McE bay mae ON ae

Ginseee mS ciniied
fashions new society

In brilliant sunshine
plane circled the great ee
hai airport for a landing. Be-
low the Wangtsu River glitter-
ed like a ribbon of molten
gold with a vast city studding
its banks in a magnificent
blaze of color.

As our pilot, a Chinese girl
in her early twenties, brought
the plane down on the tarmac
with a touch
which would
not have dent-

puff, :
MacLeod, for-
mer member of
the Ontario
legislature, re-
marked to me,
“Well, there’s
the welcoming
committee all waiting as
usual.”

Shanghai was already the
fourteenth city in China we
had visited so we were be-

coming accustomed to these
gracious welcomes, the sin-

cere concern for our comfort
and the ready desire ‘to help
us see as much as possible
during these all too brief vis-
its.

The flight from Canton to
Shanghai had been a very
long and roundabout one. Our
pilot (she didn’t tell us until
Shanghai) had to detour sev-
eral hundred miles to keep
clear of Chiang Kai-shek’s
bombers, then making their

raids along the South China
coast.

Since my boyhood days I
had cherished the hope of vis-
iting this great historic city of
Shanghai, symbol of foreign
exploitation ands aggression,
and cradle of heroic revolu-
tionary Chinese men and wo-
men. Now I was here on the
famed Shanghai Bund, its huge
administrative, customs, ho-
tels and other office build-
ings in Western’ architecture
reminding me of an imperial-
ist robber era that-had passed
Today the Bund serves the
people of China in the admin-
istration and economy of one
of the world’s greatest’ sea-
ports,

A decade ago or less Shang-
hai was an “open port,” open
to every imperialist exploiter
who came to loot and pillage.
Today under the People’s gov-
ernment it is still an open
port—open to all who come
in the spirit of peace, friend-
ship and mutual goodwill. The
‘flags of many nations flying
at the masthead of ships along
the sweep of its great river
bespeak a commerce based on
these principles.

Remarking that there were
no Canadian flags at the mast-
head of Canadian ships, a Chi-
nese longshore worker put it
this way: “We would like to
have mutual trading relations
with Canada, but if certain

powers oppose such trade we
cannot help it. We Chinese
have been here a long time
and will manage somehow.
The question is, can you?

Our two-day itinerary which
the welcoming committee help-
ed us prepare included visits
to one of Shanghai’s largest
shipyards, a huge textile mill,
a large new suburban area of
workers’ apartments, a Visit
to the famed Shanghai Uni-
versity and its 4,000 students,
a visit to the historic Chinese
Seamen’s Institute (once the
robber den of imperialist free-
booters in China), visits to
several children’s. _creches,
nurseries and hospitals, a trip
out to a huge new sports sta-
dium, and an unforgettable
visit to a “workers village.”

$03 % 53

Before liberation in 1949 the
Kiang Nan Shipyards, found-
ed in 1865 by British capital
employed a maximum of 2,000
workers. Now there are 10,-
500 and a steady demand for
more.

Chang. Chuan, director of
the yards, told me that before
liberation the Kuomingtang
spent much more money build-
ing palaces and summer re-
sorts for Kuomingtang gener-
als and officials than they did
shipping.

Out of Shanghai, one of
old China’s great industrial
centres, came China’s | first
trade unions, the first emerg-
ence of a conscious Chinese
industrial proletariat, arming
itself with the science of rev-
olutionary Marxism. The his-
tory of the great Chinese Sea-
men’s Union-is one of long and
heroic struggle and sacrifice,
coupled with many unsurpas-
sable examples of internation-
al working class solidarity.

With mixed feelings of pride
and reverence I traversed the
great building of the Chinese
Seamen’s Union; its “museum”
filled with tokens and gifts
of working class solidarity.
from the seamen of many
lands; its restful club rooms
and a spacious gymnasium; its
large assembly halls which
now echo to the cultural tal-
ent, the singing and dancing,
debates and laughter of so-
cialist builders, in place of
the raucous haggling of for-
eign money changers. In its
long galleries of portraits of
Chinese seamen who gave
their lives for a free China one
indeed finds history and in-
spiration,

tt it %

Since 1952 the University
of Shanghai has been entire-
ly dedicated to the production
of civil engineers, architects,
machine technicians, chemists
and scientists to help meet
China’s greatest need.

This vast polytéchnical. in-
stitute with its campus build-
ings covering six “hundred

industrial

The Bund is now the administrative centre for Shanghai,

acres or more, is like a huge
machine shop, with its 4,000
students or more taking an in-
tensive training in the “know-
how” of a modern machine
age.

The dean, educated in the
J.S., conducted us through nu-
merous engineering depart-
ments, dormitories, dining
halls, gymnasia, etc., and ev-
erywhere the students, boys
and girls in their teens gave
us a rousing welcome.

Their big problem, ‘the dean
informed us, was a shortage
of teachers and, in some
branches of science, a short-
age of equipment.

tt xt xt

Housing in Shanghai, as in
other growing industrial cen-
ters: of the New China, is a
pressing problem. Measured
in terms of our own housing
construction here at home,
what the Chinese have done
in the building of workers ap-
artments is really staggering.
But for the teeming millions
of China’s great cities, it is
still only a beginning.

The Chinese are justifiably
proud of their new suburban
cities of workers’ apartments.
These have been built during
the past four years in every
big city and on a scale that
would be considered gigantic
in this country. In China’s big
centres however,
they are only a very small
fraction of the need.

The Chinese people are also
fully aware that their housing
construction doesn’t come up
to the standards of the West-
ern world, but, they say, “Our
problem is to get as‘many fam-
ilies as possible into a modern
sanitary household in the
shortest possible time.”

To drive home-the full sig- |

nificance of new housing, our
Chinese friends in Shanghai
urged that we visit one of the
old “workers’ villages” — one

. of the “Chinese sections’’ of the

old extra-territorial-foreign-

concessionaire regime. “There,”
they said, “you will see where
we had to start from.”

The workers’ village we vis-
ited was appalling. Narrow
streets and lanes, ill-ventilated
hovels, death traps and incu-
bators of disease. With hund-
reds of the villagers around
us, young and old, we crowded
into one of these “homes” up-

on which foreign and Chinese ©

landlords fattened.

The chairman of the village
“Inhabitants. Committee” told
us of some of the horrors of
this slum area in the old. days.

The people were so poor
they could not pay for water,
garbage disposal, fuel or light.
The narrow streets were an
inferno of filth, disease, rats
and death. Dead children,
many at birth, were deposited
on the street aléng with the
garbage, their little bodies of-
ten half eaten away by rats
before removal.

Prostitution, vice and crime
stalked the village night and
day. Cold and hunger took
its additional toll in the win-
ter months. An appalling saga
of exploitation and the wan-
ton destruction of a people.

And this only a few miles

away from the French, BP
German, American and o

“extra-territorial concess! if
in Shanghai, where the
perialist profiteers talli |
their “take” in their pa)
residence and turned deal :
to the plight of ‘the wot
“villages.”

When, as often happen
we were taking a final
well of our Chinese hosts :
asked, “Well, what are ?
criticisms of our work?)
found it difficult to be ol
What can you say to #
who accomplishing
much?

are

There are times when Y
can be terribly empty, 2”
membering the herculea?
of eliminating the “wo

villages” of pre - liber?
days, this was one of
times.

As our plane rose above
great city of Shanghal_ ;
nose flattened against the”
dow to watch a little gro"
men_and women waving #,
bye until it dwindled |
speck — a speck re
world, and working desP {
ly to efface. the evile@ of

old. ;

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