'T- Yenan, cradle of the revolution

me rain had stopped during
the performance and as we

left the theatre the sky
Was lit by a million stars. We
8azed at the old Tang dynasty
Pagoda on the hilltop, outlined
I electric lights, and at the
twinkling lights in thousands of
illside caves — which vaguely
Tesembled American skyscrapers
at night — and thought, “Yes,

We are really here, this is Ye-
Nan!”

Tt was hard to believe that
We had reached the old revolu-
tionary base so easily. No Long

atch for today’s travellers,
Shortly after 10 o’clock one
Morning we boarded a plane in

€king, around noon we were
looking down at the Yellow
Ver winding lazily between
the bare brown hills of Shansi
4nd Shensi provinces, at 12.52

‘M. our craft made a smooth
landing on the grass airstrip
Wst outside Yenan.

A battered old bus jolted us
along muddy roads into the
Small city and deposited us at
© guest house, where I found
Yself sharing a cave with Ted
fake of the Daily Worker.
ee windows, clay walls, brick
ed On which rested our blank-
ls, ‘Wash stand and basin, two
ltchen chairs and a rickety
Wooden table—all the comforts
of home.

Yenan, Here in this valléy
qiste Yen and An rivers meet,
~hina’s Communist leaders. lived
” caves for more than a de-
4de, organizing the revolution
4Nd the resistance to Japanese
4Bgression,

thie local museum tells some-

Ng of the story of those
Years: the miserable life of the
People under warlord and Kuo-
‘ipa rule; the changes that

lowed the arrival of the Red

™y in Shensi in 1935; the
aillitary sorties against Japan-
Ch; Invaders and also against
F 'ang Kai-shek’s forces, which
_utircled, blockaded and attack-

1947
009 5
Req

Tetur

4 massive assault by 270,-
f Chiang’s troops forced to
Army to withdraw; only to
N Victoriously a year later).

me visited several caves
oe Mao Tse-tung,-Chu Teh,
othe En-lai, Liu Shao-chi and
ik those hectic days. We saw
det (rebuilt) building where Mao
if Vered his talks on art and

*rature in 1942, and where a

Mgress of the Chinese Com-

the communist regions, (In.

€r Communist leaders lived ;

Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh during the Yenan period.

munist Party was held in 1945,
We looked at the small plot of
land which Mao cultivated dur-
ing the 1942 “develop produc-
tion” drive launched by the
Communist Party to frustrate
Chiang’s economic blockade,
(Ted Brake remarked that it was
no larger than the average Eng-
lishman’s backyard garden).

In one of the caves where Mao
once lived we saw a picture
of him and his wife with their
son and daughter — and I re-
called that the boy, who appear-
ed about 10 years old in the
photo, had been killed fighting
with the Chinese troops in the
Korean War.

Today 37,000 people live in
Yenan proper and another 10,-
000 in hillside caves. Will the
caves. remain in future? Prob-
ably, for they are warm in win-
ter, cool in summer, and last
for years without repairs; con-
sequently many people prefer
them to ordinary houses. We
were told that 760 new caves
had been built since 1958.

Agriculture is still the main

alse show,

ILLUSION: That which deceives; an unreal vision pre-

Sented to the bodily or mental eye; a deceptive appearance;

_ REALITY: Actual being or existence of anything in dis:
Unction from mere appearance; truth; fact.

Webster’s Twentieth Century Dictionary.

The material in this four-page “special” on China was pre-
Pared by Tribune staff writer Bert Whyte, our correspondent
'N Peking from 1960 to 1963. The opinions expressed are his
°Wn, based on his experiences in China.

occupation in the Yenan area
(basic crops are wheat, millet,
corn and rice) but there is some
small industry — a match fac-
tory, porcelain and ceramic fac-
tories, a paper-making plant.

But Yenan still remains a
backward small town, without
railway connections, and dirt
roads for “highways.” Travel-
ling along one of these to visit
a commune one day we had to
ford a swift-flowing stream. Old
men squatting in front of mud
huts smoked long brass-bowled
pipes, their tobacoo pouches
slung around their necks; women
crouched beside pools or
streams, washing clothes; small
naked children stopped their
play to gaze wide-eyed at the
big-nosed foreigners.

* * *

Mao Tse-tung was a man in
his early forties when he came
to Yenan. He had been leader

of the Communist Party for only’

a year, having assumed that role
following an emergency confer-
ence called by himself at Tsunyi
during the Long March, at which
(illegally according to establish-
ed party practises) a new cen-
tral committee had been set up,
with Mao at its head. Previously
Mao had been at odds with the
CPC leadership on various oc-
casions, and once had been re-
moved from the central commit-
tee. But after the Tsunyi Con-
ference his political line was
never successfully challenged
again.

Mao’s determination to

achieve unity of the Chinese
people to fight Japanese aggres-
sion in the 1937-45 period added
enormously to his prestige. For
several years during the anti-
Japanese war the Red Army tied
up 15 Japanese divisions — half
the entire invasion forces. If
this seems small compared with
the large-scale fighting in Eur-
Ope, particularly on the Russian
front (where hundreds of divi-
sions clashed) ‘please remember
that Mao’s forces were made up
of illiterate peasants, poorly
equipped with ancient weapons.
They fought bravely and well
and fully deserve the admiration

the world later accorded them.

In the Yenan period Mao, ac-
cording to foreign observers,
was a more modest man than
he has become in his old age,
though even in those days he
set himself apart, working by
night and sleeping by day.

When Gunther Stein inter-
viewed him in 1945, Mao spoke
of future relations between the
Soviet Union and the United
States, and advanced a sound
position from which he has since
retreated:

“I do not believe for one
moment that conflict between
the capitalist world and the
USSR is, inevitable,” Mao told
Stein. “On the contrary, we Chi-
nese Communists are convinced
that the capitalist world and the
USSR can and will learn to co-
operate closely in peace as in
war, in spite of occasional dif-
ficulties. We must not give in
to an attitude which implies a
defeatist denial of the possibility
of stable world peace and there-
by in itself hampers progress to-
ward real peace.

“China can and must be one
of the bridges between the two
camps, instead of hoping to win
foreign support as one of the
zones of friction.

“China’s progress depends
upon real world peace, and the
internatioanl role of our country
can be enhanced only by sincere
cooperation with all countries
and by helping them overcome
their differences.”

What happened to Mao in the
intervening years to cause him
to make a 180 degree turn from
his own wise words of 1945?

The question might be placed
another way: Is Mao in 1964,
an ailing man in his seventies,
still the supreme leader of the
Chinese Communist Party — or
is policy today being made by
a group of men around him,
who use Mao as a figurehead?

Commune members in modern China spread fish nets by tradi-
tional method at the Takiang People’s Commune, where fish are bred

and caught.

August 14, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5