Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  Most of the Western journalists present – mainly young, idealistic and penniless ‘stringers’ – were deeply sympathetic to the Chinese cause. Many had come to Wuhan directly from Spain, where the democratically elected Spanish government’s heroic attempts to defend themselves against the fascist invasion were now on their last legs.

  Jack Belden was there – an American college kid who hadn’t been able to find work in Depression America, had worked his passage to China on a tramp steamer and then laboured for several year as a coolie in the Shanghai docks before becoming a journalist. So was George Hogg, a nervous young English Quaker. Izzy Epstein, a fervent communist and United Press reporter, was arguing with George Wang of Reuters over what were the precise colours of Madame Chiang’s polka dot sweater. His boss in New York had sent him an imperative cable ordering him to uncover this vital information rather than endlessly rabbiting on about the terrible sufferings of the Chinese people under the Japanese boot. ‘Give us a story with pizzazz,’ he demanded.

  ‘What colour is her fucking sweater, George?’ demanded a desperate Izzy. ‘You’re fucking Chinese, you should know.’

  ‘Hell,’ responded George, ‘just make it up.’

  Izzy grinned wolfishly.

  ‘Purple with pink dots!’

  In a corner at the back sat two callow and rather clumsily dressed young Englishmen – Wystan Hugh Auden and Christopher Bradshaw Isherwood. Sporadically they tried to speak to a massive and muscular Chinese general who sat beside them. Feng Yuxiang would only respond to their questions with a grin as wide as the Yangtze. He was here to celebrate. Celebrate most especially the triumph of his two friends, Generals Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren, and, to a lesser extent, of himself. And to ensure that not one ounce of credit went to the charlatan General Chiang Kai-shek. The more Auden and Isherwood badgered him, the more he smiled.

  ‘Inscrutable,’ said Auden to Isherwood.

  Feng’s smile grew even wider. Auden and Isherwood reminded him of Laurel and Hardy.

  Isherwood scratched the top of his head.

  At the end of the row of seats, all by himself and perfectly self-composed, sat a youthful and dashingly attired Old Etonian, Peter Fleming, the special correspondent for The Times and The Spectator. Peter Fleming was a man of many secrets, none of which we will go into at the moment.

  There was a fluster up front and suddenly Hollington Tong’s portly figure bowled through a door and bounced onto the podium.

  ‘What’s the colour of Madame Chiang’s polka dot sweater, Hollington?’ shouted Izzy Epstein. Everyone laughed, Hollington most.

  Hollington was widely respected by the press corps. Ever since taking his position at the start of the Wuhan government he had adopted a revolutionary position as government press officer. He told the truth. Or almost told the truth. He had intelligently calculated that the Chinese nation’s position was so dire that it was best to be honest about it. Since the government’s position was that they wished for immediate economic and military aid from Britain and France and America, the worse the Chinese nation’s position became and the more powerful the Japanese grew, the more likely it was that these nations would involve themselves in these wars. It was a slender hope, a very slender hope considering these countries were all lead by appeasers and isolationists, but still a hope. So Hollington almost entirely told the truth, and the press corps loved him for it. And they entirely understood that on certain matters – namely military ones – no government on earth in a war can afford to tell the truth about its military activities.

  Hollington continued to grin, incontinently, then spoke.

  ‘Gentlemen, the united government of China has very important, auspicious news for you. News which I hope and trust you will report faithfully and as loudly as you can. It is truly momentous news for your governments and peoples to hear.’

  He paused.

  ‘General Rensuke Isogai is the commanding officer of the Imperial Japanese Army’s most formidable and powerful military force, its 10th Division. This is the news I bring you and the world. Military forces of the Chinese government and nation have for the last three weeks engaged the Imperial Japanese Army’s 10th Division under the command of General Rensuke in sustained and ferocious and unremitting combat in and outside the city of Taierzhuang in Shandong Province.’

  Agnes reminded herself she really had to speak to Spider Girl.

