# THE SUNGPAN VALLEY AWAKES

By REWI ALLEY

As the struggle for resistance deepens, and as China is thrown more and more upon her own resources, the necessity for the spread of small productive units to whatever corners of the country will carry industry becomes more and more evident. Back valleys and almost forgotten corners of this huge land are being made to play their part. Many a locality is being visited which was previously just a name in story books, written for those who delight to hear of strange places and strange ways. Moreover, China's mountains and rivers contain gold—gold enough to pay for the job of clearing out the Japanese and of rehabilitation. All of which accounts for my being one of a party which, in the late summer, set out from Chengtu, capital of Szechwan, for the narrow trail which runs up the valley of the Sungpan River for seven hundred Chinese *li* to the trading post of Sungpan. Of necessity a slow journey and one which took many days.

"See you've got a cargo of foreign goods," one group of carriers shouted at our party. "What does he eat?" the curious villagers would ask my carriers—with the "he" said as if to mean "it," almost!

"Oh, the same as we do, though he drinks a black tea in the morning that smells very bad."

But the way those carriers attacked the coffee pot as the days went on became a scandal. The liquid which finally got to me was so diluted by additions and subtractions that it bore little resemblance to the real thing.

It was a trail on which one made the acquaintance of all manner of men, of all kinds of inns and, especially, of all kinds of innkeepers. For the chief business on that road is the keeping of inns for the thousands of carriers who take the tea up to the Tibetai highlands and bring the wool, medicinal herbs and hides down in exchange. Inns in which there stands in the middle of the floor a great iron tripod on which the guests are welcome to cook their potatoes, their beans, cornbread or whatever they have been able to buy on the way. The innkeepers are more or less a class unto themselves. Many of them are widows—some war widows.

In one place mine host was a very old man who could not see and could not hear so very well. "What do you want to buy? Yang yu—kerosene—of course not. I don't even buy vegetable oil these days, it's so dear. Oh, you mean *yang yu*-potatoes—of course I have them. But you'll have to measure out a catty yourself. I can't see well enough. By the way, they tell me that Hankow has fallen. Is that so? Well, we'll kick those Japanese out one of these days all right. They're like those pigs that come in off the street. Some are mine and some are the neighbors', and I'm too blind to see which are which. Now, I don't mind my pigs coming in and stealing things so much, but I don't see why I should feed other people's hogs. Get out! Get out!" he shouted, charging over at a group of the said animals which had just pulled down a sheaf of wheat from a table on which it had been laid. His rheumatics were too much for him, however, and, nursing his knee, he returned to the fireside, still grumbling.

Then there was the old Mohammedan with a long and straggly beard. He had been a *mullah—an ahung—in Sungpan, but the pay was too small for a family. "Just look at those Christian teachers and the big houses they live in, in Chengtu. Now that's what our Muslims ought to do. Have you any medicine? My boy has parasites in the stomach. I sent him to school in Sungpan, but I found out that the teacher both drank wine and smoked cigarettes, so I took him away. How could I have my boy follow such? Now the boy will only sit and look at the fire. He must have many worms in the stomach!"

Then there is always the lady of the public-house type—fat and smiling, with an answer to every quip and a pleasant word that comes soothingly to quiet the tempers easily roused in tired bodies. One such had a merry youngster who would find a bit of colored paper and come solemnly to her and say: "Here you are. One dollar and a half. That's for only one night." They would look at each other gravely for a moment and then both would burst into delighted laughter. "Kwei erhtze—crazy kid," she would say as he fled to his buddies.

The kindest innkeeper I met, though, was a lame old lady. In the night two rats, in playful frolic, fell from the rafters onto my face. I woke with such a start that the camp bed—a war-time product—collapsed. The bedbugs from near-by beds then came to get their supper, and sleep became impossible. So I took a seat at the one table the place possessed and called all available patience into play to take me over to dawn. The old lady, hearing the imprecations, got up and surveyed the wreck. Yes, she had had a cat once, but it had died. She first procured five walnuts to solace the foreigner, then lit her precious lamp and vanished into the night and came back hauling three very clean boards, which she set up on two trestles, and then she put the disconsolate one to bed on the same. As a final touch, she pulled the quilt over his head in the approved manner before departing. And it very evidently pleased her to be called "Ti-erh Ma"—second mother. It is little acts of grace like this that always come in China when the situation looks dismal to the stranger; and they are precious indeed.

The valley of the Sungpan is steep in most places, with great slips which are always sliding down to the river, carrying the trail with them, so that fresh trails need to be dug. Along this steep track come Szechwanese carrying their burdens on their backs, Kansu Mohammedans with pack ponies and *Hsi Fan*, or Tibetan tribesmen, with long-haired, long-horned highland cattle, which are also used for packing purposes. Sometimes the projecting packs strike a hillside and force the animal over the edge; sometimes avalanches of stones come down and take their toll. Below, the torrent that is called the Sungpan River dashes its light-green waters against boulders and carries swiftly away all evidence of such tragedies.

