Young China at the Crossroads

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THERE was a rap at my door. “May I come in?" asked a familiar young voice speaking Chinese. “Please do,” I answered. He was looking thinner every visit. For over a year now An-kuo had shared a self-imposed task with three student friends, monitoring Chinese broadcasts; and at the same time had kept up in his studies, in the Japanese college where his family had sent him to major in metallurgy. He put a paper on my table. Before I looked at it, I made tea and filled a plate with Chinese delicacies which Mrs. Wu of Yokohama had brought me that morning.

“I’m not hungry,”he protested, but when I put the tray near him he sipped tea and selected a small cake saying, “These are my favorites.”

“They are made by your own mother’s recipe.

I gave it to Mrs. Wu in exchange for the recipe for these with fruit in them.”

“Mrs. Wu is a good cook. I wish I were boarding with her.” (His grandfather had arranged for him to live in the home of a Japanese merchant so as to get on quickly with the language which he needs for his studies.) “I do not like Japanese cooking.”

“Is everything going well at college?" Eighteen months earlier his mother had sent me a letter asking me to look after him as much as I could. His letters home to Nanking had been unhappy.

“Book learning takes too much of my time.”Suddenly he was impatient. He touched the paper he had brought me. “Will you read this?”

Beginning to read without much interest, I was soon alert. This is what I read under the heading Harbin Secret Agreement Concerning Manchuria. “(1) Russia will give Chinese Communists full support in military and foreign affairs. (2) Chinese Communists and Russia will carry out economic coöperation in Manchuria. (3) Chinese Communists recognize Russia’s special rights of communication, including mastery of the air, military and civil. (4) Russia will provide and maintain fifty good aircraft for the use of Chinese Communists.

“(5) Russia will turn over to Chinese Communists weapons taken from the Japanese Army. (6) Russia will sell Chinese Communists munitions. (7) Russia will permit. Chinese Communists to retreat into Russian territory through North Korea in the event, of any drastic change in the Manchurian situation. (8) Russia will give assistance, unopenly at first, in the event of an enemy attack on Manchuria. (9) Russia will permit Chinese Communists to have air force training centers in Mongolia and North Korea.

“(10) Chinese Communists will hereafter furnish Russia with all intelligence on Asian matters as well as information about the United States. (11) Chinese Communists will supply Russia with cotton, soya beans, and other essentials produced in Manchuria, as required; but Chinese Communists can withhold what is needed for their own use. (12) Russia will support growth of Chinese Communist influence in Sinkiang. (13) Chinese Communists will make available the Sino-Korean border area in Antung, the border area in Liaoning, and the triangle in Kirin for stationing North Korean troops and will permit the peaceful annexation of these three areas to North Korea at an appropriate time.”

When I had read thus far I noticed how tired my guest was and I persuaded him to stretch out on the couch while I read on. His eyes were too bright, his face pale. The next page was titled Moscow Agreement. “(1) Chinese Communists will permit Russia to assist in prospecting for metals and allow joint mining ventures. A commercial trading company will be formed with Sino-Russian capital. Russia has the right to keep troops in Manchuria and Sinkiang. (2) In the event of war, Chinese Communists will fight for and with Russia.

Russia will appoint the Supreme Commander. Chinese Communists will appoint the Deputy Commander.

“(3) Russia will help Chinese Communists build an air force, which air force will be a combined Sino-Russian force for the universal protection of Asia. (4) Russia acknowledges China’s unique historical role as the middle land in Asia and agrees to the expansion of the Chinese Communist Party Organization through a Cominform placed in China for the purpose of winning and uniting Asia. (5) In the event of hostilities breaking out in Europe, Chinese Communists will send to Europe one hundred thousand soldiers and a labor force of one million to assist Russia with military operations. (6) Russia will equip and train eleven divisions of Chinese Communists in readiness for any world emergency.”

An-kuo did not sleep. When I finished reading and looked at him, his dark gaze was on me and he spoke. “I must go back. Chinese Communists are selling us to Russia. Students have moral responsibility. I came to say good-bye.”