  ‘The Japanese 10th Army Division, I am pleased to announce, has been utterly and completely annihilated by our heroic Chinese forces. Only a few hundred members of the 10th Division have been able to escape to the north. The rest are dead or captured. This Taierzhuang victory ensures that, for a time, Wuhan, the capital of China, is safe from the Japanese invaders.’

  There was a stunned silence, followed by riotous cheering and applause. The press corps were overwhelmingly young, leftist, and absolute supporters of China. Only one man in the room did not cheer or rave. Peter Fleming, Old Etonian, sighed, stood up and quietly exited. He was soon followed by a herd of screaming journalists stampeding for the phones.

  *

  News of Taierzhuang spreads swiftly upwards from the marketplaces on the Bund and downwards from those with radios and telephones and telegraphs. The news meets somewhere in the middle. I am later told that those who received the news simultaneously from below and above have never really recovered from the experience, such was the joy and relief which exploded within them.

  Swallows and house martins and swifts tumble and somersault across the spring skies as slowly and methodically pairs of storks – great white elegant birds with black linings all along their wings and legs trailing behind – return from their winter migrations and reclaim once more their traditional nests. As the pairs land they excitedly clack their long bills together as though rejoicing at the great victory. Their nests are on temples and in trees.

  The great trees themselves blow their blousy new leaves in the air, each green leaf trying to reach closer towards the sun than all its neighbours. A lively breeze breathes into them and their boughs sough up and down as though in celebration.

  I walk beneath the trees on the Bund, the sun dappling through their leaves onto my face. All around me are crowds. Individuals, lovers, families, crowds of even a hundred families – children, adults, grandparents – capering and jumping and parading. Chinese flags are being waved everywhere. Crowds peel off into the Chinese Big World Amusement Park – shoot up in the air on giant wheels, plummet to earth on helter skelters, amid gaudy flashing lights and raucous music. In the Good Fortune Roller Skating Dance Hall packed crowds suicidally career round and round, arms flailing, legs flying. I pass a cinema showing the latest Fred and Ginger musical. It inauspiciously belts out the sounds of ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’. The management has patriotically declared all performances for the day free, but wisely doubled the price of its refreshments.

  Firecrackers fizzle and explode among our feet. Berserk groups of children rush around screaming and shouting, demanding of their parents that they add to their sugar rush by buying them yet another candy floss. I pass a marriage procession – a red-clothed bride in her red-painted carriage – followed almost immediately by a solemn funeral procession with red-robed Buddhist priests, bells, drums and candles round the red-draped coffin and professional mourners all around. The sounds and musics of wedding and funeral blend perfectly into one.

  Up above us old men have released their pet doves into the air and have tied tiny flutes and whistles to their tail feathers so as they flutter and circle through the upper airs the sounds of sweet whistles and harmonies fill the skies. Amid them small children’s and large adults’ kites ride the wind – glittering, swooping and swirling in a thousand vibrant colours.

  Acrobats. Yes, lots of acrobats. Contortionists, jugglers, dog and monkey shows, dog and pony shows, storytellers, street pedlars selling noodles, noodle dumplings stuffed with pork, soup with glutinous rice flour dumplings, sweet cakes, round flat wheat ca
kes.

  It is still relatively early in the morning so blue-coated farmers with sturdy barefooted wives are still tramping in from the countryside to sell their produce, slung from poles between their two shoulders – great round baskets of dewy fresh vegetables, large bundles of dried hay for kindling, often trailed by a caravan of neat-footed little donkeys pattering past with enormous cylindrical bags of flour or rice crossed upon their backs.

  The clatter of mahjong tablets in a cafe and the pipings of a flute player. Hawkers selling small wooden combs, packets of powder, pocket mirrors. A travelling dentist who sits his clients in a large wheelbarrow and tries to extort money from a large crowd of onlookers hungry to witness the next tooth extraction. On a side table he displays a large pile of decayed teeth to show his successful extractions, and he employs a drummer to drown out his customers’ screams.