In summer the way is lined with wild flowers, amongst which butterflies of many colors flit happily enough. In rocky places lizards dart out and sit wide-eyed with head and tail erect, gazing at you. Houses are Tibetan in style, most with flat roofs, others with roofing of split board or pieces of slate held in position with great stones. Stones, too, hold the planking in place on the rope and cantilever bridges. Then there are those places where the crossing is made by means of a single rope which hangs over the churning waters. In one or two localities some outsider, perhaps, has brought in a steel rope which lends a greater feeling of security to the traveler as he crosses.

As you come, after the sixth day on the trail, toward Ti Chi—its old name was Chao Shang

Pa—you see evidences of nature in one of its wild moments. Several years ago there was a tremendous earthquake here. Whole villages were swept away. Mountains were torn asunder. Great fissures in the earth opened up. With so few amenities for the traveler, and with such an abundance of wild mountains, the Earth God, so the local people say, made some little adjustments and obligingly picked up some of the steep places and threw them into the valley floor, with the result that two of the most beautiful mountain lakes you could wish for have been formed, out of which the water boils in angry cascades, as if resenting its imprisonment, for some forty li.

If future earthquakes do not undo the blessings of this most recent one, the site will be a wonderful one for power—and would also make an ideal place for a summer resort, where the toilers of the plains could disport in the hot summer months. Tall spruces and lofty mountains are reflected in the green depths. Fish occasionally jump for flies. The old boatman who takes the rudder tells stories of wild times of adventure in other days. The carriers lean back and smoke the little cigars that have become so popular in the valley since the rise in price of the imported "tailor-made" cigarette. It is a pleasant interlude on the journey, more especially so on the up-journey; for one knows that after Taiping, the village at the head of the lake, the valley opens out a little and the going is easy.

The boat is propelled by four great oars, which the carriers laughingly try out, until four men are found who can manage them properly. Yang, the boatman, depends on a small boy he has adopted as a son to collect the fares and to rate the amount each heavy load should pay. The lad takes his position with some seriousness and overlooks nothing. Also he is a good psychologist in dealing with the more difficult of his customers—those who cannot or perhaps will not pay the required amount.

The higher up the trail you go, the more varied are the flowering shrubs that blossom on the way to delight you. Lilac predominate, blue and white. Amongst them are many wild gooseberry and apricot bushes, which grow more especially round the ruins of the walled strongholds by which the "Hans," or Chinese, maintained their hold over this country since early Ming times. It is interesting that today, when China is facing imperialist Japan with such determination, she is reaching out into these districts, not with forts and machine guns, but with the idea of bringing together the various

peoples by helping them in industry, in education and health and in the possession of more of the better things of life. The industrial coöperative, instead of the desperately maintained fort, is seen today to be the better way.

Our chief claim to fame on the way up was the new-type spinning wheel which we carried, around which would gather groups of interested womenfolk. Spinning in this locality is done by the oldest known method, and a machine which enabled one person to spin two catties instead of half a catty in one day was certainly some improvement. Weavers here, we found, also had the oldest methods known. Two women stood at a little distance from each other, with the turbine around their waists, and passed the shuttle through it by hand. The result was not good, a loosely woven article. Some of these people around Sungpan are already receiving instruction in the use of both the improved spinning wheel and the improved loom. To them it is a real advance in civilization, and their teacher is thrilled to be able to impart the knowledge he acquired in an orphans' industrial class in Kwanhsien. He was a lad from the Sungpan Valley whose people had lost all in the earthquake. He had drifted to Kwanhsien, and had been taken in charge by the authorities and taught a trade. Filled with the missionary spirit, he now tries to impart what he has learned, and the audience is certainly appreciative.

With the increase in the price of cotton yarn in Szechwan, an excellent substitute in the form of ramie fiber, bleached, degummed and woven thick, somewhat like a grass-cloth canvas, is very popular among the carriers in the valley, and is very largely worn by the Mantze, the tribal people who occupy the region around Mohsen halfway to Sungpan. We passed among these people on the way up, but had little opportunity to see much of their work, and so did not see their weaving. It was the time of the year when they carried down lumber to Mohsen for sale. Both women and men were trotting along the trails with almost incredible loads of spruce logs.

Sungpan, in spite of its wealth of material, is almost entirely a trading post, where the Szechwan Chinese, the Kansu Mohammedan trader and the Hsi Fan, or Fantze—as the local Tibetans are called—are the producers and the buyers. It was with much alacrity, then, that I accepted an invitation to go out into the jealously guarded preserves of one of the fifty-two Tu Kwan who control the two hundred thousand people who live in an area a good deal bigger than the whole of Japan.

These Fantze are a very direct people. Anything you say is taken to be exactly what you mean. When the particular Tu Kwan who was to be his host offhandedly said would I object to going out with him the next time he came into the township and received the answer that any time would be suitable, he simply took that as a final statement and one evening at dusk, a few days later, casually called with a couple of retainers and another Tu Kwan to say that we were ready to start.

