Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  ‘But what I can’t figure,’ continued Belden, ‘is why? Why they’re loaning the Japanese all this money so they buy steel and oil and chemicals to make arms, ammunition and poison gas? Can’t the fucking banks, can’t our fucking governments, see they’re building a monster out here in Asia – just like in Europe, where they’re financing the Nazis – which one day, pretty soon, will turn on us, devour us too?’

  ‘Then the banks’ll be able to finance our own war industries and armaments and make even bigger profits.’

  ‘So, whether we live in democracies or dictatorships, the bankers are going to rule us forever?’

  ‘That’s what bankers think. But, whisper it, bankers are incredibly stupid, short-sighted, ill-informed creatures. They believe they shall rule us forever. They believe that the wolves can eat as many sheep as they want but that they will never develop a taste for fat, short-sighted bankers. And that even the sheep themselves might one day have had enough and start chomping their teeth.’

  ‘Not with politicians like Chamberlain and Daladier around they won’t.’

  The ferry arrived in Wuchang.

  The two had been invited by the Chinese government’s press office to attend the site of a recent Japanese atrocity where the Japanese Imperial Army had used poison gas against Chinese troops and civilians. The attack had taken place about fifty miles east along the southern bank of the Yangtze River at Kiukiang.

  The Japanese attack had not been entirely successful. They had fired chemical mortars and gas cylinders – containing mustard gas – into the Chinese lines and the village behind them. The gas was successful, killing many Chinese, but then suddenly the wind changed direction and the gas was driven billowing back into the faces of the advancing Japanese troops. It killed all of them too. The area where this atrocity had taken place was thus still in Chinese hands.

  A smart young officer greeted them on the quayside and they drove off.

  They passed through the familiar sights of an army in retreat. Civilians, carts, lorries, wounded soldiers walking, women and children.

  They arrived at the village and the two men walked quietly amid the houses and surrounding fields. Corpses lay all over the place, strangely united in death. Japanese uniforms, Chinese uniforms, peasant smocks and shoes, tiny children with their playthings, ducks and pigs, even the odd rat and crow who’d turned up for a free bite. To die in a gas attack is particularly painful. Once the gas gets into your lungs you are stricken with fever and chills. Then you get a craving, a desperate thirst for water. Your throat is on fire. So you gulp it down, and as the liquid spreads through your body your face turns black and swells and bursts in pustules and blood pours from your mouth and nose and your lungs start fermenting and melting and the poison finally enters your bowels and guts so in your last agonies you squirm and writhe and give rictus grins which freeze in death.

  Belden and Alley had both been on battlefields before so they were quiet, matter of fact and detached as they went round viewing the slaughter, noting down the details, searching for the correct words and phrases.

  ‘Like to see The New York Times or the Chicago Tribune printing this,’ murmured Jack.

  Jobs done, the two returned to their car.

  Rewi Alley was a short, straight-backed New Zealander. He sported a military moustache and black swept back hair. His liberal parents, of Scottish ancestry, named him after Rewi Maniapoto, the legendary Maori warrior who had fought back against the British invaders. In 1916 Rewi had volunteered for the Western Front and won the Military Medal. After the war he’d become a factory inspector in Shanghai and was so appalled by the conditions the mill workers were forced to work in he resigned and, with the help of several Chinese trade unions, had started organizing self-governing cooperatives where members could work in safe and sanitary conditions.

  When the Japanese overran Shanghai, he and the cooperatives swiftly moved machinery, workforce and families upstream to Wuhan. Here in Wuhan, he worked with General Feng Yuxiang in funding and organizing further cooperatives and facilitating their movement upstream to Chungking.

  Short of money, he also worked as a ‘stringer’ for various New Zealand and British papers.

  Rewi sighed.

  Jack passed him his flask of bourbon. Rewi drank from it.

  Rewi sighed again.

  ‘Got something to say?’ enquired Jack.

  Rewi paused.

  A shadow passed over his face.

  ‘I lost a brother, my older brother, in the Great War, in France. My parents have never recovered from it.

  ‘You know why all we soldiers volunteered and set sail from New Zealand, on the other side of the world, travelled thousands of miles across the oceans to fight that bloody war in Europe?’

  He paused.

  ‘Because the bloody politicians told us, swore, it was the last war, the very last war, the war to end all wars. By fighting in this war, they promised us, we’d stop all future wars. Because when the war was won they, the politicians, would set up this League of Nations, a worldwide organization that would never allow another war. They swore it! Not one single war! Because any nation trying to start a war with any other nation would be immediately stopped by all the other nations, members of the League, sending all their troops and battleships to intervene and stop it. They told us this. The fucking governor general of fucking New Zealand himself stood on the verandah of our cricket pavilion in front of our whole school, lined up on the field, and fucking swore to our faces that the imperial British government in London had solemnly pledged that this is what would happen. The League of Nations would be set up. It was for this promise my brother died on the Western Front. It was for this promise millions of young men were butchered.

  ‘Look at this slaughter here in China. Twenty million dead because our governments refused to allow the League of Nations to intervene. Intervene in Manchuria, in Abyssinia, in the Rhineland, in Spain, in China, in Austria…’

  He paused.