  I am passing the walls where the newspaper pages are pasted up. A week ago there used to be quite large groups of people there hotly debating the news, arms flying, jaws hinging, everyone conversing and debating vital topics of politics, war, economics, governance, the foreign situation – with especial reference to Hitler’s invasion of Austria and his new treaty with Japan – even going as far as to hint that perhaps we needed new leaders and, dare to whisper it, elections.

  But the victory at Taierzhuang has changed everything.

  There is an ocean, in fact there are several oceans, of packed people around the walls – a turmoil and roar of humanity as they all express their own different opinions and points of view and fervent beliefs. Socialism, Communism, Buddhist parties, Daoist parties, an Independence for Tibet Party, an All-Woman’s Party, a No Tax Party, a Let’s All be Ruled by Experts Party, even a Let’s Get Back to the Good Old Days of the Emperor Party. Never before have I witnessed such release, such exuberance, such unleashing of opinion and intention and belief in public. Speaking your mind? It is bad manners! You might upset someone important! But now, it is as though a tsunami has been unleashed, the banks of the Yangtze River broken open. A universal unlocking of jaws! Great tides of humanity flow back and forth, orators cling to their soap boxes so they are not swept away. Everyone is insulting, disagreeing with, debating, agreeing with, cheering, booing everyone else.

  And their greatest cries are for elections and for fighting the Japanese!

  I walk among them open-mouthed. I listen in awe to the speakers, to the groups of people debating among themselves. I mean, what I love is the way in which ordinary people are suddenly speaking. With passion, with deadly humour, with great charity. They suddenly, mysteriously speak like angels – openly, beautifully, freely, dealing with the most complex subjects and ideas in the simplest, most concise language. I came to Wuhan to teach educated people how to write as common Chinese people speak. But when I hear these common people speak, these ordinary, everyday, modest people, they speak the most heavenly, the highest Chinese ever spoken.

  It does an old socialist’s heart good. I mean, you can sense, you can almost see the high and the mighty, the powerful – amid all this popular ferment and action, people carrying on as though they are their own masters, feeling their own power – you can sense the powerful flinching, for a second doubting, even foreseeing their own end.

  John Milton’s great words come to my mind:

  Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: Methinks I see her as an Eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazl’d eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heav’nly radiance.

  A call for joyous prayer resonates from the minaret of a nearby mosque.

  I am hit full in the face by a random egg. This really is a proper political meeting! It reminds me of my days in London’s East End.

  Wiping the yolk from my face, I suddenly recall I should be elsewhere. As the unofficial matchmaker between Yu Liqun and Guo Morou, at this very moment I should in fact be at a meeting between the ‘happy’ couple to help ‘negotiate’ their marriage. I hurry off.

  *

  Amid all these celebrations Hu had stayed to comfort the weeping Spider Girl. Spider Girl apologized for weeping. Weeping was a selfish and time-wasting thing to do! She had not done it since she was a tiny child. Hu assured her it was perfectly all right. She told The Drab, Spider Girl’s assistant, to prepare another bowl of Oolong tea to soothe her.

  Hu herself was likewise facing difficulties. It was getting time for her to go and attend her daily government committee. Hu increasingly harboured doubts not only about the usefulness of the committee – it never seemed to reach a decision about anything except for matters which favoured the already rich and powerful – but also of her own presence on it. No one ever listened to a thing she said.

  What she had told Madame Chiang had had some effect. The hospitals which the whores had set up inside the brothels were no longer being harassed as much by the owners’ goons and gangsters. Two of the floating brothels had been adapted into hospitals and wounded soldiers were now being transported upstream to Changsha and Chungking in them. And her ideas on getting many more sampans moored around Wuhan to provide homes to house the refugees had resulted in a few being towed downstream, but not many.