So there was nothing to be done about it except to throw my blanket over the saddle and ride off with them—and it was a wild ride! We crossed ridges and valleys down which rushed turbulent mountain streams and proceeded around cliffs on what seemed to be an exceedingly narrow track, till finally I simply let the reins fall and the horse follow those I could hear but not see through the inky darkness in front. One of the Tu Kwan had bought a bottle of white wine, a potent grain spirit, and this passed from rider to rider, much in the same manner as that of sheep farmers of my native New Zealand on their way home to the bush from a successful "sale day" in the township.

It was nearly midnight before a resting place was reached. Many dogs barked, and retainers with their queues coiled on the back of their heads opened the gate, all in a pleasant bustle and confusion, while we dismounted. We passed through the ground floor where the animals lived, to the great living room on the first floor, where the cooking was done and where rows of burnished copper and brass kettles and pots, shining comfortably through the smoke, lined the walls—on up to the top floor balcony where a bed had been arranged.

Morning showed the valley to be a pleasant one, its sunny sides golden with the ripening harvest while the flats on its floor were mainly pasture and the darker sides forests of spruce. The high melodious calls of the harvesters surrounded on all sides. Sometimes they would call in unison—very delightful to hear.

From the exterior, the houses looked very much like those one sees in Swiss mountain valleys. On the balconies were pots of gay asters and tiger lilies. Under the projecting eaves were sawn-off short lengths of logs which were hollowed out and used as beehives. At the back of the house might be a grove of walnut trees. On some stubble a retainer, with sword slung over his loins, was leisurely doing the autumn plowing with two hill cattle and a wooden-stake plow completely innocent of iron of any kind.

Beside each of the houses were flagpoles from

which fluttered prayer flags, and from the balcony of the Tu Kwan's house came the smoke of the green furze burnt in ritual there each morning. In the valley a string of waterwheels from the swift stream turned large painted prayer wheels. Up the valley came a group of horsemen, who soon joined us in drinking buttered tea, which was converted to tsamba, the staple article of diet, when the last third of the bowl had a few spoonsful of raw barley meal added and was mixed up into a paste.

We then set off for a day's ride, the monotony—if there was any—for my companions being broken by impromptu races in which two riders would ride together toward a certain point, suddenly turn when they got there, shouting catulls, and lashing their mounts, race back to the main group.

At one large block of temples, we called on a Living Buddha, and I was interested to see that he was the same lad we had passed a while back playing with his dog in the woods near by. The dog, a Pekinese, now reposed demurely in front of him, while he sat Buddha-like on his throne in approved posture, with one bare arm out. He, it appeared, was the brother of the local Tu Kwan.

In this temple were no fewer than two thousand small gilt images, which had brought all the way from Mongolia. There were also lama pilgrims from inner Tibet who put out their tongues to you in welcome. In the courtyard of another Tu Kwan, there was a seller of ivory which had been brought from India through Tibet: he was selling the larger ivory beads which the Tu Kwan like to wear around their necks. Many of the great woolen capes the local Hsi Fan wear—"polu" they call them—are made in Tibet or on the Indian border. One, I noted, worn by a certain chieftain, had a lining of yellow Indian silk. But the most curious thing I saw was in the town home of a certain Living Buddha in Sungpan. It was a brightly colored tin, of the flat, biscuit-tin type, which had been made in France, exported from Novelda, Spain, to Bombay, in India, whence it had gone to Tibet and then had come right over to Sungpan, in the backwoods of Szechwan.

It was surprising to find all the customs that I had read about in books on Tibet so prevalent. Men urinate squatting on the ground. When they meet their female relatives, they greet them with a smacking kiss that would give Hollywood points. All the Hsi Fan carry arms—an essential in country where wild animals abound. They fix a pair of prongs to even the most modern rifle, so as to provide support

when they shoot from their favorite sitting position.

The Church is all-powerful, almost. We were fortunate to have the coöperative of the enlightened Lin Pu Living Buddha, who came to the Chinese Industrial Coöperatives' office and assisted with translation and with advice. He is one who is anxious to see industry spread and very anxious to see that his people get an education which will be of service to them and enable them to keep pace with the times. Indeed, the cry for modern things is a growing one in all the Hsi Fan country, I realized. "Om Mane Padme Om" does not satisfy in quite the same way as it did. When the people see gold rushes like that going on at present in a valley they have regarded as of no value, and when they know that gold means the power to acquire so many of the things which they crave, their attitude toward robbing the earth of this metal will change.

The Hsi Fan are men of many types. Tu Kai, who was quite a Chinese scholar, might have been a Maori in my native New Zealand as far as appearances went. San Za, a Tu Kwan of some influence, could have walked into any Mexican town and passed as one of the crowd, with his hawked nose and devil-may-care manner. "San Za, where is that dollar you owe me?" a retainer of Obu Tu Kwan with whom we were traveling jokingly shouted. It was at the parting of the ways. San Za got off his horse as we rode past, peering up under the felt hat pulled over his eyes, the gold in his teeth glittering in a wicked smile as he pulled out his pocketbook and thrust his fingers into each pouch to show that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, available. When I left the valley, San Za gave me, covered with the usual ceremonial scarf, a bit of fur for my "best girl."

