Uniqueplay
staged by
prostitutes

; PEKING
PLAY entirely written and
acted by the ex-prostitutes

is playing to packed houses twice
a day here. It is a simple play,
called “Frozen River Has Thaw-
ed’

a

*; telling of the lives of prosti-.

tues in Peking and what has hap- :

pened to them since the ‘city’s
liberation.

There is no plot. The play tries
only to bring home the unbeliev-
able hell of the brothel life and
equally incredible story of re-edu-
eation of Peking’s prostitutes
after the government closed all
brothels and arrested all their
keepers last November.

Horrifying ag the play itself is,
it can only convey a tiny part of
the horror of each girl's life. One
of the leading actresses, in real
life is 17 year-old Wu Yvc-ling,
whose peasant, family had to sell
her to a landlord during a famine
year. Later he sold her for a
few ounces of gold to a Peking
brothel keeper named Hwang Hus-
ching, who is known to have kill-
ed five girls—two of them buried
alive. <A livid scar ‘on Wu Yu-
ling’s forehead and. others on her
body bear witness to some of the
brutalities she has suffered.

‘As the play unfolds, the, utter
hopelessness of these girls is borne
home. Every man is their enemy.
Kuomintang police are all in the
racket. Medical inspectors de-
mand bribes for letting the girls
rot with disease instead of report-
ing them. The girls become use-
less and are strangled, buried
alive, tortured to death by the
subhuman sadists who own them.
Even the lover who helps a girl
to escape in order to marry her

turns out to be only another

slave dealer.
e

These things are not exaggera-
tions. They show. only those
things fit for public display. The
reality was so much worse, as I
saw when I visited an “accusation
meeting” carried out under the
auspices of the Women’s Produc-
tion and Education Institute to
which the ex-prostitutes went for
re-education, training for work
and to be cured of disease.

On one side of the great hali
were a thousand ex-prostitutes,
on the other, about 200 former
keepers of brothels, and on the
high platform were none other
than Hwang Hsu-ching and a

woman, Hei Mu-tan (Black
Peony), two _of Peking’s vilest
procurers. Guards stood around

to prevent the girls from doing
physical violence to their enemies.

A tall girl, strong and beautiful,
went first to the platform to ac-
cuse them. ;

She told, how after they had in-

duced an abortion, they forced her
to receive men the same day; how
they had shut her in dark cold

she stole some opium and ate
enough to kill herself.
You cannot deny it.”

I saw you.

She told how one girl, weak
with illness, was in the same room
while Hwang told his henchmen
to take her and bury her. “She

~ whispered to you from under the

cover, ‘Don’t bury me. I dm not
dead yet’ and you pushed cotton
into her mouth and sent her to be
buried alive.”

At this point the girls, whose
rage had been growing, tried to
rush the stage and for a moment
it seemed that they would get the
better of the guards. When things
were quiet again, one after an-
other they made their accusations,

Almost monotonously they told
of their dreadful stories of sale
and murder,
use Of hot irons, red pepper and
boiling water to “cure’ syphilis.
As they talked and wept, their

purchase, torture,

. colleagues below would call out in

a rhythmic chant:
ter.
ment behind us. Don’t cry sister.
Tell your story.”

“Don’t cry, sis-

e
It was no easy matter to get

{

Now we have our govern-

China.

and properly allocated
ted.

¢

No food shortage

HE food Situation in the deficiency areas of China has

been basically changed as a result of the reshuffling of
the grain supply throughout the country and the organisation
by the government of widespread production schemes.

A further 600,000» tons of grain have been delivered from
Manchuria to areas south of the Great Wall since January
and surplus grain from other parts of China are pouring into
the areas formerly short of grain.

During the past three months, the Chinese People’s gov-
ernment has allotted more than 500,000 tons of grain which
is being used’ as payment for peasants taking part in water
conservancy work and side occupations in North and East

Owing to serious floods in some areas and drought in
others, and Kuomintang wrecking and neglect of irrigation
works, harvests suffered damage last year in regions popu-
lated by about 40,000,000 people. Of these some 7,000,000 people

, saced a shortage oy food at the end of last year, although
only a small percentage needed urgent relief.
government allotted another 84,000 tons of grain as relief food.

With sufficient grain at the disposal of the government

throughout the country,
shortage wal was eee in those areas has been arres-

For this, the

the food’

themselves, had discovered. Its
‘impact was so great that, they
were asked to stage it in public to
help the public understand the
problem. too.

Now, as the last curtain falls, at
the end of the staged accusation
meeting with the Black Peony as
the central figure, the audience
also joins in with the girls: “Don’t

ery, sisters, .Now you have your
government behind you.”

