LIGHTER SIDE IN CHINA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 782, 1 October 1929, Page 9

LIGHTER SIDE IN CHINA

WAR WITHOUT BLOODSHED NOT SO LONG AGO UMBRELLAS FOR GUNNERS Those who have known the Chinese best, though often execrating their unaccountable perversity, are the most sincere in regretting that encounters between China and the West often lead to “incidents” more or less unpleasant. It seems so needless. If only diplomacy could be cut out and one could treat with the Chinese as man to man, negotiations would be much more simple, for they have a broad humanity, a naive and endearing way of looking at things which seem to lend themselves to compromise and agreement. These qualities are equally conspicuous in running a civil war on a grand scale or looting a mission hospital, -writes a Shanghai correspondent. In North Kiang-su there is, or was hut recently, a venerable French Catholic priest, once a soldier, who rode his own horse in the Grand National. Brigands were devastating the neighbourhood, and the elders of the French priest’s little town came and impressed upon him that it was clearly his duty “to save them all. So out the old man went, quite alone to meet the brigands. He greeted them courteously: explained to them that all in the town were their brothers and were quite confident of receiving brotherly treatment at the brigands’ hands. Nothing pays so well with the Chinese as good manners. The outlaws were enchanted.

“A town honoured by your Elxcellency’s presence must indeed be full of virtuous ones,” they said; IJ we should not dream of Intruding.” And off they went and sacked the next village to their hearts’ content. But the French priest’s town they never touched. Not So Cheery Times have changed and civil war is not the cheery thing it once was. In 1913, when the Southerners under Chen Chi-mei and Huang Hsing attacked the Kiangnon Arsenal (a couple of miles south of Shanghai), which was held by Yuan Shih-kai's forces uider Admiral Tseng Yu-cheng, there were two or three hours of rather dangerous fighting, and' heavy firing every night for a week. Nobody in Shanghai got a wink of sleep. But the casualties were negligible. I went over the battlefield a day after the fight and saw only one corpse. Trees and houses were covered with bullet marks. But the method of fighting was all against carnage. A commander would lead his men a mile out into the country and direct them to fire 20 rounds each toward the south-west. Having made a thoroughly satisfying noise they went home to bed while others took a turn. Nowadays civil war means high explosives, bloodshed, death, wounds, and suffering. Yet it has its picturesque side. It is still considered the proper thing to allow a defeated general to escape in good order to Dairen, while his troops pass under the standard of his conqueror. Thus the respect due to rank and wealth is preserved, while the leaderless soldiers are provided for, a little expensively perhaps, but much more cheaply and conveniently than allowing them to turn brigands, their only alternative. The Woosjmg forts, at the mouth of Shanghai’s river, the Whangpoo, were for many years a great prize, being armed with three or four 12-inch guns. Only one set of men knew how to fire them, and it was an invariable rule among the Tuchuns who used to compete for Shanghai that when the forts changed owners the men went witli them. But I cannot remember a single shot being fired by those 12inch guns. It was a general of the Woosung forts who, when tht Shanghai Volunteer Corps Artillery went down to Woosung one Sunday, about five years ago, to practise shooting by special permission across the Yangtze, sent an officer with a courteous offer of umbrellas for all the gunners, as it was raining hard. Agitators Charmed During the strikes and boycotting of 1925, after the famous affair of May 30, no place was more afflicted than Swatow. A British warship had to stand guard there the whole summer to protect the little British community and even to provision them. All ships in the China Fleet carry a number of Chinese servants, and the agitators were continually trying to get on board to drag them off. It w T as a ceaseless struggle'between agitators and crew, with occasionally some sharp encounters. At last the ship was relieved and ordered elsewhere, when it occurred to one of the officers that he would like a souvenir of his tormentors. So, armed with a camera, he went ashore and up a creek where most of the strike-pickets lived. The agitators were charmed. They lined up to have their photographs taken, gave the officer tea, then escorted him to his boat and said good-bve_ with great warmth, pressing him to" come and see them again if ever he returned to Swmtow. One, and perhaps the most typical, story may be told. On the King’s birthday a military tattoo was arranged on the Racecourse. It so happened that the General Officer Commanding was forced in the course of j duty to be absent from Shanghai, j Among the Chinese the story ran j around —and probably is still believed —that he had gone off with the army’s funds, and that his second-in-com-mand had organised the show in order to make some money to pay the troops. Is it unreasonable to suggest that the ordinary ways of diplomacy are quite inadequate in dealing with the sons of Han?