Although Sungpan is a wool center, the wool comes largely from the country still farther to the West. The Hsi Fan locally have rather lost the art of caring for sheep, and keep to the longhorned cattle. It would seem that there are great chances here for a sheep that would stand up to local conditions—perhaps a Romney Marsh cross. Excellent feed is available in the summer, and there is plenty of good flat ground, in which crops could be grown for winter feeding.

Amongst the Hsi Fan the old silver dollars are still used, though most trade seems to be done by barter. I bring you so many potatoes; you give me so much wheat or barley-meal and so on. There is much time which cannot be profitably employed in the long winter months; for the highlands are really cold. Heating is

done with firewood; no attempt is made to use the plentiful supply of coal available. Hides are sent down to the plains to be tanned, since old secrets of tanning and dyeing have been lost. There is room for industry, especially in the coöperative form, for it should be of considerable value to these people to be organized together for so definite a purpose. They are intensely loyal to the central government of China, and state freely that, when the government wants their sturdy menfolk for soldiers to fight the Japanese, they are more than ready to send them

along. They would like to be related to the national effort for reconstruction, and the Chinese Industrial Coöperatives can offer them the chance to be just that. C.I.C. has the technique, and hopes soon to have the ability to train many of these people so that they will be equipped to live a more creative life, and more fully participate in the activities that will make the China to which they are so proud to belong a still greater and more effective portion of our world. To relate the lonely individual or lonely group to a greater group has been recognized as sound policy.

# TALE OF A SPINNING WHEEL

By LEWIS S. C. SMYTHE

When I arrived in Chengtu in October, 1938, I was surprised to find that, for spinning stocking yarn, the local women used a simple whorl very similar to that used in ancient Egypt. They had also simple spinning wheels turned by the right hand while wool was fed to the spindle point by the left hand. In the same district I found the felt makers using the same techniques which had been observed and described by Sir Alexander Hosie in 1904.

After considerable investigation concerning the possibilities of introducing the best improved small-scale spinning equipment from England, I came to the conclusion in December, 1938, that probably the best immediate improvement in local spinning would be the introduction of a simple foot-treadle spinning wheel made in Shanghai which I had seen at the National Handicraft Exhibit in Nanking in May, 1937. It was an exact copy of the old American spinning wheel. I at once wrote to a friend in Shanghai asking him to find one, buy it, take photographs of it, make construction drawings and send them to Chengtu.

In January I was called to Chungking to help work out a plan of making army blankets by simple hand methods. Upon arrival I was introduced to Miss Yu Ching-t'ang of the Women's New Life Movement. I told her that the first problem was spinning and asked her what method they were using at their experimental center near Chungking. She said, a new wheel, and the man who made it was in Chungking. She telephoned him, and in a few minutes he arrived. From pictures I instantly recognized his

wheel to be the one I sought. But this Mr. Sih Ming-chien had simplified it from the spinning wheel I saw in Nanking, by mounting the spindle directly over the treadle wheel. He was making his wheels for ten Chinese dollars apiece, and he promised to send one to Chengtu.

The model wheel arrived the first of February, just as the Chinese Industrial Coöperatives were arranging to open a center in the Chengtu area. Since they did not have a machine shop organized, they turned the new wheel over to a local loom builder who said he could duplicate it. I recommended that he drop the fancy wood turning taken over from the American wheel. He could get the aluminum fork (technically called "flyer") made, but the mechanics interested in starting a machine coöp agreed to make it themselves and did so in a day or two. However, the new wheel would not spin the kind of yarn we wanted for blankets.

Our experienced wool spinners and weavers did not arrive from Nanking until the middle of March. Their skillful tests soon showed that the difference in speed between the "flyer" and the bobbin had to be increased. Meanwhile, Mr. Chang Hung-chi had arrived to serve as engineer for the Chinese Industrial Coöperatives in the Chengtu district, and the machine coöp had been organized. Mr. Chang immediately streamlined the new wheel, thereby making it much more sturdy than the American colonial model. An iron plate with a square hole on a square shaft replaced the nail driven in beside the shaft; in the drive wheel a better iron connecting rod and a stronger and more easily worked pedal

Spinners are fast being trained for the spinning and weaving program of the Chinese Industrial Coöperatives, which have undertaken to produce four hundred thousand blankets. At Chengtu, fifty young men (right) from as many weaving cooperatives were trained as supervisors. Farm women (below) are trained and supplied with wheels providing they in turn will teach others

The spinning wheel adopted by cooperatives in the Chengtu area is the result of experiment and, though simple, will produce four times as much as the type commonly used in West China. The wheels are carefully built—each is trued when finished (below)—by machine cooperatives at a cost of less than thirty American cents each. The spinning forks for the wheels are made (below, left) of scrap aluminum salvaged in part from fallen Japanese bombers

were added. Then women were called in to try
the improved wheel.

