MORALE STILL HIGH IN CHINA’S CAPITAL

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24028, 17 August 1943, Page 4

MORALE STILL HIGH IN CHINA’S CAPITAL

CHUNGKING

Four years to the day after my first arrival in Chungking in 1939, I went leisurely across the length and breadth of the city trying to be uninfluenced by my daily experience of China’s steadily growing difficulties, but to make out with a fresh thought to what extent the outward appearance of Chungking and its people actually has changed during those four years. I was surprised how much Chungking Las remained the same, and how little the great economic and social problems that have been developing since the early stages of war are showing up outwardly in Chinese life. First of all, I would not have been able to realise if it were not a fact I know to be correct that the population of this always overcrowded city has doubled during those four years. Even when one walks far into the countryside, which was once rustic and uninfluenced by the city, but now is a loosely-knit tremendous suburb, with small bamboo and plaster buildings huddling between rice fields and climbing up steep hills, it is difficult to understand where the additional 400,000 persons are living. Nor would I have been able to judge the magnitude of the air-raid damage Chungking suffered in 1940 and 1941 had I not been touring the city after most of the many devastating bombardments and fires, for most of the ruins have disappeared and the primitive new structures that have grown up in their place with facades that promise more- than their interior keeps do not look so different from those of the Chungking of 1939, which were ramshackle and unsightly enough. Even then the poor shelters made of a few bamboo poles and _ matting, in which coolies’ large families lived, and the rickety poor shops and eating houses built of thin wooden boards and protected against torrential rains by loose rows of half-broken tile were more prominent in the picture of the city than the few solid banks and schools and villas, most of which have survived and changed little by superficial repairs. Only the Government buildings, infinitely more numerous now than four-years ago, look decidedly less respectable than they did. One Change In City There is, however, one change in the picture of the city—the primitive dormitories of the lower officials have multiplied in number and crowd the compounds of many Government organisations. Apart from them, little huts for men with families have been built, for most of them had their wives and children come to Chungking from the occupied areas during the,last few years. New babies have arrived. The difficulties of living have caused many of these families to keep pigs, chickens, ducks, and goats. Vegetable plots have penetrated into those large gardens in which wealthy leisurely merchants and retired provincial generals were living before they became compounds of Government institutions. A kind of village life, therefore, has invaded the city, just as the city invaded the countryside round Chungking. I also was surprised to come to the conclusion that there are scarcely fewer motor-cars and buses in Chungking than there were in 1939, in spite of the fact that all normal gasoline supplies from outside have been cut off, while most stocks were confiscated for the army. The stifling fumes of the exhausts of the motor-cars and the solid black clouds of the city’s veteran buses, which keep running, in spite of age and dilapidation, remind one of the fact that home-made mixtures of sugar and alcohol and of the distilled products of rape seed, wood, and other vegetable oils have largely taken the place of ordinary gasoline. Even the rickshas, which seemed to be going to pieces in 1939 and threw quite a few fares into the mud or dust of the roads when they lost a wheel or broke their axle, are still on the move, although probably in. somewhat smaller numbers. The shops are at least as numerous as they were four years ago, looking in their majority little poorer than they were. Those of the better-class shops which are selling goods of notorious rarity, like leather shoes and watches, electrical appliances, imported cosmetics, etc., have increased in numbers,

[By GUENTHER STEIN.] (Published by Arrangement with the "Christian Science Monitor.”)

but their prices are entirely out of nm. portion to the incomes of most in Chungking. This protects the shon keepers, who apparently consider their wares primarily a means of safe cant x tal investment against a rush of would be buyers. Another most surprising result of an attentive walk through Chungking hj the observation that everybody stiS wears clothes which are more or W adequate by pre-war Chinese standards! for it is known that Free China pro duces only a very small fraction of the cotton and other materials needed hv its population of 250,000,000 persons that regular imports have long ceased' completely, that the influx from the occupied areas cannot possibly be great ’ and that trade stocks were not very considerable when the Japanese block*, ade was tightened. Looking closely, one -' will find the coolies’ primitive clothes more patched and torn and the aver* age Government official’s Chinese or Western-style clothes needing replace, ment, but the whole picture is little - different from 1939 and there still are a good number of people in Chung. 1 king’s streets and restaurants who Mr; well dressed. Poorly nourished persons have at ways been numerous in Chinese cities; yet there is no sign of actual starvationeven now. It seems that most of my acquaintances,' Chinese as well gj.' foreigners, have lost weight, though 1 probably not more than' persons in; other countries at war. But many in., Chungking who know how to manage are still eating well, since practically every kind of foodstuff can be bought without rationing. The display of luxury which started-, to develop only during the arid was no feature of Chungking duN> ' ing that heroic year of withdrawalLfrom Hankow, when war disciplinewas especially high, has recently beejjt restricted by several Government de-V. crees. Banquets and wedding parties, fewer in number than before, are re* 5 stricted to Chialing House and Vic*' 3 ' tory House, the city’s only hotels, while Chinese-style restaurant*?' are allowed to serve only two dishes gV head and no alcoholic drinks, % A “Happy-go-Lucky" Crowd The spirit of the populace as it manifests itself when one goes through the • streets does not seem to have sufferedlin comparison with 1939, They seem as { lively, noisy, “happy-go-lucky” and as'.f absorbed in their daily routines as ever i.| and just as convinced that complaining 4 and worrying do not diminish diffl-'| culties and hardships. The war, which? four years ago still was new, especially-! to the people in the remote province .of s, Szechwan, has virtually merged into? their normal daily life, and nothing‘s that is familiar, even the worst, is k;| matter of much comment to the aver- 1 age Chinese. ‘*f There is one change in psychology/,? however. At any tinie in 1939—and. hi; I' fact, until shortly after the outbreak? of the Pacific war—most persons would f have replied to the question of how-T----long they thought the war will last, r with the almost stereotyped statement, 1 ? 1 “About one year.” Now they will say, p two or three or even four years in a £ matter-of-fact way, without further? comment. * ? The desire to leave Chungking a*? soon as possible of all those who camefrom “down , river”—that ' is, from-l Shanghai, Hankow, and of rr those who used to live in Canton, fei-jp ping, Hong Kong, etc., is as little denied*# as it was in 1939, and all foreigners | share it. wholeheartedly.. The Chung-% king climate, with its trying dampness-? in hot as well as cold weather, is ? abominable. The local people are not? nearly the nicest of the many different'!* types of Chinese and the very narndoH' Chungking now stands for from the outside world and for a felt lack of books and newspapers, films and music, friends and relatives—lii in other words, a kind of banishment I from one’s home for temporising and:# waiting. ■ Yet in spite of all this, there is no”lj actual impatience either among Chipese M or foreign “refugees” to leave nor any If' more impatience on the'part of more primitive among the SzechWfngsa f people to be left alone again.