The play will end its run soon
and the actresses will leave 4
take up work they have selected.
But Hwang Hsu-ching, Hei, Mu-
tan and others will stay to await
the decision of the People’s Courts
on how they will expiate their
crimes,

Zz

Old

China

Five hundred million people
on the march to socialism

rooms without food or covering;

“beaten her unconscious and re-

vived her with water to flog her

again.

“Do you remember Hung Yu
(Red Jade)?” she said,
beat her and then stripped her,
making her kneel on a washing
board with a rice bowl and chop-

sticks balanced on her head: for’

houns while you smoked opium
and then, when you both slept,

HINA'S new marriage law

will bring powerful sup-
port to her women, whoa have
been so long oppressed. It
will protect the children and
wipe out the feudal remnants
in marriage relations, Shih
Liang, woman minister of jus-
tice of the Chinese People’s
“government, recently observed.
in an interview with the
Kwangming Daily.

_ Most of the civil law suits
handled by the local courts are
related to marriage problems,

new law met the needs of the.
‘people. Women who have been
vietims of unreasonable mar-

*

Equality for women

mature of the law, she said.

that careful considerations

she saidi This showed that the _

saolare ix usbuaieaelt te tm tos pail,
now have land in their own
right, after the land reform.
Their economic status has been
raised and they are no longer
subject to their husbands’ eco-
nomic bondage.

Prohibition of infanticide pro-
vides protection for infants as
soon as they are born. Since
almost all victims of this feud-
al practics were female, this
offers protection to women
from their first days. ‘

Equality of rights for the
children born out of marriage
also expressed the progressive

The stipulation that, if one
party desires a divorce, this will
be granted only if no reconcili-
ation can be affected, means

must be made by two parties
before a divorce. Any irrespon-
sible attitude towards marriage,
is not allowed, but this does
not mean that the unwilling
Barty. pf Bin. emcaep le Hiya

“makes clear.

“how you ,

these girls to talk, as their play
‘After. years in the
absolute power of such monsters
as Hwang and Black Peony, with
the police and government officials
all in the business and the whole
law lined against them, they trust-
They feared that if
they. whispered a word against

ed no one.

their ex-owners they would be
They
did not believe that the govern-

murdered out of ‘hand.

ment really meant to wipe out

‘prostitution; they did not know
‘how they could live except by

protitution; they had no hope—
only fear.

At the Production and Educa-
tion Institute they found books to
read, good food and comfortable
beds, medical workers were freed
from other work to concentrate
on curing them of venereal dis-
ease, regardless of cost.

Softened by kindness, one would
agree to talk, then another, until
the government had enough wit-
nesses to call an “accusation meet-
ing.” Once the girls saw some of
their ex-colleague boldly accusing
their old procurers and felt that

the law could really protect them,

the trickle of denunciation be-
came a flood and one after an-
other, the former brothél keepers

went from the “accusation meet-_

ings” to face the People’s Court.

‘The play was written by some
of the former prostitutes to help
others to understand what. they

-and New |

Rivers will
be tamed,
harnessed

GIGANTIC water conserv-

ancy scheme is now being
pushed ahead by the Chinese Peo-
ple’s government. It is the big-
gest and. most extensive water
plan ever conceived in China and
is aimed at freeing the country
from floods and bringing water
to enrich her farmlands.

This year’s part of the plan will
protect millions of acres of land
from flood, add about one million
-aeres to China’s existing irrigable
areas and thus help to reach this
year’s target of increasing grain
crop by five million tons.

Several millions of peasants and
People’s Army men, directed by
water engineer's, have been work-
ing at high pressure on various
parts of the plan for some months,
and now the government, in a
directive published recently, has
called on all local governments to
take special measures to ampapiete
their 1950 sections,

The 1950 plan embraces wide-
spread repair of river dykes,

‘

drainage, cutting irrigation canals,
and the dredging of rivers, The
biggest single section of the plan
is construction of earthworks to
raise and widen dykes along the
Yangtse, Yellow, Huai and other
major rivers and lakes. This part
of the plan must be finished be-
fore the monsoon rains’ in three
months’ time or so,

“Even if the raing this year are
as heavy as last year’s, which were
exceptional, the danger of flood
will have been reduced to neglif-
ible proportions. The Yellow
River dykes are to be raised well
above the highest water mark
reached in last summer. Those of
the Yangtse will be similarly re-
inforced.

The plan also includes: building
of 2,000 miles of canal system in
Manchuria, including many locks
and suitable arrangements for ir-
rigation; dredging of silted up
sections of the Grand Canal in
north Kiangsu; repairing of sea
dykes, which protect millions of
acres of fertile field in Kiangsu
and Chekiang.

One longer term project is har
nessing of the treacherous Yi and
Shu rivers in East China. Thies
‘project will be completed in 1952 .
when these two rivers will be di-
verted across the north Kiangsy
plain through separate outlets to-
the sea, protecting about three
and a third million acres is land
from flood. ; Bia

’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 5, 1950—PAGE hi

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