They liked it. Meanwhile the loom builder
had continued to copy the model spinning
wheel, and he has sold more than a hundred of
the unimproved wheels for ten Chinese dollars
each. The machine coöperative had started mass
production of the improved model at N.C.
(national currency) $6.00 and later reduced it
to $5.65 per wheel, less than U.S. $0.30 at the
current rate of exchange. Two model wheels
were sent to the northwestern headquarters of
the Chinese Industrial Coöperatives for dupli-
cation in that part of the country; five were
sent to the coöperative exhibit held in May in
Chungking, fifty were sent on order to a C.I.C.
depot some forty miles west of Chengtu. Now
this latter place makes its own wheels. Rewi
Alley has taken one of the wheels and an orphan
boy adept in its use to Sungpan, ten days'
journey farther inland, to start training Tibetan
tribespeople in spinning. At the time of writing
the local machine coöp is turning out fifty
spinning wheels per day, but this will soon be in-
creased to one hundred per day.

In the meantime, C.I.C. had undertaken to
make four hundred thousand army blankets for
this winter, one hundred and fifty thousand of
which were to be made in western Szechwan.
To make these blankets we required seventy-five
hundred spinning wheels and also seven hundred
and fifty of the old-style, narrow, jerk-cord
hand looms.

The local women soon learned that with the
new wheel it was easier to produce an even yarn;
greater production could be secured; and for
beginners the new wheel was much easier to
learn to operate. Expert woman workers can
produce two catties of yarn per day. Conse-
quently the local weaving union ("Federated
Marketing Coöp" in the United States) decided
to provide its forty-three weaving coöperatives
with the new type of wheel. Women living with
their families and others who register at the
union office will be supplied with the wheels on
condition that they spin for the blanket pro-
gram. They will be trained in the use of the
wheels on condition that each one trains ten
others. Later, some of these women will be or-
ganized into spinning coöps. Fifty men from
the weaving coöps were trained also and are to
supervise the spinning so that the work will be
kept up to standard.

The aluminum from which the flyer on each
wheel is made comes from scrap. With the
Chinese air force continuing to improve, more
Japanese bombers will provide more aluminum

for spinning forks! So the modern Isaiah might
say "from bombers to spinning forks."

But the women who spin and the men who
weave are scattered in countless villages beyond
the attack of Japanese bombers. The machine
coöp that makes the new wheels is far out in the
country on the side of a hill. The carpenters and
machinists who turn the pile of logs and scrap
iron, delivered by boat, into humming spinning
wheels have plenty of air and sunshine. The
strong brown backs of the sawyers swing to the
tune of "We'll beat the Japs yet, we'll beat the
Japs yet." For C.I.C. has taught them a new
way in which they can use their skill and strength
to help save their fellow countrymen.

But some keen observer will say, "That is all
right for war time, but how are these coöps
going to compete after the war?" Certain wool
experts abroad are advocating the introduction
of central power-driven carding machines to
supply the carded wool to spinning coöps. But a
private local wool manufacturer came in one day
elated over the fact that his spinners can produce
better yarn with this new wheel without carding
than they could on the old wheels with wool
carded by his small imported German carding
machine. However, in order that the coöps may
have every opportunity to compete after the
war, we are working on local reproduction of the
best small-scale carding and spinning equipment
made in England—with the full coöoperation of
the manufacturers.

In January, 1939, Mr. H. Y. Moh of the
National Agricultural Production Promotion
Commission gave a grant to the University of
Nanking in Chengtu to reproduce locally the
kind of carding and spinning equipment devel-
oped by the university in Nanking and by Mr.
Sam Dean in Peiping during the past six years
of experimentation. This outfit should be ready
by the beginning of 1940. A committee for the
promotion of small-scale spinning and weaving
industry in Chungking, headed by Dr. Wong
Wen-hao, has also asked the University of Nan-
king to duplicate small-scale carding and spin-
ning equipment made in England and to
introduce improved weaving and finishing equip-
ment. The necessary model set for this project
has been purchased in England by the Chinese
Relief Association in London at the request of
Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The new finishing
equipment will be used for the blankets this fall,
and the work of duplicating the English carding
and spinning set should be near completion by
another year. Then West China spinning and
weaving coöps can make good woolen suitings
and blankets for the local market.

# Can China Survive?

by HU SHIH

IN THEIR new book, *Can China Survive?* my friends Hallett Abend and Anthony J. Billingham propound an interesting theme and arrive at a terrible conclusion:

Unmolested, China might survive and eventually achieve real unification, particularly if she were given intelligent help from outside. But with Japan exerting a constantly growing pressure, with the Japanese government avowedly determined to keep other nations from playing a large part in China's future development, and with Soviet Russia occasionally filching away large areas of the northern territories, the prospects for survival, except under Japanese direction, or as an adjunct to the Soviet Union, seem gloomy indeed.

I am not interested in refuting the thesis of my journalistic friends, which, I must confess, is sufficiently refuted by the main body of the book itself. For, though they have told us in the opening chapters that Chinese unification is a "myth" and that "today China seems to expect every other nation to do its duty, while making no concrete plans to do anything for itself," the reader of the book can readily see that unification is a reality. For example, we find this:

> Today things are different. . . . Reforms, modernizations, and reconstruction projects are . . . being carried out in a surprising and ever increasing measure. There have probably been more actual physical and beneficial changes made in China in the last five years than in the preceding half century. This is no doubt due to the increasing power and authority of the Central government, but must also in a large measure be attributed to a new vigor which seems to be released in the land.

