at my home again,

  I see my mother standing stiffly at the doorstep.

  Choosing between being a loyal citizen and a filial son is hard,

  But at last I stamp my feet and leave my home.

  Frankly it is awful. Terrible – as writing, as propaganda. To write good propaganda, I’ve discovered, you must destroy any vestige of subtlety, suppress any literary instinct you might possess, and simply hammer your audience with blows of emotion and melodrama. Hammer, hammer, hammer! But this is awful hammering. Its barely tapping. And in only three days’ time I’m meant to be teaching a gang of young upper-class Marxist toffs how to write powerful and effective propaganda in language understandable and inspiring to every peasant and factory worker in China. So that, duly inspired, the millions will rise up, seize upon their weapons, and march out singing triumphantly to defeat the barbarian invader.

  My dark night of the soul lasts only a second. The door to my room flies open and a human dynamo bursts in – small and wiry in frame, pugnacious in stance and exp
ression.

  ‘Fuck,’ it says.

  ‘Xiang,’ I reply.

  ‘You look like a dog that’s about to be fucking hung.’ A moment. ‘No, you look like a dog that’s already been fucking hung.’

  I explain to him my fears about my upcoming teaching assignment.

  ‘Fuck ’em. Kick ’em in the balls. And if these upper-class twats try any nonsense call ’em fuckwits, more-dead-then-alive abortions. Piss on their accents. Blind them with insults.’

  ‘For some reason General Feng Yuxiang thinks I’m just the man to teach them.’

  ‘That fucking peasant.’

  Lao Xiang (absolutely no relation) is a free-spirited foul-mouthed south Hebei peasant who miraculously ended up as a writer. A very good writer who speaks several dialects and writes powerful and hilarious plays and squibs. Strangely he also writes beautiful and delicate poetry for children to recite and sing. Exactly the sort of writer we need. After we finally arrived in Wuhan a group of us – folk artists like He Rong, cartoonists like Zhao Wangyun, writers like Lao Xiang and myself – formed a group known as the All-China Resistance Association of Writers and Artists. We write and produce popular drama for the masses. There aren’t enough of us. Four hundred and sixty million fellow citizens – 97 per cent illiterate – speaking in hundreds of different dialects and accents, must all be reached. Transformed by my upper-class Han-accented Marxist shock troops.

  As I lament the impossibility of my mission Lao Xiang is reading my ‘Wang Xiao Drives a Donkey’.

  ‘Fuck,’ he says, ‘this is awful.’

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll rewrite it,’ he says. ‘You copy as I dictate.’ He dictates.

  I am a man of fiercest feeling.

  I will volunteer now. Fight for my country.

  To defeat these demons I will have no fear of dying.

  It is better to die under the bayonets of our enemy

  than live as a slave and grovel as a worm.

  A pause.

  I turn and see my dearest mother,

  her body stiff with age and sickness,

  stand in the doorway of our hovel.

  She holds out her hands in supplication to me.

  ‘Do not desert me, my son,’ she cries.

  Do I stay a pious son or serve my country?

  I stamp my feet and march to serve my country.

  ‘That’s so much better than mine,’ I say.

  ‘It is,’ he agrees. ‘But I’m having a great deal of trouble with one of mine. “Women at the Front”. It’s a kuaibanr with bamboo clappers.’

  ‘Let me read it,’ I say, holding out my hand.

  ‘Thing is,’ says Xiang, ‘I’ve got this rehearsal for it over the river. Could we work on it in a rickshaw as I go down to catch the ferry?’

  I agree.

  We both pile into a rickshaw and set off down the hill, Lao Xiang’s voice resounding round the streets. This is what we arrive at on our journey.

  They are women, but fierce as men.

  Lovers of China who will not permit a traitors’ peace.

  Endlessly toiling, they never dress up,

  Give all their meagre pennies to the nation

  endlessly sewing winter clothing for the troops…

  Full of courage, the sisters take up their guns,

  Inspired by the heroic Hua Mulan…

  Women of a new age, their arms holding up the sky.

  These heroines become famous throughout the nation.

  The rickshaw driver likes it so much he only moderately overcharges us.

  I walk slowly back up the hill to my desk.

  *

  By the time Hu Lan-shih and Agnes Smedley left their apartment the early morning fog had cleared and a bleak winter sun was shining down on Wuhan. Hu naturally smiled at the sun, as she smiled at all things, because she had an optimistic nature. Agnes naturally scowled at it. She always scowled at everything when she was thinking. They walked along the crowded, frenetic Bund – packed with market stalls and acrobats and astrologers and abandoned orphans begging and picking pockets. Hu asked Agnes about her childhood in America.

  ‘I suppose you were born in some great city somewhere.’

  ‘I’m a country girl,’ replied Agnes.

  ‘Oh,’ Hu laughed, ‘just like me.’