  ‘The thing I feel worst about, hurts me the most, is the shame, the bloody shame. That we have betrayed all those young men who laid down their lives fighting for a better world, for peace. All their families who have grieved their loss ever since. All the weak, defenceless nations we’ve allowed these fascists to devour.

  ‘Above all – we’ve betrayed ourselves.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Rewi?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘How did your brother die?’

  ‘In a bloody gas attack.’

  *

  I continue my stroll down the Bund, carrying my large bag of onions, and arrive at the tea house. My friend is sat outside. The sun has certainly got to him, his face is tanned. He looks fitter and healthier and more relaxed. Must be all that walking and fresh air. He looks about him, watching all the faces and people passing by him, then he sees me. His face breaks into a wide grin.

  ‘Mr Lao,’ he shouts.

  ‘Tian Boqi,’ I shout.

  ‘It is so good to see you.’

  ‘And you. You are looking so healthy.’

  ‘All the walking, route marches. Putting up stages, taking them down, engaging in fierce sword fights, talking all hours of the night and day to all sorts of people.’

  ‘And you are looking really happy. I am so glad.’

  A shadow crosses his face.

  ‘Compared to last time, you mean? My family?’

  ‘No,’ I hasten to tell him.

  He thinks a second, then smiles.

  ‘I love the countryside. And the people. The warmth, comradeship even more. And the going up into the mountains. They give me such strength.’

  One piece of information I should give you before Tian Boqi and I get stuck into our conversation is that he is sporting a very prominent black eye. But I naturally ignore this. I order tea for us both – he might have more-than-full-time work but he is still paid virtually nothing. I put my bag of onions on the table, we sit down, and I demand to hea
r his story.

  ‘Well, first we returned to the village where we had our disgraceful first show. We apologized over and over to the villagers for what we’d done and then talked a lot with them about drama. We told them of various ideas, they had their own ideas, so we worked on them together with the villagers and then played them out in front of the whole village. They had their comments and suggestions which we tried to incorporate – if they were practical – into the plays. People would come up to us and say – “He wouldn’t say that in that circumstance. That sounds daft. You should have that woman saying it. She’d be much funnier.” And we’d do it. And of course everywhere we travelled we heard: “We have to have more swords. We must have to have more fights. And more romances. Lots and lots of sighing and suffering!” Four or five villagers joined us in the troupe – a couple as actors, one as a writer (though technically he couldn’t write, I wrote down his dialogue – which was incredibly good – and of course he always got the dialect dead right) and the other two using their carpentry skills to build our stages and sets.’

  Sometimes it’s difficult to follow Tian as he’s speaking at such a gallop. He asks me what had happened to all those orphan children who had put on that extraordinary play that day?

  I smile. ‘They came back with us to the university and started to work with my colleague Lao Xiang on the play they were performing, then on other plays he wrote for them, and some which they wrote for themselves.’

  ‘And they’re off touring?’

  ‘Yes. In a way. They were put into the government’s orphans programme. But because they were already such a strong group, a family almost under their young leader Su, it was decided not to split them up but instead to give them an “aunty” and then send them all upstream to Chungking so they could start to work with all the other orphans there, helping them with their problems and fears, touring out into the countryside. I decided to put Chang Lee in charge of them. The student in your group who walked all the way from Shanghai?’

  ‘I remember him,’ says Tian.

  ‘He is quite childish in his way. And he relates to children very well. Has their fantasies, knows how to express their feelings, their thoughts.’

  Suddenly Tian Boqi is serious.

  ‘I am such a horrible man,’ he says. ‘I treated him so badly, mocked him and bullied him. I was so stupid.’

  ‘And you have learnt how not to be stupid. We have all had to learn how not to be stupid. Except the rich and powerful. You remember the little girl, the silent one, Lim From The Forest? The one who went from person to person in the audience, staring at them and trying to see her parents in them?’

  ‘I still have nightmares about her.’

  ‘She’s started talking again. Only a little bit. She’ll only talk within the group, to those she knows and trusts. But a doctor I spoke to is sure she’ll change. That she’ll soon be a non-stop chatterbox. And she’s stopped looking for her family everywhere.’

  Our tea and sweet dumplings have arrived. I’d ordered a double portion because Tian Boqi is looking quite gaunt. I still do not mention his black eye.

  ‘So tell us about how you work in the countryside, sort out your plays?’

  ‘Well, as we learn we adapt. We’ve developed different kinds of drama for different situations. There’s a lot of sharp minds in our group.

  ‘If there’s a tea house in the village we warn them ahead of time, then we enter the tea house as customers, start mixing with the villagers, performing our prearranged play in a way that involves interacting with all the villagers, bits of comedy, bits of anger, improvising lines and actions, leaving them intrigued because they can’t decide which bits are real, which are fantasy. We do slapstick (always clearing up afterwards), information bits, bits of traditional theatre while we’re there drinking their tea. Generally the audiences love it. If people are put off or scared we explain to them what is happening and once they understand they start joining in themselves.