Is it necessary for me to point out to the authors that political unification exactly means the "increasing power and authority of the central government"?

I am, however, more interested in a sentence of my own which another friend, Mr. Lin Yutang, has done me the honor to quote in his book, *My Country and My People*. This sentence is: "If China does not perish, God is blind." As Mr. Lin Yutang has quoted this

saying without its context, which alone can make it intelligible, and as this remark seems to have some bearing on the question of the survival of my country, I am tempted to offer a few words of explanation.

I remember distinctly when and under what circumstances I made such a sweeping condemnation of my own country. It was in the summer of 1920, when I was talking with an editor of the *Peking Morning Post*, under the shades of a 600-year-old fir tree in the Central Park, which had for centuries been a part of the imperial palace. I was in a mood of lecturing to him, because he was one of my mature students. I said that our ancestors had committed many grave sins, every one of which could have ruined a nation and destroyed a race. I enumerated half a dozen of them — foot-binding by the women for a thousand years, opium smoking for over 300 years, wasting the best brains of the intelligentsia in mastering the octopartite ("eight-legged") form of classical composition for 600 years, the use of torture in the law courts for obtaining confessions for all the centuries, conversion to an other-worldly religion of India for 2,000 years, and so on. I said to my friend:

> These sins of our fathers are visited on us. And we have not done enough to eradicate their evil effects. When I look back into history and contemplate these deadly burdens of a terrible heritage, I often tremble and say to myself, "If China does not perish, there is no divine justice." And it was really sheer luck that China did not perish during the last 80 years of her contact with the militant powers of the West.

That was the origin of the much quoted and misquoted saying of mine of sixteen years ago. It was said in all earnestness as a stern warning to my own people, especially to those whose uncritical reading of history had led them to place too much reliance on what they called our glorious past and to those who saw in old China only the "China of blue porcelain bowls and exquisite silk scrolls" and forgot it was also the

Reprinted from THE FORUM with the compliments of CHINA INSTITUTE IN AMERICA

39

THE FORUM

nest of vice, dire poverty, prevalent ignorance, and unbelievable cruelty. Our past was neither all glory nor all beauty. Whatever glory and beauty there was belonged to the past and does not help us to achieve our own survival today.

Our own survival and salvation must depend on our own success in rectifying the evil effects of the sins of our fathers and in positively solving our new problems, which living in a new world has forced upon us. In the last two decades, I have watched my people work in both these directions and I am convinced that our successes in these efforts warrant us to believe that, however the present crisis in the East may turn out, China can survive.

II

HERBERT SPENCER once said that nature was kind, in that acquired characters are not transmissible, for, if they were, the feet of the descendants of a Chinese mother of bound feet would become smaller and smaller throughout the generations. The same consideration applies to all the evil institutions of our ancestors, which, though great evils in themselves, were man-made and capable of being uprooted by human efforts. Once the Chinese girl is freed from the fetters of foot-binding and is given the benefits of modern schooling and physical exercises, she bursts forth in full blossom as one of the most beautiful and graceful species of womanhood. And her brother, when he gives up the octopartite composition and submits himself to the discipline of the modern school and the scientific laboratory, is capable of surprising the world by his dexterity in handling the test tube and the microscope, and by his quick understanding and creative ingenuity in scientific research. Six centuries of wasteful literary gymnastics apparently have not disabled the Chinese mentality any more than 1,000 years of foot-binding have permanently crippled the feet of the Chinese girls.

These sins of our fathers are merely institutional, social, and educational. They are not biological or racial. New institutions have replaced old ones, which soon lose all their traces, because the people, once brought back to their senses, are so ashamed of them that they destroy all reminders of their former sins. I am afraid future directors of historical and sociological museums will find it very difficult to collect the women's footwear of the foot-

binding days or the exquisite tools of opium smoking, if such articles are allowed to disappear with the rapidity they are today. It is really amazing and indeed amusing to see that, whereas in the old days women with large feet would resort to artificial devices to make them appear small, today elderly ladies having bound feet are inventing new devices to make their feet appear "natural." And all this change of psychology has taken place in my lifetime.

It must be admitted, however, that habits of thinking and acting formed under certain social institutions for long centuries cannot be easily eradicated. The use of torture in the law courts, for example, represented a mental habit — the habit of demanding speedy justice, of impatience with careful search, argument, and sifting of evidence. The new codes and courts and the prohibition of torture, it is pointed out, cannot do away with this impatience for the "due process of law," which is necessarily slow and expensive. It is this old mental habit which endears to the peasants of Shantung their military governor, General Han Fu-chu, who, "acting as governor, magistrate, judge, jury, and lawyer at the same time," hands out "rough justice" to the people. Mr. Abend says of him that he "gets results," and Mr. Lin Yutang, who elsewhere most enthusiastically praised Hanfeiche for advocating a government by law, thinks "the province is lucky which sees the type of enlightened despotism of General Han Fu-chu." It is probably the same old mental impatience that has made Mr. Lin Yutang dream of a "Great Executioner" as the "Savior of China":

> Behold, here the great Savior comes! The Great Executioner nails the banner of Justice on the city wall. . . . Whosoever says he is above the law and refuses to bow before the banner will be beheaded and his head will be thrown into the lake. . . . And of those whose heads the Great Executioner chops off, great is the number . . . and the lake is dyed red with their blood of iniquity.