  ‘Osgood, Missouri. End of nowhere. I’ve Scotch/English blood and my great grandmother was a Cherokee Indian.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Raised in a two-room cabin in the middle of nowhere. We had a clock, a sewing machine, chickens but no cows. My father liked singing songs and telling stories. He was never interested in work. Talked endlessly about getting rich quick but never did nothing about it. I caught sight of my parents having sex and it was the most disgusting thing I ever saw.’

  ‘Were there many of your relatives in the village?’ asked Hu. ‘Aunts, uncles, cousins?’

  ‘Not one of ’em. We Americans ain’t like you Chinese. We spend our lives getting away from our relatives, not getting’ closer to ’em.’

  Hu couldn’t understand this so she smiled. She stepped aside as a herd of desperate pigs were driven past.

  ‘When I was seven,’ Agnes continued, ‘a flash flood washed down our valley and took our cabin and clock with it. But not the sewing machine. We lived in a tent and Pa left us pretty soon after that and took to gambling and drinking full time. Ma rented a room and we took in washing and sewing and patching other folks’ clothing.’

  ‘Did you plant any crops?’

  ‘No. Hardscrabble land. A few potatoes.’

  ‘What did you eat?’

  ‘Mostly we didn’t. My dad had shifted to a mining camp in Ludlow, Colorado, where he took up with another woman, but she left him and he told my mother to join him.’

  ‘Your father did not seem to have a sense of duty.’

  ‘He stole from his own children. Ma said no for a while, even wanted a divorce, but we had no money, we was starving. He sent us railroad tickets and we went.’

  They passed a witch trying to sell them a spell guaranteed to win them husbands, then two keen young medical students offering free injections to inoculate you against typhoid. (The disease was rampant in Wuhan since the huge influx of refugees.) Hu and Agnes had already had injections but congratulated the two students on their public service.

  ‘It’s strange,’ Hu said, then giggled, ‘but we always think of America as such a rich place.’

  ‘Ever been to a mining town?’ Agnes asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hell and smoke and dust. You live in shacks or tents.’

  ‘Sounds like us workers in Shanghai.’

  ‘You bought your marked-up food and supplies in company stores. There weren’t no schools nor doctors nor hospitals. There weren’t no law. The company goons ran the town. If you objected to anything they beat up on you and ran you out of town. That’s why I hate seeing all this same stuff in China.’

  ‘In my village,’ said Hu, ‘if men behaved like those company thugs all the village would meet together. We would try to reconcile with the men, but if they refused the whole village would turn on them and throw them out.’

  ‘In Ludlow we tried go-slows, we tried strikes to get better conditions, but they brought in Pinkertons and the state militia. There was gun fights taking place in the hills around and once on Main Street. Buildings and the railroad station were dynamited. Then we formed the Western Federation of Miners, all across the mines in Colorado. I went to see Big Bill Haywood himself address a meeting. I was only a kid. There were thousands of us there and Pinkertons and the state militia opened fire on us. Blood and bodies everywhere. It was on that afternoon that I decided I was a socialist, that I was going to start a revolution.’

  Agnes, involved in telling her story, walked into a juggler. His balls flew everywhere. He cursed her in fluent Hubei Chinese. She cursed him in fluent Missourian American, gave him some money and walked on.

  ‘What
about your childhood, Hu?’ asked Agnes.

  Hu laughed.

  ‘You always laugh when you’re embarrassed,’ noted Agnes. Hu giggled.

  ‘Well, there’s not much to tell. I come from Jiangsu Province. Kaixiangong is my village. When I was very young it was very prosperous. There was lots of farming, but also almost all the women spun silk at home. The silk we spun was sold on to the Chinese silk mills in Shanghai. They sold their woven silk on all over the world. It was famous. But suddenly the whole market collapsed because of cheap Japanese imports.’

  ‘Hurrah for capitalism!’

  Hu didn’t laugh. ‘Yes – hurrah for capitalism. There was no work in the village. Times were very hard. So my mother sold me to a Shanghai cotton mill. It was the right decision. The family needed my wages. Only six years old, I was taken into the Shen Xin Number Nine Cotton Mill. The heat, the noise, the machinery was terrifying. Forty thousand spindles all spinning at once. It was huge. I was put in the slubber room. Bigger girls and women were feeding these huge slivers of raw cotton into the machines, lint and smoke and dust was flying everywhere so you could hardly draw breath, but every time the sliver broke, which was often, that was when we tiny children were used. The machinery was packed tight – all wheels and gears and cranks flying and revolving – and it was only the smallest of children who could worm and wind their way amid all this snatching and hammering and spinning machinery to catch hold of the two ends of the broken sliver and band them together. They particularly valued my work because I had deft fingers from the silk spinning.’

  ‘Bet they didn’t pay you nothing more for it though,’ observed Agnes.

  Hu giggled.

  ‘Carry on,’ said Agnes.

  ‘The worst time was my best friend Kaija. She was a year older than me. You have to make friends fast in a place like that so people look out for you or you don’t last long. I didn’t look out for her.’

  Hu Lan-shih stopped dead at this. The memory of it.