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McEWEN REPORTS ON CHINA

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(ity that reveres
a great Canadian

Two cities in China and their
Kindly people’ will always re-
Main vividly in my memory.
Ohe is Shih Chua-Chuang in
| Hopei province where the
Bethune International. Peace
Hospital stands, dedicated to
the memory of a great Cana-
tian doctor, Norman Bethune.
The other city is Anshan in
liaoing province, a great new
Manchurian steel -centre, the
Pittsburg” of North China.

Although ‘hundreds of miles
part these two

Cities are bound
together by

Onds much
Stronger than
€ strongest

Steel, because
the revolution-
ay core of the
Steel builders® =
of Anshan are veterans of the
8th Route Army days. They
are veterans of the Long March
Tom Kiangsi in the south to
fennan in the North; of a
Reople’s army which starved,
toze, crawled and fought its
Way over swamp, grasslands,
‘Urging rivers and snow-cap-
Ped mountains, to bring libera-
On and a new life to an en-
‘laved people.

As this army moved its tor-
Tous way north, beset on all
Sides by the Kuomingtang and
aPanese armies, veteran army
‘Ommanders like Chu Teh
foul cheer their men on with

€ encouraging words, “Re-

€mber comrades, Doctor Be-
‘une is right behind you.”

Small wonder that the name

this Canadian doctor is

‘Poken with reverence from

anton to the borders of Mon-

S0lia by old and young alike.

* * x

thvben it became known that
Rice Canadians were to visit
hih Chua-Chuang, mayor
‘a Hsui-Ming of that city
velled all the way to Peking
“Sme 380 miles to meet us and
jompany us. back to his
med city the first to be lib-
"ated in China’s struggle for
"eedom from the Kuoming-
ang and Japanese aggressors.
fo hen our train arrived at
UW in the morning, a large
oun of city and party offi-
als was on the platform to
Steet us in the name of the
Pople of Chih Chua-Chuang.
ae in the day we met the
“ople themselves, doctors,
Wses, staff personnel, and
endteds of citizens in a great
ar nstration — to thank our
q Y and the people of Cana-
th for Doctor Norman Be-
Une,
phe Bethune International
aoe Hospital, Memorial Hall
Neg Park covers an area of
~“8rly 2,000 acres. Seven times

the hospital had to change its
location.

The present buildings were
completed in 1954. It has 800
beds and a total staff of.1,200
doctors, nurses, trainees and
other staff personnel. Director
of the Bethune Hospital is
Chang Chih-Chi and vice-dir-
ector Ko Wei Chuan, both
frontline fighters in the great
liberation struggle.

The hospital has eight sec-
tions including X-ray, blood
bank, surgery, optical, dental,
maternity, TB, and “tradition-

_ al” Chinese medicine many of
its departments under the dir- -

ection of students taught by
Dr. Norman Bethune, in the
firing: line and in the Yennan
caves.

I gathered a lot of statistics
on the work of this famed hos-
pital and its Canadian founder,
but statistics are cold things
when measured against the
kindly people who stood
with us around the grave of
Bethune, listening to the tri-
bute of Leslie Morris, and
weeping for the foreigner who
came to them and proved his
friendship by his devoted
work to their army and people.

Every Sunday not less than
6,000 of Chih Chua-Chung’s
518,000 people visit the graves
of their countless heroes who
sleep in Memorial Park, and
the flowers on Bethune’s grave
are always fresh.

Coal miners and_ textile
workers bring their families to
this sacred spot on “rest” days
and tell their children of a
great Canadian who came to
help them during the hard
years, and died helping them.
Little children pluck flowers
from the well kept borders of
flowers between graves and
lay them on the little bit of
earth that is Canada to them.

When we left Chih Chua-
Chuang and its great memorial
centre of health and culture,
hundreds came from the hos-
pital and the city to bid us
goodbye, with flowers and
tears and the true internation-
alism of the common people.

* x *

One month later in the steel
city of Anshan in the North,
I found a son. Strange how
things happen. In this great
new city of steel in the North
of which I shall have more to
say next week, we had met
with the usual hospitable re-
ception. Civic, trade union, and
party officials told us all about
the stirring history of their
city under Japanese occupa-
tion and Kuomingtang rule.

Anshan was one of the key
centres of the Japanese “co-
prosperity” scheme in which
Chinese industry, agriculture,
education and culture were all
subordinated to Japan’s im-
perialist ambition.

* Here Tom McEwen (left) is shown with A. A. MclI.eod and Leslie Morris of Toronto at
the grave of Dr. Norman Bethune, famed Canadian surgeon who died in China while

heading a medical mission to the Chinese Liberation Army.

Like many other cities An-
shan was won and lost from
and to the enemy many times
before final liberation. Only
the people of Anshan know
what their liberation cost in
torture, suffering and death.

We sat around the table after
dinner. Yang Kwei-Chen who
had been with us during our
tour of the giant steel mill
was quietly relating the days
of the Long March, the ter-
rible sufferings of the 8th
Route Army men, the dire
poverty of the people.

Born in Kwangtung pro-
vince, South China of three
generations of textile work-
ers, Yang Kwei-Chen had
joined up with the 8th Route
Army in the south. He didn’t
know what it was all about at
the age of 18 years, but some
villagers had told him that
the Red Army fought for the
people.

Every now and again he
would cease talking, in tones
scarcely above a whisper, turn
away and wipe the tears from
his eyes — and beg our for-
giveness for his “weakness.”

Severely wounded in both
legs Yang Kwei-Chen had lit-
erally crawled for ten days,
trying to keep up with his
army. As an 8th Route Army
man he knew the peasants and
the villagers would feed and
care for him if they could, but
the people had no food, And so
he crawled, painfully but re-
Jentlessly, to catch up with his
beloved army and crawled
right into the midst of an-
other battle and more wounds.

Then a miracle happened.
While shells were screaming
overhead a gaunt foreigner
speaking a strange tongue ran

out of nowhere, picked Yang

Kwei-Chen up in his arms and
carried him into an old dis-

used Buddhist: Temple, the
front-line “hospital” of Dr.
Norman Bethune.

There Dr. Bethune and

Nurse Jean Ewen worked to
save his life and patch up his
shrapnel-torn body. During
the operation a shell tore half
the temple “hospital” away,
but. the work went on as
though nothing were amiss. A
Canadian doctor had taken the
Hippocrates oath to sustain
life and screaming death out-
side would not steer him from
that path.

Yang’ Kwei-Chen’s_ voice
trailed away into silence, and
only tears came. Words from
any of us around that table
would have seemed terribly
empty.

Getting up from his chair,
stiffly from his old wounds,
and wiping all traces of tears
from. his .eyes, Yang Kwei-
Chen came and laid his hand
on my shoulder and spoke
these words, “Comrade Mc-

. Ewen, I would be very proud

to be called your son. Dr. Be-

thune and your. daughter
saved my life. May I, please?”
* x *

It was getting dark when
our train pulled out of Anshan.
A large number had come to
the station to see us off and
bid us goodbye. (How very
dear and how terribly short
many of those friendships
were.)

As the train moved slowly
out of Anshan station a little
man separated himself from
the group and ran stiffly along
beside my coach. It was my
son, Yang. Kwei-Chen, steel
builder of Anshan. Back of
him in crimson silhouette, the

red glare of his blast furnaces
lighted the dark October sky.
Other red glares had lighted
the skies of China, those of
burning villages and towns,
and people. Yang Kwei-Chen
has seen them all from Canton
to Yennan. Now he had lit one
himself, for peace and social-
ist construction — the Anshan
blast furnaces.

- HUB HUMOR.

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NOVEMBER 30, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5