When I read these beautifully written pages, I cannot help sighing, "Truly the old mental habits die hard!"

But I do not despair. Education and experience will change and rectify these hard-dying habits. And they are changing with a truly amazing rapidity. Mr. Lin Yutang has said:

> We are an old nation. . . . We do not want to race about in a field for a ball, we prefer to saunter along willow banks to listen to the bird's song and

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CAN CHINA SURVIVE?

the children's laughter. . . . We do not ache to reach the foot of the mountain when we are in the middle of the lake, and we do not ache to be at the top of the hill when we are at its foot.

All this is no longer true, fortunately. We are no longer an old nation. We are a changing and rejuvenated nation. We — Mr. Lin and I and thousands of others — are witnessing our own sons and daughters running about in a field for a ball, swimming the open seas, and aching to scale the highest peaks of the mountains.

In short, China has been more successful in the uprooting of old evils than the outside world has suspected. In the course of a quarter of a century, my people have thrown off the monarchy, together with its huge paraphernalia of vice, which had existed from time immemorial; the practice of foot-binding, which had existed a thousand years; the whole system of education in useless literary gymnastics, which had prevailed at least 1,400 years; the old laws, which were the best examples of what Sir Henry Maine called the ancient laws based on the conception of status; and the law courts, which resorted to torture as the legitimate means to obtain confessions of guilt. These and hundreds of other things

have gone overboard almost overnight and, I am quite sure, never to return.

These changes have been tardy in coming. China paid sufficient penalties for their tardiness. But no change is ever too late. A nation that has the pluck and resolve to discard her basic social, political, educational institutions of thousands of years' standing is a nation of vitality and youth who cannot perish. She will survive.

III

AND THE MOST
marvelous thing about
these fundamental

changes in China is that they have all come from below and not from the top down. This is the point which men like Messrs. Abend, Billingham, and Lin Yutang have all failed to see. These men, who are most en-

thusiastic over Japan's successes in modernization and who belittled China's more recent efforts in the same direction, do not realize the fundamental difference: that, while in Japan all reforms began with a powerful ruling caste, in China all reformers have been men without political power who have often had to fight against the rulers in order to bring about a change. I have elsewhere pointed out that the process of modernization in Japan is a type of "centralized control" and that in China it is one of "diffused permeation."

Japan was at the height of military feudalism when Western civilization knocked at her shores. She was ruled by a military caste, the daimio and the samurai, who in those days numbered 260,000 families and who were politically the most powerful class in the land. When that class was finally convinced of the necessity of change, it had the power to carry out all the reforms it wished. And that class happened to be highly trained in the art and discipline of war. When the samurai put on his new uniform and was equipped with the modern arms, he was a ready-made soldier. That is why, of all the non-European nations with whom the Western civilization has come into contact, Japan is the only one who readily succeeds in mastering the military arts and making the fullest use of them. When the military

caste had succeeded in solving the problem of national defense and security, the efficacy of the Western civilization was clearly demonstrated to the whole nation, and the remaining task of modernization of the country was smooth sailing.

Not so in China. China had no ruling class, and the

ignorant imperial household was deaf and blind to the demands of a new age. And because for twenty centuries the soldier and the arts of war had always been looked down on by the whole nation, the early

attempts at modernization of the army and the navy were doomed to fail miserably. All the changes in the direction of modernization — from the political revolution to the literary renaissance, from foot-binding to bobbed hair

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THE FORUM

— have originated with the people themselves. Every reform has begun with a few advocates, spread with slow diffusion and voluntary following, and finally succeeded when the following became sufficiently powerful.

Let us not be too easily dazzled by the brilliant successes of Japan's modernization. That type of reform under centralized control has the advantages of rapidity, orderliness, and capability for large-scale enterprises. But it also has its great disadvantages. The power of initiative is centered in a small but powerful class which is conscious of its effective leadership and is unwilling to surrender it. It is up to that class to build or to ruin. And the rest of the nation is not accustomed to contest leadership with it. Moreover, class interest and prejudice on the part of that ruling class often lead to the conscious effort to protect certain phases of Japanese national life from modern influence and peaceful change. Today the whole world is seeing how those unchanging phases of medieval Japan are now running wild, disturbing the peace of the East, and heading that island empire toward unknown and dubious destinies.