He stood up — small, frail, and tense — staring toward things in his homeland. “They have arrested Angus Ward. I knew him when I was a child, He never beat a servant. He is kind and good. Ho loves China. I was visiting my aunt up north in summer. He took me by the hand and we went into his house and I met his animals. He is so gentle he could understand their languages. He is a big man, strong in character. He never beat anyone. It’s only a weak, frightened person who hits another.” An-kuo was walking back and forth.

“Please sit down,” said I. “I know Angus Ward. He is a good man, wise and strong. Trust him to do the best it’s possible to do.”

“Did you know his animals?”

“Yes. I liked most Blanche, a hen. She used to talk to him.” As I spoke An-kuo’s face lit up.

“Mr. Ward did not train his animals — they just had confidence and so talked with him — perhaps he will know how to reach the hearts of his jailers. Communism could be right but it’s wrong—it’s wrong because its tool is hate. Communism should have love. Hatred and fear are twins. Fear destroys intelligence.” My young guest’s words were kindled by faith. “We Chinese must teach the Russians.”

He sat down, his hands clasped together, and I asked him, “Where did you get this information you gave me to read? Was it given on the radio?”

“It wasn’t broadcast.” His tone was the polite voice that youth in Asia use to their elders when they find us stupid. “I was given it by a Chinese merchant resident in Japan — a member of the Chinese Overseas Association who has a chain of arrangements by which he is able to get accurate information.”

“Perhaps this isn’t true,” I tried to comfort. “We have to wait to see how things turn out in China.”

“I didn’t come to discuss the truth of these copies of agreements made secretly at Harbin and Moscow.” His manner was stiff and then he smiled. “Mother asked you to mother me. I could not disappear without letting you know.”

“Your family want you out of China for a while.”

“They are afraid of some of the intelligent boys and girls of our house. We might be bothersome at home. So they have scattered us. I was put in Japan, where educators from the United States have remodeled the teaching and brought scientific knowledge up to date. I am to return and help make steel.”

“You are in an excellent school, doing well.”

“My cousins have been sent to colleges in Switzerland, Scotland, and Norway. Our parents chose countries where there is not much luxury so that we will not get extravagant ideas. We are to work hard and come back with wisdom to help develop our land’s natural resources. Our family have become acutely conscious of the want and misery in Asia. They are ashamed of it in China. In our home, every growing child has to learn about Gandhi. Our parents do not want us to enter the Chinese Communist Party yet, but they do not want us to oppose the Communists. We are to be quiet and study — far from home.” He was tapping on my table with his fingers.

“Your parents think into the future.”

“Before 1911, my kin were coöperating with Sun Yat-sen. Later they gave ardent support to the rise of the Kuomintang and then after some years they washed their hands of the party of Chiang Kai-shek. They give us three reasons. The first is that he put on too tall a hat. He neglected to study the history of China. He forgot that in our country the people are the government, the ruler an agent only. Repeatedly he contended, ‘I am the government.’”

We were both silent, I remembering the high hopes in China when the Kuomintang was a young party.

“Secondly, he did not make a true effort against the Japanese invasion. And thirdly, the leaders of the Kuomintang betrayed China by their love of riches for themselves — deposited in banks in North and South America, invested in far places,” he went on. “Our family have not hindered the advance of the Communist Party. Several of the leaders are long known to us. Grandfather has probably pledged his help. Two of my uncles belong to the Party. They were at Yenan. I was born into an optimistic group. They hope for good in every change. They look for good but they are cautious, so they keep us away.”

An-kuo asked for my address book and I gave it to him. He wanted lo check my list of students in Japan from the mainland of Asia with his own. I had some new names which he copied and he wrote some he had for me. The radio monitors circulate their information to Asian students reaching out wider than just their own nationality. An-kuo had tried many times to get official records and failed to lind them. Some who are in Japan as st udents have not registered at their diplomatic missions or their Overseas Associations. I learned soon after I arrived, in September of 1947, not to ask people from the mainland of Asia or any of the Pacific islands when or how they came, if I wanted them to be friendly.

