'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