IV

ON THE OTHER hand, changes through "diffused permeation," as typified in modern China, are necessarily slow, sporadic, and often wasteful because of the amount of undermining and erosion that must take place before any change is possible. Moreover, without centralized direction and control it is often impossible to effect reforms in such gigantic undertakings as nationwide militarization or industrialization. Nevertheless, there are also distinct advantages. Such changes, because voluntary, go deeper and often are more permanent. The people must be first convinced of the superiority of the new over the old, before a change is accepted. When a change is at last generally accepted, its reasonableness has already become apparent, and there is little chance of a return of the old order. Moreover, because of the lack of centralized control by any powerful class, everything is subjected to the contact and influence of new ideas and new institutions. Nothing is protected from

this contact and nothing is too sacred to change. In this way, the cultural changes that have taken place in China are invariably more thorough than in Japan.

There is no doubt that the social, political, and intellectual modifications in China are far more profound than those in Japan. Political thinking in Japan today is still largely medi eval in its predominant tenets, and some of the recent persecutions of "dangerous" thought are simply ridiculous in the eyes of the Chinese intelligentsia. The political revolutions in China since 1911, however unsuccessful in their constructive aspects, have created an en vironment conducive to free and independent thinking on social, political, and cultural matters which is impossible in Japan under dynastic and militaristic taboos. In religious thought and practice, Japan is slavishly medieval and is naively ambitious to reconvert China to the medieval religions which Japan once borrowed from her but which Chinese iconoclasm and rationalism have long since undermined and discarded. In social changes, China has forged far ahead of Japan — in a democratized social structure, in the absence of a ruling military caste, and in the much higher and more eman ciated position of women.

Thus, contrary to all superficial observations of Japanese modernity and Chinese backwardness, life and institutions in China are more modernized in their essential aspects than

CAN CHINA SURVIVE?

in Japan. And the explanations thereof are not far to seek.

Last year, I asked a group of Japanese newspaper correspondents in Peiping, "Who are the thinkers in Japan today?"

After consulting with one another, one of them said: "I am sorry to say that we have no thinkers at the present time, and we shall have none until after a war with Soviet Russia."

I put the same question to a prominent member of the Japanese delegation at the Yosemite conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations last August, and his reply was: "I don't think there is any Japanese whom we can call a thinker."

Twelve years ago, I raised the same question with a Japanese professor of philosophy in one of the imperial universities and received the same negative reply: "There are teachers of European philosophy, of Chinese philosophy, and of Indian philosophy. But there are as yet no Japanese thinkers."

Without going into the more complicated question as to why there are no Japanese thinkers, let us pause and reflect upon the modernity of a nation which either cannot or dares not think for herself. Where there is no free and creative thinking, there cannot be fundamental reforms; and traditional Japan lingers on under the protective shell of superficial modernity till she shall burst in volcanic eruption.

Our greater successes in the more fundamental social and political changes have been due, I believe, to the intellectual leadership of our veteran thinkers. Liang Chi-chao, Tsai Yuan-pei, Wu Ching-heng, and Chen Tu-shiu, who have influenced the nation for the last 40 years, are men who know our historical heritage critically and who have the moral courage ruthlessly to criticize its evil and weak aspects and to advocate wholehearted changes. Neither Confucius nor Lao-tse nor the Buddha nor Chu-hsi was too sacred to escape their criticism. Even Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whom the Western world often belittles as a demagogue, was essentially a courageous thinker. He earned his exalted position in the nation by his moral courage to initiate the revolutionary movement for the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty as an alien rule and the monarchy as an undesirable form of government.

A nation that has the moral courage to criti-

cize her most sacred sages and her most time-honored institutions, a nation that can and dare think for herself will surely have the vitality to survive all adversities.

V

BUT," THE pessimists say, "all your arguments do not convince us of the ability of China to survive the present international crisis, which is essentially political and military. Will all the social and intellectual changes that China may have achieved give her a political and military machine that can fight your aggressors? How will you answer Mr. Lin Yutang's complaint that 'in China individually men are more mature, but politically and nationally we are as mere children'?"

As a matter of common sense, Mr. Lin Yutang has answered his own question when he asks, "Why are we individually mature but politically and nationally mere children?" It is precisely because we are individually mature that we are *not* politically and nationally mere children, easily to be led by a "leader half the size of a Gandhi." Only those races which are politically and nationally mere children can be led by the nose by a Hitler, a Mussolini, an Araki, or a "leader half the size of a Gandhi." A mature race cannot be led by the Great Executioner of whom Mr. Lin Yutang dreams as the Savior of China.

I am quite sure that future historians will record that China has not been without leadership during all these years of her national crisis. A government that has been able to rally all the centrifugal forces that have been running wild since the collapse of a central authority and to bring about a political unity in five years cannot be without leadership. A government that, in the face of incredibly provocative and humiliating aggressions and in the face of a nationwide outcry for immediate war on the invader, has held out for five years without a war, in order to gain time for better consolidation and greater strength of resistance, cannot be without leadership. Only this leadership is of a type so different from that of the Hitlers and Mussolinis that impatient souls can never appreciate or recognize it.

And, let it be said clearly and unmistakably, this political unity and this better consolidation and greater strength of resistance are no myths but realities. Even as I write today in a

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