It’s the same with the merchants as with the students. The Chinese Overseas Association reckons that there are between thirty-five and forty thousand Chinese in Japan. The Korean Association concludes that there are between six and eight hundred thousand Koreans. The old-fashioned Japanese police used to have knowledge of everyone in Japan, but these police were purged after the defeat, and the remodeled police force is cautious about names. Some people have gone away unrecorded and others have come in quietly. Every student of my acquaintance is sponsored by a Japanese family, usually a family with whom his family has had commercial dealings over a long period. They are all here because their parents have sent them. Each one has an intense interest in what is happening back in his homeland.

2

JAPAN is the most literate of the Asian countries. A reading and writing survey made by members of the Civil Information and Education Section of our Occupation has shown that 95 per cent of the adults can read and write. There are more than eighteen million children in the age group who must attend school, by Japanese law, and a large number go on for higher education. Although Japan is merely four mountainous islands collectively no larger than Montana, a population of more than eighty million people lives here, and they maintain one hundred and eighty universities.

They began fairly extensive education with the opening of Buddhist schools in the seventh century. Since then they have made many changes every change in government has caused a reform of the educational system. Sixty-nine of the present universities are called National Universities. Nineteen were founded by cities. Ninety-two arc private universities belonging to Catholics, Protestants, and Japanese who are not Christian but want to promote Western learning. The universities are scattered all over the islands and many of them are in lovely places.

Compared with students in colleges in England and the United States, students in Japan have poor conditions. The miracle is that this Asian land has these schools. Some buildings are of brick and stone, but mostly they are of frail wood. This has never been a materially rich nation. In the recent attempt to grab a big empire,the universities were almost lost. The government in power from the time of the attack on China in 1931 until the defeat in August of 1945 did not allow school buildings to be repaired. They pulled out everything they wanted, including radialors, telephones, and electrical wires. Many professors gave full support to the war effort. Others suffered for their opposition. False theories about race were put into the textbooks, and unsound scientific data. Then, under our bombing, buildings were destroyed, books burned, laboratory equipment blasted away. After the Occupation, we undertook a renovation of the Japanese educational system from first grade through university.

There is still a scarcity of classrooms and teachers. Within recent months, missionary teachers who have had to leave China have been admitted to Japan. Fifty came in one group, thirty in another. They are busy learning the language and soon will be teaching. There is eagerness lor learning. The boys and girls who get into college work hard — with a few exceptions who are soon dropped. There isn’t room for all the Japanese who apply, and if the way were wide open the universities would be swamped with students from the Asia mainland. If another university went up, youth would be at the gates.

Word has spread into Asia that wo have put much into the Japanese education system. Donald Nugent, who taught in Japan before the war, has been in full charge of what has been accomplished.

I think that he has done ;i line job. He has known that we cannot make over Japan, or any Asian nation, in our own American image, We can give Asiatics the gift of our best and then they will use or discard it. He has kept before him the realization that the schools are Japanese and that nothing will endure when we withdraw unless they want it. He has an able American, Dr. Arthur K. Loomis, as chief of his Education Division and a small American staff. Everything has been done by working with Japanese educators. Busy, gifted Americans have responded generously to invitations to come for a visit and lend the Japanese a helping hand. Everything tried has been founded on human trust.

The South Korean government has been asking official permission to send students, and General MacArthur recently approved a plan to enroll fifty in various colleges where they will st udy agriculture, government, medicine, and engineering. Often I hear Asians express a wish to go to school in the company of Americans and Europeans in Asia. Our Veterans Administration has approved of eighteen Japanese universities to which former service men and women may go, but as yet General MacArthur has not given the green light for entry to Japan because of food and housing conditions. Some who are here in Occupation jobs have been able to arrange to attend classes and take part in college activities.

An-kuo interrupted my thoughts. “Who are these?” he asked, running a finger along several pages in my address book.