  The main resistance to all these schemes was the opposition, the total opposition, of Wuhan’s landlords. The scarcer property became the higher the rents they could charge. And the landlords wielded great influence within the government and within her own committee. Even Madame Chiang could not get far against such powerful vested interests. Brothels were definitely more profitable than hospitals, and the more sampans that were brought in the lower they would drive rents.

  Hu was a rare and rather bizarre creature in human life. Her great desire was to be helpful. To serve others. To work for the greater good. She was as dedicated to her work as any medieval nun. While her committee work was of little use, her relationship with Madame Chiang was useful and did help some people. She did not want to upset Madame Chiang, who she thought of as a good person, by resigning from the committee. Even if she did resign, at the moment she did not have any other useful job or work to go to. She was in a quandary.

  Then she had an idea to help Spider Girl.

  ‘Spider Girl, I’ve decided not to go to my committee today. Instead of you being upset here in the apartment, why don’t you come along with me and help us bind the soldiers’ wounds on the Bund?’

  Spider Girl looked at her. Spider Girl was always practical. No point letting your grief get in the way of doing something good.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Good idea. I don’t know anything about binding wounds, so you’re going to have to show me.’

  ‘We’ll start with the easy stuff.’

  ‘You never know,’ pondered Spider Girl, ‘my father might just turn up there. I could look after him.’

  They got ready to go. Spider Girl’s spirits were reviving. She gave The Drab a cuff to remind her she should prepare the vegetables ready for cooking before she and Hu returned, then they set off along the Bund.

  The snows had been melting on the great mountains of Tibet so the Yangtze was now in full and glorious spate. The sun shone. Everywhere Chinese flags were flying – from the factory chimneys of Hanyang, the battlements of Wuchang and in all the Chinese areas of Hankou. Even the embassies in the foreign concessions flew flags and their warships anchored in the river were covered in bunting. At least on the British and French and American embassies and boats. The Italian ones remained stark and unfestooned.

  Li Dequan and her husband Feng Yuxiang were working at the dressing station as they arrived. Hu introduced Spider Girl.

  Feng looked Spider Girl up and down.

  ‘You look like a good stout peasant girl,’ he opined. ‘Bet you could collar a good husband.’

  Spider Girl had never blushed before but found herself doing so now. What a generous man! And he had a pretty fine figure h
imself!

  Feng left to attend to several of his many duties and Spider Girl, instructed by Hu, started enthusiastically rolling up disinfected bandages. She fantasized about good fat husbands with lots of land.

  As they bandaged and swabbed and staunched the bleeding and tried to set broken bones and lessen the pain and suffering, Li Dequan and Hu swapped news.

  Two or three times different candidates came up to them and handed them their policy pamphlets for the upcoming elections. Spider Girl, who’d been following the news by reading the papers on the walls and listening in at various barbers’ stalls, had several sharp questions for them.

  Hu started to explain to Li Dequan her doubts about staying on the government committee. She didn’t feel she was doing any good.

  Li thought that Madame Chiang would be upset. She had great respect for Hu.

  ‘But I’m not doing anything useful. Look at us here. We’re helping these soldiers in their terrible pain. We might even be saying the lives of a few of them. But on that committee…!’

  Li Dequan looked at her.

  ‘What would you do instead?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know at the moment. And I don’t want to upset Madame Chiang. I think she is a good person.’

  ‘She is a good powerful person,’ Li Dequan corrected her.

  ‘If I was to do something else,’ said Hu, ‘I’d still think of good things to do, watch the world around me and hand any suggestions I had to Madame Chiang to help her – but what I should be doing in this terrible world we’re in at the moment, with so much suffering, such injustice, is helping ordinary people. Just like Jesus tells us to.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Li. ‘I will speak to Madame Chiang,’ she continued. ‘Explain to her that you do not like the committee work. And why. She won’t like your decision. But do not worry, she is not a vindictive person.’

  ‘Thank you, Li,’ said Hu.

  ‘And,’ said Li, ‘I have an idea what you could do afterwards, as a useful job.’