CHUNGKING AS I KNEW IT FOUR YEARS AGO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 167, 4 September 1942, Page 8

CHUNGKING AS I KNEW IT FOUR YEARS AGO

(Written for "The Listener" by

HSIN

LAI

OME two hundred miles to the west of the majestic Yangtze gorges lies the city of Chungking, a commercial centre of Szechwan, but now known to the world as China’s wartime capital. Szechwan, far in the interior of China, was in old days practically isolated from its neighbouring provinces, because its borders cover mountainous regions. The only access was from the east, where the torrential Yangtze washes through cliffs of immeasurable height. Here are the gorges. Mountains barred the province’s communications in other directions. Yet the navigation in the Upper Yangtze (especially the gorges) was extremely difficult and dangerous. Only the steamboat affords the province comparatively easy traffic with the lower Yangtze valley. Now the Yangtze is once more blocked at the gorges, because right outside them anchor the Japanese gunboats, but they have been unable to break through. They have not even attempted that. Szechwan now finds exits both northward and southward by constructing highways up mountains and down dales. That was formerly regarded as impossible. Those highways at present constitute the outlets of China and the arteries that connect the battle fronts with the country’s very heart, Chungking. A City on a Hill Before you come to Chungking,’ you may have imagined that Chungking is old. Doubtless it is in age but not in appearance. The city stands at the confluence of the Yangtze and the Kialing rivers, and covers two rocky hills. When you arrive by boat or bus from the south or by ’plane, you simply cannot avoid climbing those hundreds of steps which lead you from the river banks to the streets. Breathlessly you get to the top of them. Instead of seeing a narrow street of the ancient style, you find to your surprise (or disappointment) that you are standing in a modern thoroughfare very much like one in Harkow. It is not the ancient Chungking that you

have expected. This thoroughfare winds up and down the hills for miles, with stepped alleys interwoven. These alleys form short-cuts from place to place, but the climbing of hundreds of granite steps is tiresome to everybody. One deep night, while leisurely taking a walk home from somewhere down hill, I counted the steps of the alley. It was three hundred and ninety odd. This fact gives good reason for the popularity of sedan chairs, which are something of the past in other parts of the country. The experienced carriers never slip on the steps, but you must be careful and sit tight as your sedan chair is going down hill. On both sides of the thoroughfare, congested with pedestrians, motor-cars, buses, rickshaws as well as sedan chairs, stand two rows of four-storied buildings. They are not built of reinforced concrete but of mere plastered timber. With a solid rocky foundation, they stand firm and safe; no house has ever collapsed. Chungking is not short of concrete buildings or brick houses though. There are modern buildings six or seven stories high, designed in the western fashion; there are also large residences of concrete or brick that cannot be bettered as far as safety and beauty are concerned. I do not claim that the city is beautiful. The touch of exoticism makes it very ugly. Have There Been Changes? But Chungking as I knew it must now belong to the past. Those devastating air raids during the summers of the last three consecutive years must have changed the look of the city tremendously. It may now be in ruins, I think, and it may not be. The city has constantly been in a state of rebuilding during the winters. How does Chungking look now? I cannot say. But I can say that those scorching summers and misty winters remain as ever, The raids could not change them. Nor did they disintegrate the two huge rocks, from which the sacred flame of freedom throws its light over the whole of the vast country. It shines with increasing brilliancy. It brings hope and inspiration to all free-dom-loving people the world over.