I looked over his shoulder. “The names in red ink are the Friends Service Committee registration at an international seminar which was held at Tsuda College. Men and women students gathered there for ten days in vacation time. Each person was required to bring five pounds of rice and five pounds of flour toward board. As you can see from the spelling, Chinese, Formosans, Koreans, Indians, Australians, Japanese, Indonesians, Filipinos, and Americans were there. They met for friendship. Esther Rhoads of Philadelphia made the arrangements. Yasaka Takagi of Tokyo University was the leader. Edmund Blunden, the English poet, Li Shi-mou of UNESCO, C. K. Tandan of the Indian Liaison Mission, and others contributed to the program.”

“Why didn’t you get me an invitation?”

“More wanted to come than there were places.

I thought you were too busy. Esther planned for fifty and she let eighty-six in. There was lots of music. People taught each other the songs of their countries.”

“Among those who were present, I’ve found a friend from near home. I didn’t know he came to Japan. Perhaps he’ll take on my radio work.” Soon after this, An-kuo left to look for him at the address in my book.

3

TWICE during the next week I met An-kuo on the street. He looked happy and he did not mention returning to China. Then one day when I was out, Pi-feng came in and left a note on my desk:

“Have you heard from Uncle Tsao-ming? I have had a gift and a letter. He went from Taku Bar to Hong Kong on business and he was about to start back by the same freighter that took him down. He sent me a food parcel from Hong Kong by British Overseas Airways, with which I am having a party Tuesday late afternoon. Please come bringing pinemushrooms, if you can get any, either canned or fresh.”

The principal ornament in Pi-feng’s room is a handsome globe of the world with an electric light in it. I knew his parents in Hopei before he was born. At twenty-one he has the high cheekbones, the direct gaze, the physical stamina of the healthy northern. He is nearly six feet tall. He has faith in the future, humor, and a dream. He wants to help make a world society where people are able to have individual liberty and at the same time are willing to obey controls which provide equalities for all. He intends to be an electrical engineer.

When his family sent him to college in Tokyo, they made provision for him to live well but he chooses to live simply in one room with a small alcove in which he does his own cooking. This room is in the rambling home of a Japanese businessman, and Pi-feng pays his rent by teaching Chinese writing to the children of the house, a boy and girl aged eight and six. The surplus of the money his parents provided for him, he gives to other Asian students who came here less well arranged for than he is. His needs are few. He wants to live free of nonessentials. Friendships are top on his list. With him, one meets students from many parts of Asia.

On Tuesday afternoon, carrying the requested mushrooms, I left the Correspondents’ Club where I live when in Tokyo and walked to Pi-feng’s place, which is about an hour away on foot. Earlier there had been a light snowfall. Now the air was fresh and clear. I crossed Avenue A and went along the moat which circles the high gray wall of the palace grounds, turned north to go by the Diet building where laws are enacted, and then on by a winding way. The streets were filled with people. The snow was lovely on the trees. As I neared the end of my walk, I met a student from Saigon in Indo-China and we went in together. He had brought a scrapbook of Dugwood and Blondie and a bottle of Chianti. Pi-feng, assisted by his young Japanese pupils, was cooking in the alcove. He welcomed us by waving a pair of long chopsticks and thanked us for food and wine to add to his least.

As I sat in the midst of this gathering group of young people, listening to their conversations and their laughter, I felt their zest for life. There was no skepticism in their faces, no cynicism in their voices. The possibilities of the future stirred their imaginations. They dwelt not on the destructive powers of atomic energy but on its creative might. As they spoke to one another pastures were made green in Asia. Arid deserts became fertile. People had clothes, food, and shelter — leisure and vitality for music, literature, and friendships.

The Indonesian student who lives near-by had carried over his gramophone and records. He would give music, with Pi-feng’s good dinner. He had made a European choice — the G-minor Quintet. Everything was ready. We were fourteen. We sat on the floor around four oblong low tables pul together. The cooks dished up. Pi-feng is a wonderful chef and his uncle had sent fine things.

“Where is An-kuo? Isn’t he coming?” the Japanese children asked.

“He has gone home to China.” With these words the fears which are the burden of our time came into the room.