  ‘We do the same sort of improvised stuff in the streets. Sometimes, when a village festival is on, we – with the villagers’ permission – take part in the procession, distributing propaganda leaflets, making the people laugh, then we put on a proper play on our stage. One of the problems is that in many places people know that there is a war on, are terrified of it, but don’t have any idea what it’s about. So we put on a play about when the Japanese first attacked us at Marco Polo Bridge, or one celebrating Taierzhuang or the communists’ victory at Pingxingguan. People are very moved to see that we are fighting back. Even winning. It makes them want to join in. On other days and nights we do great patriotic plays from the legends and histories of China. You’d enjoy them,’ he says, grinning at me.

  I laugh back. It is wonderful to watch his enthusiasm.

  ‘On occasions, if something important has happened in the war, like Taierzhuang, we work up an overnight improvisation on it to inform people about it immediately.

  ‘And all the time we’re travelling. On and on and on. Some of our audiences want to put on their own plays, pass the message on to other nearby villages we haven’t been to. So we leave one of us behind to help them prepare it, then let them stand on their own two feet. We do some literacy work, especially among children, so they can go back to their parents and start teaching them how to read and write.

  ‘And we travel so much – through beautiful country, amid all sorts of different cultures and peoples. In some areas people are prosperous, in other areas, especially in the mountains, with villages and terraces clinging to the mountainside, we pass through places where women will never leave their own homes because they’re too poor to afford clothing.

  ‘We do plays encouraging villages to set up their own committees and start trying to cooperate, govern themselves. We discovered that that was already happening in many places spontaneously. In Nationalist areas Chiang Kai-shek’s officials and politicians would often be hostile to this. In the Communist areas they try to make them tow the party line. But the best places are behind the enemy lines.’

  I was shocked. ‘You’ve been behind enemy lines?’

  ‘The Japanese have taken over vast areas. Far too large for their troops to properly control. In many places the lines between the Japanese and the Chinese are extremely fluid. Those areas, those villages and communities, are the best places to be. They’re wonderful. The peasants have simply taken over. They run the landlords out and take over the government. They’re organizing the resistance. And they’re so knowledgeable. All the little details and jokes we put in our plays they get. And they suggest new ones.

  ‘Everything is working fine, but then Nationalist agents and officials turn up. “You can’t put stuff like that on. Say things like that. Be disrespectful to our great leaders.” And the villagers simply stand up and throw them out. Some of the officials sneak back and watch the shows because they agree with them. And the communists are just as funny. They start to tell everyone what to do in these solemn Marxist voices and the villagers simply start to argue back, saying “That won’t work. That’s nonsense. If you want people organizing themselves effectively you’ve got to allow this and that and this.” And when the Eighth Route Army turns up – the communist soldiers – the peasants have already worked out the best way of defeating the Japanese in their area, the best places to waylay and ambush them, the best ways to confuse and terrorize them. Because they know their own countryside, every hollow and copse and cave, and the soldiers don’t. So the soldiers – the revolutionary vanguard – have to follow the orders of village peasants. It’s wonderful!’

  We both laugh. Seeing him makes me so happy. Seeing his metamorphosis.

  Tian Boqi has come to Wuhan for three days so he can advise and train our current students on how to put on the most effective propaganda in the towns and villages. I can think of no one more inspiring to encourage and steer them.

  I make a passing reference to his black eye. He grins.

  ‘The perils of acting! In
one town we were doing some improvised street theatre. I was playing this villainous money lender. Playing it very well. Too well, in fact. This farmer comes round the corner, doesn’t realize a play is going on, listens to all my foul deeds and love of other people’s gold and wives, and promptly punches me straight in the face. One must suffer for one’s art!’

  ‘It’s a credit to your acting,’ I say. ‘And it gives you a certain air of derring-do! You look a bit like Errol Flynn in one of his pirate movies.’

  ‘My acting is a bit forceful,’ agrees Tian. ‘It’s true, I do like to play villains.’

  We finish our food and part. Since he is obviously living in straightened circumstances and has little to eat I offer him the only thing I have that might help him, my bag of onions. He gratefully accepts them.

  What neither of us realizes, as we have sat there talking and laughing, is that, not six feet away, someone has been sitting at a nearby table and noting down every exact word we have spoken.

  Before long I will be sitting somewhere else, listening and sweating while someone reads back to me every single word of our conversation.

  *

  ‘Why does Donald want these bicycle parts?’ asked Spider Girl.

  ‘Not sure,’ replied Hu. ‘It’s to do with his surgery.’

  ‘That’s cutting people up?’

  ‘That’s cutting people up to make them whole again.’

  ‘I want to come and see him cutting these people up and making them better. Sounds like a butcher’s stall.’

  ‘I’m sure you can come,’ said Hu.

  Spider Girl and Hu were pushing their way through the crowds on the Bund.

  ‘He’s a very strange man, Donald.’

  ‘He seems a very nice man to me,’ said Hu.

  ‘He is very nice. But he is also strange. With his bow tie.’

  ‘That is just a piece of dressing. Which Europeans wear.’

  ‘That is maybe what they tell us. I was washing it last night. It was covered in blood. I thought it could have many powerful magical spells woven into it. He looks so strong when he wears it.’