CHANG AND CHIANG.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 8

CHANG AND CHIANG.

MARSHAL DEMANDS PUNISHMENT. (By ARPAD SfcIGETVARY.) . While Marshal •' Chang Hsueh-Liang's action in voluntarily submitting himself and demanding punishment for instigating a rebellion against Marshal Chiang Kai-Shek may appear strange to us, it is only in keeping with Chinese tradition. The working of the Chinese mind is the very antithesis of ours, and no foreigner, however long he has lived in China, can ever understand its peculiarities. However, we can-, by tracing history, show how Chang's action is really not nearly as strange as it may seem. Chang acted as his ancestors did, and in China ancestral worship and therefore precedent, despite the Republic, is still a dominant feature of the people's lives. In the Manchu conquest of China in 1644 an incident occurred which fully illustrates the Chinese attitude. The last of the Ming Emperors was faced by three Manchu armies, headed by T'ientsung, a descendant of Aishin Goro (the Golden One*, founder of tha Manchu Royal House and said to hav? been immaculately conceived, Li and Chang. The Chinese called the Portuguese to their aid. A Portuguese regiment arrived, but the Chinese merely seized the guiis and equipment, making no use of the soldier*. T'ientsung crushed Korea, but failed in his attack on Peking, and retired into Manchuria. Li now took the field. He captured the strategic city of Kaifeng through broaching the stop bank oi the Yellow River. He drowned thus 1,000,000 people, including 10,000 of his own men. He assaulted Peking and overwhelmned the vastly superior force. When the last of the Ming Emperors, the last of a glorious dynasty, saw the flower of hie armies crushed and certain defeat facing him he committed suicide by hanging himself from a branch of a monkey-puzzle tree. When Li entered the city at the head of hk victorious troops one of his first acts was to load the tree with chains as a punishment for having destroyed the ""Son of Heaven." Upon he who had hanged himself the Manchurians conferred the title of "Sedate and Heroic Emperor." Another incident will suffice. Kabul was the first Mongol sovereign to visit a Chinese Emperor. Upon their meeting he disgraced himself. After his nomadic life and uncouth manner of living Kabul was awed by the magnificence of the Emperor's palace. However, when faced with a meal he reverted to the primitive savage. It is said that he ate a whole lamb, tearing the meat apart with his fingers. What really mattered, though, was the fact that he got very drunk. In the hilarious stage of intoxication he laughed immoderately at the Emperor's beard. In the provocative stage he pulled the Emperor's beard. When Kabul sobered up and realised what he had done, he immediately apologised and demanded that the Bmperor should have him executed. However, the Emperor refused to do this, and, instead, presented Kabul with a gown of golden cloth as a farewell present. Chang Hsueh-Liang's apology describing himself as "a surly, unpolished, rustic and impudent law-breaker," and Chiang-Kai-Shek's self-accusing reply, "I must hold' myself responsible for the incident, which makes my heart ache," are' merely instances of Chinese flowery speech and of etiquette. When a Chinese of the ruling class meets a labourer or peasant he merely demands "What's your name?" However, in meeting bne of his own class he asks "Sir, I pray what may your honourable and exalted name be?" To which the reply comes, "My unworthy, despicable and humble name is Wang," or whatever it may be. Chang's and Chiang's quoted remarks are purely and simply the carrying out of the accepted form of verbal etiquette, and therefore not to be interpreted as anything out of the ordinary. What the outcome of the dispute will be it is naturally impossible to say. However, probably precedent will again be acted upon— a precedent set by the Emperor Mu Wang, who ruled as long ago as 1001-946 B.C. Chang will be fined. Chiang holds the purse strings, so will probably give Chang the money to pay the fine, and the matter will be amicably settled: